Bücher veröffentlicht von Cambria Press

The investigation of HAART adherence behavior and its effect on those under therapy in Uganda is important, especially because provision of HAART in low-income nations-such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, where many of the affected individuals are poverty stricken and possess little or no formal education-may result in negative public health implications, including those resulting from suboptimal adherence, such as drug resistance. In exploring the effect of HAART on sexual behavior of those under therapy, this study may augment existing knowledge pertaining to this area in resource-constrained nations. Of supreme importance, this study may assist in the formulation of strategies and policies that could enhance the effect of HAART and the quality of life for those with HIV/AIDS in developing nations such as Uganda.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the bilingual acquisition of English and Mandarin in a child. It makes a much-needed contribution to the field of child language research, and, in particular, the research on bilingual children. Firmly grounded in bilingual language acquisition theory and methodology, the book uses empirical data to assess the relation between the two languages of a bilingual child growing up in Sydney, Australia. It also addresses a range of theoretical and methodological questions that are central to the study of language acquisition, bilingualism and child development. This book is the first detailed, systematic investigation of the language development of a child exposed to Mandarin and English from birth in an immigrant family in Australia. It is also the first longitudinal study of bilingual acquisition in a context-bound, one-language-one-environment situation. The vast majority of existing research studies one-parent-one-language situations. The focus of the investigation reported in this book is on tracing the developmental route of person identification in the bilingual child in both languages from the age of 19 months to 4 years. Person identification is the precondition to socioemotional attachment and meaningful human social life, an important milestone in a child s cognitive, interpersonal, and language development which has surprisingly long been neglected in bilingual research in spite of its importance. This book addresses both pragmatic and semantic issues relating to pronoun usage in real life communication context, while investigating the child s early word learning and syntactic development in each of the two languages. This addresses, in turn, a key issue in bilingual acquisition research of whether the early lexical and syntactic development is "e;separate"e; or "e;fused"e; in the early stages of development. Additionally, the book explores the nature of the weaker language and bilingual acquisition strategies in relation to input and learning context while the two languages are in contact and interaction and it compares these and other findings with both monolingual and bilingual data. The overall aim of this study is three-fold: first, to improve our understanding of the process of bilingual first language acquisition in its own right; second, to contribute to a better understanding of child language acquisition processes in general; and third, to help bilingual families and educators to understand early language differentiation in bilinguals and manage possible interaction in language contact while maximising bilingual experiences. This book will be an important resource for researchers, developmental psycholinguists, language educators, and clinical professionals from related disciplines. Parents who wish to raise their children to be bilingual will also benefit from this book.

On September 11, 1973, a right-wing coup overthrew Chile s democratically elected, socialist President Salvador Allende and established an eighteen-year dictatorship. The new government exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and killed Allende supporters. In addition to targeting leftist politicians and labor organizers, the new government took aim at the nueva canci n ( new song ) movement. It banned this style of folk-based music, exiled many nueva canci n musicians, and brutally executed V ctor Jara, the movement s most prominent figure. Meanwhile, supporters of the coup celebrated Allende s overthrow by blasting m sica t pica, a different style of folk-based music, into the streets. The intensity with which Chilean rightists and leftists each came to embrace and attack different styles of folk-based music was the outcome of a historical process in which competing notions of Chilean identity became intertwined with the political divisions of the Cold War era. To date, scholars have paid little attention to the role that music played at political rallies and protests, the political activism of right-wing and left-wing musicians, and the emergence of musical performances as sites of verbal and physical confrontations between Allende supporters and the opposition. This book illuminates a largely unexplored facet of the Cold War era in Latin America by examining linkages among music, politics, and the development of extreme political violence. It traces the development of folk-based popular music against the backdrop of Chile s social and political history, explaining how music played a fundamental role in a national conflict that grew out of deep cultural divisions. Through a combination of textual and musical analysis, archival research, and oral histories, Mularski demonstrates that Chilean rightists came to embrace a national identity rooted in Chile s central valley and its huaso ( cowboy ) traditions, which groups of well-groomed, singing huasos expressed and propagated through m sica t pica. In contrast, leftists came to embrace an identity that drew on musical traditions from Chile s outlying regions and other Latin American countries, which they expressed and propagated through nueva canci n. Conflicts over these notions of Chilenidad ( Chileanness ) both reflected and contributed to the political polarization of Chilean society, sparking violent confrontations at musical performances and political events during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Recent studies of diplomatic and military history have shown that the Cold War in Latin America was a multifaceted contest between various regional proponents of communism and capitalism. This book adds to this new conceptualization of Latin America s Cold War era by extending it to musical culture as well. It examines the manner by which the Chilean right attempted to undermine nueva canci n music, and it disproves common perceptions that the right had no culture of its own by revealing that rightists labored passionately to protect and advance their own style of folk-based music. It also examines how the Allende government and nueva canci n musicians worked officially and unofficially to expand their musical influence and provide cultural assistance to other Latin America countries. By analyzing the development of such endeavors by the right and left, Mularski reveals through the lens of music how national and transnational perspectives shaped social relationships and political conflict among rightists and leftists in Chile. This book contributes a more nuanced conception of music, politics, and cultural nationalism. Most existing research on the cultural components of anti-imperialist movements links nationalist political and economic policies with expressions of cultural nationalism, such as folk revivals, generally asserting that these folk revivals convey nationalist and anti-imperialist perspectives by celebrating traditions of local origin rather than foreign cultural influences. Mularski demonstrates how complex local dynamics complicate the prevailing association of cultural nationalism and anti-imperialism: right-wing Chileans embraced the folk-based m sica t pica style while at the same time crusading against the political and economic efforts of anti-imperialists, and Chilean leftists condemned imperialism while expressing a cultural identity rooted in nueva canci n that was simultaneously both nationalist and transnational. In doing so, Mularski offers a powerful example and multifaceted understanding of the fundamental role that music often plays in shaping the contours of political struggles and conflicts throughout the world. Music, Politics, and Nationalism in Latin American is an important book for Latin American studies, history, musicology/ethnomusicology, and communication.

This book offers an historical portrait of the first generations of women home scientists at the University of New Zealand in the early decades of the twentieth century. It adopts the tools of biographical research to interrogate their professional lives in a new colonial university. With a specific focus on Home Science, this book contests contemporary views that a university education would produce glorified housekeepers. Previous scholarship has not fully considered how Home Science expanded the range of professional, academic and career options for educated women. Drawing extensively on archival material from New Zealand, the United States, and England, this book examines how women worked with, around, and against gender stereotypes to establish themselves as professional scholars in the field of Home Science. This book is a rich micro-history of gender identities and roles. It demonstrates how Home Science, intended by male academic administrators to confine women to their "proper" domestic sphere, was used by home scientists to create new professional opportunities for women, both in the academy and in the scientific community at large. These determined and talented women were not victims of patriarchy but creative agents of change and promise. As activist women before them, they worked with, around, and against gender stereotypes to expand the area of "women's sphere." The portraits sketched in this book illuminate the extent to which New Zealand home scientists established connections with women in the US and England and their contribution to this transnational community of scholars. The authors go beyond arguments that Home Science, as a subject and field of study, hindered women to ask instead how and why it developed as it did. They trace the lives and careers of early home scientists to understand how these educated and mobile women transcended gendered views that their work was little more than "glorified housekeeping". The careers of academic women were deeply marked by the gendered boundaries of the Academy as well as the profoundly gendered expectations of their daily lives. The portraits presented in this book suggest that academic women were politically astute. That is, they were able to 'read' the context in which they lived and worked and while on the one hand they appeared to accept their gendered positioning, on the other, they used these opportunities to neutralize their marginal status and create a specialized education for women. Successive generations of graduate women derived benefits from the professionalization of women's work and were able to consider a range of career options that provided real alternatives to domesticity. There can be little doubt that these first generations of academic women occupied dangerous territory; and it is this terrain that contemporary women academics inhabit. The history of women's higher education continues to be deeply marked by enduring struggles for recognition of their scholarly contribution and expertise. Historical Portraits of Women Home Scientists is an important book for those interested in the history of women's higher education, gender and the professions, historical methodology, and transnational histories of women home scientists.

This is the first study of constitution making during a critical decade of British rule in Kenya to be based on a thorough examination of archival sources. Such sources include secret police and intelligence reports, records of the planning and negotiations leading to the imposition of the three constitutions, and British cabinet records. These allow for a more complete appreciation of the forces that produced the specific constitutional dispensations. For example, the book provides the fullest and most authoritative account of the first Lancaster House conference of 1960. The account indicates that the constitution that emerged, as with the negotiations of 1954 and 1957, was not the result of inter-racial bargaining. Rather, each constitution was imposed by Britain after acceptance by some political groups, though not all. Such partial acceptance proved fatal to the constitutions of the 1950s. The book illustrates this reality as well as highlighting the importance of African agency in the overthrow of the Lyttleton and Lennox-Boyd constitutions and in the emergence of the very different constitutional order that resulted from the Lancaster House conference. Britain and Kenya's Constitutions, 1950-1960 is an important resource for scholars in African studies as well as those researching the history of British decolonization in Africa.

In the memoirs of no other contemporary theater personality (i.e., William Dunlap, Edward Cape Everard, James Fennell, William Wood), has a figure quite like John Durang emerged. His eagerness in grasping opportunities, expanding his skills, shaping his career, and establishing a home are unique, not only in themselves, but also in his articulation of these enterprises. Looking at his life through the lens of American national development illuminates the role of the theater in this critical and ongoing process, while also revealing the forms and repertory that shaped this theater. Remarkably few significant biographies are available of American dance and theatrical figures whose lives preceded the twentieth century. A small handful of memoirs by actors of the period fill in a small part of this gap, but memoirs-like John Durang's-need context and connections to be fully appreciated. The role of dance and theater in shaping the young United States is highlighted in this biography. John Durang: Man of the American Stage by Professor Lynn Matluck Brooks serves both general and theater-educated readerships. Interested groups include readers of American studies, dance, and theater.

The interrelation of globalization, communication, and media has prompted many individuals to view the world in terms of a new dichotomy: the global "wired" (nations with widespread online access) and the global "tired" (nations with very limited online access). In this way, differing levels of online access have created an international rift - the global digital divide. The nature, current status, and future projections related to this rift, in turn, have important implications for all of the world's citizens. Yet these problems are not intractable. Rather, with time and attention, public policies and private sector practices can be developed or revised to close this divide and bring more of the world's citizens to the global stage on a more equal footing. The first step in addressing problems resulting from the global digital divide is to improve understanding, that is, organizations and individuals must understand what factors contribute to this global digital divide for them to address it effectively. From this foundational understanding, organizations can take the kinds of focused, coordinated actions needed to address such international problems effectively. This collection represents an initial step toward examining the global digital divide from the perspective of developing nations and the challenges their citizens face in today's error of communication-driven globalization. The entries in this collection each represent different insights on the digital divide from the perspectives of developing nations - many of which have been overlooked in previous discussions of this topic. This book examines globalization and its effects from the perspective of how differences in access to online communication technologies between the economically developed countries and less economically developed countries is affecting social, economic, educational, and political developments in the world's emerging economies. This collection also examines how this situation is creating a global digital divide that will have adverse consequences for all nations. Each of the book's chapters thus presents trends and ideas related to the global digital divide between economically developed countries and less economically developed nations. Through this approach, the contributors present perspectives from the economically developing nations themselves versus other texts that explore this topic from the perspective of economically developed countries. In this way, the book provides a new and an important perspective to the growing literature on the global digital divide. The primary audiences for this text would include individuals from both academics and industry practitioners. The academic audience would include administrators in education; researchers; university, college, and community college instructors; and students at the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

From the early days of "worker films" that attracted working-class audiences to tiny, storefront theaters in the first decades of the twentieth century to the gritty films of social realism that brought audiences to theaters during the Great Depression and beyond, Hollywood has played a major role in defining the working class in America. This power of film to define the working class was never more apparent than in the Hollywood of the late 1960s and 1970s. Films from that epoch continue to have a profound effect on America's political and cultural lives decades later. Although the plight of the working class has been a Hollywood subject for more than a century, no significant work has explored Hollywood's role in shaping the modern working class. Most studies of the films of the late 1960s and 1970s explore the "New Hollywood," or the "Hollywood Renaissance," a brief period of directorial creativity in the industry. Some studies analyze the emergence of the "blockbuster" film and "four-wall" distribution that rejuvenated Hollywood with films like Jaws and Star Wars, while others examine the effect of the Vietnam War on the film industry. This study, however, explains how Hollywood created a false binary of the counterculture vs. the working class in an effort to appeal to the largest possible audience and, in doing so, helped to draw the lines for cultural and political discourse four decades later. Through narrative repetition, film has the power to create a world that becomes accepted as "the way things are." This happened in the mid-1970s when several significant films depicted the white working class as victim of a system that privileged the broad "counterculture," creating a world view that still flourishes in some circles of the white working and middle classes. This study makes that connection for the reader through close readings of various films of the era. As the first study to establish a direct connection between popular films of the 1970s and right-wing populist movements of today, this book helps to provide context for the more extreme rhetoric and activities of the Tea Party and other more fringe groups of the 2010s. By analyzing the depiction of the working class in films of the late 1960s and 1970s, this study provides the first look at how films of the era changed how the working class is viewed by others and by itself. This study also examines the political climate of the Nixon and Carter eras and demonstrates how concepts like Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" found their way to the big screen and helped to shape the future of the working class. Finally, this unique study explores how Hollywood, given a choice of providing an honest rendering of the era or exploiting its tensions to ensure better box office, made the latter choice. By breaking down iconic films like Easy Rider, Dirty Harry, Jaws, and Rocky, character studies like Scarecrow, Blue Collar, and Hard Times, and cult favorites like Joe, Billy Jack, and Medium Cool, author Robert A. Marcink provides a comprehensive look at how Hollywood's choice played a significant role in shaping the modern working class. By exploring films from both the Left and the Right, he also demonstrates that in Hollywood the message rarely strays too far from the ideological center. The Working Class in American Film is an important volume for all film collections. It is also an important volume for communications, sociology, political science, and history collections that explore the relationship between popular media and the shaping of American society and political discourse.

Until the mid 1950s, the Jews of Egypt lived in a multicultural and diverse society, which constituted a model of conviviality and tolerance, using French as its lingua franca. The Jews constituted a respected and well-integrated urban community of about 80 to 100,000, and made an impressive contribution to the socioeconomic modernization of the country. Together with the rise of Arab nationalism and the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the escalating Arab-Israeli conflict brought about the rapid demise of Egyptian Jewry. Like the other Jewish communities of Arab lands, these people were either expelled or forced into exile in the aftermath of the 1948, 1956, and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. As a consequence, close to half of the Jewish population of Egypt found refuge in Israel while the rest dispersed throughout the Western world, mainly in France, Brazil, and the United States. This book focuses on a group of about two thousand who settled in Australia, the Edge of the Diaspora. It also examines the migration experience of Egyptian Jews who settled in France, in order to compare and contrast their integration in a non Anglo-Celtic environment. Although the Jews of Egypt, like most refugees, suffered the trauma of dispossession, expulsion, and dislocation, their particular experience did not attract the attention of Australian sociologists or historians. Even within the context of Australian Jewry, their story was largely unknown even though there has been much discussion about the postwar migration of European Jews. The author Racheline Barda believes that it is important to give them a voice, to tell their stories, and delve into their past history, thereby discovering the richness of their cultural heritage which ultimately gave them the tools for a successful integration in Australian society. One of the crucial concerns of this work was the preservation and transmission of the rich and dynamic history of this unique group to successive generations, through the oral testimonies of first-hand witnesses of a vanished world. This book makes an important contribution to the study of contemporary Australian society as well as diaspora studies. It deals with a topic that has rarely been reported on or studied in Australia the migration experience of a small and unique ethnoreligious population such as the Jews of Egypt. It is the first comprehensive research on their immigration and integration into Australian society. Traditionally, sociohistorians have mostly concentrated on the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe or on the long established local Jewish community, which was historically of British and German origin. The Jews of Egypt constitute one of the largest Jewish communities to settle in Australia from outside European societies, in response to the rise of Arab nationalism and hostility to Israel. Based on a series of comprehensive interviews conducted mainly in Australia and France, this study reconstructs the history of a Jewish community and the circumstances of its demise. It takes the innovative approach of systematically analyzing the ethnic, religious, and cultural characteristics of both sample groups, highlighting the diversity that is inherent to the group as a whole. By specifically targeting the issue of identity, it provides an insight into the dynamics of a multilayered identity, which performs as a vehicle of integration and acculturation for a migrant group in any host society. Apart from individuals studying the particular history of Egyptian Jews wherever they settled after their forced emigration from Egypt, the book would be of interest to scholars specializing in diaspora studies, ethnic and immigrant studies, and social history.

"This book combines the work of 18 international scholars in the first comprehensive study of contemporary regional shrinkage under Japan's national depopulation. The contributions have been arranged thematically, and interspersed throughout the book are tables, charts, diagrams and photographs that visually augment and describe the processes and impacts of regional shrinkage. In this way the book stitches together a representative variety of detailed and richly textured examinations of shrinkage at the local level, out of which emerges the overall story of Japan's depopulation and its place within the trajectory of world development. The book shows that shrinkage has not been a uniform experience for regional communities, as some settlements have expanded and others close by have disintegrated. It also describes the differential processes of shrinkage taking place throughout Japan in the postwar era, as well as their characteristics, impacts and implications. From remote mountain villages to regional industrial centers, the authors analyze the responses that national, regional, local and individual actors have brought to bear on shrinkage, including the important roles that the state and municipal authorities, and the construction and tourism industries have played. Ominously, the authors demonstrate that depopulation is deepening and broadening to include larger and more densely populated settlements as the national population decline becomes more entrenched. The authors conclude by arguing that depopulation and socioeconomic decline may combine to induce individuals and groups to begin to rethink growth and to embrace a new way of life that prioritizes stability and, even, sustainability."--Publisher's description.

For those wishing to develop their professional voice in theatre, it is common to draw on practical training and experiences as their main foci. Observational undertakings, apprenticeships, and personal endeavours are also customary ways to further this development of their persona as director or performer. There has been little in the way of academic research or study of general principles to open the door to formal discussion of the theatrical processes involved in creating a production. Common approaches are personal (mainly autobiographical or context-specific) assessments that recount individual episodes and milestones within the careers of well-known and respected individuals. Although such methods are informative and often interesting, formal analytical tools to undertake production analyses and intellectual comparisons are still needed. This is the first study that attempts to apply a systematic process to the mysteries of directorial communication within a theatrical setting. Categories created using this methodology make comprehensive breakdown and analysis possible of those elusive interpersonal interactions, the communication flow, during the period of rehearsal leading to a production. As such, the case studies make available some of the inner individual experiences from each company s endeavour, the artistic journey, successes and pitfalls, viewpoints and reflections of those involved, the changing styles of communication, and thus, many important lessons that would be otherwise completely unavailable to a wider audience. Whilst centring specifically on opera as a medium, the examination unpicks general processes of theatrical rehearsal, profiling individuals at work in a systematic way that begins to uncover and identify patterns of behaviour. The study, thus, draws important lessons from observation of that process which can then be applied to future experience, assisting the novice especially, whose previous recourse was mainly limited to trial-and-error approaches within their own personal production experience. Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance is an important addition to the general study of theatrical performance communication and its analysis. The case studies and interviews are especially helpful because the reader will not only be able to read directly the views and experiences of professionals at work but also to unpick and analyse those processes taking place over a period of rehearsal. Its ability to bring into relief the practices of theatrical professionals makes this study an invaluable option for university drama departments, colleges of drama training, as well as for individuals at a more advanced point in their professional existence who are looking to evolve their understanding and artistic style.

This book examines the complex and unique human, cultural, and religious exchanges that resulted from the enslavement and the trade of Africans in the North and the South Atlantic regions.

The movement of research animals across the divides that have separated scientist investigators and research animals as Baconian dominators and research equipment respectively might well give us cause to reflect about what we think we know about scientists and animals and how they relate to and with one another within the scientific coordinates of the modern research laboratory. Scientists are often assumed to inhabit the ontotheological domain that the union of science and technology has produced; to master 'nature' through its ontological transformation. Instrumental reason is here understood to produce a split between animal and human being, becoming inextricably intertwined with human self-preservation. But science itself is beginning to take us back to nature; science itself is located in the thick of posthuman biopolitics and is concerned with making more than claims about human being, and is seeking to arrive at understandings of being as such. It is no longer relevant to assume that instrumental reason continues to hold a death grip on science, nor that it is immune from the concerns in which it is deeply embedded. And, it is no longer possible to assume that animal human relationships in the lab continue along the fault line of the Great Divide. This book raises critical questions about what kinship means, or might mean, for science, for humanimal relations, and for anthropology, which has always maintained a sure grip on kinship but has not yet accounted for how it might be validly claimed to exist between humanimals in new and emerging contexts of relatedness. It raises equally important questions about the position of science at the forefront of new kinships between humans and animals, and questions our assumptions about how scientific knowing is produced and reflected upon from within the thick of lab work, and what counts as 'good science'. Much of it is concerned with the quality of humanimal relatedness and relationship. For the Love of Lab Rats will be of great interest to scientists, laboratory workers, anthropologists, animal studies scholars, posthumanists, phenomenologists, and all those with an interest in human-animal relations.

"Situational Poetics is a deep, cultural history of Henryson's problematic Testament of Cresseid. This book offers wonderful insights throughout, from its analysis of the hybrid "dislocations and double consciousness" of late medieval Scottish literature, Henryson's "Virgilian" career, his admixture of tragedy and satire in the Testament, and the anamorphic temporalities that link Chaucer, Henryson and Shakespeare in their telling and re-telling of the Troilus and Criseyde story. This is an utterly compelling study of Henryson's Testament, one that promises to re-shape completely our understanding of the poem." --Stephanie Trigg, Professor of English, University of Melbourne "A remarkably ambitious attempt to re-situate Henryson's Testament of Cresseid within literary history and to recover the author's deliberately constructed career-profile from the many accidents of transmission. ... the first ever view of Henryson "in the round." --Tom Shippey, Professor Emeritus, St. Louis University "Nickolas Haydock's new book on the great Scot poet Robert Henryson manages to do several things at once that seemed to the rest of us to be incompatible. He firmly places Henryson's work in literary history, but renders him accessible and even in dialogue with new ways of thinking about literature and culture. He is respectful of Henryson's canonical place in Scottish identity but raises questions about how literature works in making national and ethnic identities. Haydock gives us a Henryson for the twenty-first century." --John M. Ganim, Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

Political turbulence was common during the times of dynastic transition in imperial China. Multiple regional regimes frequently rose on the lands of the former unified empire, vying for political and military supremacy until a dominant power emerged and achieved reunification. The period of political fragmentation during the tenth century, known as the Five Dynasties and Ten States (907 979) was typical of such times. From the crumbling of the Tang empire to the next reunification of China proper under the Northern Song dynasty, five short-lived dynasties succeeded one another in the Central Plains, the old political heartland in North China, while about a dozen smaller autonomous regimes occupied though not concurrently the rest of the country (mostly in the south). Lasting more than a half century, the period is thought to have been one of unique political intrigue, during which founding rulers of humble origins engaged in schemes and strategies that increasingly inspire popular interest today. This book is an exploration of the complicated national politics and intricate interstate relations of the early tenth century with a focus on the Former Shu (891 925), one of the Ten States that significantly contributed to the formation of the unique political configuration of the day. From the viewpoint of traditional historiography, the five northern dynasties constituted the central powers of the tenth century that dominated national politics and ultimately led China to the Northern Song reunification. In contrast, southern regimes were usually treated as subordinate or secondary powers, all considered neither legitimate nor capable of ever challenging the north, politically or militarily. This binary grouping and its discriminatory interpretation fundamentally shaped later historians perception of the national politics of Five Dynasties China. Even today, compared to the studies on the political history of the five northern dynasties, the neglect of the southern regimes is obvious in modern scholarship, especially in Western language publications. By focusing on the political history of the Former Shu regime in the south, this book seeks to provide a new understanding of the geopolitics of Five Dynasties China. This book sheds much light on the complicated national politics and intricate interstate relations of the divided tenth-century China. It examines how Wang Jian, a military governor of Tang, rose to power from obscurity in the chaotic late ninth century and founded an empire in what is today s Sichuan province in the early tenth century. Depending on a powerful military, the strategic location, and astute diplomatic tactics in dealing with surrounding powers, the Former Shu under Wang Jian s rule successfully challenged the hegemonies of the most powerful regimes of the day from its base in the south. It was recognized as a political equal and treated as such by the contemporary northern powers, with whom the Former Shu shared the Mandate of Heaven both in rhetoric and in reality. As the achievements of the Former Shu demonstrate, the widely accepted predominance of the northern dynasties over the other states during the Five Dynasties period does not reflect the political reality, at least in the first half of the tenth century, when no single power possessed the capability of destroying other rivals and dominating the entire country. The constructive relationships between the Former Shu and other regimes discussed in this study define a unique political configuration of tenth-century China that was characterized by power balance and pragmatic coexistence among the dynasties and states, which in most cases sensibly chose to share the Mandate and maneuvered to survive by interacting strategically with other powers and thus should be equally treated as regional regimes. This study thus provides a reevaluation of the biased Song interpretation of the Five Dynasties and rethinks national politics, the reality of interstate relations, and the mentality of the contemporary people in perceiving the upheavals and changes of tenth-century China. This book is an important study for scholars and students of medieval China and regional studies. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in political and military history.

War, genocide, and foreign occupation have taken their toll on Cambodia. These events have demolished infrastructure, overturned ruling parties, and led to the deaths of millions. Although these events are now past, many of the resulting ramifications still linger. One such remnant of the past are the landmines--abundant in number and pervasive in their propagation, landmine-related contamination continues to impact lives more than 30 years after the last war effort. The residual ordnance problem in Cambodia is being confronted by a team of well-intentioned, motivated, and hardworking professionals. Current efforts, however, do not consider, account for, or target economic vulnerabilities that individuals and family structures encounter. This study analyzes the relationship between economic vulnerability and landmine-related incidents. Specific accountability for vulnerability is given in terms of poverty assessment, agricultural vulnerability, and the relationship between the price of metal and tampering-specific behavior. This book provides the first and only comprehensive historical account of landmine-related contamination in Cambodia. This historical account contextualizes the magnitude, origin, and impact of ordnance in Cambodia by analyzing each of the ordnance contributing factions. In addition to providing an historical analysis of landmine-related contamination, this book assesses various types of vulnerability in conjunction with landmine-related incidents. More precisely, poverty, agricultural vulnerability, and the price of metal are all examined separately in accordance with landmine-related accidents and tampering rates. The author Wade Roberts presents research that has enabled the first-ever analysis to take place testing the response of tampering behavior to changing metal prices at the Cambodia-Thailand border. This book also provides a unique approach to the landmine problem, bringing in and comparing various socioeconomic variables of poverty and economic need. Measures of poverty that prove statistically significant in predicting landmine-related incidents include levels of single parenting, the use of firewood for cooking, migration proportions, population densities, male-female sex-ratios, and with low levels of formal education. Critical agricultural measures that are statistically correlated to landmine-related incidents include net rice output, the supply of water, rice yields, crop diversification, floods and droughts, and nonrice agricultural production. The statistical analysis of the price of metal reveals that tampering responds directly, and more than proportionately, to a change in the price of scrap metal. Suggested policy recommendations follow each of these analyses. Given the rich combination of quantitative and qualitative data coupled with the practical recommendations delineated, this book will be of immense value to scholars in poverty management studies, policy studies, and sociology.

China's recent economic growth has fed a rapid increase in the study of modern Chinese language and literature globally. In this shifting global context, authors who work on the edges of the literary empire raise important questions about the homogeneity of language, identity and culture that is produced by the modern Chinese literary canon. This book examines a key segment of this literature and asks, "What does it mean to be of Chinese descent and Chinese-speaking outside of China?" While there have been several excellent works that deal with individual Chinese authors from Malaysia, there is to date no broadly framed and comprehensive study of the body of Chinese diasporic literature emerging from this multiethnic, polylinguistic country. This neglect is surprising given the vibrant development of Chinese Malaysian literature.This book fills the gap by looking specifically at how diasporic Chinese subjects make sense of their Chinese and Malaysian identities in postcolonial Malaysia. This book will be of value to scholars and students of Chinese-language literature and culture.It will also appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Chinese and Southeast Asia studies as well as those interested in postcolonial, diaspora, migration, Asian American studies, and world literature.

The single most influential work in Chinese history is Lunyu, the Confucian Analects. Its influence on the Chinese people is comparable to that of the bible on the Western world. It is neither a tract of prosaic moralism contained in the fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants nor a manual of political administration that prescribes do's and don't's for new initiates. A book claiming a readership of billions of people throughout the history in China and East Asia and now even in the Western world must be one that has struck a chord in the readers, one which appears to arise from the existential concerns that Confucius shared: How can one overcome the egoistic tendency that plagues life? How does one see the value of communal existence? What should be one's ultimate concern in life?These questions call for a line of inquiry on the Analects that is explicitly existential. An existential reading of the Analects differs from other lines of inquiry in that it not only attempts to reveal how the text spoke to the original audience but also to us today. It is not only a pure academic exercise that appeals to the scholarly minded but also an engagement with all who feel poignantly about existential predicaments.In this existential reading of the Analects, the author takes Paul Tillich as an omnipresent dialogical partner because his existential theology was at one time very influential in the West and currently very popular in Chinese academia. His analysis of ontological structure of man can be applied to the Analects. This conceptual analysis reveals that that this foundational text has three organically connected levels of thought, proceeding from personal cultivation through the mediation of the community to the metaphysical level of Ultimate Reality. Few scholarly attempts like this one have been made to reveal systematically the interconnectedness of these three levels of thought and to the prominence to their theological underpinnings.This existential reading of the Analects carries with it a theological implication. If one follows the traditional division of a systematic theology, one will find that the Analects has anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions, which correspond to the three levels of thoughts mentioned. If one understands soteriology more broadly, one will find the Analects also has a soteriological dimension. The Analects points to the goal of complete harmony in which a harmony within oneself, with the society and cosmos are ensured.If one is to construct a theology of the Analects, the existential reading enables the drawing of certain contrasts with Paul Tillich's existential theology. The Confucian idea of straying from the Way differs from the symbol of fall. The Confucian reality of social entanglement differs from the reality of estrangement. The Confucian paradoxical nature of Heaven differs from trinitarian construction of God. The most important contribution of this study is that it reveals the religious or theological dimension of the Confucian Analects.This is an important book for those engaged in the study of the Confucian Analects, including those in Chinese studies as well as comparative theology and religion.

If novelist Paul Mark Scott (1920-1978) has secured a niche in English literature, it is on the merits of his Raj Quartet and its sequel, Staying On, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1977. Yet by the time he had published The Jewel in the Crown in 1966, he had supported his family on his writing for six years, worked as a literary advisor for several publishers, routinely written book reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and Country Life, and published eight novels. Scott's literary reputation was already considerable when, at the age of 44, he embarked on The Raj Quartet that would take up the last fourteen years of his life-a masterpiece that reinterpreted the major events of his generation and challenged his contemporaries to face the legacy of their past. Beginning in 1964, Scott negotiated with the Harry Ransom Research Center at The University of Texas-Austin for the purchase of his manuscripts. Later, when he was teaching creative writing at the University of Tulsa in 1976, he arranged to sell his letters to the archives at McFarlin Library. Many years after his death, David Higham Associates (the literary agency for which Scott worked from 1950-1960 and which acted as Scott's own agent until his death in 1978) sold archival materials to the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin. Only a limited amount of material from McFarlin's Paul Scott Collection has been published to date. The David Higham Collection has not been systematically used until now. Together, the Tulsa and Austin Collections involve many thousands of Scott's professional and personal letters, to a large degree untapped by scholars of literature. In this two-volume collection, Janis Haswell makes available to the reading public for the first time several hundred letters from the Tulsa and Austin archives, as well as dozens of private letters to daughters Carol and Sally Scott. Scott's letters never disappoint. They are intriguing, well-penned and (in most cases) well-preserved in carbon form by Scott himself. They explore in depth and detail available nowhere else his view of the themes and structure of his novels; his experience and views of India; his dealings with publishers, agents, critics, readers, and writer friends (the likes of Muriel Spark, Gabriel Fielding, M. M. Kaye); his role as an agent and influential reviewer of fiction; his trials in supporting himself and family as a freelancer; his experience as a teacher in the United States; and his love and loyalty to family and friends.

This book addresses two issues related to the structure of local government: the determinants of consolidation and the potential impact of consolidation on local government spending. This is a narrow undertaking and leaves important elements of local government reform for future analysis. The study's primary foci are examining the factors that influence city-county consolidation, considering the impact of city-county consolidation on local government spending, and estimating the potential savings that could result from the scale economies and efficiency gains from consolidating local government units. While other regions of the United States are considered in this study, but the analysis focuses primarily on the Midwest where population declines and changes in the employment base and state policies (such as property tax caps in Indiana) have had dramatic effects on the fiscal viability of local governments. The current economic climate, along with policy changes related to property tax restructuring in many states, has led to substantial reductions in local governments' budgets. As a result, many local governments are in crisis and are considering some level of consolidation. Statistical methods and data on consolidation referendum attempts in the United States since 1970 are used to test whether governments that have consolidated (i.e., voters approved the consolidation referendum) had higher spending prior to their consolidation (as measured by local government employment rates, payrolls, and expenditures) compared to the average local government in the state. The effects of city-county consolidation are explored; using consolidation referendum data, the impact of consolidation on local government employment rates, payrolls, and expenditures is examined. The influence of consolidation on economic development is also investigated with some interesting results. The study also used two methods to estimate the savings from government consolidation and presents aggregate models to examine the potential savings from economies of scale and efficiency improvements. The book also helpfully provides a helpful discussion of the economies of scale and efficiency for several functional areas, including police and fire protection, sewerage, solid waste, public welfare, administration, health, education, and libraries. This book will be an essential resource for political scientists and policy makers interested in American government. Written in a highly accessible manner, it will also be a valuable read for students and general readers.

American media interests have expressed profound dismay over the phenomenon of libel tourism whereby American authors and media companies have been successfully sued for defamation in foreign courts where there is little if any connection between the venue and the parties. Media interests view these proceedings as forum shopping of the worst sort because essential American First Amendment rights are being compromised. In response to this concern, federal legislation commonly known as the SPEECH Act (Securing the Protection of Our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act) became law in August 2010. The SPEECH Act promises to disturb the traditional American practice of extending comity or recognition to foreign judgments except where those judgments are repugnant to American concepts of justice. Foreign defamation judgments are routinely denied recognition under existing law and there would seem to be no reason for specific legislation dealing with defamation. However, in the absence of this legislation, recent developments in the English common law may open a window for greater international cooperation regarding defamation judgments. This book looks at defamation law from the viewpoint of freedom of speech theory as well as doctrinal law and demonstrates that the common law, while presenting a truer match with essential theory, frequently fails in practical application while Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment, while less sound theoretically, typically yield more satisfying results. Nevertheless, there are also ongoing changes in both bodies of law and the similarities will soon outweigh differences and recognition of foreign defamation judgments should no longer be routinely rejected. American media interests are quite rightly concerned about defamation actions being commenced against them in countries where freedom of speech is not as well developed or as protected as it is by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Of late, London has been the forum of convenience for lawsuits which have become known as Libel Tourism litigation because of the flimsy connection of the publication to the venue. As a consequence, media interests have been lobbying for protective legislation and on August 10, 2010, the federal SPEECH Act became law. This book discusses the ostensible reasons for this legislation and examines the law in light of traditional principles of extending recognition to foreign judgments as an essential aspect of comity among nations. In order to properly evaluate the SPEECH Act and its likely implications, this study critically examines the ongoing degradation of First Amendment speech protections in the US and the developing English common law defamation privileges and reaches some startling conclusions. In this first critical study of the SPEECH Act, Harry Melkonian not only examines the specifics and likely application of this legislation as well as the underlying phenomenon of Libel Tourism but also provides a radically new perspective on the incipient convergence of US First Amendment and English common law freedom of speech and defamation principles. Uniquely, the book approaches the concept of convergence from the viewpoint of both doctrinal law and free speech theory and amalgamates the results through application of the traditional law of comity among nations. Defamation, Libel Tourism and the SPEECH Act of 2010 is an essential book for everyone involved with international legal aspects of the media including publishers, broadcasters, as well as legal professionals and academics.

This book strives to address this gap in the research literature by focusing on the intergovernmental role of the nation's governors. This is done by examining the lobbying efforts of the governors through their national organization, the National Governors Association (NGA). The NGA has been a prominent representative of state interests for a number of decades, and the increasingly complex relationships between the states and the federal government--and the governors' role as manager of those relationships--have ensured that the governors and the NGA remain at the center of many critical national policy debates. Furthermore, the NGA serves as the primary organizing body of the governors, and the organization allows the state executives to effectively exert their influence over important policy decisions at the federal level. For these reasons, the NGA is a most appropriate organization for the study of governors as they work to influence federal policy. Taking a mixed method approach, this study highlights the factors that affect the ability of governors to shape national policy decisions and examines the results in the context of contemporary literature on the governorship, intergovernmental relations, and federalism. This book is therefore ideal for all who are interested in U.S. governorship, intergovernmental relations, and federalism generally.

Mo Yan, the most prolific writer in present-day China as well as one of its most prominent avant-gardists, is an author whose literary works have enjoyed an enormous readership and have caught much critical attention not only in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan but also in many other countries around the world. This book provides the most comprehensive exposition of Mo Yan's fiction in any language. Author Shelly Chan delves into Mo Yan's entire collection of literary works, considering novels as well as short stories and novellas. In this analysis, Mo Yan's works are dealt with in a diachronic fashion--Chan discusses the development of Mo Yan's style throughout his career by considering themes that he has addressed in a variety of narratives over time. This provides the reader with valuable insight into understanding how individual narratives fit into the entire collection of Mo Yan's body of literary work. Scholars will also welcome the book's extensive reference to secondary scholarship and theory, which skillfully deals with the Chinese scholarship and thoroughly covers the English-language sources on Mo Yan as well. This book on one of the most important figures in contemporary Chinese literary history will be a landmark resource for scholars in Asian studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism, as well as an enticing read for people interested in Chinese literature and historical fiction.

The disparate poetry of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell remains loosely connected by the New England region. The original voices in this verse form in part out of historical trends shaping the environment, as speakers confront a landscape informed by its past and transformed by cultural movements from the nineteenth century into the middle of the twentieth century. As the first region in America, New England offers a locus in which to better understand the emergence of poetic voices closely identified with the experience of their surroundings. Tracking these voices in the verse of four seminal poets over the course of roughly one hundred years allows for a thorough survey of common links as to how speakers respond to historical shifts as well as how they view the landscape in the context of a shared literary tradition. Though scholars have explored the relationship between the work of these four poets and the New England region, the primal lyric tension that ultimately defines the voices that readers have come to identify as Dickinson or Lowell warrant closer investigation. No study has yet to use Lacanian psychoanalysis to read the speakers of this verse in the context of historical changes in their surroundings. This post-structural reading allows for arguably the closest consideration as to how voices take shape in the New England region based upon how the various speakers view the landscape they inhabit through a version of Emerson s perspective via his paradoxically transparent eyeball : an invisible presence that remains in the foreground because of rhetoric that describes it. For these speakers, history as well as literary tradition serves as such rhetorical covering , which in part offers a new way of considering how they come to sound like they come from New England by their visual experience of the environment. In connecting what has become rather standard post-structural theory to the practical relevance of local New England history, this book strives to bridge a recurring divide in literary study. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis to look specifically at the poetic speakers in part makes such an interdisciplinary examination possible. To see New Englandly ironically means to be seen by the formative historical effects of New England. Cultural movements shaping the experience of the speakers surroundings thus inform their conscious and unconscious desires as they in turn project such desires onto the land. The paradox of Emersonian vision especially central to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, wherein transparency gets covered with textual awareness, comes to exemplify this regional view taken by the speakers in the verse of the other poets here as well. The connection of Emerson s transparent eyeball in the New England landscape to the Lacanian gaze offers a means to extend a fundamental trope for lyric vision in the region. Such a critical and theoretical link especially in Stevens s verse offers a revision of readings by scholars like Harold Bloom and Richard Poirier who, though recognizing the importance of Emerson s eyeball as a metaphor of visual priority, have refrained from examining its full implications in a collective body of American literature. The insights that follow such an analysis perhaps make the strongest contribution to the existing scholarship of New England poetry by broadening the scope of the region and the reach of the historical effects that define it. The site of the Lacanian b ance defined as the gap between nature and the symbolic which ultimately defines the speakers inherent self-division, consistently charges the poetry with the greatest tension, paradoxically linking speakers to New England by threatening to disrupt their imaginative connection to their surroundings. This recurring gap around which vision and rhetoric move ultimately make the speakers of Stevens and the other three poets more regional than any slight reference to pine trees, barns, or graveyards. New England Landscape History in New England Poetry is an important book for readers interested in American poetry (especially the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Lowell), psychoanalysis and literature, deconstructive analyses of modern poetry, and New England regional history.

This book remedies the near-complete lack of individual senator-level data available to scholars. Moreover, the dataset that Bell compiles represents a much more comprehensive list of Senate filibusters than any that has previously been compiled. Data are available for the entirety of the period from 1790 to 2008. The text provides a fully current (through the end of the 110th Congress) list of Senate filibusters from the first recorded instance in 1790. This new list undergirds a comprehensive historical analysis of filibusters and a full exploration of both micro-level (individual senator) determinants of filibustering and macro-level (institutional) factors that affect filibustering and its consequences. Beyond compiling and sharing the raw data on who filibusters what, Bell demonstrates that senators' filibustering behavior is frequently an extension of senators' legislative behavior more generally. The book makes it clear that filibustering is simply one strategy among many that senators employ as they try to advance their sometimes competing goals of representing their constituents, serving their political parties, and crafting good legislation. Building on work by Franklin L. Burdette (1940), Richard S. Beth (1994), and Gregory Wawro and Eric Schickler (2006). Filibustering in the US Senate offers a readable, accessible analysis that clarifies the meaning of important terms and offers practical insights into the uses-and abuses-of Senate legislative procedures. The timeliness of Filibustering in the US Senate, its interesting subject matter, and the accessible nature of the analysis will appeal to general and professional readers of political studies, as well as to practitioners in government.

Challenges and Opportunities: The Future of the Internet, Volume 4 is the fourth volume in a series on the future of communications by the Pew Internet &American Life Project and Elon University. Is Google making us stupid what is the future of intelligence in the age of instant information? This and other important issues were addressed by nearly 900 expert respondents who wrote compelling answers to the 10 questions asked in the Future of the Internet IV survey. Technologists, business leaders, scholars and others shared their views about the Internet and the evolution of: intelligence; reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge; identity and authentication; gadgets, applications and the predictability of innovation; personal and social relationships; industrial-age institutions; cloud computing; the Semantic Web and Linked Data; Generation Y, also known as the Millennials; and the core values of the Internet, such as the end-to-end principle. This book is an extension of and deeper look at the results of six Pew Internet/Imagining the Internet Center reports generated from the survey in 2010. About the series: Technology builders, entrepreneurs, consultants, academicians, and futurists from around the world share their wisdom in The Future of the Internet surveys conducted by the Pew Internet &American Life Project and Elon University. The series of surveys garners smart, detailed assessments of multi-layered issues from a variety of voices, ranging from the scientists and engineers who created the first Internet architecture a decade ago to social commentators to technology leaders in corporations, media, government, and higher education.

The essays in this book present new scholarship on the subject of empire building from a postcolonial and transnational perspective, using literary texts and cultural practices to focus on the exchange of ideologies and the intricacies of nation building, state-power, democracy, and anti-democracy, up to the recent "war on Terror." -- Publisher sumary.

Arthur Laurents's career as a playwright, screenwriter, book writer for musicals and director spanned over half a century. His first Broadway play, Home of the Brave, was produced in 1945; his last play, Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are, was produced in 2009 when he was ninety-one. Although he is best known for his work on the classic musicals Gypsy and West Side Story and for his screenplays for Rope, The Way We Were, and The Turning Point, Laurents is the author of seventeen full-length plays, numerous screenplays and three volumes of memoirs. Despite the length and distinction of Laurents's career, until now no one has written a full-length critical study of his work. Laurentss' name was associated with a few hit musicals and films, but his best work, the plays he wrote since 1975, are not as well known. One reason is that the economics of the American theatre have changed during the writer's lifetime and Laurents's serious plays were performed Off-Broadway or at regional theatres. Few were published, except in acting editions, until a volume of Selected Plays was assembled in 2005. Moreover, Laurents's highly controversial volumes of memoirs, filled with attacks on people who he felt betrayed him over the years, overshadowed his later work. Ignoring most his own plays in the memoirs did not help to maintain his reputation as a serious playwright This book rectifies the absence of a serious examination of all of Laurents's major work. This first comprehensive study of Laurents's work focuses on the subjects and themes that recur in his work, particularly the interrelated topics of gender politics, homosexuality and the dynamics of marriage. The position of women and gay men changed greatly over the sixty-plus years of Laurents's career and we see those changes reflected in his work, particularly in the shifting power dynamics within a marriage. Laurents was fascinated by the dynamics of marriage. In his plays there is always a tension between love and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of monogamy. In works like The Enclave, we also see a variety of ways in which gay men try to live proud lives in a heteronormative society. In that play and in Two Lives, Laurents examines how gay men negotiate something like a marriage before gay marriages were legally sanctioned. The book also covers the ways in which Laurents's plays reflect his interest in leftist politics from the 1940s through the various liberations of the late 1960s and 1970s. Above all, the study argues that if there is any common theme running through the plays, films and memoirs, it is betrayal-betrayal of marriage partner, friend, artistic collaborator and, most important, betrayal of one's own ideals. The Works of Arthur Laurents will be of particular interest to students and scholarsof American drama, musical theatre, American film, gender studies, gay studies, and Jewish studies.

Digital Media in East Asia sees digital media as an important element in the integration of South Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan, with economic/commercial interaction now being accompanied by regional sharing of content and services. It argues that the underappreciated scale of East Asian activity in this key sector is setting up the region as a global leader in the new economy, quietly building global dominance in manufacturing, digital implementations and, most recently, digital content production. The book also argues that the rise of prominence reflects the still active presence of national governments in East Asia in selecting and promoting commercial success in emerging industries. The combination of infrastructure development, regulation, investment, training and promotion used by each of the national governments in the study has produced impressive national and regional integration across manufacturing, service, government and education. The national innovation strategies of the East Asian governments have, in sum, produced impressive results, sparking widespread private sector investment and the development of sizeable content production communities. Of particular importance is the reality that linguistic and cultural barriers are keeping most of the digital content within East Asia, the world's fastest growing market for digital materials, a process that is re-enforcing the developing cultural ties within the region. Digital Media in East Asia makes significant contributions to East Asian studies (Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China), the scholarship on national innovation, and to debates about the economic, social, cultural, and political importance of digital media. As such, it will be of value in media studies/cultural studies collections, and will be of interest to scholars of Asian business, political science, national innovation, and political economy.

In the major literature on early modern Japan, the sakoku (closed country) edicts lurk in the background, and while scholars are generally aware of the major tenets of the policy, for example, the inability of Japanese to travel abroad or the clampdown on Christianity, the specifics of the edicts have yet to be studied in detail despite its potential to reveal much about this era of Japan's history. This work seeks to clarify the seventeen-article sakoku edicts of 1635 as well as to situate the edicts in the general foreign policy of seventeenth-century Edo Japan. This book will also examine a number of other policies that evolved in the first half of the seventeenth century to complete what is commonly (and somewhat erroneously) referred to as the "closed-country period." A great number of works on European and Chinese interactions with Japan have appeared over the past few decades, and most of them have done a fine job of dispensing with the myth that Japan was somehow hermetically sealed from the outside world. Scholars are aware that the Dutch played a large role in keeping the shogun informed about affairs in Europe, and that the Chinese were coming to Japan in ever greater numbers. They are also aware of the relationship between Japan and Korea. However, the fact remains that the Tokugawa did take pains to regulate the interactions of Europeans with Japan, and these measures are generally found in the various edicts passed by the bakufu in the first half of the seventeenth century. This book translates and illuminates the specific machinery of Japan's foreign relations, especially as it pertained to European trade and Christianity. In so doing, this study will situate the edicts--which are largely taken for granted, even though little has been studied--in Japan's early modern history. There are two insights this book presents. First of all, the study will demonstrate that the sakoku edicts were not a monolithic piece of legislation, but rather they evolved over time. The edicts against Christianity, the expulsion of the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the establishment of the machinery to regulate foreign trade were all responses to historical stimuli, and as such evolved in response to Japan's interactions with Europe and European trade and ideas. Second, this work will show that, ironically, the Tokugawa control of Japan's foreign policy was meant to strengthen its domestic control, especially vis-à-vis the powerful daimyo of western Japan, who traditionally profited with relations with the West. Therefore, there is much more to the sakoku edicts than simply the regulation of Japan's relations with foreigners. This book will appeal to the wider academic community working on pre-modern and early modern Japan. It will also be of value to those whose work involves the expansion of Europe into Asia, as well as European-Asian interactions. Written in a highly accessible style, this book will be of interest to even the casual reader of Japanese history.