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Contemporary scholars who study race and racism have emphasized that white complicity plays a role in perpetuating systemic racial injustice. Being White, Being Good seeks to explain what scholars mean by white complicity, to explore the ethical and epistemological assumptions that white complicity entails, and to offer recommendations for how white complicity can be taught. The book highlights how well-intentioned white people who might even consider themselves as paragons of antiracism might be unwittingly sustaining an unjust system that they say they want to dismantle. What could it mean for white people 'to be good' when they can reproduce and maintain racist system even when, and especially when, they believe themselves to be good? In order to answer this question, Barbara Applebaum advocates a shift in our understanding of the subject, of language, and of moral responsibility. Based on these shifts a new notion of moral responsibility is articulated that is not focused on guilt and that can help white students understand and acknowledge their white complicity. Being White, Being Good introduces an approach to social justice pedagogy called 'white complicity pedagogy.' The practical and pedagogical implications of this approach are fleshed out by emphasizing the role of uncertainty, vulnerability, and vigilance. White students who acknowledge their complicity have an increased potential to develop alliance identities and to engage in genuine cross-racial dialogue. White complicity pedagogy promises to facilitate the type of listening on the part of white students so that they come open and willing to learn, and 'not just to say no.' Applebaum also conjectures that systemically marginalized students would be more likely and willing to invest energy and time, and be more willing to engage with the systemically privileged, when the latter acknowledge rather than deny their complicity. It is a central claim of the book that acknowledging complicity encourages a willingness to listen to, rather than dismiss, the struggles and experiences of the systemically marginalized.

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed is of interest to political theorists partly because of its association with anarchism and partly because it is thought to represent a turning point in the history of utopian/dystopian political thought and literature and of science fiction. Published in 1974, it marked a revival of utopianism after decades of dystopian writing. According to this widely accepted view The Dispossessed represents a new kind of literary utopia, which Tom Moylan calls a 'critical utopia.' The present work challenges this reading of The Dispossessed and its place in the histories of utopian/dystopian literature and science fiction. It explores the difference between traditional literary utopia and novels and suggests that The Dispossessed is not a literary utopia but a novel about utopianism in politics. Le Guin's concerns have more to do with those of the novelists of the 19th century writing in the tradition of European Realism than they do with the science fiction or utopian literature. It also claims that her theory of the novel has an affinity with the ancient Greek tragedy. This implies that there is a conservatism in Le Guin's work as a creative writer, or as a novelist, which fits uneasily with her personal commitment to anarchism.

Gender and the Construction of Hegemonic and Oppositional Femininities investigates how hegemonic and nonhegemonic forms of femininity are constructed in the social institutions of school, the workplace, and the media. Hegemonic femininities are those that form a complementary and subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity and in doing so legitimize a hierarchical relationship between men and women, and masculinity and femininity. Nonhegemonic femininities include culturally-idealized dominant femininities, which do not legitimize a hierarchical relationship between masculinity and femininity, and gender-deviant subordinate femininities. Through an analysis of existing empirical research and fictional media, the book illustrates the relationship between these various femininities and their relationship with masculinity.

In The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, Metta Spencer recounts the political and military changes that have occurred in Russia up to mid-2010. Using hundreds of interviews she conducted with officials, dissidents, and liberal intellectuals, she describes the various groups, forces, and individuals that worked to liberalize the totalitarian Soviet Union and its fellow nations behind the Iron Curtain, and which ultimately brought about the dissolution of those repressive governments. Spencer identifies four political orientations to describe Soviet society: 'Sheep,' ordinary citizens who accepted the undemocratic regime they lived in without challenging it; 'Dinosaurs,' hard-line Communist officials; 'Termites,' including Mikhail Gorbachev and his advisers and government; and 'Barking Dogs,' a few hundred dissidents who made 'a lot of noise' protesting, hoping to awaken a grass-roots demand for democracy. The strange rivalry between the Termites and Barking Dogs would ultimately doom perestroika. Spencer's research dispels the widely-held perception that US President Ronald Reagan 'won' the Cold War by standing firm until the Soviet Union 'blinked first.' There are vitally important lessons to be learned from the Soviet period, about how to assist citizens of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes around the world. The irony is that transnational civil society organizations, major sources of the progress in Soviet Russia, are still needed today in authoritarian Russia, under Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, for totalitarianism remains a potential social trap. In The Russian Quest for Peace and Democracy, Metta Spencer suggests new ways of building urgently-needed social capital in today's Russia, where democracy has yet to flourish.

Francis Bacon's 'Inquiry Touching Human Nature' is a study of Francis Bacon's moral philosophy in its relation to the enlightenment project he helped launch. Since Bacon is one of the founders of technological modernity, the book presents a meditation on the presuppositions and character of modern life. In its distinctiveness, modern life is characterized by a rejection as well as a reinterpretation of the classical and Christian approaches to life and conceptions of virtue. Svetozar Minkov follows closely Bacon's confrontation with the traditional views on courage, moderation, justice, wisdom, love, and ways of dealing with death and general adversity. Bacon had a comprehensive vision of the human situation. He can help us think through the relation between power and wisdom. And because he saw the costs or dangers of modern life as clearly as he predicted, and helped bring about, its advancements and boons, Bacon is a thinker who addresses directly and deeply our own perplexities.

Uneasy Neighbors: Israel and the European Union presents a concise and thorough analysis of significant aspects of Israeli-European relations from the late 1950s to the present day. Its primary concern is to examine major facets of the troubled Israeli-European relations, which are characterized by a love-hate relationship fueled by economic passion and occasional political hostility. This study of Israeli-European relations is important not only because it explores this unusual relationship, but also because it offers insights into how the European Union (E.U.) is actually judged by Israelis as well as serves as an important indicator of how well European intentions have been translated into observable actions in both Israel and the Middle East. In addition, Israeli-European relations reflect what has been faced by the E.U. in the process of setting-up its foreign policy instruments. In other words, the book offers both an analysis of Israeli-European relations, and an observation on the Union's emerging role as an international actor, especially in the Middle East. Despite the importance of Israeli-European relations, the subject has received relatively little attention in the fields of Israeli, European and Middle East studies, outside the context of the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A review of the academic literature reveals a limited number of studies on Israeli-E.U. relations. This book attempts to fill this academic gap in our grasp of major aspects of this relationship. Each of the chapters reflects on different dimensions of this relationship. The emphasis is on across-the-board observations and crucial areas for the understanding of Israeli-European relations. In this regard, while the chapters were designed to add up to an inclusive study, each of them can also be read individually.

This book uses John Dewey to articulate discursive practices that would help citizens form better intellectual and moral relationships with their fragmented, shifting political environment. These practices do not impart more or better information to citizens, but instead consist in dialog exhibiting rhythms and patterns that increase their interest in inquiring how distant events and communities affect their individual lives. The basis for these practices can be found in Dewey's claim that teachers can lead class discussions with particular 'aesthetic' qualities that encourage students to expand the scale of the realm of events that they deem important to their lives. The ability to forge moral and intellectual links with distant political events becomes all the more necessary in our current environment-not only are individuals' lives increasingly affected by global events, but also such events constantly shift across an increasingly 'liquid' social landscape comprised of decentralized institutions, instantaneous communication and easy transportation. Dewey saw early on how such 'aesthetics' of society, or its spatial and temporal qualities, might undermine citizens' understanding and concern for the larger public. This concern for how the movement and location of elements of the social environment might affect citizen perception ties Dewey to many contemporary geographers, economists and social theorists normally not associated with his work. If Dewey's classrooms were to be reinterpreted as political associations and his teachers as organizers, individuals discussing the origins of their seemingly local issues in such associations could forge passionate moral connections with the contemporary liquid public. Subsequently, they might begin to increasingly care for, participate in global politics and seek solidarity with seemingly distant communities.

Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist is the first book-length exposition of the ideas of the American anarchist and abolitionist who lived mostly in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1808 to 1887. Few people today are familiar with Spooner. Nonetheless, there are many interesting strands of original thought to be found in his works that have contemporary significance_for example his reflections on the need for jury nullification or his devastating critique of the social contract. Rediscovering Spooner today is no mere investigation of a bygone nineteenth century thinker, but rather a gateway to a brilliant and original scholar whose counsel should not be ignored.

Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman in American history elected in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the first politician to take a public stand against McCarthyism, and the first woman of a major political party to run for president of the United States. An American Stand: Senator Margaret Chase Smith and the Communist Menace, 1948-1972 explores her engagement with the 'masculine' issue of national defense. An unyielding foe of global communism, this Republican senator was the first female Cold Warrior. During the Korean War, she voiced strident anti-communist rhetoric in her newspaper column. Her energetic support for nuclear superiority in the fifties and sixties caused Nikita Khrushchev to describe her as 'Satan in the guise of a woman.' In the face of growing opposition to America's involvement in Vietnam, Smith remained committed to a clear stand against violent communist expansion. This book examines the exposition of the communist 'menace' and the Cold War as a fight between good and evil without sanitization of communist leaders' ruthless actions. For Smith and many others, America's fight against global communism, despite appalling sacrifices of lives and money, made sense because they believed that communism was a vicious, expansionist system with little respect for human life and freedom.

Over the past 50 years, the influence of visuals has impacted society with greater frequency. No subject is immune from the power of visual culture, and this fact becomes especially pronounced with regards to history and historical discourse. Where once the study of the past was books and printed articles, the environment has changed and students now enter the lecture hall with a sense of history that has been gleaned from television, film, photography, and other new media. They come to understand history based on what they have seen and heard, not what they have read. What are the implications of this process, this visualization of history? Mark Moss discusses the impact of visuals on the study of history with an examination of visual culture and the future of print. Recognizing the visual bias of the younger generations and using this as a starting point for teaching history is a critical component for reaching students. By providing an analysis of photography, film, television, and computer culture, Moss uses the Holocaust as an historical case study to illustrate the ways in which visual culture can be used to bring about an awareness of history, as well as the potential for visual culture becoming a driving force for social and cultural change.

This book considers cultural representations of four different types of labor within Italian and U.S. contexts: stories and songs that chronicle the lives of Italian female rice workers, or mondine; testimonials and other narratives about female domestic servants in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century (including contemporary immigrants from non-western countries); cinematic representations of unwaged household work among Italian American women; and photographs of female immigrant cannery labor in California. These categories of labor suggest the diverse ways in which migrant women workers take part in the development of what Antonio Gramsci calls national popular culture, even as they are excluded from dominant cultural narratives. The project looks at Italian immigration to the U.S., contemporary immigration to Italy, and internal migration within Italy, the emphasis being on what representations of migrant women workers can tell us about cultural and political change. In addition to the idea of national popular culture, Gramsci's discussion of the social role of subalterns and organic intellectuals, the politics of folklore (or 'common sense') and everyday culture, and the necessity of alliance-formations among different social groups all inform the textual analyses. An introduction, which includes a reconsideration of Gramsci's theories in light of feminist theory, argues that the lives of subaltern classes (such as migrant women) are inherently connected to struggles for hegemony. A brief epilogue, on a lesser-known essay by photographer Tina Modotti, closes the discussion.

Plato's Republic is typically thought to recommend a form of government that, from our current perspective, seems perniciously totalitarian. Athens Victorious demonstrates that Plato intended quite the opposite: to demonstrate the superiority of a democratic constitution. Greg Recco provides a brilliant rereading of Book Eight. Often considered an anticlimax, Book Eight seems to be a mere catalogue of mistakes but is in fact one of Plato's most neglected literary creations: a mythic or epic restaging of the Peloponnesian War that pitted Sparta's militaristic oligarchy against Athens' democracy. In Plato's reenactment, Athens wins. Recco argues that the values identified in Book Eight as distinctively democratic were the very ones that served as the unannounced touchstones of moral and political judgment throughout the dialogue.Athens Victorious is an important reinterpretation ofThe Republic. It is an excellent resource for students and scholars of Classical Studies, Philosophy, and Political Theory.

Gratuity is based on interviews with 425 people in more than 50 occupational categories. The respondents from across the U.S. reflect the diversity of the population but have one thing in common: they earn tips. A tip is a price set almost entirely by a customer, less connected to demand than to social code. In the U.S., tipping remains one of our most controversial, confusing, and highly variable norms. In their own words, respondents present their perspectives regarding their compensation as well as what they like and dislike about work. Understanding what people think about tipping and how tipped employees experience their work provides an understanding of tipping norms that has never been addressed. The evidence in this study indicates that tips do not appear to increase in accordance with inequality, and tips do not alleviate the discomfort of inequality from the perspective of the tipped employee when they are given to demonstrate status over another. Tips may in some cases serve a redistributive function, but they are not consistent with regard to social status. The evidence in this study also indicates that tips are a weak signal of quality and are not likely to serve as an effective monitoring mechanism. People appear to conform to tipping norms for social and emotional rather than strictly rational reasons. Furthermore, conformity to tipping norms is likewise inconsistent across work contexts. One of the principal mechanisms for fostering conformity lies within the organizational hierarchy, and management plays a critical role. The definitive difference between those who like their job and those who do not is the experience with people, particularly management. Every person who interacts with the public encounters people who are rude or disrespectful. The critical lesson for management is that the emotional costs of these interactions can be mitigated by managers who extend trust and support to employees. The absence of trust in the workplace contributes to a work environment that imposes additional, unnecessary costs on employees and likely affects the experiences of customers.

Most research on the president's relationship with the public focuses on modern presidents because they frequently give speeches in the attempt to build public support for their policy goals. Expanding the concept of presidential communication beyond policy speeches, Popular Leadership in the Presidency: Origins and Practice reveals the extent to which presidents have always communicated with the public. And it is not simply the existence of public communication that is significant, but the fact that structural elements of the presidency encourage a connection with the people. The fact that the executive consists of one individual, the symbolic authority that devolves on the president as the sole national leader, and a selection process that in practice turned out to be popular all encourages a relationship with the people. An examination of the first four presidents demonstrates the broad range of public persuasion practiced by early presidents as well as the way in which the structural encourages that behavior.

United City, Divided Memories? focuses on the basic question of how Berlin today deals with three specific Cold War-era legacies: the presence of the four Great Powers, the East German Stasi, and the Berlin Wall. Dirk Verheyen looks at monuments, museums, and memorial sites as illustrations of Berlin's struggle to craft an effective shared identity that ties together its western and eastern halves. Verheyen's comprehensive and critical analysis is considered against the broader background of Germany's efforts at coming to grips with its dual twentieth-century totalitarian past. This book demonstrates that important elements of east-west contrast linger and complicate the city's efforts at crafting a more definitively future-oriented united identity. United City, Divided Memories? will stimulate debate among German studies scholars, as well as among those interested in German history and cultural studies.

The Philosopher's Song is a full-length treatment of Plato and the dynamic course of his philosophical thought, regarded from a distinctly poetic point of view. Kevin Crotty demonstrates how Plato's invention of philosophy needs to be situated within the context of a society where poets were cultural authorities, whose teachings emphasized such tragic themes as the instability of things and the indeterminacy of moral terms. The interest of Plato's philosophy lies to a great extent in the compelling interest of what he sought to repress-the poetic and political heritage of a world tragically conceived. Plato's attacks on the poets are notorious. Despite his apparently frank hostility, however, his relation to the poets was exceedingly complex, argues Crotty. Even the banishment of the poets in the Republic turns out to be, more deeply, a recruitment of mimetic poetry for Plato's metaphysics. Once endowed with a metaphysical significance, however, the poets posed a serious challenge to Platonic idealism, and spurred Plato to revise considerably his metaphysical scheme. Crotty ultimately concludes that the views of politics and ethics in Plato's later works return in many ways to the insights of the poets.

'Thou shall remain objective' is the number-one newsroom commandment, but lately cracks have begun to appear in the news media's objective fa_ade. American journalists have been pushed to the emotional brink with such recent tragedies and September 11th and Virginia Tech. Like social scientists, reporters are expected to be immune to, and even aloof from, the pain and suffering they chronicle. Daring to Feel: Violence, the News Media, and Their Emotions challenges this journalistic mandate, particularly as it pertains to the emotional topic of violence. Interviewing journalists who have covered some of the worst tragedies in our nation's history, Jody Santos shows what happens when the news media dare to feel. No longer detached observers, they are free to see violence in all of its emotional complexity. In allowing themselves to experience the rage, helplessness and fear of those who have survived violence, these reporters tell deeper, more moving stories-stories that hopefully will have a profound effect on the way society views and confronts devastating problems such as child abuse and school massacres. Daring to Feel is not a call to scrap objectivity but an attempt to rebalance journalism's hierarchical relationship between thinking and feeling; rather, Santos creates an insightful new dialogue about the value of emotionally engaged reporting.

Corporations and Cultural Industries: Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and News Corporation, by Scott Warren Fitzgerald, provides an introduction to the political economy of international media corporations. This text fills a fundamental gap in the critical media studies field, expanding on the relative paucity of academic studies. To ground the discussion, Fitzgerald focuses on the growth of three specific media conglomerates: Time Warner, Bertelsmann and News Corporation. Adopting an approach rooted in critical political economy, the book explains the corporations' growth through an engagement with broader social theories: the wider conditions of capital accumulation (especially theories of corporate competition and financialization); issues of institutional logic and corporate strategies; and the role of states as regulators, mediators of opposed interests, and facilitators of corporate expansion.The first section presents debates in social theory, addressing issues that pertain to cultural industries and dimensions in which they both challenge and extend these wider social theories. The second section presents detailed case studies of the three contemporary media ';mega companies' across the range of operations they coordinate, both within and outside the cultural industries. By analyzing the specifics and complexities of different media industries, Corporations and Cultural Industries examines how financialization processes re-gear the internal operations of media corporations in a manner that pits one sector against another. This book provides an in-depth study that can be used as stand-alone teaching resources or as a valuable supplement to a variety of media courses.

Posthumanism portrays technology as an 'other' to be embraced, and consequently has lost sight of the basic realities of human/technological boundary. Technology becomes a superior model of information processing to which humans aspire. Posthuman Suffering contends that we do not embrace technology to expand and augment our selves, we embrace technology so that it may embrace us. Finally and most importantly, the posthuman view reconceptualizes the human being to be made more compatible with computerized systems or possible artificial intelligences. In the age of technology our own limitations are legitimized as unique to the human condition. Through those limitations, we can distinguish ourselves from our machines, making us superior to them via our own imperfection. Posthumanist discourse from scholars such as N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, and others, often fails to address the underlying meaning behind our technological aspirations, and actually perpetuates the belief that properly embracing technology allows us to overcome the very need to technology itself; if we possess the right apparatus to take in the world and the code which instantiates it, then the world will give us everything it has to offer. In so doing, we sacrifice the objective of experiencing the world for the object through which it should be experienced. By revealing the theoretical and historical foundations of posthumanism through the work of Elaine Scarry, Freud, Heidegger, and Lyotard; and tracing narrative representations of failed posthuman ontologies in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's White Noise and Steven Spielberg's film, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Posthuman Suffering and the Technological Embrace re-frames the core assumptions of posthumanism in terms of psychological trauma and the physicality of the human/technological interface itself.

This study analyzes factors, both legal and illegal, that lead to inequities in the pay and status of men and women. Due to American culture, the wage gap may never close, but investments in human capital development may facilitate women's career advancement and narrow the gap. The author develops specific strategies for narrowing the wage gap, and explores avenues of implementation.

Peoples of the Earth employs a comparative history of ethno-nationalism to examine Indian activism and its challenges to the political, social and economic status quo in the countries of Central and South America. It explores the intersect between problems of democratic empowerment and security-including the appearance of radical Islam among Indians in two important countries-arising from the re-emergence of dormant forms of ethnic militancy and unprecedented internal challenges to nation-states. The institutions and practices of Indian self-government in the United States and Canada are examined as a means of comparison with contemporary phenomena in Central and South America, suggesting frameworks for the successful democratic incorporation of the region's most disenfranchised peoples. European models emerging from "e;intermestic"e; dilemmas are considered, as are those involving the Inuit people (or Eskimos) in the Canadian far north, as policymakers there "e;think outside the box"e; in ways that include more robust roles for both sub-national and international bodies. Finally, the work challenges policymakers to broaden the debate about how to approach the issues of political and economic empowerment and regional security concerning Native peoples, to include consideration of new ways of protecting both land rights and the environment, thus avoiding a zero-sum solution between the region's 40 million Indians and the rest of its peoples. Peoples of the Earth has the potential to become a pioneer study addressing ethnic activism, characterized by multiple, small groups pressing for state recognition and democratic participation, while also promoting a defence of the environment and natural resources. Part of its attractiveness is the likelihood that the work will lead to further investigations and will become an authoritative point of departure for the fertile area of ethnonationalism studies in Latin America. Each country chapter provides a succinct but substantial presentation of the basic issue

'If you do the crime you gotta do the time.' This adage reflects the overall attitude most Americans have about crime and the criminal justice system. Implicit in this adage is the notion that once 'the time' is done, the individual is free to re-enter society and resume a normal life. In Prisoner Re-entry and Social Capital, authors Earl Smith and Angela J. Hattery challenge this myth. Prisoner Re-entry and Social Capital takes as its starting point interviews with twenty-five men and women during the summer of 2008 about their experiences with re-entering the 'free world' after a period of incarceration. By analyzing the experiences of these men and women, Smith and Hattery look in depth at the factors that inhibit successful re-entry and illustrate some successes and failures. The book examines individual characteristics that inhibit successful re-entry such as addiction and sex offender status as well as the unique challenges faced by women. Uniquely, Smith and Hattery focus on the role that social capital plays as one of the most important factors that shapes the re-entry experience. Today, one of the most pressing issues facing scholars, those who work in the criminal justice system, and the citizenry as a whole is the extraordinarily high rate of recidivism. These interviews and analyses provide a deeper and more precise understanding of the biases faced by re-entry felons in the labor market and work to address the key barriers to re-entry in hopes to aid in their elimination.

Globalizing the Postcolony: Contesting Discourses of Gender and Development in Francophone Africa is a study of development in the former French colonies of West Africa. It takes as its starting point the international community's reporting on human and social development and gender in the developing areas which began systematically in 1990 and which has provided a framework for policy-making in this field. International reports suggest that the francophone African countries have been experiencing low levels of social development throughout the past two decades. These levels fall dramatically when the factor of gender is introduced to the point where statistically-speaking francophone African women have had less access to social development than any other population in the world. This study analyzes current thinking on the challenges facing gender and development in Africa, before moving on to examine the historical factors marking the gender and development profile of the francophone West African region. Through an analysis of gender politics in the region from pre-colonial to postcolonial times, the book examines the gradual incursion of exogenous gender policies into the region throughout the 20th century. The discussion concludes by arguing that despite the tendency of the international community, and their colonial administrative forebears, to pursue 'one-size-fits-all' solutions to what they identified as the main development challenges of the day, the impact of standardized solutions remains subject to the unique historical and cultural context in which they are implemented. Adapting formula-driven policies to unique cultural contexts constitutes a major challenge for gender and development politics in the second decade of the new century. Meanwhile, the book coincides with the introduction of a new international development agenda in Africa articulated around issues of security and globalization. While civil unrest continues to destabilize vast regions of the continent making the prospects of human and social development ever more remote, the rise of China among the traditional powerbrokers threatens to push social development and gender equality even further down the international agenda for Africa. This book is a timely reminder of the feminisation of poverty and disadvantage in the region and the need to keep the gender dimensions of development at the top of the social policy agenda for Africa in the 21st century.

Intellectuals and the Communist Idea describes how the Communist ideology penetrated into Czech culture and politics from the dawn of the twentieth century into the late 1930s, just before the outbreak of WW II in Europe. Based mainly upon the research of contemporary primary sources, the analysis examines the complex issue of personal reasons and individual motivations, appealing slogans, and ideological and power peripheries connected with the formation of the relationship between the newly-founded Communist Party in Czechoslovakia and the left-wing artists and intellectuals declaring themselves Marxists. The work follows two main paths: the first is marked by the melting of the pre-war (meaning WWI) libertarian communism and radical left-wing stream in Czech politics into the Czechoslovak Communist Party, established in 1921 and becoming a strong and relevant political subject soon after its foundation. The second path follows the left-wing art front involvement in the Communist Party and its activities within. This concise insight into the world of Czech Communist intellectuals uncovers the ideological bigotry and intolerance of the Communist class-defined ideology, together with pointing out the unprincipled pragmatics of the ideological flops committed by the members of the interwar Communist movement under Lenin's and later Stalin's ward. The book illustrates clearly how the initial enthusiasm of the Czech Communist intellectuals eventually changed either into disillusionment resulting in their disaffiliation with Communism, or into permanent fear and obedient loyalty, which later became the base for establishing the Communist system in post-WW II Czechoslovakia.

By the end of the 2000s, the term 'resource curse' had become so widespread that it had turned into a kind of magic keyword, not only in the scholarly language of the social sciences, but also in the discourse of politicians, commentators and analysts all over the world-_like the term 'modernization' in the early 1960s or 'transition' in the early 1990s. In fact, the aggravation of many problems in the global economy and politics, against the background of the rally of oil prices in 2004D2008, became the environment for academic and public debates about the role of natural resources in general, and oil and gas in particular, in the development of various societies. The results of numerous studies do not give a clear answer to questions about the nature and mechanisms of the influence of the oil and gas abundance on the economic, political and social processes in various states and nations. However, the majority of scholars and observers agree that this influence in the most of countries is primarily negative. Resource Curse and Post-Soviet Eurasia: Oil, Gas, and Modernization is an in-depth analysis of the impact of oil and gas abundance on political, economic, and social developments of Russia and other post-Soviet states and nations (such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan). The chapters of the book systematically examine various effects of 'resource curse' in different arenas such as state building, regime changes, rule of law, property rights, policy-making, interest representation, and international relations in theoretical, historical, and comparative perspectives. The authors analyze the role of oil and gas dependency in the evolution and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarian drift of post-Soviet countries, building of predatory state and pendulum-like swings of Russia from 'state capture' of 1990s to 'business capture' of 2000s, uneasy relationships between the state and special interest groups, and numerous problems of 'geo-economics' of pipelines in post-Soviet Eurasia.

Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond explores the Beur/banlieue literary and cultural field from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present. It examines a set of postcolonial Bildungsroman novels by Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Le la Sebbar, Sa d Mohamed, Rachid Dja dani, and Mohamed Razane. In these novels, the central characters are authors who struggle to find self-identity and a place in the world through writing and authorship. The book thus explores the different ways all these novels relate the process of 'becoming' to the process of writing. Neither is straightforward as the author-characters struggle to put their lives into words, settle upon a genre of writing, and adopt an authorial persona. Each chapter of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond focuses on a given author's own relationship to writing before assessing his or her use of the author-character as a proxy. In so doing, the study as a whole explores a set of literary questions (genre, textual authority, reception) and engages them against the backdrop of socio-cultural challenges facing contemporary French society. These include debates on education, cultural literacy, diversity and equal opportunity, and the banlieue environment. Finally, it argues in relation to the authors and novels in question for the particular relevance of 'rooted and vernacular' cosmopolitanism, which suggests both that exploration of the world must begin at home and that stories are crucial for such explorations.

The Dynamics of Connection: How Evolution and Biology Create Caregiving and Attachment describes the logic of giving, love, trust, and nurturance. Bowlby's theory of attachment provides an excellent starting point for an explanation of nurturance, but there are some limitations in this theory, especially its tendency to minimize the caregiving side of the relationship. The book builds on and extends Bowlby's theory by examining the evolutionary evidence for both attachment and caregiving, the origins of which can be seen in the earliest mammals. It describes neurobiological research that has identified the brain circuits that underlie caregiving and attachment. The book then describes a theory of relationships based on these neurobiological circuits and the resulting human desire to give and receive emotional contact, warmth, and support. The theory details the emotional logic of this relationship process. The proactive connection process (caregiving), characteristic of parents, involves a growing capacity for both empathy and responsibility. In the receptive process (attachment), trust grows from the experience of being cared for and nurtured. These processes coexist alongside other motivations with which they interact. The Dynamics of Connection introduces a view of the dyadic social psychology of connection that underlies both parent-child and close adult relationships. It provides a description and explanation of parental and adult nurturance. It gives a long-needed account of the origins of social norms of parenting. While building on the foundation of attachment theory, David Bell brings together new insights from both evolutionary theory and neurobiology to deepen our understanding of caregiving and attachment.

This book analyzes Brazilian foreign policy after the democratic opening of the country in the mid-1980s. To illuminate this topic, authors Tullo Vigevani and Gabriel Cepaluni built an analytical framework which uses three concepts to examine Brazilian Foreign Policy changes over the years: (1) autonomy through distance, (2) autonomy through participation, and (3) autonomy through diversification. The authors demonstrate that the Brazilian military regime sought to distance itself from powerful countries in order to keep its domestic sovereignty, while the Brazilian democratic regimes_especially the Cardoso administration_tried to increase international connections despite practicing a foreign policy defending the nation's autonomy in relation to the great powers. With the Lula administration, the country still seeks greater international relationships but through a diversification strategy concerning its partners abroad, therefore counterbalancing the influence of the great powers, especially the United States.

This book studies five ethnic communities_South Asian Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, and Somoan Americans_to understand how their members feel about being studied by researchers. American society has always had tension between and among ethnic groups, and yet our researchers are given limited training, if any, on how to approach various ethnic communities, all of which see their problems and needs differently than those outside their communities. This book bridges that gap by focusing on trust-building as a necessary process in doing good community research. The building of trust requires gaining knowledge of a group's culture and history, their perspective on social problems and issues, and the proper way of interviewing its members, going well beyond the mere building of rapport. This book offers the reader culturally sensitive methods to approach interacting and interviewing members of each of these unique, multifaceted ethnic communities.

The Man Who Knew God unravels the complexities of the book of Jeremiah and argues that this prophet is the key figure in shaping Western civilization. Mordecai Schreiber posits that Jeremiah is not only the one who eradicated paganism amongst the Hebrew people, but he can also be considered the founder of the post-biblical Jewish faith. Offering intriguing insight into Jeremiah's role in the founding of Western monotheism and the eradication of paganism amongst the Hebrew people, this book should be read by all those interested in Biblical studies, Jewish studies, and religion.