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The Constitution allows the president to Ofill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.O In Justice Takes a Recess, Scott E. Graves and Robert M. Howard address how presidents have used recess appointments over time and whether the independence of judicial recess appointees is compromised. They argue that these appointments can upset the separation of powers envisioned by the Framers, shifting power away from one branch of government and toward another. Examining every judicial recess appointment from 1789 to 2005, the authors discover that presidents are conditionally strategic when they unilaterally appoint federal judges during Senate recesses. Such appointments were made cautiously for most of the twentieth century, leading to a virtual moratorium for several decades, until three recent recess appointments to the courts in the face of Senate obstruction revived the controversy. These appointments suggest the beginning of a more assertive use of recess appointments in the increasingly politicized activity of staffing the federal courts. The authors argue that the recess appointment clause, as it pertains to the judiciary, is no longer necessary or desirable. The strategic use of such appointments by strong presidents to shift judicial ideology, combined with the lack of independence exhibited by judicial recess appointments, results in recess power that threatens constitutional features of the judicial branch.

Flak-Catchers explores the ways in which riot commissions-the institutional bodies appointed by an executive in the aftermath of a race riot to determine a riot timeline, investigate causes, and offer prescriptions for change-have dealt with racial violence in the United States over the last century. In studying five riots and their commissions, Chicago 1919, Harlem 1935, Los Angeles 1965, USA 1967, and Los Angeles 1992, this book shows that riot commissions only serve to give the appearance of strong and responsive government action during uncertain times. They primarily benefit the instituting body by focusing on a restoration of law and order while undermining any larger civil rights message. However, this book also challenges the prevalent idea that riot commissions are all the same, by revealing how riot commissions have changed over the last century, shifting in their prominence, content, and focus. After the 1968 Kerner Commission, which studied the 1967 summer riots, it has become increasingly common for the riot commission to fail to answer fundamental questions posed by the crisis.

Across Europe, the prospect of a rapidly shrinking workforce has put increased labor migration back on the political agenda. However, for many on the left, concerns exist that less restrictive labor migration policies threaten core features of the social democratic project. This is perhaps clearest in Sweden, which in late 2008 adopted a liberal approach to third-country national labor migration, allowing employers to hire freely from outside the European Union. Defending the Swedish Model explores the debate leading up to this reform, focusing on the preferences of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). While generally positive to the economic potential of increased labor migration, these allies remained highly skeptical towards calls from employers and bourgeois parties for liberalization. Bucken-Knapp argues that the SAP and LO develop their labor migration policy preferences on the basis of whether specific reform alternatives are perceived as being consistent with, or as undermining, the Swedish model. In the case of third-country nationals, both allies considered liberalization a threat to full employment aims, instead seeking to preserve an influential role for the state labor market board and organized labor. Bucken-Knapp also focuses on the Swedish labor migration debate prior to the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, showing how SAP concerns over potential abuse of the universal welfare state led to its support for transitional arrangements. Defending the Swedish Model illuminates the challenges faced by social democrats and trade unions when considering the need for increased labor migration.

Long-simmering conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur came to a boil in the spring of 2003 and became a focus of American media attention in September 2004. After the genocide in Rwanda the international community developed a new way to deal with genocide-the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine which legitimized intervention in case of egregious loss of human life. Despite this new doctrine, it took over five years of conflict in Darfur before the U. N. began intervening. The Responsibility to Protect in Darfur: The Role of Mass Media, traces the development of international intervention in domestic conflict, culminating in the concept of 'Responsibility to Protect' in 2001. The authors explain the background and complexity of the crisis besetting Darfur, and document U.S. media coverage of the crisis in terms of framing that would mobilize public opinion behind international intervention. The book traces evolution in international norms regarding state sovereignty and human rights that led to the articulation of 'Responsibility to Protect' and its subsequent adoption by the international community in 2005. It provides an understanding of the complex nature of the Darfur crises, in a way that was seriously lacking in media coverage. The authors also analyze the affects media coverage of the crisis had on the world's reaction, particularly in the U.S. Specifically it looks at television coverage of the crisis, and the newspaper coverage, particularly through The New York Times. Finally, the authors ask if 'Responsibility to Protect' was helpful in Darfur, and if it will be in the future for other countries.

While most studies on gentrification focus almost exclusively on its causes and consequences through an examination of housing, class conflict, and the displacement of residents, this book analyzes the process of gentrification. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn examines the ways in which the established working-class and lower-income residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn remain socially segregated from the incoming gentrifiers, with both groups forming parallel cultures within the shared physical spaces of the community. Desena broadens the typical analyses of gentrification to include the grass roots dynamics which create social class relations that lead to residential segregation created by social class relations. Drawing upon areas traditionally under represented in urban sociology, including families, women, children, and local institutions other than housing, this study explores the ways in which working-class residents, in the course of their everyday lives, negotiate change in their neighborhood and dissimilarity with their new (gentry) neighbors. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn touches on issues familiar to anyone who has lived in a multi-class or multi-ethnic community, while offering new perspectives on the ways that such communities develop and maintain the boundaries of social segregation.

Europe and the Eastern Other critically evaluates and supports the argument for adopting an intercultural or comparative approach in western political theory. Hassan Bashir examines the encounters between Europeans and their eastern others before the European Enlightenment and illustrates that the West's cultural others have played a foundational role in developing a distinct western cultural self-understanding. This analysis includes records of eyewitness accounts of European visitors in Eastern lands during the medieval and early modern periods, including William of Rubruck's account of the Mongol lands in mid-thirteenth century, observations of the first Jesuit mission in the court of Mughal Indian emperor Akbar the Great, and circumstances in late Ming China as recorded in the journals of Jesuit missionary and scholar Matteo Ricci. This work illustrates the dynamism and complexity involved in an inter-cultural encounter and highlights the fact that cultural self-understanding is often deeply rooted in how we understand our cultural others.

Alone among contemporary American novelists, John Irving seems to bridge the ever-present cultural divide between best-selling fiction and serious literary endeavour. His Irvingnesque style encapsulates the shifting patterns of American culture since the 1960s, expressing a mood of nostalgic melancholy or cultural mourning, which seems to go against ideas of the Postmodern. Indeed, Irving is one of the very few commercial novelists to be taught on university courses, this book is the first full-length study of his writing to situate him within the social, historical and political context of his times. It contends that postmodernism derives from the political failure of the sixties and a narcissistic obsession with the composition of the self. This narcissism is at the same time what Freud labels as cultural melancholia, the mourning of a lost ideal self-image. Just as nostalgia appears as narcissistic history, this lost self-image conjures up the figure of the Dead Father and the Father's Law, a figure which Irving's prose obsessively pursues.

Innovations in Child and Family Policy tackles many of the common problems and challenges that are considered to be at the heart of child and family policy: family creation, economic support, childrearing, and family care-giving. Innovations begins by defining child and family policy and discussing the history of this growing specialization within the social sciences. The main chapters of Innovations address policy and programmatic solutions to problems that face families by topic area: (1) early childhood and education, (2) government interventions with family violence, children's welfare, and the justice system, and (3) supports for children and families. Specifically, the chapters in Innovations address the availability of child care, family medical leave, special needs children, parent involvement in their children's education, preventing and addressing child abuse and neglect, children who witness partner violence, child support orders, children of incarcerated fathers, and young adults in the justice system. What makes this book unique is that it contains applied research from many program evaluations or assessments of existing state-level legislation. Social scientists from multiple disciplines examine the efficacy such programs and policies to make recommendations for expanded or new child and family policies. For our novice and/or student readers, we hope that Innovations will help them to develop a greater sense of what academics, professionals, and politicians mean when they speak of 'child and family policy' and also an appreciation for how social science research can contribute to policy-making to support children and families. For our more advanced readers, we hope that these chapters make a significant contribution to the conversations regarding how multidisciplinary social science research can inform policy recommendations. For all of our readers, we hope that the use-inspired research presented in Innovations will help to strengthen and support the well-being of children and families through innovative child and family policies.

Reading and Writing in the Global Workplace: Gender, Literacy, and Outsourcing in Ghana by Beatrice Quarshie Smith explores the conditions that underlie the outsourcing of US data-processing work in Ghana. Here Beatrice Quarshie Smith describes the convergence and interplay of at least four different socio-economic forces: (1) the digital and satellite technology enabling virtual environments for global outsourced data-processing; (2) the historical development of Ghana as a politically-stable Anglophone society with a relatively strong tradition of public education; (3) the neoliberal economic restructuring policies advanced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and (4) the ready availability of women seeking to enter the formal wage economy either to seek independence from their roles within traditional families, or in order to support their families. The author's comparative study of two distinctly different workplaces reveals significant insights about problems of organizational hierarchy and management-employee relations in the cross-cultural environments of out-sourced business and IT process work. Through extensive interviews, the book sheds light on the educational backgrounds, day-to-day struggles, fears, and aspirations of the workers. Quarshie Smith develops this multi-faceted analysis with keen insights into the representational limitations and ethical responsibilities of the researcher. This pioneering study about outsourced data-processing work in West Africa opens up a new area for research and offers a fresh perspective from which to consider outsourcing in other regions of the globe.

Changing Bodies in the Fiction of Octavia Butler: Slaves, Aliens, and Vampires is a timely text that critically situates Butler's fiction in several fields of study including American, African-American, gender, and science fiction studies. This book attempts to avoid excluding as many readers as possible by evading esoteric jargon while still engaging the interdisciplinary discourses that respond to Butler's fiction. The study asserts that Butler's fiction transforms the way the body is imagined with reference to race and gender. This text examines how Butler's fiction is able to cross several genre boundaries while simultaneously reshaping the genre of science fiction. This book makes the claim that Butler's fiction is crucial for contemporary and future investigations of identity formation. Discussions of race, class, and sex are reoccurring topic that are inextricable to any understanding of body politics and theory. This book is filled with exciting and insightful discussions that raise questions about what constitutes humanity in Butler's fiction and in the real world. Ultimately, the purpose of the text is to add to the scholarship surrounding Butler and to bring her to the attention of audiences that might otherwise overlook her work. This book is an invitation for readers inside and outside of the academy to discover the fiction of Octavia Butler.

In his illuminating, well-researched book examining the site of Et-Tell, also known as Bethsaida, Carl E. Savage explores archaeological evidence to offer readers a portrait of the religious beliefs and practices of the community living near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee during the first century CE. In the study of the cultural and social matrix of the first century in the Galilee, scholars have commonly prioritized written sources over archaeological evidence because written sources seem to contribute more directly to an understanding of the religious beliefs and practices of a community. However, there exist many competing views of the landscape during that time due to the varying interpretations of the textual sources. Using archaeological data from Bethsaida itself, Savage investigates the material practices of Bethsaida's ancient inhabitants, describing these practices as significant indicators of their sense of place both ideologically and geographically. He evaluates the historical plausibility of various social reconstructions for the region, and finds that the image that emerges of first-century Bethsaida is one similar to those of other Jewish communities in the Galilee.

In this new book on the rise of commercial black 'mega churches,' Mary Hinton examines the rich legacy of the historic black church from the dual perspectives of theology and religious education. She explores the new religious models emerging from the tradition of the historic black church and questions whether they are continuing to operate and practice according to the wisdom of this unique form of American religion. Two mega church ministries, those of T. D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar, are examined in detail with regards to how they align with black church religious history. Hinton concludes by proposing that the fastest growing religious phenomenon within and outside of the black community in the United States-the mega church-should no longer be analyzed based on size alone. Instead, Hinton urges readers to consider the ecclesial structures of churches in making appropriate assessments in determining should and should not be classified as a commercial church.

Assumptions and institutions that we have taken for granted for fifty years are proving inadequate for the world now emerging. Moreover, mono-casual explanations of rapid global change do not work. Religious as well as economic dynamics, cultural as well as political forces, environmental as well as military constraints, are frequently working at cross-purposes in shaping a globe we cannot yet fathom. The essays in this volume reach beyond the mere description of phenomena to explore deeper currents of institutional breakdown and competing cultural drives that are radically reshaping our world. Covering topics ranging from the New Silk Road to changes in school governance around the world, the authors offer a critical, historically-informed assessment of the diverse dynamics that are undermining or nullifying current paradigms of thought and action. Drawing on their diverse backgrounds in economics, international affairs, ethics, history, education, and religion, the authors share the conviction that long-standing assumptions about a state-centered, secular-tending, economically converging world are in large measure mistaken. A paradigm shift is required if we are to understand and constructively shape the twenty-first century world.

Rhetorics for Community Action: Public Writing and Writing Publics, by Phyllis Mentzell Ryder, offers theory and pedagogy to introduce public writing as a complex political and creative action. To write public texts, we have to invent the public we wish to address. Such invention is a complex task, with many components to consider: exigency that brings people together; a sense of agency and capacity; a sense of how the world is and what it can become. All these components constantly compete against texts that put forward other public ideals_opposing ideas about who really has power and who really can create change. Teachers of public writing must adopt a generous response to those who venture into this arena. Some scholars believe that to prepare students for public life, university classes should partner with grassroots community organizations, rather than nonprofits that serve food or tutor students. They worry that a service-related focus will create more passive citizens who do not rally and resist or grab the attention of government leaders or corporations. With carefully contextualized study of an after-school arts program, an area soup kitchen, and parks organizations, among others, Ryder shows that many so-called 'service' organizations are not passive places at all, and she argues that the main challenge of public work is precisely that it has to take place among all of these compelling definitions of democracy. Ryder proposes teaching public writing by partnering with multiple community nonprofits. She develops a framework to help students analyze how their community partners inspire people to action, and offers a course design that support them as they convey those public ideals in community texts. But composing public texts is only part of the challenge. Traditional newspapers and magazines, through their business models and writing styles, reinforce a dominant role for citizens as thinking and reading, but not necessarily acting. This civic role is also professed in the university, where students are taught writing that extends inquiry. Phyllis Mentzell Ryder's Rhetorics for Community Action: Public Writing and Writing Publics turns to the rhetorical practices of nondominant American communities and counterpublics, whose resistance to 'good' public speech and 'proper' public behavior reveals alternate modes of composing and acting in democracy.

The Dred Scott decision of 1857 is widely (and correctly) regarded as the very worst in the long history of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision held that no African American could ever be a U.S. citizen and declared that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional and void. The decision thus appeared to promise that slavery would be forever protected in the great American West. Prompting mass outrage, the decision was a crucial step on the road that led to the Civil War. Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court traces the history of the case and tells the story of many of the key people involved, including Dred and Harriet Scott, President James Buchanan, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and Abraham Lincoln. The book also examines in some detail each of the nine separate Opinions written by the Court's Justices, connecting each with the respective Justices' past views on slavery and the law. That examination demonstrates that the majority Justices were willing to embrace virtually any flimsy legal argument they could find at hand in an effort to justify the pro-slavery result they had predetermined. Many modern commentators view the case chiefly in relation to Roe v Wade and related controversies in modern constitutional law: some conservative critics attempt to argue that Dred Scott exemplifies 'aspirationalism' or 'judicial activism' gone wrong; some liberal critics in turn try to argue that Dred Scott instead represents 'originalism' or 'strict constructionism' run amok. Here, Judge Ethan Greenberg demonstrates that none of these modern critiques has much merit. The Dred Scott case was not about constitutional methodology, but chiefly about slavery, and about how very far the Dred Scott Court was willing to go to protect the political interests of the slave-holding South. The decision was wrong because the Court subordinated law and intellectual honesty to politics. The case thus exemplifies the dangers of a political Court.

What do people make of their own development? In Educating Activists, Rebecca M. Klenk illuminates a reality that is far more complex than either development planners or critics commonly assume. This gracefully written, accessible ethnography shows how rural women accept, refuse, reinterpret, and negotiate development's terms in a quest to improve their own communities. Klenk offers an account of Lakshmi Ashram, a remarkable Gandhian educational initiative for women and girls in Himalayan India. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Educating Activists blends memories and stories with historical research and richly detailed ethnographic analysis to craft a compelling portrait of how women across two generations have engaged with issues of sustainability, poverty, gender equity, autonomy, and progress.

Since the Wests very early flirtations with the modern Near East, and especially in the past 100 years of East-West relations, there has been considerable difficulty in understanding and defining the Middle East, the Arab world, pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, and Middle Eastern identities in general. The Western impulse of conflating national identity with language, state, and ethnicityoften subsuming Arabic language into Arab ethnicityhas contributed to this misunderstanding and misreading of the region. For, while the Middle East can be accurately referred to by way of the generic Arab world label, the appellation itself is a misleading oversimplification that conceals an inherent diversity and multiplicity of Middle Eastern cultures, ethnicities, languages, and nationalities. And while there is certainly a dominant Arab ethnos, there are also significant numbers of Middle Eastern peoples and nationalities with historical memories and ethno-cultural bonds that challenge the dominant Arabist paradigm. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the regions problems. The book is an attempt to rehabilitate and bring back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East has a special focus on Lebanon, a Christian homeland, because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the regions template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.

Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico is a political biography of General Maximino Avila Camacho (1891D1945), one of the most powerful regional politicians in Mexico from 1935 to 1945. He was a member of an officially sponsored party, known today as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which claimed to represent the goals of the Mexican Revolution (1910D1921) and which managed to win most federal and regional elections from 1929 until its first presidential defeat in 2000. Maximino (as he is commonly known) became a powerful politician at the time when the official party effectively transformed the Mexican political system from one based on the personal power of regional strongmen and political bosses relying on clientelistic networks (popularly known as 'caudillos' and 'caciques') to a modern one based on a centralized civilian administration supported by institutions. The story of Maximino, the powerful cacique of the state of Puebla, demonstrates that the emergence of the one-party-dominated Mexican state did not destroy caudillos and caciques but simply controlled them. Specifically, it shows how the official party incorporated these leaders and their authoritarian practices into the state's political machinery. The result was 71 years of one-party political domination based on a political culture that emphasized patronage, favoritism, corruption, coercion and co-optation. By tracing Maximino's career, from revolutionary soldier to powerful political leader, we learn how and why the goals that had originally inspired the 'party of the revolution'-primarily democracy and social justice-were sacrificed in order to empower it.

A Communication Universe: Manifestations of Meaning, Stagings of Significance presents a new theoretical understanding of communication. Igor E. Klyukanov conceptualizes the process of communication in terms of space and time, i.e., as a continuous process of meaningful spatiotemporal transformation. He goes on to examine four fundamental transformations and the four theoretical perspectives on the nature of communication. From the first perspective communication appears to be 'pure space,' then time comes into play more and more actively, and from the fourth perspective communication appears to be 'pure time.' Following the fourth transformation communication is seen as returning back to the first stage where it again appears as 'pure space;' however, now its reality contains all meanings created in the process of the previous transformations. Based on these four transformations, the process of communication is understood as a universe, meaning 'whole,' 'entire,' 'turned into one.'

Popular Culture and the Future of Politics: Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park argues that progressives should conceive the connections between media, policy, and culture beyond the limits of 'politics' and 'news.' With sustained analyses of groundbreaking contemporary examples of what has become known as 'convergence culture,' Ted Gournelos brings together a wide range of media without sacrificing depth. His examples, such as South Park, The Simpsons, The Onion, The Daily Show, Chappelle's Show, and The Boondocks, are chosen for their political scope and social impact and demonstrate the ways in which what we know as 'politics' is rapidly changing. The book's forays into established fields like feminist, race, and queer theory are combined with perspectives drawn from political economy and rhetoric to demonstrate the power of irony, humor, and cultural dissonance in modern approaches to dissonant cultural politics.

Transforming NATO: New Allies, Missions, and Capabilities, by Ivan Dinev Ivanov, examines the three dimensions of NATO's transformation since the end of the Cold War: the addition of a dozen new allies; the undertaking of new missions such as peacekeeping, crisis response, and stabilization; and the development of new capabilities to implement these missions. The book explains these processes through two mutually reinforcing frameworks: club goods theory and the concept of complementarities. NATO can be viewed as a diverse, heterogeneous club of nations providing collective defense to its members, who, in turn, combine their military resources in a way that enables them to optimize the Alliance's capabilities needed for overseas operations.Transforming NATO makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it offers new insights into understanding how heterogeneous clubs operate. Second, it introduces a novel concept, that of complementarities. Finally, it re-evaluates the relevance of club goods theory as a framework for studying contemporary international security. These conceptual foundations apply to areas well beyond NATO. They provide useful insights into understanding the operation of transatlantic relations, alliance politics, and a broader set of international coalitions and partnerships.This update in April 2013 covers new developments related to NATO's transformation after this book was originally published: http://homepages.uc.edu/~ivanovid/pdfs/book_update.pdf

Language and Collective Mobilization analyzes the origins of communal conflict in five phases of Zanzibar's modern history. The first phase examines the implementation of British colonial control, focusing on the conversion of Zanzibar's subsistence farming economy to a cash-crop plantation complex.This first phase of colonial rule disrupted a variety of indigenous political and social institutions which traditionally promoted peace and stability. During subsequent phases of colonial rule, the British government devised political, economic and educational policies that promoted elite Arab rule at the expense of the majority Swahili- speaking population. Colonial authorities rendered illegal any attempts by Swahilis to organize political resistance, a rule which exacerbated anti-Arab animosity. Colonial rule ended in 1964, when Swahili-speaking Zanzibaris led a violent revolution against English command and Arab control. Having forced a variety of wealthy Arab and Indian communities off the island, Swahili revolutionaries allowed a small number of Indian merchants and a few Shirazi farmers to remain. Less than twenty years after the revolution, in this fifth phase of Zanzibar's political history, partisan conflict between the Shirazi and Swahili populations threatens to unleash a new rash of violence. The social climate mirrors the first phase of British rule, where economic stratification deepens and political tensions grow. The analysis offered in this book will find an audience in students, scholars, journalists, and policymakers interested in understanding so-called 'ethnic' conflict in Africa.

This book examines the prospects for rebuilding state and nation in Afghanistan with regard to 'Operation Enduring Freedom' carried out by the international coalition. It starts off by delineating the conceptual basis of Afghanistan's status as a frontier state. Looking at geo_strategic aspects Afghanistan's position as an historical buffer between empires and its internal characteristics-_weak authority structure, internal conflicts, interventions by neighbors, legitimacy of internal conquest, and trans-national ethnicities, the book provides insights into the unique geo-political context of Afghanistan. Whilst the author deems the legacy of the previous intervention for containment as a major contributing factor to the disorder in Afghanistan's state and society, he draws on lessons from the past intervention to assuage current obstacles and stalemate that is hindering political, social, and economic development in Afghanistan. Focusing on the impediments to development in Afghanistan, the background against which the problem needs to be analyzed, and consequently countered, is effectively set out. Incessant war and insurgency has led to mobilization along ethnic and religious lines in Afghanistan and has had profound effects on the kinds of intuitions that have perpetuated over time. Ethnic and religious groups have applied constant pressure on the state and this dissonance has had enduring negative consequences on nation building, social cohesion, and state-society relationships. Pre-emptive and reactive intervention by neighboring states and their links to ethnic groups inside Afghanistan is another dimension which is analyzed. An extensive exploration into the geo-political history of social groups of Afghanistan with an intensive account of the rise of various power contenders as a function of their history, their links with external actors, and their traditional position in the indigenous vertical hierarchy are made. Unconventional war and counter-insurgency operations funded by foreign and local elements are examined and policy guidelines for negotiations and conflict resolution are discussed. The work provides fresh insights into the rise of the Taliban, and adds further to the scholarly debate about the causes for the consolidation of Taliban power. It traces the history of the Afghan crisis, and critically evaluates the roles played by different national and international actors. A major contribution of the work is the articulation of the need for an integrated nation and state building strategy which takes into account the sensitivities of the Afghanistan experience instead of treating it like other post-conflict zones.

In this original and illuminating work, the reader is invited to approach philosophy as an activity that can instruct, delight, and move. On this view, philosophy can be seen as a key to human education, a mastery of humane letters, and a part of the repulic of the liberal arts. Embracing this approach to philosophy, Verene argues, involves moving beyond modern philosophy's analytical encounter with experience, one that emphasizes argument and criticism at the expense of the Socratic search for self-knowledge. Relying on insights from Vico and Hegel, Verene introduces a new sense of reason, one that sees the True as the whole and that connects reason to the ancient sense of speculation. Reflection and criticism are given their due, but the reorientation of philosophy toward the speculative grasp of the whole of things allows memory, imagination, and dialectical ingenuity to take on philosophical form. In the end, this work show how speculation, symbolic form, metaphor, poetry, and rhetoric are natural parts of philosophical thinking.

The realities of mankind's cognitive situation are such that our knowledge of the world's ways is bound to be imperfect. None the less, the theory of unknowability-agnoseology as some have called it-is a rather underdeveloped branch of philosophy. In this philosophically rich and groundbreaking work, Nicholas Rescher aims to remedy this. As the heart of the discussion is an examination of what Rescher identifies as the four prime reasons for the impracticability of cognitive access to certain facts about the world: developmental inpredictability, verificational surdity, ontological detail, and predicative vagrancy. Rescher provides a detailed and illuminating account of the role of each of these factors in limiting human knowledge, giving us an overall picture of the practical and theoretical limits to our capacity to know our world.

Responsibility, Complexity, and Abortion: Toward a New Image of Ethical Thought draws from feminist theory, post-structuralist theory, and complexity theory to develop a new set of ethical concepts for broaching the thinking challenges that attend the experience of unwanted pregnancy. Author Karen Houle does not only argue for these concepts; she enacts a method for working with them, a method that brackets the tendency to take positions and to think that position-taking is what ethical analysis involves. This book thus provides concrete evidence of a theoretically-grounded, compassionate way that people in all walks of life, academic or otherwise, could come to a better understanding of, and more complex relationship to, difficult ethical issues. On the one hand, this is a meta-ethical book about how people can conceive and communicate moral ideas in ways that are more constructive than position-taking; on the other hand, it is also a book about abortion. It testifies from a first-person female perspective about the life-long complexity that attends fertility, sexuality and reproduction. But it does not do so in order to ratify abortion as a woman's issue or a private matter or as feminist work. Rather, its aim is to excavate the ethical richness of the situation of unwanted pregnancy showing that it connects to everyone, affects everyone, and thus gives everyone something unique and new to think.

This engaging work of comparative philosophy brings together American pragmatism and Chinese philosophy in a way that generates new interpretations of Chinese philosophy and a fresh perspective on issues in process philosophy. Through an analysis of key terms, Haiming Wen argues that Chinese philosophical terminology is not simply a retrospective language that through a process of stipulation promises us knowledge of an existing world, but is also an open, prospective vocabulary that through productive associations allows philosophers to realize a desired world. Relying on this productive power of Chinese terminology, Wen introduces a new term: 'Confucian pragmatism.' Wen convincingly shows that although there is much that distinguishes American pragmatism from Confucian philosophy, there is enough conceptual overlap to make Confucian pragmatism a viable and exciting field of study.

The figure of the intellectual looms large in modern history, and yet his or her social place has always been full of ambiguity and ironies. Between Utopia and Dystopia is a study of the movement that created the identity of the universal intellectual: Erasmian humanism. Focusing on the writings of Erasmus and Thomas More, Hanan Yoran argues that, in contrast to other groups of humanists, Erasmus and the circle gathered around him generated the social space_the Erasmian Republic of Letters_that allowed them a considerable measure of independence. The identity of the autonomous intellectual enabled the Erasmian humanists to criticize established customs and institutions and to elaborate a reform program for Christendom. At the same time, however, the very notion of the universal intellectual presented a problem for the discourse of Erasmian humanism itself. It distanced the Erasmian humanists from concrete public activity and, as such, clashed with their commitment to the ideal of an active life. Furthermore, citizenship in the Republic of Letters threatened to lock the Erasmian humanists into a disembodied intellectual sphere, thus undermining their convictions concerning intellectual activity and the production of knowledge. Between Utopia and Dystopia will be of interest to scholars and students interested in Renaissance humanism, early modern intellectual and cultural history, and political thought. It also has much to contribute to debates over the identity, social place, and historical role of intellectuals.

This book disturbs the 'normal' and depoliticized meaning of virtue through a genealogical reading of the debates, conceptual struggles, and ambiguities that were cleansed by virtue ethicists to produce today's conception of excellence. This approach provides the narrative raw material to craft a new meaning of excellence as a creative actualization of the potentials for human prosperity. The fundamental question asked and addressed about excellence is how communities can use excellence as the organizing principle for political and economic development. The author explores how large-scale modern societies can be better administered in environments characterized by contingency and possibilities. At the very least, excellence in societal governance practice should involve the creation of possibilities for community and participation by all its members so that their potentialities can be drawn out for the common good. The book also explores the connection between excellence and creativity. If excellence is the drive toward actualization of potentialities for all human beings, it follows that human creativity is an adequate form for that movement. The author not only attempts to trace and clarify the mystique of the creative functions of persons and social groups, but also shows how the creative functions of human life can express the unconditional eros of divine creativity. In the process of doing all this, the author offers a fresh and provocative perspective of philosophy and theology's oldest concerns: the good, truth, beauty, justice, love, hope, and the eschatological New Creation.

'Rewriting' in the context of critical work on Caribbean literature has tended to be used to discuss revisionism from a variety of postcolonial perspectives, such as 'rewriting history' or 'rewriting canonical texts.' By shifting the focus to how Caribbean writers return to their own works in order to rework them, this book offers theoretical considerations to postcolonial studies on 'literariness' in relation to the near-obsessive degree of rewriting to which Caribbean writers have subjected their own literary texts. Focusing specifically on FrankZtienne, this book offers an overview of how the defining aesthetic and thematic components of FrankZtienne's major works have emerged over the course of his forty-year writing career. It reveals the marked development of key notions guiding his literary creation since the 1960s, and demonstrates that rewriting illustrates the central aesthetic of the Spiral which has always shaped his Iuvre. It is, the book argues, the constantly moving form of the Spiral which FrankZtienne explores through his constant reworking of his previously written texts. FrankZtienne and Rewriting negotiates between the literary and material ends of the burgeoning field of postcolonial studies, arguing that literary characteristics in FrankZtienne connect with changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the Haiti he rewrites.