Search

Historians generally recognise E.A. Preobrazhensky as the most famous Soviet economist of the 1920s. English-language readers know him best as author of The New Economics and co-author (with N.I. Bukharin) of The ABC of Communism. The documents in this volume, many newly discovered and almost all translated into English for the first time, reveal a Preobrazhensky previously unknown, whose interests ranged far beyond economics to include not only party debates and issues affecting the lives of workers and peasants, but also philosophy, world events, and Russian history, culture and politics. Including moments of triumph and tragedy, they tell an intimate story of political awakening and of commitment to socialist revolution as the path to human dignity.

The Baltic philosopher Vasily Sesemann (1884-1963), rooted in the Classics and influenced but not dominated by Kant, Herder, Bergson, Husserl, and Lossky, was a first-rate scholar in the fields of aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and history of philosophy. But he is still relatively unknown internationally because he wrote mostly in Lithuanian and some of his many works are only now being translated into English. This successor volume to his Aesthetics collects eight noteworthy essays, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, on aesthetics, aesthetic education, national culture, and theory of knowledge. They reveal a sympathetic and responsive mind equally at home in Ancient Greek and modern French, German, and Russian philosophy; and capable both of untendentiously expounding their dominant ideas and fruitfully anticipating newer developments even as the latter began to take shape in early-to-mid-20th-century Western European philosophy. Hallmarks of Sesemann's thought are the Heraclitean preference for becoming (dynamism, change) over being (stasis, timelessness) and the idea that any culture, in order to survive and grow, must be intellectually deep and open to foreign influences. This insight has crucial relevance to the debates about multiculturalism today.

Evgeny A. Preobrazhensky was Russia's foremost economist in the 1920s. This volume editorially reconstructs his theory of socialist industrialisation in an agrarian country and relates it to previous socialist theories and to issues of political struggle, culture and communist morality. The editors create a unique portrait of Preobrazhensky as an economist and social theorist, assess the viability of NEP as a model of economic growth, and identify the fault lines that contributed to the split in the Trotskyist Opposition and its defeat in the struggle against Stalin. The bulk of the work consists of the important An Attempt to Provide a Theoretical Analysis of the Soviet Economy, while the material in Volume III focuses on concrete analysis.

Evgeny A. Preobrazhensky was Russia's foremost economist in the 1920s. This volume editorially reconstructs his theory of socialist industrialisation in an agrarian country and relates it to previous socialist theories and to issues of political struggle, culture and communist morality. The bulk of the work consists of Preobrazhensky's Concrete Analysis of the Soviet Economy, which supplements his theoretical inquiry published in Volume II. A number of appendices present Preobrazhensky's analysis of the NEP and his correspondence with Trotsky alongside extensive contributions by the volume's editors and translators.

The present collection of essays grew out of a conference, held in Dresden in December 2001, exploring the relationship between the public sphere and legal culture. The conference was held in connection with the ongoing research undertaken by the Sonderforschungsbereich 537 ‘Institutionalisation and Historical Change'and, in particular, by the project ‘Circulation of Legal Norms and Values in British Culture from 1688 to 1900'.The conference papers include essays on the theory of the public sphere from a systematic and historical point of view by Gert Melville, by Peter Uwe Hohendahl and by Jürgen Schlaeger, all of whom try to re-evaluate and/or improve upon Jürgen Habermas'seminal contribution to the discussion of the emergence of modernism. Alastair Mann's contribution investigates the situation in Scotland, particularly censorship and the oath of allegiance; Annette Pankratz focuses on the king's body as a site of the public sphere; Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock looks into the widespread ‘culture of contention'at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and Eckhart Hellmuth considers the reform movement at the end of the century and the radical democrats'insistence on the right to discuss the constitution.Ian Bell, who took part in the conference, suggested the inclusion of part of the first chapter of his seminal study Literature and Crime in Augustan England (1991). Beth Swan, Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos, and Christoph Houswitschka respectively analyse the ideologies of justice, the interrelation between journalism and crime, and the juridical evaluation of the crime of incest and its representation in public. Greta Olson investigates keyholes as liminal spaces between the public and the private, Juliet Wightman focuses on theatre and the bear pit, Uwe Böker examines the court room and prison as public sites of discourse, and York-Gothart Mix discusses the German emigrant culture in North America.

If the practice of war is as old as human history, so too is the need to reflect upon war, to understand its meaning and implications. The Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus asserted in 600BC that War (polemos) is justice, thus inaugurating a long philosophical tradition of consideration of the morality of war. In recent times, the increased specialisation of academic disciplines has led a to a fragmentation of the thematic of war within the academy - the topic of war is as likely to be addressed by sociologists, cultural theorists, psychologists and even computer scientists as it is by historians, philosophers or political scientists. This diversity of disciplinary approaches to war is undoubtedly fruitful in itself but can lead to an isolation of respective disciplinary analyses of war from each other. In July 2002, at Mansfield College, Oxford, an inter-disciplinary conference on war (entitled'War and Virtual War') was held so as to redress some of this disciplinary isolationism and to forge an integrative dialogue on war, in all its facets. The papers in this volume were nominated by delegates as the most paradigmatic of the ethos of the original project and the most successful in achieving its aims of inter-disciplinarity and critical dialogue.

This book began as a collection of papers presented at a conference entitled ‘The Future Business of Higher Education'held at Oxford University. The contributions range from those who grapple with the question of what a University should do, through those concerned with making Higher Education more efficient, to some who were already planning for some technologically inevitable virtual future. These disparate leanings led to inevitable conflict and a challenge in editing into book form. In compiling and editing the chapters the editor has tried to preserve some of the diversity of opinion presented at Oxford. By doing so it is apparent that some individual contributors would find unacceptable much of what others in the book have to say. The traditionalists clash with the modernizers, the Left with the Right, Public with Private and the theorists with the practitioners. It is this very divergence of philosophical opinion as to the future of Higher Education that makes this book such an enjoyable and stimulating read.

(Re)Constructing Cultures of Violence and Peace brings together eleven original essays that were presented at the Third Global Conference on Cultures of Violence held in August 2002 in Prague. Covering an array of violence-related subjects, and a range of methodologies—textual, historical, theoretical, quantitative—the resulting volume is a multifaceted exploration of how cultures of violence are constructed, and how they can be deconstructed and replaced with cultures of peace. In part one, the authors aim to map and describe some of the important cultures of violence in our modern world—interstate war, civil war, criminal punishment, religious conflict, hooliganism—as an initial step towards understanding violence as a cultural construction. Part two explores aspects of the (re)construction of culture of peace. Specifically, the challenges encountered in attempting to conceptualise, study, or transform cultures of violence are examined. A common theme throughout the book is that violence is a fluid social and cultural construct—it is made by individuals, groups, and social forces. The implications of this are more than simply ontological: if violence is made, it can also be unmade; if cultures of violence are socially and politically constructed, they can also be de-constructed.

Evil is not only an abstract concept to be analyzed intellectually, but a concrete reality that we all experience and wrestle with on an ongoing basis. To truly understand evil we must always approach it from both angles: the intellective and the phenomenological. This same assertion resounds through each of the papers in this volume, in which an interdisciplinary and international group (including nurses, psychologists, philosophers, professors of literature, history, computer studies, and all sorts of social science) presented papers on cannibalism, the Holocaust, terrorism, physical and emotional abuse, virtual and actual violence, and depravity in a variety of media, from film to literature to animé to the Internet. Conference participants discussed villains and victims, dictators and anti-heroes, from 921 AD to the present, and considered the future of evil from a number of theoretical perspectives. Personal encounters with evil were described and analyzed, from interviews with political leaders to the problems of locating and destroying land mines in previous war zones. The theme of responsibility and thinking for the future is very much at the heart of these papers: how to approach evil as a question to be explored, critiqued, interrogated, reflected upon, owned. The authors urge an attitude of openness to new interpretations, new perspectives, new understanding. This may not be a comfortable process; it may in fact be quite disturbing. But ultimately, it may be the only way forward towards a truly ethical response. The papers in this collection provide a wealth of food for thought on this most important question.

The main common themes of an earlier book in this series, Virtual Learning and Higher Education, were: the extent to which education should become ‘virtual', the actual cost and value of such innovation and to what degree such education suits its stakeholders. In order to further engage with these important issues a conference was held in Mansfield College, Oxford in September 2003. An edited selection of the papers from that event along with relevant papers that developed as a result of the conference's subsequent correspondences are the contents of this book.The chapters cover a spectrum of practical issues from ‘at the e-chalkface'experimentations with virtual technologies via those who consider the consequences of establishing such systems through to those interested in developing long-term strategy or policy in the area.This stimulating and important book is aimed at researchers of topics such as technology-driven education, philosophy, innovation and cultural studies. It is also meant to appeal to anyone with an interest in the ‘virtual'world of education.

Environmental justice is the subtext of this collection of anxieties around the need for a sustainable future on Planet Earth. Thinkers and scholars from a diversity of backgrounds reflect on what it means and how cultures must change to greet this future. From Romania to Mexico, Bosnia to Canada, Sweden to California authors analyze and recount community experiences and expectations leading to justice for land, sea, air and wildlife. The kind of ethical weltanschauung for a society in which this kind of justice is achievable is suggested. The collection points to the myriad of single instance decisions that we must all make in living our daily lives whether in our homes, workplaces or leisure time. From good policies to sound management, governments, corporations and community-based organizations will find prudent praxis from cover to cover.

The 5th Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship conference was held at Oxford, UK in 2006. This decidedly trans-disciplinary, international event attracted participants from traditionally separate academic perspectives; each ambassadors for their disciplines and each seeking and making connections with other disciplines and other understandings. Some of the presentations from this conference have been further developed for inclusion in this book, yielding 14 chapters of paradigmatic richness covering issues ranging from environmental education and the nature of global multinational corporations, to the role of environmental activism and consideration of how democratically representative some campaigns may be. This book will be of great interest to anyone working in these areas as well as an excellent introductory journey for those seeking to become pan-paradigmatic.

This book is a selection of the scholarly works presented at the 2nd International Redefining Europe Conference in Prague, 2005 as a part of the Ashburn Institute's analogous initiative, the goal of which is to advance people's understanding of the future of European civilisation, and to explore the varying dynamics of transatlantic relations. This volume is a 2nd publication in the Redefining Europe Conference Series. The third manuscript will appear in print following the Renewing the Transatlantic Relationship: Prospects for Europe and the United States in an Emerging Multipolar World Conference held in Norman, OK, November 2008. This book is targeted at scholars and students in political science and related disciplines.

Designed for students, academics and the general reader alike, Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging provides theoretical and empirical insights into the linkages between sexualities and forms of desire, and ways of belonging and relating to others in specific contexts and moments in time. Opening with a substantial introduction by one of the editors, this collection of thirteen essays is organised into three parts, each section making important contributions to contemporary debates regarding the sexual politics of citizenship, marriage, friendship, pornography, intimacies, eroticism and desire. As such, the essays introduce fresh perspectives for thinking about how individuals construct senses of belonging and modes of relating to others in their everyday lives, within the disciplinary frameworks of sociology, organisational analysis and cultural studies. As well, the volume analyses representations of desire and eroticism in British Pop Art, trauma and feminist fiction, polyamory self-help literature, Hollywood films, and sociological and psychoanalytic theory. Analytical insights offered within these essays will do much to stimulate debate about aspects of the socially and historically constituted relationship between desire and sexuality. Because of the diverse approaches and conclusions it contains, the volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in engaging with inter- and multidisciplinary perspectives in order to understand the dynamics between constructions of desire and belonging, and discourses of gender, sex and sexuality.

This book presents papers by eleven European scholars that explore the ambivalent representations of an American West that follows “no single trajectory, creating instead a series of lines and rhythms, always moving, crossing, and folding” (Neil Campbell). The papers explore the use of the American West as an ideal or a realistic setting in different cultural productions, ranging from music (“Sing-along Melodies of the West”) to film (“Western Images in Motion”) or comics (“Graphic Representations of the American West”), and including popular cultural fields like podcasts, fashion, and gastronomy (“Performing the West”).

This first and only English translation of Rong Xinjiang's The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges Between East and West is a collection of 28 papers on the history of the Silk Road and the interactions among the peoples and cultures of East and Central Asia, including the so-called Western Regions in modern-day Xinjiang. Each paper is a masterly study that combines information obtained from historical records with excavated materials, such as manuscripts, inscriptions and artefacts. The new materials primarily come from north-western China, including sites in the regions of Dunhuang, Turfan, Kucha, and Khotan. The book contains a wealth of original insights into nearly every aspect of the complex history of this region.

The book represents a selection of papers presented at an international symposium in Singapore on the role of theory and practice in the mutually interactive and mutating relations between institutions and cultures. In effect, the papers turn about a single theme: the ways in which power is expressed through those institutions by means of which cultures mediate their requirements. The symposium brought together scholars and academics from a variety of disciplines, including literature, philosophy, cultural studies, sociology, comparative literature and comparative religions. In terms of the geography of cultures and the history of institutions, the range of reference to this book of the symposium is global: from Hong Kong awaiting 1997, through the travails of political democracy in Singapore, and Cultural Studies à la Greenblatt or under the aegis of Shakespeare as cultural idol, through German Romantic theory and its relevance to current theorizing about theory in America, to Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna and how these two sources refract the concerns of Jung, Lacan and Derrida; through Colonialism and postcoloniality and how they have shaped identity and mediated power to the current crises in education created by these mediations, specifically, in literary studies. The aim of the symposium was twofold: to theorize about the impulse to theorize in relation to the plurality of cultures and institutions which comprises our contemporary world; and to ground this impulse in those specificities and contingencies which provide resistance to such theorizing.

An account of the author's triple careers in academia, and services to two distinct governments of Liberia – William R. Tolbert's and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's (consultant). Situated between the crisis years of the True Whig Party (TWP) regime, and the hopeful years of the first post-civil war government, stands more than three decades of teaching, research and public intellectual engagement. More than an impressionistic account, the author employs a rich repertoire of unpublished documents that include his personal cabinet notes and a wide range of government papers. His personal research papers acquired from archival research and interviews over the years supplement these. It is this rich background material that enables the telling of a fascinating story of the tensions within the TWP regime on the eve of the bloody 1980 coup, and in the process, paints enlightening portraits of such key players as Tolbert and his finance minister, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, among a host of others. Included as well are some specifics of the 1979 “rice riots” and its impact on the politics of change. Discoveries are also unearthed about the author's role in racially integrating and internationalizing an American Episcopal/Anglican University in rural Tennessee. Among the questions explained are: Who was President Tolbert? What sort of finance minister to Tolbert was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf? Who was C. Cecil Dennis? Who was Jackson Fiah Doe? Who was Bacchus Matthews? How did the forces for change interact with those of the status quo in the 1970s? What were some of the forces at play in the reform attempts in the early 2000s? All things considered, what are Liberia's prospects going forward?

This volume represents the efforts of fifteen scholars from Europe and North America to work through the complex and sometimes compromising past and the current struggles that together define eastern German identity, society, and politics ten years after unification. Their papers offer an exemplary illustration of the variety of disciplinary methods and new source materials on which established and younger scholars can draw today to further differentiated understanding of the old GDR and the young Länder. In a volume that will interest students of German history, cultural studies and comparative politics, the authors show how utopian ideals quickly degenerated into a dictatorship that provoked the everyday resistance at all levels of society that ultimately brought the regime to its demise. They also suggest how the GDR might live on in memory to shape the emerging varieties of postcommunist politics in the young states of the Federal Republic and how the GDR experience might inspire new practices and concepts for German society as a whole. Most importantly, the papers here testify to the multidisciplinary vitality of a field whose original object of enquiry disappeared over a decade ago.

These papers reflect the long and distinguished career of Professor Jane Roberts in the field of medieval English studies, and especially her pioneering work on A Thesaurus of Old English, which provides novel source material for several of the contributions to the volume. Many of the papers deal with aspects of early lexicology and lexicography, while others focus on linguistic and literary features of Old and Middle English texts and their interpretation. They will thus be of interest to researchers in many areas of early English. A special introductory article describes the interlinked development of A Thesaurus of Old English, The Historical Thesaurus of English, and the proposed Thesaurus of Middle English.Contributors include: Rosamund Allen, Janet M. Bately, Carole P. Biggam, Michelle Brown, Julie Coleman, Janet Cowen, Jodi-Ann George, Joyce Hill, Rosemary Huisman, Giovanni Iarmartino, George Kane, Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Michiko Ogura, Peter Orton, Jeremy J. Smith, E.G. Stanley, Paul Szarmach, Ronald Waldron.

The present volume is the product of a joint effort made by scholars from across China (including Hong Kong), Japan and Europe. The book gathers sixteen papers devoted to literary and cultural criticism from a comparative point of view.A perspective prominent in this volume is imagology, an approach first developed by Daniel-Henry Pageaux, and which focuses on specific images in literary and other texts. The study of the image of the “foreign” in national literary traditions, for instance, belongs to the traditional purview of comparative literature. Pageaux did more than uphold this tradition. He practically reinvented it using new theoretical concepts and perspectives (in particular, semiotics and reception aesthetics). On this basis, he was able to develop a theory and a methodology that are both usable and in tune with contemporary concerns. The present book covers a wide range of topics in the study of images of Westerners in Chinese and Japanese literature. Individual contributions deal with issues such as the genesis of the Chinese term Foreign Devil, the occurrence of Westerners in modern Chinese and Japanese literature, and the Chinese and Japanese reception of indiviual western authors and artists such as, amongst others, Oscar Wilde, Vincent Van Gogh, and Madame Roland. Some papers examine individual authors such as Lu Xun and Takeyama Michio. Others examine historical periods or literary movements. The approaches followed range from historical investigations of linguistic practices to detailed literary analyses.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. What emerged from the 3rd Global Conference on Trauma Theory and Practice was a lively and informed view of the different ways our history, personal experiences, education, and forms of entertainment are shaped by trauma and its resultant interpretations. This volume comprises numerous academic papers concerning essential subjects in relation to trauma, from literary representations of and responses to war-related trauma, to the articulating of suffering and other traumatic legacies of colonialism. Key scholars, including Cathy Caruth and Ann E. Kaplan, are employed to develop these important research areas, as conference participants provide new insights into artistic representations of trauma and their subsequent analysis. Significant time is also dedicated to papers concerning post-traumatic growth and the role of psycho-spiritual transformation in the process, outcomes, and management of trauma. Using clinical examples, valuable research concerning the creation of safe learning environments for traumatized children is also discussed, along with additional research concerning Sandplay therapy and the theoretical and empirical aspects of time.

Happiness is a challenging, multifaceted topic, which obviously calls for an interdisciplinary approach. This work is a collection of papers which explores the phenomenon of happiness from a variety of angles, and from both theoretical and practical perspectives. They deal with the general nature and conditions of happiness, methods and measures for studying happiness, the consequences of happiness policies and discourses and the significance of specific factors, like landscapes or educational environments, for happiness. Some of the papers investigate the thoughts of ancient, 19th-century or 20th-century philosophers. Others employ theories and techniques from contemporary psychology to get a firmer grip on the elusive phenomenon of happiness. Contributors include Ranjeeta Basu, Valeriu Budeanu, Sarah A. Bushey, Mustafa Cihan Camci, Emily Corrigan-Kavanagh, Carolina Escobar-Tello, Julia Hotz, Søren Harnow Klausen, Kathy Pui Ying Lo, Andrea-Mariana Marian, Bryon Martin, Andrew Molas, Sean Moran, Liza Ortiz, Shelomi Panditharatne, Sheila M. Rucki, Jane Russel-O'Connor and Marie Thomas.

The general papers in Volume 29 of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion cover a range of topics including psychological type, prayer, nature and well-being, psychobiography, coping with addiction, and the role of place in spirituality. The first special section on congregational studies draws on a range of large datasets from the National Church Life Surveys in Australia. Papers examine the factors that predict individual sense of belonging in Catholic parishes as well as congregational-level aspects of vitality, collective confidence, and innovativeness. The second special section examines the Ideological Surround Model and how it can help to better understand expressions of faith related to psychological constructs such as mindfulness, fundamentalism, and the ‘Dark Triad'of Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. Contributors are: Tania ap Siôn, Amanda (Mandy) Aspland, Dharma Arunachalam, Joel Gruneau Brulin, Zhuo Job Chen, Victor Counted, Giuseppe Crea, Robert Dixon, Martin Dowson, Deepti B. Duggi, Leslie J. Francis, Nima Ghorbani, Pehr Granqvist, Gill Hall, Douglas Hall, Nicole Hancock, Magnhild Høie, Ralph W. Hood Jr., Shanmukh Vasant Kamble, Thomas Lindgren, Ronald J. Morris, Miriam Pepper, Ruth Powell, Brooke M. Ruf, Sam Sterland, Fazlollaha Tavakoli, John-Kåre Vederhus, David C. Wang, P. J. Watson, and John K. Williams.

Archival Afterlives explores the posthumous fortunes of scientific and medical archives in early modern Britain. If early modern natural philosophers claimed all knowledge as their province, theirs was a paper empire. But how and why did naturalists engage with archives, and in particular, with the papers of their dead predecessors? This volume makes a firm case for expanding what counts as scientific labour, integrating scribes, archivist, library keepers, editors, and friends and family of deceased naturalists into the history of science. It shows how early modern natural philosophers pursued new natural knowledge in dialogue with their recent material past. Finally, it demonstrates the sustaining importance of archival institutions in the growth and development of the “New Sciences.” Contributors are: Arnold Hunt, Michael Hunter, Vera Keller, Carol Pal, Anna Marie Roos, Richard Serjeantson, Victoria Sloyan, Alison Walker, and Elizabeth Yale.

This volume of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion includes a wide range of papers from a social-science perspective. The special section gives a unique insight into the rapidly growing field of psychological studies of religion in China. It draws on experts from China and the USA who met for a conference at Fuller Theological Seminary and have together compiled a collection of original research and reviews that helps to locate the current state of the discipline from a specifically Chinese perspective. Other papers in the volume examine intergenerational religious transmission and religious problem-solving styles in the USA.

Which three stages of the evolution of world order has China gone through? How does China deal with its neighbors, and with the countries on its periphery? How will China and the United States avoid falling into ‘The Thucydides Trap'? What led China to propose the ‘One-Belt-One-Road'joint development initiative? This volume, the first of its kind, gathers a collection of translations of influential essays, speeches, and papers on Chinese foreign policy, national security, and foreign economic relations written by Chinese scholars. Many papers have also served as propositions for policy prescriptions to China's leaders, the vast majority of which have, to date, only been available in Chinese.

This volume includes a wide range of papers that explore individual and institutional aspects of religion from a social-science perspective. The special section has articles related to the practice of prayer, and includes studies from the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. The general papers include studies on coping strategies, God representations, spirituality versus religion, self-control in a Muslim context, and faith-based organizations in Cambodia. Together these papers form a valuable collection indicating the depth and vibrancy of research in these fields. Contributors are: Blanca Aranda, Mark Aveyard, Aaron W. Banister, Anderson Blanton, Zhuo Job Chen, Francine Dolins, John Frame, Leslie J. Francis, Shira Gabriel, Norma Geist, Gemma Penny, Nima Ghorbani, Zvonimir Knezović, Kevin L. Ladd, Jonathan D. Lane, Patrick J. Laycock, Kirsten A. Lesage, Mikael Lundmark, Patrick Pössel, Rebekah A. Richert, Anondah R. Saide, Nicholas J. Shaman, Fazlollah Tavakoli, Filip Užarević, Jennifer Valenti, Paul J. Watson.

The Writer's Craft, the Culture's Technology explores the multiple ways in which a culture's technological resources shape its literary productions. Literature and style cannot be divorced from the particular technologised culture that sponsors them. This has always been true, as papers here on literature from earlier periods show. But many of the papers focus on contemporary culture, where literature vies for attention with film, the internet, and other multimodal cultural forms. These essays, from an international array of experts, are stylistics-based but not stylistics-bound. They should be of interest to all who are interested in discourse analytic commentaries on how technological horizons, as always, continue to shape the forms and functions of literature and other cultural productions.

The debate on Orientalism began some fifty years ago in the wake of decolonization. While initially considered a turning point, Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) was in fact part of a larger academic endeavor – the political critique of “colonial science” – that had already significantly impacted the humanities and social sciences. In a recent attempt to broaden the debate, the papers collected in this volume, offered at various seminars and an international symposium held in Paris in 2010-2011, critically examine whether Orientalism, as knowledge and as creative expression, was in fact fundamentally subservient to Western domination. By raising new issues, the papers shift the focus from the center to the peripheries, thus analyzing the impact on local societies of a major intellectual and institutional movement that necessarily changed not only their world, but the ways in which they represented their world. World history, which assumes a plurality of perspectives, leads us to observe that the Saidian critique applies to powers other than Western European ones — three case studies are considered here: the Ottoman, Russian (and Soviet), and Chinese empires. Other essays in this volume proceed to analyze how post-independence states have made use of the tremendous accumulation of knowledge and representations inherited from previous colonial regimes for the sake of national identity, as well as how scholars change and adapt what was once a hegemonic discourse for their own purposes. What emerges is a new landscape in which to situate research on non-Western cultures and societies, and a road-map leading readers beyond the restrictive dichotomy of a confrontation between West and East. With contributions by: Elisabeth Allès; Léon Buskens; Stéphane A. Dudoignon; Baudouin Dupret; Edhem Eldem; Olivier Herrenschmidt; Nicholas S. Hopkins; Robert Irwin; Mouldi Lahmar; Sylvette Larzul; Jean-Gabriel Leturcq; Jessica Marglin; Claire Nicholas; Emmanuelle Perrin; Alain de Pommereau; François Pouillon; Zakaria Rhani; Emmanuel Szurek; Jean-Claude Vatin; Mercedes Volait

The 25th volume of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion continues to provide readers with an interdisciplinary assortment of high quality research studies aimed at capturing salient, contemporary trends in the field. The current volume presents a special section examining the role of spiritual and religious themes in sexuality research. Engaging analyses evaluate homonegativity and how religious advocacy influences perceptions of gay and lesbian individuals across different cultures. Also included are papers on the development of sexual identities among religious committed individuals. These papers help to connect concepts too frequently considered unrelated. The regular articles provide similarly stimulating evaluations of timely topics such as religious coping, gratitude, and the role of personality in describing religious experiences. The contributors are: John K. Anarfi, Alexandra M. Anderson, Ana Luiza Vilela Borges, Gina M. Brelsford, Marian Burchardt, Zhuo Chen, Leslie J. Francis, Megan E. Fulmer, Luke Gahan, Shiva Geranmayepour, Nima Ghorbani, Angela A. Gyasi-Gyamerah, Marissa A. Harrison, Lynne Hillier, Luiza Akiko Komura Hoga, Tiffany Jones, Elizabeth A. Maynard, Eduardo Ocampo, Sarah-Jane Page, Priscilla Evelyn Penteado, Alexandria Heysquierdo Posada, Mandy Robbins, Juliana Reale Caçapava Rodolpho, Michael W. Ross, P. J. Watson, Xu Xu, George Yancey, Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip.

A quarter of a century ago His Royal Highness Prince Claus of the Netherlands (1926-2002) formulated his statements on ‘development and equity'. To honour him and his work, a professorial chair in ‘development and equity'was established in 2003: the ‘Prince Claus Chair'. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Chair, a conference was held in The Hague in November 2012. Each of the ten chair holders presented a paper written from his/her own perspective. These papers have been brought together in this book and show the diversity and richness of the theme. The volume also includes three essays by the promising young scholars who were judged to be the top three in a competition for the best Master's thesis in ‘development, equity and citizenship'.

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion continues to offer a place for the publication of theoretical and empirical papers related to the broad area of how the social sciences understand religion. Two papers in the general section add important contributions to the fields of faith development and spirituality. The use of special sections has enabled particular topics to be dealt with in detail and shows how information that is gathered incrementally can help make great advances in a field. Spirituality, alongside religion, features as the key independent variable in many of the nine papers of the special section in this volume. Social scientific approaches have sought to show links between the experiences of health, well-being or disease, and individual differences in religiosity and/or spirituality.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. In November 2011, artists, professors, students, and scholars from around the world gathered in Prague, Czech Republic, to attempt to define what could be considered the erotic. The conference sought submissions that addressed interactions of the erotic with history, art, literature, practices, performances, pedagogy, and sexuality, among many others. This wide focus brought together an intellectually rich meeting that interrogated the boundaries between eroticism, sex, and desire. This volume represents a sampling of papers presented at the conference, and the diverse focuses within these papers are indicative of the inter- and trans-disciplinary work that was presented. Each work within this collection brings a fresh and unique approach to the erotic and, in its own way, tries to answer the question, ‘What is erotic?'

The social scientific study of religion is a crucial arena of human endeavor, as questions about the existence and nature of God interact with the study of religion as a human phenomenon. The twenty-third volume of Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion continues the tradition of promoting extended debate of current issues in the field. The special section on Theism and Non-Theism in Psychological Science includes contributions from leading researchers in this area. This landmark collection of papers draws on a range of perspectives that both summarize the theism debate in psychology and help to move it forward in new directions. In addition, the volume includes papers on other key areas in the study of religion such as spirituality and social capital.

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion publishes empirical and theoretical studies of religion from a wide range of disciplines and from all parts of the globe. A special section is devoted to the issue of psychological type and religion and especially how psychological type can increase our understanding of Christian ministry. Alongside this section are papers presenting studies on subjects such as civic participation, suffering with God, and spirituality. Together these papers represent important contributions that advance theory and evidence in a number of different fields of contemporary relevance to the study of religion. Contributors to the present volume include: William L. Smith, Pidi Zhang, G, Michael Leffel, Keith M. Wilson, Ronan Bernas, Liza Benovenli, Elizabeth Fuller, Ja Sinnott, Sarah Waterman, Andrew Village, Leslie J. Francis, Mandy Robbins, Keith Wulff, Christopher F.J. Ross, Michael Whinney, Lewis Burton, Bruce G. Fawcett, David Tilley, Susan H. Jones, and Andrew Ryland.

The papers within this volume articulate the challenges perceived by an individual or a country when its sense of self is confronted by the foreign, the threatening. Migration, exile, and invasion all challenge the individual or the nation to redefine itself and thereby write and rewrite the concept of personal and national identity. This interdisciplinary collection of papers, published for the first time, provide a stimulating and varied set of insights into the ongoing conversation that maps identity.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2011. Cultural Cyborgs: Life at the Interface is a collection of essays arising from the 6th Global Conference on Cybercultures: Exploring Critical Issues, held as a part of Cyber Hub activity in Prague, Czech Republic in March 2011. The papers explore the augmented lives of people, communities and society at the interface between cyberspace and ‘real space.'This edge between realms allows for cultural hybridisation, which can enhance the lives, relationships and understanding of those who actively engage. However, this augmentation has far reaching implications not only for the lives of the cultural cyborgs, but also for the political, commercial and legal sectors and even the way we conceptualise and construct cyberspace itself. The ebook begins by questioning identity formation in this hybridised existence, and many of the essays continue to explore how certain communities (disabled people, people with eating disorders, parts of the gay community, indie music bands and even horror movie fans) use cyberspace to enhance and support their online/offline identities. Other essays question how we conceptualise our interactions in cyberspace, from visions of the space itself, through to representations of bodies made corporal, online scandals, and constructions of hacker identities in the courtroom. The book concludes with a series of papers which investigate how offline activities are co-opting social networking in the areas of corporate communication, civic engagement and political campaigning. Each essay explores a different aspect of the hybrid cultural and social existence which is cyberculture, and together they form a fascinating glimpse at this rich, diverse and rapidly developing cultural formation.

This latest edited book in the Idea of Education series, entitled ‘Frontiers in Higher Education', began its journey as working papers from an Inter-Disciplinary.Net conference held in Budapest, Hungary in 2008. The conference was fortunate in that all its delegates were committed to critical engagement and as a result the quality and quantity of interaction between attendees was high. Some extremely important issues were raised and engaged with collectively. Subsequent to the event in Budapest the editors actively encouraged an electronically-mediated on-going debate about the themes discussed in Budapest. As a result all papers selected for this volume have undergone major transformation since first aired at the conference.In making the final selection the editors were desirous of a work that had distinct clearly-recognisable themes where complementation and relevance was self-evident. There are three main thematic sections in this volume: ‘Sociocultural Frontiers of Higher Education'containing four chapters; ‘Limitations and Aspirations of the Academy'comprising the six chapters, and two innovative final chapters presenting and reflecting on aspects of the ‘Technological Frontiers of Higher Education.'This book is aimed at researchers of topics such as the future of higher education, globalisation and cultural and social frontiers of higher education and related fields.

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion publishes empirical and theoretical studies of religion from a wide range of disciplines and from all parts of the globe. This volume includes a special section on spirituality and hope that brings together theoreticists and practitioners who present original research on this important and neglected topic. Alongside this section are papers presenting studies on subjects such as civic participation, suffering with God, and spirituality. Together these papers represent important contributions that advance theory and evidence in a number of different fields of contemporary relevance to the study of religion. Contributors to the present volume include: Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek, Gina Brelsford, Sarah A. Chickering, Joanne Dickson, Leslie J. Francis, Kenneth H. Hamilton, Russell McCann, Joyce O. Murphy, Michelle J. Scallon, Anthony Scioli, Patrick Shade, Christopher Sink, Jen Unwin, Andrew Village, Marcia Webb and Paul Wink.

The book reveals different dimensions of modeling in the historical sciences. Papers collected in the first part (Ontology of the Historical Process) consider different models of historical reality and discuss their status. The second part (Modeling in the Methodology of History) presents various forms of idealization in historiographic research. The papers in the third part (Modeling in the Research Practice) present various models of past reality (e.g. of Poland, Central Europe and the general history of the feudal system) put forward by historians. Other papers consider the status of scientific laws and historical generalizations. The volume will be of interest to those who study analytical philosophy of history, methodology of history and social sciences, social philosophy as well as theory and history of historiography.

The papers brought together in this volume explore, through corpus data, the link between contrastive and interlanguage analysis. Learner corpora are approached from a contrastive perspective, by comparing them with native corpora or corpus data produced by learners from other mother tongue backgrounds, or by combining them with contrastive data from multilingual (translation or comparable) corpora. The integration of these two frameworks, contrastive and learner corpus research, makes it possible to highlight crucial aspects of learner production, such as features of non-nativeness (errors, over- and underuse, unidiomatic expressions), including universal features of interlanguage, or more general issues like the question of transfer. The ten papers of this volume cover topics ranging from methodology to syntax (e.g. adverb placement, postverbal subjects), through lexis (collocations) and discourse (e.g. information packaging, thematic choice). The languages examined include English, Chinese, Dutch, French and Spanish. The book will be of interest to a wide array of readers, especially researchers in second language acquisition and contrastive linguistics, but also professionals working in foreign language teaching, such as language teachers, materials writers and language testers.

This volume of articles comprises papers from the 25th annual conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA), which was held at the University of Huddersfield, England, in July 2005. The theme of the conference was ‘Stylistics and Social Cognition', and as usual at a PALA conference, this theme was interpreted very widely by the participants, as the reader of this book will no doubt conclude.At the heart of this volume, there is something of a reaction against the cognitive developments in stylistics, which might be seen as being in danger of privileging the individual interpretation of literature over something more social. The concern is to consider whether there is a more collective approach that could be taken to the meaning of text, and whether recent insights from cognitive stylistics could work with this idea of collectivity to define something we might call ‘commonality'of meaning in texts.Stylistics and Social Cognition will be of interest to those working in stylistics and other text-analytic fields such as critical discourse analysis and those concerned with notions of interpretation, collective meaning and human communication.

Historical materialism as Marx understood this was always an integrated conception or field of research, not one divided into separate disciplines. The essays gathered in this volume are a remarkable example of how this works across a wide range of subjects as diverse as agrarian history, capitalism, Hegel's influence on Marx, and class struggles in India. They were written over some fifty years of both activism and academic work, embodying Banaji's lifelong engagement with Marxist theory. His recent papers on merchant capitalism can also be found here, along with a biographical sketch that sets all of his work in context.

This volume of the Annual Review for the Sociology of Religion adresses the challenges of the diversity and complexity of sociological approaches to Asian forms and dynamics of Asian or Asian-inpired ascetic ideas and practices. Eleven papers, written by scholars conducting researches in different geographic and cultural contexts, all contribute to enrich discussion on the relevance of sociological studies of Yoga, meditation and other ascetic techniques and traditions. Contributors are: Zuzana Bártová, Loïc Bawidamann, Jørn Borup, Sally SJ Brown, Ugo Dessì, Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, Marc Lebranchu, Patrick S.D. McCartney, Lionel Obadia, Matteo Di Placido, Alexandros Sakellariou, João Paulo P. Silveira, and Rafael Walthert.

What does it mean to be human? We invite the reader to discuss this most fundamental issue in philosophy and to do so in an intercultural framework. The question of the human was the starting point for a legendary discussion between two German philosophers who met in Davos in 1929. We return to this historical event and re-imagine the debate between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer from a global perspective. Generating twenty papers from elaborate discussions, our authors contribute to the thought experiment by inviting the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō from Kyoto and other Japanese thinkers into the debate to overcome the challenge of Eurocentrism inherent to these historic days in Davos.

This book focuses on the concepts of environmental justice and global citizenship from a number of different disciplinary perspectives with the intention of promoting at the very least some interdisciplinary understandings.Initially presented as papers at an interdisciplinary conference on the themes of environmental justice and global citizenship in Copenhagen in February 2002, the chapters in this volume were chosen by election by those attending the conference. They represent the emergent differences of opinion and glimmers of agreement in the conference as discussions of environmental justice and global citizenship inevitably led to considerations of sustainability and Agenda 21. Some degree of agreement did emerge around the idea of seeing sustainability as a process rather than a predetermined outcome. There was also a shared interest in the pedagogy of educating students in and about sustainability. This volume has been divided into disciplinary or thematically based sections but the purpose of the introductory chapter is to draw links and connections between different papers and different themes in the volume.

This book is a collection of philosophical papers that explores theoretical and practical aspects and implications of nonviolence as a means of establishing peace. The papers range from spiritual and political dimensions of nonviolence to issues of justice and values and proposals for action and change.