The focus of this book is on functional seating, and the key argument presented is that functional seating needs to assist the person using it for the performance of seated tasks, enhance rather than detract from the person's posture and health, and it needs to provide aesthetic features that do not limit task or health. The book spans the period 3000BC to 2000AD and presents largely Western seating. This book is unique in its approach to seating because it draws together evidence that relates to seating that facilitates health and task while also addressing aesthetic factors. This evidence creates an understanding of how seats may be designed to not only promote bodily health but also allow functional optimisation of sitting and seating. This book is important to furniture and industrial designers, interior decorators, architects, those teaching seat design, health professionals attending and educating those who relax or work in the seated position, furniture historians, and members of the general public interested in the history of seating.
Sustainable agricultural development has become one of the most popular research topics globally in the recent decades. Its primary goal is to develop farming systems that simultaneously promote three key areas (farm profits, agro-ecosystems, and local communities) and to consider trade-offs among them. This alternative perspective has challenged the core values of economic growth as well as the domination of nature in conventional agriculture. As sustainable agricultural development has increasingly become an international trend in recent years, a focus on the analysis and management of its practical dimensions is imperative. This book will examine these dimensions in the context of Chinese ecological agriculture. Seeking out ways to achieve agricultural sustainability is now a focus point for agricultural researchers, government leaders, and policy makers, and it has been given top priority status on the research and policy agendas of most countries. The current ecological agricultural development in China is the result of a long-term planning system and the outcome of a number of market principles that have been introduced in the last three decades. There is an immediate need to carry out an extensive study of the present status of ecological agriculture to sustain its further development, especially the multidisciplinary documentation and diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of China s development strategy for ecological agriculture. In the past, analyses were predominantly based on isolated disciplinary approaches. It is now necessary to bridge the areas of biology, ecology, sociology, and economics for a trans-disciplinary ecological economics perspective in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of ecological agriculture. Ecological agriculture can be regarded as an attempt to realize sustainability in a dynamic agricultural context. In operationalising the concept of sustainable development in agriculture, problems arise because different frameworks of analysis and different methods of assessment are employed in research and practice. In many cases, the sustainability debate has not provided any clear indications about how to modify current agricultural development towards sustainable outcomes. One of the main reasons for the existence of the gap between the rhetoric and the practice of agricultural sustainability is the conflict between the need for implementing long-term research (which is particularly important in an ecological-economic integrated context) and the constraints posed by short-term research funding and methodological difficulties. The current overall perception of the problem is replete with ambiguities and is too constrained by discipline boundaries. This thus calls for a conceptual shift, which recognizes that economic, ecological, and social issues are inextricably linked and therefore must be considered together. In contrast to past research that focused only on better descriptions and analyses, the main task of ecological agricultural research is to further improve its practice as a sustainable system. In other words, it is inevitably faced with the challenge of balancing costs and benefits between contemporary and future generations to justify policy actions toward sustainability, thereby requiring the research to be of a problem-oriented nature. Ecological economics emphasizes the two-way interdependencies between the micro and macro levels. Although the questions about ecological agricultural research arise from the local level, their answers may lie at higher levels within the realm of political economy. Therefore, it requires substantial research not only on the links between local production systems and the larger national economy, political structures, and decision-making processes, but also the role and limitations of the national and local authorities in policy development and implementation. There is also scant research on Chinese ecological agriculture published in English. This book helps fill the void. It employs a trans-disciplinary approach to investigate the connection and discrepancy between knowledge and actions. It presents methodological perspectives and practical suggestions for the comprehensive analysis of ecological agriculture as inputs to improved agricultural policy-making for sustainability practices. In this way, this book illuminates the possibility of bridging the gap between local level implementation and the larger political-economic processes. This book helpfully provides a comprehensive analytical framework within which agricultural sustainability can be better analyzed and understood by articulating ecological economics as a policy science to guarantee transparency and fairness in the decision-making process . It shows the important role that traditional culture can play in promoting ecologically and socially sound development. It further emphasizes the imperative to move the ideology of ecological agriculture into the political realm and promotes a continuous dialogue between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. It also suggests that local government has a significant role to play in establishing appropriate institutional arrangements and policy settings (e.g., bottom-up policy initiatives) for sustainable ecological agricultural development. By elaborating on the methodological synthesis of ecological economics and system dynamics modeling as a holistic approach to facilitate an improved policy-making process for agricultural sustainability, this book demonstrates the effectiveness of this alternative approach to improve policy making process and facilitate the realization of sustainability through a case study in China. This book will be an important resource not only to those interested in China, but also to scholars and policy makers around the world because of its global relevance in the areas of ecological economics, ecological agriculture, sustainable resource management, political economy, system dynamics thinking and modeling, and participation in the policy-making process.
U.S. farm bills are home to the nation s primary policies for agriculture, land use, and conservation. Although often outside the public spotlight, many of these policies are crucial to how land and food are managed in this country from food stamp programs for low-income households to environmental conservation for natural resources to the often controversial commodity subsidy programs to support farmers. Every five to seven years when the farm bill comes up for reauthorization, policymakers, interest groups, and the public spend months and often years advocating, questioning, and debating farm bill provisions. Typically when the new farm bill emerges, it appears expanded and adjusted, but rarely radically reformed. Early in debates over the 2008 farm bill, however, this norm of incremental policy change seemed to be cracking. International trade proposals, budget constraints, and new tides of public opinion brought proposals to the table for drastically reforming commodity subsidies. But as the situational and cultural context surrounding farm bill debates changed, so too did prospects for farm bill reform. In the end, influenced by an emerging focus on biofuels and discourses of national security, the 2008 farm bill settled back into a more typical incremental policy trajectory. Despite its ultimate conformity to the norms of incremental policymaking, the 2008 farm bill s flirtation with radical policy reform makes it an interesting empirical case for studying processes of policy change and stability. Following the trajectory of the 2008 farm bill debates as it unfolded provides an opportunity to examine those factors political, economic, cultural and otherwise that typically combine to facilitate or forestall policy change. In this case, biofuels became a prominent driving force in debates in part because they helped policymakers sidestep earlier controversies over more radical farm bill reform. Alongside a decline in trade pressure to reform subsidies, increased biofuels production raised crop prices, alleviated budgetary pressures, and inspired support for commodity production in the name of national security. Examining the gains and misses for conservation in the 2008 farm bill also sheds light on agricultural sustainability prospects embedded in farm policy. In this case, the emphasis on biofuels during farm bill debates both threatened conservation with the prospect of large-scale corn ethanol production, and also shifted public focus away from reforms that might have improved agriculture s environmental and social footprint. At the same time, the 2008 farm bill did introduce some new prospects for environmentally- and socially-sustainable agricultural policies in the longer term. In examining the reasons for the 2008 farm bill s approach to and then retreat from rapid policy change, Nadine Lehrer guides us through ideological conflicts over world trade, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture as embedded in U.S. farm policy debates. This book locates these debates within the historical context of farm bills over time, providing a concise history of agricultural policy dynamics as they relate to current issues. The book also integrates complementary theoretical perspectives from the policy change and social movement literatures, and in particular makes a case for incorporating discourse analysis into studies of policy change and policy stability. Integrating theory and history with a multidisciplinary perspective on changing situational drivers, interest group struggles, and Congressional politics, Lehrer uses the farm bill as an illustrative case for illuminating U.S. political processes and implications. This is an important work for students and scholars of the U.S. political system, especially those focused on agricultural policy, sustainability and environmental conservation, theory and methods of policy analysis, and the intersections of policy and culture.
The sex goddess's seemingly endless power to influence and fascinate, to achieve in a sense her own self-reproduction through many decades of "re-makeovers" reveals her positioning in American culture as not only a lasting image but also as a potentially powerful and subversive force. The sex goddess is often thought by feminist film theorists to be little more than a projection of the male imaginary. However, this book makes a necessary correction to this trend by demonstrating how the actresses performing the role of sex goddess in fact use the feminine imaginary to create their own agency. Through their performance of "hyper" femininity, and with their seductive power, they exert control not only over their filmic narrative "targets of seduction" but their viewers as well. The ability to hold their objects of seduction in such thrall suggests that the image of the sex goddess possesses a power far more subversive than what has been previously explored; in fact, to date there has not yet been a critical study of the sex goddess in film. Cinema becomes a place where the sex goddess's designation as sex itself can further suggest her bodily signification as a whole discourse on sex outside of her cinematic representation, thus loading her body to be read almost entirely in terms of sex and its corresponding contemporary social thought. During the period of Classical Hollywood Cinema, the construct of the sex goddess warrants especial attention because of what this study can reveal in broad terms about cultural ideas of feminine sexuality, American cinema, and visual culture. In the first critical study of the sex goddess in film, Jessica Hope Jordan illustrates how Jean Harlow uses her sexualized body to "affect" and seduce viewers away from any primary identification with those characters and their plotlines that are supposed to lead the film, to identifying instead with the kind of sexual empowerment and self-possession her characters consistently display. Linking the idea of sexual empowerment to the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality, the book additionally covers previous feminist discussions of Mae West's performances as "feminist camp" to argue that West sought to both celebrate and embody for women viewers what she viewed as cultural ideals of femininity and women's sexuality. With Lana Turner and the "cinematic code," the book considers the many problems inherent in both the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality in relation to censorship and considers the effects of the Hays Code on hyper-feminine sexuality as depicted in film noir. The book also importantly presents the first critical discussion of the actress Jayne Mansfield, suggesting that her 1950s open acceptance, celebration, and public promotion of her feminine sexuality, both onscreen and off, makes her not only a precursor of the more sexually liberated 60s, but also, like the other actresses discussed here, a kind of prescient performance artist, even theorist, of feminine sexuality in particular, and cultural ideas about sexuality more generally. Beyond recouping her image as feminist, the book demonstrates how the kind of desire aroused by the sex goddess, a desire which remains endlessly suspended, works as a supreme example of the aesthetic apparatus of cinema itself. This is an important book for inclusion in all film, film history, film theory, gender and sexuality studies, women's studies, and American studies collections.
Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region worldwide, has only recently begun to fully address the issues of meeting the water needs of its rapidly growing population, to reduce the deepening poverty besetting the region and to accelerate economic growth. The Nile Basin, characterized by sharp spatial and temporal variations in water resources and including countries with different economies, social and political structures and capacities, illustrates the challenges of developing and managing the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries, lakes and wetlands equitably among its 10 riparian countries. Ethiopia, the major source of the Nile but one of the poorest countries in the Nile Basin, has recently begun to implement plans to harness more Nile water through hydroelectric and irrigation development both for national use and for transboundary development as part of the Nile Basin Initiative. The Ethiopian government and communities, by using different management approaches and resources, are trying to boost water, energy and food production, strengthen conservation efforts and mitigate potential repercussions of water resources development. These initiatives and programs have not been comprehensively examined. In this study, the editors address these and other issues surrounding water resources management in all economic and water sectors in Ethiopia within the setting of the Nile Basin, the first comprehensive treatment of this subject. The wide scope of this book is consistent with the tenets of integrated water resources management, which demand that all water uses be managed in an integrated fashion for optimum and sustainable benefits to all water users, both humans and ecosystems. This book reveals the impacts of various resource management approaches and practices in Ethiopia and the Nile Basin. Specifically, it examines how deforestation and prevailing land use practices have exacerbated soil aridity and flood events, why irrigated agriculture and hydropower development have caused floodplain degradation, livelihood hardships and water-related diseases, where industrial and agricultural development is increasingly polluting water resources, how household water supplies can be obtained through rainwater harvesting and the dependence on hydropower reduced through alternative energy sources and how misguided government policies have impeded efforts to deal with these and other challenges. Results reveal dynamic interrelationships between these processes and identify the human and environmental driving forces, which must be understood in effective integrated water resources management. Another unique contribution of this book is the examination of the role of government and communities in managing water resources in Ethiopia. Results show that the top-down approach used by the socialist Derg government in soil and water conservation and social programs exacerbated water problems and reduced community participation. Moreover, the failure of its economic program reduced agricultural production, increasing dependency on relief food and further impeding community initiatives in soil and water conservation activities. Many elements of central planning persist in spite of the decentralization drive by the current government, but there is evidence that integration of the top-down and bottom-up approaches to water resources management is necessary (and feasible) to strengthen and up-scale programs to the national level. The book identifies a number of customary water and soil management practices and institutions that may strengthen especially community-based rainwater harvesting, small-scale irrigation, reforestation, soil and water conservation and flood control efforts. This is an important book for researchers and students of resources management, rural development, hydrology and African studies.
This book presents folktales in the Herati dialect of the Afghan Persian language, along with useful transcriptions and translations. This dialect is spoken by the sedentary population of Herat city and the adjacent area situated in the northwest of Afghanistan. Historically, the area in question was part of the Persian province of Khorasan that was known for its significant role in the development of Persian culture in general and literature and philosophy in particular. Suffice it to say that the classical Persian language (Farsi) is considered to have originated in that region. For centuries, Herat has been one of the main cultural centers of the Khorasan province, and according to a reliable historic source, it was in Herat that the first poetical piece in Farsi was composed. The area was the birthplace of many most prominent Persian-speaking poets such as Ferdowsi, F. 'Attar, Khayyam, to mention a few. Others such as Jami and Ansari were originally from the Herat area and their shrines are located in the city. Given the fact that many early Persian-speaking poets came from this region (Khorasan) and from Herat in particular, their native Khorasani dialects--including Herati-- considerably influenced the language of Persian classical literature. The Herati dialect linguistic importance from the synchronic perspective is based on the fact that it serves as a bridge between the Persian dialects of western Iran and the Tajiki of Central Asia. In addition, given the geographic position of Herat (situated on the border between modern Afghanistan and Iran), its dialect also shares many common characteristics with the Persian dialects of Iran and those of Afghanistan.Despite its cultural and linguistic importance for studies in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, this region has never been open to field research (especially by westerners) because of its long political instability and constant wars. There is no similar published work in English on this particular Persian dialect and its oral literature. Based on academically informed fieldwork and presented in a scientific fashion, this study provides information previously unavailable and is thus valuable to the academic discourse in Iranian linguistics. The materials were collected by the author during field research in Afghanistan in the 1980s from illiterate dialect speakers (a category which has preserved the dialect the most in terms of purity and entirety). The book helpfully provides a grammatical introduction to the Herati dialect, a glossary of dialectal and common words, as well as approximately 500 explanatory notes.This book will be of interest to linguists and language learners, especially those studying Afghan Persian. It will also be useful as a language learning aid for intermediate and advanced students of spoken Afghan Persian in general and of Persian (in the broader sense) dialectology in particular, foreign NGO workers or interpreters/translators who find themselves in the field in western Afghanistan or far eastern Iran. Though the present book is by no means a study in folklore literature or anthropology, these texts containing ethnographic data will also be of value to folklorists or ethnographers.
Throughout the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, video art as vehicles for social, cultural, and political analysis were prominent within global museum based contemporary art exhibitions. For many, video art during this period stood for contemporary art. Yet from the outset, video art's incorporation into art museums has brought about specific problems in relation to its acquisition and exhibition. This book analyses, discusses, and evaluates the problematic nature and form of video art within four major contemporary art museums--the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. In this book, the author discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of video art and contends that analogue video art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. By addressing some of the problems that analogue video art presented to those museums under discussion, this study penetratingly reveals how video art challenged institutional structures and had demanded more flexible viewing environments from those structures. It first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre Museum in Paris during the 19th century and then examines the transformation from this museum structure to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA was the first major museum to exhibit analogue video art in a concerted fashion, and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. In this book, MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to video art. Extremely well researched and well written, this book covers an exhaustive, substantive, and relevant range of issues. These issues include video art (its origin, significance, significant movements, institutional challenges, and relationship to television), the establishment of the museum (its patronage and curatorial strategy) from the Louvre to MoMA, the relationship of MoMA to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a comparative analysis of three museums in three countries on three continents, a close examination of video art exhibition, a closer look at three seminal video artists, and, finally, a critical overview of video art and its future exhibition. This unique book also covers an important period in the genesis of video art and its presentation within significant national and global cultural institutions. Those cultural institutions not only influence a meaningful part of the cultural life of four unique countries but also represent the cultural forces emerging in capital cities on three continents. By itself, this sort of geographic and institutional breadth challenges any previous study on the subject. This book successfully provides a historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to video art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the book contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to video art imagery with the period of High Modernism; it examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct major contemporary art institutions. The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum, 1968-1990 is an important book for all art history and museum collections.
Literature on Zimbabwe s modern history is influenced by one particular perspective concerning the historical roots of inequitable land distribution choreographed by British colonialism from 1890. This dominant theme is based on the imperatives of redressing a historical injustice where British people alienated prime land from, among others, the indigenous Shona, Ndebele, and Tonga. The key element in this perspective has been the science of land management, particularly the protection of wooded areas, the soil, and wildlife. The discourse of ecological calamity stresses the damaging outcomes from unregulated timber logging, agriculture, mining and hunting, as well as the threats of degradation and the need to control methods of resource exploitation by humans. This book examines the debates and processes on woodland exploitation in Zimbabwe during the colonial era (1890 1960). It explores the social, economic, and political contexts of perceptions on woodland distribution and management. Much of the period was characterized by both local and global debates about environmental problems, generating in their wake politically charged and emotive language about the consequences deforestation, soil erosion, and threats to wildlife. This study analyses the history of exploitation and conservation of the Zimbabwean teak (mkusi or Baikiea plurijuga) and its associated species in Northwestern Matabeleland from 1890 to 1960. Timber exploitation was among the top three colonial economic activities in Matabeleland, including ranching and tobacco cultivation. Concessionaire capitalists and forestry officials dominated the exploitation and conservation of the Zambezi teak woodland or gusu, respectively. On one hand, capitalists sought to extract as much commercial hardwood timber as they could while on the other hand, foresters restricted tree felling. This study shows that there was conflict and accommodation between the two interest groups involved regarding exploitation and conservation. Conflict arose when timber firms such as the Rhodesia Native Timber Concessionaires (RNTC) demanded an increase on the quantity of important trees cut every year while foresters put pressure for minimum exploitation. Reconciling the two stakeholders was difficult, and from time to time they either clashed or accommodated each other through dialogue, persuasion, and compromise. The two dominant players on the scene were the Forestry Service and the RNTC. Such conflict and accommodation also took place between foresters and Africans. Foresters and other government officials blamed African methods of farming and food gathering for causing destruction on gusu. But foresters depended on ultra-cheap African tenant labor in the practice of conservation, which in large part involved firefighting and prevention. A major stumbling block for the Forestry Service in conserving gusu against African and settler demands was the absence of a Forest Act in 60 out of the 70 years of history examined. A Forest Act was enacted in 1949. In these seventy years, 994,000 and 963,000 acres were exploited and conserved for future purposes respectively. In this first critical work on the topic, author Vimbai Kwashirai focuses on woodland conservation and commercial development in Zimbabwe during the colonial period. Emphasis is placed on the tensions, conflicts, and sometimes the collusions between timber companies and the developing state. This book provides a rich example of Green Imperialism along the lines of Richard Grove, but goes beyond that by giving an economic historical account that situates conservation history within the broader political-economic context. This book is based on broad archival research, and it traces the relationship between conservation and the development of commercial capital from forest enterprises in colonial Zimbabwe. It delivers much insight on the conflicts and tensions of the workings of the British South Africa Company (a capitalist enterprise that was at the same time overseeing the development of a state polity of the then Rhodesia), providing evidence for a strong argument for the development of industrial capital under colonialism. The forestry service was caught in these tensions of supporting and enterprise, but also trying to regulate that green capital and establish the beginnings of protected forests in Zimbabwe. This book casts much light on the environmental impact on a part of Africa caused by the push and pull of politics and economics. This book will be an important addition to collections in African studies, environmental studies, and political science.
The relationship of French national identity to its cinema is a well-established field. Yet so far, most studies have either taken a broad historical approach or focused on a particular director or period. Using various theoretical approaches, this book investigates an area that is as of today either ill or untreated by scholars: what is the relationship of film form to the historical and social reflections of a given work, whether they be overt or hidden? To answer this question, Noah McLaughlin conducts a close formal analysis of ten French war films from across the twentieth century. His subjects range from Abel Gance s 1919 J Accuse to Jean-Pierre Jeunet s 2004 Un long dimanche de fian ailles and his theoretical approaches change to best examine each one. This study builds upon the broader histories of French cinema by Alan Williams (Republic of Images) and Susan Hayward (French National Cinema). Its approaches to the intersection of cinema and history owe a particular debt to Robert Rosentstone (Film on History/History on Film). War films react to moments of crisis for national identity. One can examine works made under the shadow of war as well as movies made at a historical remove from their subject. This duality of temporal distance and social function allows us to look at movies as both documents of social history and as historical reconstructions. The chronological breadth of this project permits the author to suggest an evolution of strategies, ranging from literary appropriation, to allegory, to Barthesean myth and artificial myth and most recently to experiments in history. There are very few book-length studies of French films about war. A close look at French cinematic explorations of war gives us a glimpse at the evolution of French identity over the course of the 20th century. It equally illuminates the story of how that nation's cinema has spent the past hundred years growing up: from its first steps leaning upon the coffee table of older literary conventions to its current adulthood as a means of cultural expression and critical exploration. One significant challenge is that the French war film is quite different from its Anglo-American counterpart. This book works through to a useful definition. It is a kind of cinematic creation that treats through form or content real armed conflicts that have significance in French history. The genre is often hybrid in nature and frequently uses metaphor. Its subjects are most often characterized collectively and in order to understand the past, psychology is emphasized over physical violence. Its plot structure is frequently non-linear and other forms over time have developed to place modernist historiography in doubt. Increasingly sophisticated, it has attained a point where historic meditations are often seamlessly but visibly integrated into both form and content. This is an important book for people interested in film studies and French studies as well as historians and historiographers.
Spanning across playwrights, performers, critics, and theatrical commemorations, this book raises controversy about familiar figures and brings attention to neglected ones. Thomas F. Connolly opens his book with a provocative essay subtitled "Notional Culture." The first sentence: "Postmodernism makes others of us all," introduces Connolly's confrontational approach to the study of culture. The introduction takes readers from Montaigne's "Cannibals" to Madison Avenue "gangsta" wannabes, while explicating the impulses behind formal classification that have driven intellectual pursuits from the Early Modern Period through postmodernism. The chapter on Eugene O'Neill argues that his colossal status as the "greatest American playwright" has been imposed upon him and reduces his stature as a world playwright. Connolly is the major scholar of American drama critics and the essay on John Mason Brown has been called "a fascinating and important piece" by leading theatre historian David Savran. Other chapters on major European performers: Noël Coward, Micheál Mac Liammóir, Alexander Moissi and Viennese theatrical culture, offer analysis of self-creation, the superficiality of national identity, and the ways governments use performers. Genus Envy is an important book for all theatre, cultural studies, and literature collections.
Contemporary interest in spiritual transformation has been growing in fields as diverse as theology, psychology, education, the health sciences and management theory. There is an emerging recognition of the need for a fuller understanding of the nature and dynamics of spiritual growth and its implications for human development and social change. Transformation has also become the subject of scholarly investigation in the Christian tradition, as churches seek to recover their vitality and relevance in a radically secularized and pluralistic culture. The emerging disciplines of practical theology and Christian spirituality have made major contributions to the current discussion of spiritual transformation. James Fowler s groundbreaking studies in faith development, Benedict Groeschel s exploration of spiritual passages, and Evelyn and James Whitehead s investigations of Christian life patterns are representative of the many efforts being made to clarify the nature of transformation in Christian spiritual experience. Even a cursory survey of the different scholarly approaches in theology and Christian spirituality reveals that the notion of transformation remains ambiguous as a theoretical construct. In some contexts it implies a developmental transition or change in beliefs and values. In other contexts focusing on religious conversion it indicates a structural shift in personality and group affiliation. Therapeutic perspectives focus on the dynamics of healing and addiction research views the process through the lens of recovery. Much literature in the study of Christian spirituality continues to focus on transformation largely through the frameworks of classical sources such as the three-fold way of purgation, illumination and union in monastic spirituality, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, or the mystical ascent described in studies of figures such Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Very often, the notion of spiritual transformation in these studies is not defined or examined critically. Moreover, most theoretical accounts of transformation, whether theological, psychological or spiritual, tend to remain highly abstract and detached from the relational and communal contexts in which persons actually live. There is also a lack of transdisciplinary perspectives on transformation that integrate theology, psychology and spirituality. In this study, Michael Hryniuk develops a full phenomenological, psychological and theological account of spiritual transformation in the context of L Arche, a federation of Christian communities that welcome persons with learning disabilities. The book begins with a critical examination of current perspectives on spiritual transformation in theology and Christian spirituality and constructs a new, foundational formulation of transformation as a shift in consciousness, identity and behavior. Through extensive analysis of the narratives of the caregiver-assistants who share life with those who are disabled, this case-study reveals an alternative vision of the three-fold way that unfolds through a series of profound awakenings in relationships of mutual care and presence: an awakening to the capacity to love, to bear inner anguish and darkness, and to experience radical human and divine acceptance. The book examines the psychological dimensions of spiritual transformation through the lens of contemporary affect theory and explores how care-givers experience a profound healing of shame in their felt sense of identity and self-worth. It moves finally to a theological investigation of the meaning of transformation in the context of L Arche as a process of synergy with the Holy Spirit in relationships of mutuality with persons who are disabled. By tracing the transformative process in L Arche as one of growth in communion, the book outlines a fully relational ontology of the person, an existential Christology of self-embrace, and a Trinitarian spirituality of community life. This book is an important contribution to the fields of Christian spirituality, practical theology, disability studies, pastoral psychology and religious education.
The population in Australia was about seven million in 1945, and it almost doubled in the thirty years from the beginning of the post-war immigration scheme. Of this population increase, more than three million were born overseas. In the two World Wars, Australia experienced threats from other powers and recognized the need to absorb more people to defend its nation, gradually changing its attitude toward the acceptance of non-British immigrants. In the famous speech How Many Australians Tomorrow? addressed by Migration Minister Arthur Calwell in 1945, concerns about population increase and national security were raised. Populate or perish became the dominant theme in nation s development issues. It goes with saying that the foundation of the modern Australian nation is based upon immigration. Migration documentary films played an important role in promoting Australian images to the outside world. Many films were made in this period to fulfill the function of migrant-recruiting and nation-building objectives. In these films, Australia was presented as a progressive and liberal nation seeking to establish her identities. The slogan Australia for the White Man prevailed over the entire period from 1908 to 1961. It was not until 1972 that The White Australia Policy was officially abolished. The historical meanings of these transformations are definitely worth exploring. The relationships among immigration policies, documentary films and the construction of national identities become valuable subjects for examination. This innovative book is the first in the field that comes with a systematic and comprehensive study of migration documentary films in post-war Australia. In the analysis of the sixty-seven films, this book reveals that the project for recruiting migrants to settle in Australia was not a simple matter of overseas campaigns. The terrain for media publicity was never just the emigrant countries and the target audience were both foreigners and local Australians. These migration documentary films are actually propaganda films in nature. However, visual images, narratives, and myths represented in these films were important in the self-depiction of Australian and in the formative discourse of national identity. This book shows how absences and under-representations of film images are important to examine in order to fully understand the particular, utopian visions of the post-war period. This book argues that open-door policies, coastal images, and modernization narratives gradually became a new maritime myth in the quest of a redefined Australian identity, and new Australians , the post-war immigrants, became battlers, echoing the bush legend existing in the Australian narrative. Themes of modernization, industrialization, Anglo-centric identity, the Australian way of life itself, political freedom, and democracy of the overall films were stressed. Yet, the massive immigration scheme initiated by the government in the 1950s had facilitated the metamorphosis of the Australian East coast into a new symbolic centre. The Red Centre, the bush, the wilderness, the country and the land gave way to the major cities and ports for their strategic positions in Australian modernization and industrial development. Looking to the coast with maritime prospects became a new direction of national development and identity formation perhaps pre-dating the seeking the centre clich s of the 1970s. These migration documentary films actually represent the most explicit state initiative to represent an ideal of what Australia was and would be. Scholars and students whose interests include documentary films, immigration, ethnicity, national identity, and propaganda would find this book to be a valuable resource.
This book examines user perceptions of European Union institutions and compares them to perceptions communicators within these institutions have of their users. Analysing the images both sides have through their interaction on the EUROPA website (www.europa.eu) helps to to show where communicator intentions and user perceptions do or do not overlap. The timeliness of this issue could not be more striking than in the current internal and external debates surrounding the EU (e.g., the "No" votes on the common constitution). With this in mind, every possible way of interaction should be reconsidered, in order for citizens to get more involved and feel more connected. Next to mass media, the Internet plays an increasingly important role in people's lives. Even though the Internet may not currently be a dominant source of information about the RU relative to other mass media outlets, it continues to increase in importance as part of most people's everyday life, in particular for the younger generation who turn to it for information. The main focus of this book is on the integration of both the user and the communicator perspectives. By looking at user needs in comparison to the production processes that determine the information structure of a Web site, the usability of a Web site is defined. The user experience online in turn determines the users' perceptions of the institutions and their attitudes towards the European Union.
The history of Singapore has been widely conflated with the history of its economic success. From its heyday as a nexus of trade during the imperial era to the modern city state that boasts high living standards for most of its citizens, the history of Singapore is commonly viewed through the lens of the ruling elite. Published in two volumes in 1998 and 2000, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs The Singapore Story epitomizes this top-down definitive narrative of the nation's past. The history of post-war Singapore has largely been reduced to a series of decisions made by the nation's leaders. Few existing studies explore the role and experiences of the ordinary person in Singapore's post-war history. There are none that do this through ethnography, oral history, and collective biography. In a critical study that has no parallel among existing works on Singapore history, this book dispenses with the homogenous historical experience that is commonly presumed in the writing of Singapore's national past after 1945 and explores how the enforcement of a uniform language policy by the Singapore government for cultural and economic purposes has created underappreciated social and economic divides among the Chinese of Singapore both between and within families. It also demonstrates how mapping distinct economic, linguistic, and cultural cleavages within Singaporean Chinese society can add new and critical dimensions to understanding the nation's past and present. Chief among these, the author argues, are the processes behind the creation and entrenchment of class structures in the city state, such as the increasing value of English as a form of opportunity-generating capital.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 1882) was one of the most complex poets and painters of the Victorian period. In the 128 years since his death, at least 30 biographies and critical studies along with hundred of articles on his life, poetry and art, and separate volumes of his correspondence have appeared. There has been continuous interest in Rossetti, but no true understanding of where he stands in the pantheon of literature; whether he is primarily a painter, a poet, or both; and why his life tends to overshadows his work. This work was prompted in part by Lisa Tinker s statement, Each ages get or makes the Rossetti it desires. It is a meta-biography that examines the central question: who are the Rossettis created by the values, obsessions, desires and anxieties of a period? It asserts that, more important than establishing some particular truth about the poet-painter, such an approach can provide a proper understanding of his life and work, it can place him more clearly and correctly into the ever-evolving interpretive schema, and it can shed some light on why Rossetti s work is most often eclipsed by his life. How are the Rossetti stories and legends represented in the different genres; why have the these genres been chosen; and why is he represented at all? These are the questions of this study. Twentieth- and twenty-first century representations of Rossetti himself as a man and artist or of his work have, to this point, remained unexamined. This omission is significant because, although the representations of Rossetti are plentiful and have continued to be created to the present time, they have continued to draw attention away from his work, and there is as yet little integration of the man with his work as both painter and poet. Moreover, there are several different representations of Rossetti, often in stark contrast to each. Rossetti scholarship has not yet attempted this. This book examines the treatment of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his work in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, drama, music, and film, specifically since 1950. The author uses these genres to examine how text, music, performance, and visual images work as a system of representation. In this book, the author strives to clarify the many Dante Gabriel Rossettis, using thirteen of the thirty easily identifiable roles in this system of representation which the author has identified herself roles by which Rossetti is described and portrayed. The identified portrayals of Rossetti fall easily into five groupings: first, the Italian-English man who is a brother and a loyal friend; second, the poet who is a painter and co-founder of an art movement which afforded him the chance to be a mentor; third, the lover, seducer, husband, oppressor; fourth, the murderer; and fifth, the tortured artist and addict who was mentally ill. These are the portrayals are used throughout this work. Several have chronological boundaries and are discrete representations while others reoccur across the time period covered. Using these categories, the author examines seven works of prose fiction, a feature-length film, two television series, a stage play, and the songs and lyrics of a contemporary band. Re-Presentations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti is an important book for all British literature and art collections.
Winner of Sarasvati Award for the Best Nonfiction Book in Women and Mythology! This book discusses erotic and magical goddesses and heroines in several ancient cultures, from the Near East and Asia, and throughout ancient Europe; in prehistoric and early historic iconography, their magical qualities are often indicated by a magical dance or stance. It is a look at female display figures both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, through texts and iconography, beginning with figures depicted in very early Neolithic Anatolia, early and middle Neolithic southeast Europe Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia continuing through the late Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and Ireland, and elsewhere across the world. These very similar female figures were depicted in Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East Asia, in a broad chronological sweep, beginning with the pre-pottery Neolithic, ca. 9000 BCE, and existing from the beginning of the second millennium of this era up to the present era. The authors find several new cross-cultural reference points to a group of related female figures. In comparing written descriptions of these female figures, the authors examine texts from the Old Irish tale, The Destruction of Da Derga s Hostel, the text of an erotic Scandinavian story and a text describing the birth of Kali. The iconography of these female figures depicts a similar crouching or bent-knee position. Old Irish and Greek texts describe the act of "e;anasyrma,"e; a woman's lifting up of her skirt to boldly display her genitals, in order to frighten off an enemy. Parallels to these terrifying, yet empowering, figures in Anatolia, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia are enigmatic Central Asian and East Asian representations of women exposing themselves, some of which go back to as early as the third millennium BCE. One particularly curious aspect of the motif of female sexual exposure is that it can occur both in East Asia and Europe in the context of war, either to frighten the enemy or to embolden one's own troops. This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty languages. The book contains many photographs of these geographically different, but functionally and artistically similar, female figures. Many current books (academic and otherwise) explore some of the female figures the authors discuss in their book, but such a wide-ranging cross-cultural and cross-temporal view of this genre of female figures has never been undertaken until now. The sexual display of these female figures reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine, and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient divine feminine.
J. M. Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940 and is the author of fourteen works of narrative fiction (some of which masquerade as memoirs) and several books of literary essays. He has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize twice (for Life &Times of Michael K and Disgrace) and he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. As a novelist born in and living most of his life in South Africa, Coetzee has been viewed by many readers and critics through an ideological lens, which he has always resisted to a greater or lesser extent. Much excellent criticism of Coetzee puts his work in context; historical, political, literary and theoretical. J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative differs from that of most commentators in that it does not concentrate mainly on the political or post-colonial aspects of his work, and resists allegorical readings--which so often ignore style, language, point of view, and narrative structure. This book is a consideration of various themes and techniques ranging across Coetzee s whole oeuvre. It aims to discover the how rather than what or why : where does Coetzee s work derive its power? A discussion of themes, influences, and allegorical meanings tends to bleach out the experience of reading; and this experience is surely the only reason for choosing Coetzee s narratives over anyone else s. It examines the type of resistance to be found in his work, a resistance which seems to have little basis in a political belief or a rational philosophy of justice. The book also traces the effects of Coetzee s choice of point of view in each of his books how it interacts with questions of complicity and impressions of realism, as well as how it relates to the subject matter and characters he is dealing with in each case. It is also an exploration of the place of the comic arts in Coetzee s work. This is a subject which has routinely been dismissed by critics who have failed to discern any humor in the novels. The contention is that a sense of the ridiculous and absurd is implicit in much of Coetzee s narrative prose and can be seen in the underlying structure of all his books. This study delves into his use of language and languages: the choice of tenses, the surprising flights of imagery to be found amidst the taut elegance of his narrative style; and also the multilingual sensibilities he shares with many of his characters, not excluding the non-verbal language of music. The subject of sex and desire has attracted less critical attention than various other themes, and, of those critics who have considered it, most seem bent on extracting allegories of sexual politics which are not necessarily warranted by a close examination of the texts. This book disputes some of these readings and suggests considering the subject in other ways. It also looks at another uncomfortable aspect of Coetzee s books: his treatment of the bond between parents and children. J. M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative will appeal to scholars and general readers who are interested in exploring Coetzee s work without necessarily having an extensive knowledge of literary theory.
This innovative approach is based primarily on Gordon's abundant private papers, colonial office patronage files, territorial files, and colonial office lists of appointments and promotions in the crown colonies he governed. By digging deeper and using these neglected tools, his personal network of friends and allies can be reconstructed and its utility for his administrative purposes and his career advancement assessed. Moreover, since the 1960s, there has been a steady output of country histories using local records as well as metropolitan sources and providing a better contextual background to Gordon's work. This is especially true for crown colonies in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean in the aftermath of slave emancipation, where Gordon encountered planter opposition to reform of immigrant indenture. It is no less true for Fiji and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) where there is a particular need to reassess the work of a man who is held responsible, in the first case, for creating an administrative system that entrenched indigenous political and economic rights at the expense of Indian settlers, and in the second for holding his civil service in contempt and favouring the leaders of one indigenous caste at the expense of others. For New Brunswick and New Zealand, too, there are strong reasons for revising earlier judgements concerning his role in applying imperial policy in the period before Canadian confederation or for exceeding his constitutional role in investigating Maori land issues. The intended academic readership, therefore, includes political scientists and anthropologists with an interest in patron-client relations, as well as students and historians familiar with the controversies surrounding imperial studies and the emergence of new states.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the most influential, challenging, and provocative pacifist of his generation. The most famous person alive at the dawn of the twentieth century, his international stature came not only from his great novels but from his rejection of violence and the state. Tolstoy was a strict pacifist in the last three decades of his life, and wrote at length on a central issue of politics, namely, the use of violence to maintain order, to promote justice, and to ensure the survival of society, civilization, and the human species. He unreservedly rejected the use of physical force to these or any ends. Tolstoy was a religious pacifist rather than an ethical or political one. His pacifism was rooted not in a moral doctrine or political theory but in his straightforward reading of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Despite his fame, Tolstoy's pacifism remains insufficiently studied. A hundred years after his death, Tolstoy is a figure unfamiliar in political science, encountered, if at all, as the author of hortatory quotations on the wrongness of political violence or of allegiance to the state. This work of political science offers an account of Leo Tolstoy as a Christian thinker on political violence. It presents Tolstoy's pacifism as a striking case of the impact of religious idealism on political attitudes. The Russian novelist offers an instructive case study in Christian pacifism and in the attractions and failings of strict, literalist, and simplistic religious approaches to the many and complex issues of politics. Today, the political implications of religious fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and Christian faith are very much live issues and the contemporary discussion of them should not omit pacifism. In this first study of Tolstoy's pacifism by a political scientist, Colm McKeogh unravels the complexities of Tolstoy's writings on Christianity and political violence. This work serves scholars of political science by bringing together relevant extracts from Tolstoy's writings and providing a succinct treatment of the core political issues. It establishes that Tolstoy's stance is primarily one of non-violence rather than non-resistance. McKeogh's work then assesses the internal consistency of Tolstoy's pacifism, its grounding in the Gospels and Christian tradition, its political and anti-political implications, and the meaning in life that it offers. It finds that Tolstoy does great service to the pacifist cause (with his defense of peace as close to the centre of Christ's message) and yet harm to it too (by divorcing peace from the love that is even more central to Christ's message). Tolstoy's political and religious legacy is not that of a prophet, a social activist, a moral reformer, a political idealist or pacifist theorist but that of a dissident. Tolstoy stands as one of the great dissidents of twentieth-century Russia, a man who condemned the system utterly and who refused to perform any act that could be construed as compromising with it. He left behind a powerful statement of the urgent human need to connect our daily living to a deep and fulfilling conception of the meaning of life. Tolstoy's Pacifism is important for political science, Christian ethics, literature, and Russian collections.
Reading Blindly attempts to conceive of the possibility of an ethics of reading reading being understood as the relation to an other that occurs prior to any semantic or formal identification, and therefore prior to any attempt at assimilating what is being read to the one who reads. Hence, reading can no longer be understood in the classical tradition of hermeneutics as a deciphering according to an established set of rules as this would only give a minimum of correspondence, or relation, between the reader, and what is read. In fact, reading can no longer be understood as an act, since an act by necessity would impose the rules of the reader upon the structure of what (s)he encounters; in other words the reader would impose herself upon the text. Since it is neither an act nor a rule-governed operation, reading needs to be thought as an event of an encounter with an other and more precisely an other which is not the other as identified by the reader, but heterogeneous in relation to any identifying determination. Being an encounter with an undeterminable other an other who is other than other reading is hence an unconditional relation, a relation therefore to no fixed object of relation. Hence, reading can be claimed to be the ethical relation par excellence. Since reading is a pre-relational relationality, what the reader encounters, however, may only be encountered before any phenomenon: reading is hence a non-phenomenal event or even the event of the undoing of all phenomenality. This is a radical reconstitution of reading positing blindness as that which both allows reading to take place and is also its limit. As there is always an aspect of choice in reading one has to choose to remain open to the possibility of the other Reading Blindly, by extension, is also a rethinking of ethics; constantly keeping in mind the impossibility of articulating an ethics which is not prescriptive. Hence, Reading Blindly is ultimately an attempt at the impossible: to speak of reading as an event. And since this is un-theorizable lest it becomes a prescriptive theory Reading Blindly is the positing of reading as reading, through reading, where texts are read as a test site for reading itself. Ostensibly, Reading Blindly works at the intersections of literature and philosophy; and will interest readers who are concerned with either discipline. However as reading is re-constituted as a pre-relational relationality, it is also a re-thinking of communication itself a rethinking of the space between; the medium in which all communication occurs and by extension, the very possibility of communicating with each other, with another. As such, this work is, in the final gesture, a meditation on the finitude and exteriority in literature, philosophy calling into question the very possibility of correspondence, and relationality and hence knowledge itself. For all that can be posited is that reading first and foremost is an acknowledgement that the text is ultimately unknowable; where reading is positing, and which exposes itself to nothing and is in fidelity to nothing but the possibility of reading.
This book constitutes a major reassessment of the mortuary remains from the two X-Group royal cemeteries at Qustul and Ballana in Lower Nubia (c. AD 380-500). Since their excavation more than seventy years ago, and the subsequent flooding of the sites following the building of the Aswan High Dam, and despite the spectacular nature of the finds, the sites have received remarkably little scholarly attention. This book offers the first interpretation of social life at these key sites, and proposes a series of innovative, theoretically informed frames for exploring the significance of the material remains found there. In doing so, it sheds new light on a culture which, although less well known than the Meroitic Empire that preceded it and the subsequent development of the Christian Kingdoms of the Sudan, is nevertheless of considerable archaeological and historical significance. The sites present a series of archaeologically unique monumental tumuli and multi-chambered tomb structures containing evidence of human and animal sacrifice, as well as a highly sophisticated material culture. The interpretations presented here draw on the emergent field of sensory archaeology to address the key issue of identity formation. It makes a case for the heretofore unrecognised significance of an 'aesthetic' identity mediated by material culture. It approaches X-Group culture as a materially complex indigenous culture that created and altered identities through time via the manipulation of materials, colours and patterns (the 'aesthetic' basis of identity). This study explores the relationships between humans, animals, and artefacts. It demonstrates how a less stable society, which based control on aggressive public displays, became a more stable state, as power was mediated by magico-ritual performances, festal occasions, and the rise of certain individuals. The interpretations put forward here are based on a systematic quantitative analysis of the archaeological material from the sites. These analyses draw on complex typologies differentiating objects according to use, ware, colour, decoration method, designs, surface finish, contents, grafitto, location in a tomb, location near a body, etc. Such a quantification and synthesis of tens of thousands of individual pieces of data enabled the identification of key trends in the dataset--the empirical basis for the modelling of socio-political change undertaken here. The study was undertaken to combat the limited and unsatisfactory set of questions posed by previous debates about the activities at Qustul and Ballana. It constitutes a significant departure from previous work which restricted the discussion of life at the sites to a limited debate about the identity of tribal groups and the chronology of activity at the sites. In contrast, this research demonstrates that the way in which the X-Group(s) dynamically created, maintained, and altered their identity through various forms of praxis. The book is essential reading for anybody researching ancient Sudanese civilisations. It has a wider appeal for researchers and graduate students interested in new developments in approaches to the archaeology of North-East Africa. It also has a broader appeal to all those interested in the theorisation of identity, the practical application of archaeological theory to the study of material culture and the human relationship to the sensory nature of the sensory world.
The Chinese legal profession was revived in 1979 after the purges of the Cultural Revolution. In the thirty years since that revival, hundreds of law schools have been established, the bar has undergone exponential growth, and the legal economy has flourished. Indicia of progress abound, but signs of profound challenge remain. Western academia and media have given scant attention to these developments. To the extent that Western commentators pay any notice whatsoever, it is to human rights lawyers and challenges to the rule of the Communist party. But such a focus misses the larger picture. The most consequential developments in Chinese legality are occurring at the center, rather than the periphery, of what is considered politically acceptable. Where building the rule of law in China is concerned, the reliable enforcement of extant rights in contract, property, and tort is far more important than pushing for the recognition of new rights or changing the process whereby rights are created. At the heart of this process is China s growing legal profession. Their unique historical situation, their distinctive sociology, their competence, and the conditions of their practice, as well as several other factors, are indispensable components to understanding the growth of Chinese legality and the socialist rule of law. Justice Holmes wrote that the law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race. This adage speaks to the intimate relationship between law and the structure, order, and values of a society. There is a growing interest in the structure, order, and values of China. This is all too reasonable given that one-fifth of the human population is in China, the Chinese economy is surging along to preeminence, and the Chinese state exerts an evergrowing influence on other states and international bodies. All recent trends underscore the fact that indifference to the Chinese system is a luxury that nobody can afford. Examining Chinese lawyers the people whose lives and purpose lay at the very heart of these currents provides an incomparable understanding of what China is today and may be in the future. Life in modern China is riddled with frustrations. Much has been written about the experience of such frustrations, from defective products to intellectual property piracy, but very little has been written about the underlying cause. The silence is broken by Lawyers in Modern China, which explains these frustrations as a natural result of the underdevelopment of the Chinese legal profession. As the Chinese state has slimmed down over the last thirty years, its ability to enforce laws and provide oversight in the lives and undertakings of the Chinese people has been diminished. The legal profession has not grown enough in size or strength to offset this loss. As a result, much of life in modern China takes place under conditions of low-level anarchy. The book explores several factors that contribute to the current state of underdevelopment of the legal profession, including weak demand for legal services, the balkanization of the profession, systemic sources of corruption, and a dearth of comprehensive yet affordable legal research tools. Finally, the book offers a set of tailored policy recommendations that are designed to ameliorate the problems that stifle the Chinese bar and cultivate it into a powerful force for the promotion of the rule of law. Lawyers in Modern China represents a contribution to multiple areas of scholarship, including the sociology of lawyers, law and economics, sinology, Chinese history, and political science. The foreword is by eminent international law professor, Dr. Tom Ginsburg, from the University of Chicago.
This book establishes the restored version of Jennie Gerhardt as a far better piece of literature than the 1911 edition. It is also the first extensive study of the damaging effects of the editorial process on a significant work of American literature. This study carefully compares the restored edition to the 1911 edition, revealing clear and precise patterns to the Harper editing. These patterns, in turn, suggest that the Harper editors deliberately approached Dreiser's original manuscript with the intention of softening its social and moral content. This study argues that the firm's historical emphasis on family values and its lengthy bout with bankruptcy and reorganization, coupled with the conservative social and moral climate at the turn of the century, motivated the house to edit the novel with a heavy and censorious hand. The end result was a more agreeable and, therefore, more saleable book. This study also provides an extensive discussion on the probable reasons why Dreiser acquiesced to changes he felt were not in the best interest of his novel. By continually placing material from the 1911 edition alongside that of the restored edition and then situating the cuts and emendations within their appropriate thematic, historical, cultural, social, moral, biographical, and autobiographical contexts, readers will see how the editors distorted Dreiser's original writing of every major character, their interaction with their environment, and their relationship with others. Readers will also see how the editing blunted, and in some cases completely erased, Dreiser's criticism of the wealthy capitalist; society's understanding and treatment of the poor, the working class, and the immigrant; and traditional notions of motherhood, womanhood, relationships, and the American Dream. This study argues that once Dreiser's original language is restored, Jennie Gerhardt can stand alongside Dreiser's other novels and can add to critical discussions on class, gender, morality, ethnicity, naturalism, and romanticism in Dreiser's fiction. The Trouble with Dreiser: Harper and the Editing of Jennie Gerhardt is an important work for collections of American literature, Theodore Dreiser, textual studies, early twentieth-century cultural studies (especially those interested in ethnicity), and early twentieth-century historical studies.
"Deniers of climate change have benefited from political strategies developed by conservative think tanks and public relations experts paid handsomely by the energy industry. With this book, environmental activists can benefit from some scholarly attention turned to their efforts. This book exhibits the best that public scholarship has to offer. Its authors utilize sophisticated rhetorical theory and criticism to uncover the inventional constraints and possibilities for participants at various sites of the Step-It-Up day of climate activism. What makes this book especially valuable is that it is not only directed to fellow communication scholars, but is written in a clear and accessible style to bring the insights of an academic field to a broader public of activists committed to building an environmental social movement." - Prof. Leah Ceccarelli, University of Washington "This is an unusually interesting volume grounded in a sustained and coordinated analysis of the Step It Up campaign. Generating a multifaceted and shared archive for analyzing the SIU campaign on global warming, the volume's multiple authors critically examine intersecting dimensions of the SIU campaign-its persuasive strategies, organizational dynamics, and political practices for everyday citizens-with an eye on implications for enhancing the larger environmental movement. Readers with a practical and theoretical interest in social and political movements will find this book engaging and leavened with heuristic value." - Professor Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, Bloomington
Increasingly, Americans are turning away from the traditional press--especially newspapers--for the news of the day. In fact, by May 2009 a Pew survey revealed that 63 percent of Americans said they would not miss their paper if it ceased publishing. Other surveys have revealed that since the late 1990s, Americans have significant concerns about the mainstream news media's credibility, with no less than 56 percent voicing reservations about the press's accuracy. At the same time, the mainstream news has continued to show a proclivity for using information proffered by public relations sources; in fact, some studies point to newsrooms that use such propaganda materials for up to 75-80 percent of their stories. As traditional newsrooms continue to either downsize (or, in some cases, disappear) and propaganda materials proliferate, the American public will continue to encounter difficulties obtaining from journalism the accurate and relevant information it needs to make informed decisions within our democracy. Current scholarship about journalism's increasing problems with relevancy often focuses on explorations of the advent of new media technologies and/or journalism's dysfunctional business models. Although those studies are important, they tend toward a presentism that ignores dilemmas that derive from the enduring ways that the press gathers and constructs news. This book argues that the problem of press relevancy can be traced to historical groundings that continue to inform newsroom practices. Specifically, it makes the distinctive claim that modern journalism's own professionalism has made the press prone to using propaganda materials, thus contributing to increasing news media irrelevance. Accordingly, this work provides an unparalleled interlocking interrogation of two areas: first, how the professionalizing press of the post-WWI era gradually progressed from resistance to acclimation as regards domestic propaganda and, second, how that acclimation can be understood as part of a historically grounded, self-rationalizing workroom acculturation known as habitus. Inspired by the works of Pierre Bourdieu, James Carey, and Michael Schudson, this work finds that journalism's current problems with pertinence lies within an unreflexive relationship with those who would offer the helping hand of propaganda materials. Today's news media exhibits a double-mindedness: many of the same professional routines it uses to apparently safeguard its credibility also rationalize the use of propaganda as news. This work maintains that news professionals and media scholars need to better recognize how this ingrained, yet dissonant approach to constructing news accounts has damaged the viability of journalism. From such an understanding, the press can better focus on news that is credible, pertinent, and reflective of the wider range of voices in American society. Press Professionalization and Propaganda is an important book for all journalism, public relations, and media studies collections and scholars in those areas. Professionals in journalism and public relations will also find this book compelling.
Language is central to human activity and is a fundamental expression of culture and a primary resource for social interaction. Learning the language of another culture is a very critical part of truly understanding the culture. This book examines the acquisition of Japanese as a second language. The ability to speak Japanese as a second language provides a great opportunity for opening a door into Japanese society and potentially gaining an in-depth experience of the Japanese culture and learning more about the Japanese people an experience one is unlikely to have without knowing the language. Given this, it is only natural to infer that language may be a key tool for breaking through intercultural boundaries. Language learning should therefore promote mutual understanding and, consequently, better and smoother communication in intercultural settings. Given the important implications of language on cultural understanding and improved communication in today s society, the process of second language acquisition deserves much attention. However, learning a second language is not usually an easy task. Attaining fluency in a language is one of the most complex skills a human being will ever acquire in their lifetime. When acquiring a first language as a child, the learning is rapid in the first four to five years of life; it takes place in a uniform manner and without much effort. Children around the world attain a high degree of success in their first language without instruction or corrective feedback. However, when it comes to the second, third, or any further subsequent language acquisition that begins after adolescence, such language learning requires much greater effort, with the ultimate attainment varying dramatically from one individual to the next from bare minimum to near-native independent of learner motivation and effort expended. Understanding second language (L2) attainment is thus a critical area of study. This study hypothesizes and tests the developmental stages of Japanese L2 verbal morphology and syntax within the framework of processability theory. It looks at four longitudinal studies (of one Portuguese as first language [L1], one French L1, and two English L1 learners of Japanese). Additionally, one cross-sectional study was undertaken to validate whether the results gained from the longitudinal studies could be generalized. Learning Japanese as a Second Language: A Processability Perspective makes a substantial contribution to second language acquisition (SLA) studies, especially for its discussion of speech processing involved in L2 sentence production and because it accounts for learning a language which is typologically distant from the native languages of the learners. The long-range perspective offered by data covering periods of up to three years is very unusual and thus highly valuable in the SLA context, where many studies are only cross-sectional or, at best, only cover a short time span. The longitudinal studies in this book are further buttressed by a cross-sectional study that supports generalizations from the findings. In addition, the author used original and inventive tasks to elicit data on structures such as passive and causative that are notoriously hard to elicit. The author also shows the various developmental stages and how these were used to measure the language development of both second language learners and bilingual speakers. This book will be an important reference for anyone working in the SLA and JSL fields, postgraduate students of Japanese and second language acquisition, and Japanese language professionals such as teachers of Japanese, JSL textbook writers, or English-Japanese translators.
The Victorian freak show was at once mainstream and subversive. Spectacles of strange, exotic, and titillating bodies drew large middle-class audiences in England throughout much of the nineteenth century, and souvenir portraits of performing freaks even found their way into Victorian family albums. At the same time, the imagery and practices of the freak show shocked Victorian sensibilities and sparked controversy about both the boundaries of physical normalcy and morality in entertainment. Marketing tactics for the freak show often made use of common ideological assumptions-compulsory female domesticity and British imperial authority, for instance-but reflected these ideas with the surreal distortion of a fun-house mirror. Not surprisingly, the popular fiction written for middle-class Victorian readers also calls upon imagery of extreme physical difference, and the odd-bodied characters that people nineteenth-century fiction raise meaningful questions about the relationships between physical difference and the social expectations that shaped Victorian life. The academic discipline of disability studies has emerged in the last few decades to encourage aesthetic, philosophical, and political discussions of the significance of disability and physical difference. This field ultimately seeks to expand the rights and social roles offered to those whose bodies defy the norm, but it also explores the subtle ways in which art, literature, spectacle, and other cultural traditions encode physical difference with ideological meaning. Just as feminism, queer theory, and other areas of cultural study have addressed both specific representations of the body and the larger systems of social power that shape how we see and interpret physicality, so too does disability studies seek both the reexamination of cultural works in light of physical difference and the illumination of ways in which physical bodies unlock or foreclose access to power. This book applies the practices of disability studies to the context of Victorian popular fiction. It offers new ways of reading the works of some of the nineteenth century's most beloved writers through their approach to physical difference. It also seeks to renew critical interest in popular novels that, while rarely taught in the academic world, still paint complex, intriguing portraits of Victorian ideology and experience. This book is primarily an aesthetic analysis of freak show imagery as it appears in Victorian popular fiction, including the works of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Guy de Maupassant, Florence Marryat, and Lewis Carroll. It argues that, in spite of a strong nineteenth-century impulse to define and defend normalcy, images of radical physical difference are often framed in surprisingly positive ways in Victorian fiction. The dwarves, fat people, and bearded ladies who intrude on the more conventional imagery of Victorian novels serve to shift the meaning of those works' main plots and characters, sometimes sharpening satires of the nineteenth-century treatment of the poor or disabled, sometimes offering new traits and behaviors as supplements for restrictive social norms. In particular, this book points out unexpected connections between the cultural iconography of the freak show and fiction's response to middle-class ideals for women and girls. It argues that images of positively-encoded difference-such as the exaggerated nurturance of Dickens's fat women and the traditionally-male strengths of Collins and Marryat's bearded ladies-nudge Victorian ideology towards more inclusive and flexible gender norms. The Victorian Freak Show will interest scholars of nineteenth-century fiction, as well as readers concerned with disability rights or the relationship between ideology and the body.
Pat Barker is one of the most compelling of the current generation of British novelists, especially in her use of the novel as an instrument of social critique, fashioning a literature which does not shy away from asking thorny questions, refusing the doctrinaire of what goes without saying, suspicious of simple answers. To date she has published eleven novels, some of which have been adapted for stage and screen. Barker s Regeneration trilogy was highly acclaimed, the second volume The Eye in the Door (1993), won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the third, The Ghost Road (1995), was awarded the Booker Prize. Other accolades include the Fawcett Society Book Prize for Union Street (1982), the 1996 Booksellers Association Author of the Year Award, and in 2000, Barker was named Commander of the British Empire. While Barker has been variously categorized as a regional, realist, feminist or war writer, her concern with the complexity of human reality sets her apart from many of her contemporaries, resisting as she does the temptation to romanticize working-class life or wartime experience. Barker s prostitutes are also wives, mothers, and friends, while her soldiers are often afraid, even hysterical, sometimes homosexual; formulaic, black-and-white categories disintegrate in Barker s hands. While Barker s work has been approached through several critical lenses, feminist and psychoanalytic among them, this study proposes examining Barker s novels from the angle of the social representations theory (especially as elucidated by Serge Moscovici), since social representations are the condition of the ongoing discourse which defines and maintains human reality as members of a group. Through time, social representations become reified, and their normative, prescriptive role develops into the natural order of things. Conversely, social representations can be deployed to challenge dominant ideologies, to expose the irrational fa ade of human reality, to seek something resembling truth. It is this dilemma of social representations, how they are used and abused and to what purpose, that Barker explores so deeply. This theoretical approach seems especially adapted to Barker s work, given her obvious concern with the articulation between the mediated foundation of contemporary human society, and our collective difficulty in representing genuine human experiences which elude easy representation. In this critical study, David Waterman examines questions of social representation in all of Pat Barker s novels, published over the last twenty-five years, from Union Street (1982) to the recent Life Class (2007), especially the ways in which Barker encourages us to interrogate the reality created by such conventionalizing, prescriptive representations in favor of a reality more accurately represented through a critical assessment of the uses and abuses of collective representations. Barker s principal characters are out of step with the natural order of things; they question cultural constructions like masculinity, heroism, the unquestionable right of institutions, and they worry about their role as members of the larger community. Such questions are often, fundamentally, questions of representation, whether we examine how existing representations serve to maintain the status quo, or whether we are interested in how to represent the horrors of war or the atrocities of civil life, how to give voice to trauma in an effort to approach something resembling truth in other words, how best to represent the kinds of human experiences which resist representation. Pat Barker and the Mediation of Social Reality is an important book for scholars interested in contemporary British fiction, women s writing, and social-psychological approaches to literature.
This book introduces the resources of contemporary social system theory, as pioneered by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and associated theorists. Luhmann's theory is very different from the general systems approach that dominated sociological thought for several decades after the Second World War. Norms and functions are not seen as fundamental premises of social systems and social order. Rather meaning, communication, and observation are set into the core of social life and its analysis. Meaning is seen as a medium that couples psychic and social systems or consciousness and communication. Observation is described as the introduction of distinctions and selections, and communication is the basic operation that connects observations and thereby allows for the emergence of observers: persons, interaction systems, organizations, and functional subsystems of society, such as the economy, politics, law, and art. Society itself is conceived as the encompassing unity of all communication, a universal set of references that makes observation and communication possible. Modern system theory does not join the quest for essential variables such as norms, values, or institutions. It selects observations and depicts their connectivity, their potential for processing information, building expectations about meaning in the world, and for structuring social systems. Contemporary social systems theory tries to explain the probability of the improbable: that communication occurs and reproduces a universe of meaning in which observers may orient themselves. Social system theory incorporates fresh insights from cognitive biology, the philosophy of consciousness, phenomenology, distinction theory, socio-cybernetics, and constructivism to explain the emergence of society. The authors of Observing Society describe how the theory moves beyond traditional sociological paradigms that attempt to explain social order and understanding with presumptions of intersubjectivity, collective conscience, communicative rationality, or normative consensus. Observing Society: Meaning, Communication, and Social Systems concisely outlines how social system theory offers sociologists an integrated set of practical and general analytical concepts, a promising agenda for scholarly inquiry, and a cutting-edge description of modern society. Using clear illustrations and effectively citing original material previously unavailable in English, Lee and Brosziewski carefully explain the logic of drawing distinctions to make observations, the concepts of meaning and communication, the forms of communication media such as speech and writing, the evolution of forms of organizing society, the functional differentiation of modern systems, and how social system theory informs sociological research and methodology. This book will hold significant relevance for collections in sociology, philosophy, German studies, European studies, and culture and media studies.
Among the success stories of economic development through hi-tech industries, the emergence of India as a major center in the world for software production and exports stands out. This is a fascinating story of economic development in a poor and technologically underdeveloped economy that surged to prominence within a relatively short period of less than two decades. The industry has sustained annual growth rates in excess of 35% for over 15 years since the early 1990s, when the country embarked upon an ambitious economic reforms program. However, within the country, the growth of this industry has been highly uneven, with the southern and the western regions leading the rest of the country. This trend has drawn attention to the role of regional policies in the development of this industry. Investigating these issues in depth will help us understand how the state can play a role in propelling an economy forward. The book also compares the different ways in which three states in southern India have established their software industries, illuminating the multiple pathways that are available to developing regions for industrial development, as well as how they affect the type and structure of the industry that evolve. In this first comprehensive study of the role of regional policies in the development of software industry in India, Rajendra Kumar explains the success of these states in terms of four critical factors: availability of adequate skilled labor and specialized infrastructure, pro-employer labor and policy reforms, ethnic linkages of immigrant professionals abroad who returned to establish firms in their native states, and their existing technological capabilities at the beginning of reforms. Contrary to common explanations in the literature, the state did not play a significant role in providing specialized R&D or finance to the industry. He also presents a new "Competitive Flexibility" model and shows that increasing globalization presents tremendous opportunities for developing regions to become globally competitive in a hi-tech field. This is an important book for all scholars and policy makers interested in economic development through high-technology-based industries.
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