Social Sciences (R0)

This textbook familiarizes students with grammatical concepts of the English language and develops skills to apply grammar to creative writing and the study of literature. Students take an interactive 'learn-by-doing' approach to the mechanics of language and explore the creative uses of grammar. Experimenting with their own linguistic and creative skills, they come to appreciate the importance of language not only as a means of communication but also as an essential part of creative practice and literary composition. This applied approach to learning about grammar will be a valuable resource for students of English Literature and Creative Writing who may already be good users of grammar but not fully aware of its significance for communication and creativity.

This book provides a comprehensive study of the notion of responsibility in environmental governance. It starts with the observation that, although the rhetoric of responsibility is indeed all-pervasive in environmental and sustainability-related fields, decisive political action is still lacking. Governance architectures increasingly strive to hold different stakeholders responsible by installing accountability and transparency mechanisms to manage environmental problems, yet the structural background conditions affecting these issues continue to generate unevenly distributed, socially unjust, and ecologically devastating consequences. Responsibility in Environmental Governance develops the concept of responsibility as an analytical approach to map and understand these dynamics and to situate diverse meanings of responsibility within larger socio-political contexts. It applies this approach to the study of food waste governance, uncovering a narrow governance focus on accountability, optimization, and consumer behavior change strategies, opening up spaces for organizing more democratic solutions to a truly global problem.

This book presents an innovative theory of liquid institutionalization at sea and explores the building blocks of this theory focusing in particular on institutionalization, blue governance arrangements, reflexivity and power. The book opens with an overview of stability and change in new institutional theory before moving on to discuss liquid institutionalization in more detail. The author applies this approach to three different cases: Arctic shipping; deep seabed mining; and transboundary regionalization in Europe. For each of these cases the book describes the emerging blue governance arrangements, the type of liquid institutionalization and the consequences this has for power and reflexivity. 

This book examines the governance and democratization process in Africa, its history, trends, and prospects. Written by a diverse panel of experts, the book provides an intersectional and interdisciplinary analysis of Africa’s democratic environment. Chapters cover topics such as the evolution of democracy in Africa, electoral politics, gender, activism, human rights, and cultural diversity. Critically assessing the fit of democracy for African countries and offering strategies for the Africanization of democracy, this volume will be important for researchers and students interested in African politics, postcolonial theory, democracy, and governance.  

This book considers the impact of digital media and technology on lived experience for young people in foster care. While the extent and intricacies of foster care—known as out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia, where this study takes place—are not widely understood by the general public, youth in care might struggle to construct a personal identity that goes beyond reflecting the stereotypes and stigma by which they are often recognised. In today’s digital environment, media can play a significant role in any individual’s developing sense of self, identity, and belonging. Deitz and Sheridan Burns examine OOHC through the lens of networked media environments and investigate the conditions that encourage belonging and resilience in order to establish the role that digital technology can play in supporting those conditions for individuals, family networks, and the care sector.

This book contributes to emerging debates about Levelling Up the UK Economy, considering these alongside the nature of, and trends in, both the political economy and spatial disparities. Drawing on a complex systems framing, the book pulls together a range of evidence to provide insights about the agenda from macro, meso and micro levels of analyses, including utilising qualitative data from a small scoping study with Directors of Regeneration across several ‘left behind’ places and 25 residents of ‘left behind’ Redcar & Cleveland in Teesside. 

The book outlines phases in capitalism’s development, particularly the shift from post-war capitalism to a post-industrial and neoliberal society and the implications for spatial inequalities. The 2022 Levelling Up White Paper is analysed alongside a focus on the role of local government relative to the agenda. The book offers an empirical case study of ‘left behind’ Redcar & Cleveland, exposing deindustrialisation, insecure employment, crime, anti-social behaviour and sentiments on a North South divide and Levelling Up. We suggest that only a transformative change in the political economy, including significant and sustained investment at different spatial levels, is likely to achieve the ambition to Level Up.

During the early days of the COVID-19 health crisis, Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary provided an important portal for people around the world to understand the outbreak, local response, and how the novel coronavirus was impacting everyday people. But when news of the international publication of Wuhan Diary appeared online in early April of 2020, Fang Fang’s writings became the target of a series of online attacks by “Chinese ultra-nationalists.” Over time, these attacks morphed into one of the most sophisticated and protracted hate Campaigns against a Chinese writer in decades. Meanwhile, as controversy around Wuhan Diary swelled in China, the author was transformed into a global icon, honored by the BBC as one of the most influential women of 2020 and featured in stories by dozens of international news outlets.

This book, by the translator of Wuhan Diary into English, alternates between a first-hand account of the translation process and more critical observations on how a diary became a lightning rod for fierce political debate and the target of a sweeping online campaign that many described as a “cyber Cultural Revolution.” Eventually, even Berry would be pulled into the attacks and targeted by thousands of online trolls.

This book answers the questions: why would an online lockdown diary elicit such a strong reaction among Chinese netizens? How did the controversy unfold and evolve? Who was behind it? And what can we learn from the “Fang Fang Incident” about contemporary Chinese politics and society? The book will be of interest to students and scholars of translation, as well as anyone with special interest in translation, US-Chinese relations, or internet culture more broadly.

This volume analyses democratic governance, the rule of law and development in Africa. It is unique and timely. First, the theme and sub-themes were carefully selected to solicit quality chapters from academics, practitioners and graduate students on topical and contemporary issues in constitutional law, human rights, and democratic governance in Africa. The chapters were subjected to a single-blind peer review by experts and scholars in the relevant fields to ensure that high quality submissions are included. Due to the dearth of knowledge and studies on the chosen thematic areas, the publication will remain relevant after several years due to the timeless themes it covers. In this regard, this edited volume audits the progress of democratic consolidation, rule of law and development in Ghana with selected case studies from other African countries. This book is intended for higher education institutions (universities, institutes and centres), public libraries, general academics, practitioners and students of law, democracy, human rights and political science, especially those interested in African affairs. 

This book will provide a comprehensive discussion of groundwater sustainability, including what it is, how its definition has changed over time, why traditional assessments of it are wrong, how assessments of it are ideally multidisciplinary efforts recognizing that policy is more controlling of outcomes than science, and why achieving it is difficult once pumping exceeds sustainable levels of pumping. The book will provide a nontechnical background of hydrogeology relevant to groundwater sustainability and present several case studies from around the United States and the world.

This book draws upon diverse approaches and understandings of sustainability transformations, social transitions and environmental accountabilities. It presents case studies that highlight real-world consequences of changing ideas about how best to achieve effective and durable sustainability transformations and examines how environmental accountabilities and social transitions influence sustainability transformations. Each chapter provides insights regarding how new knowledge and perspectives matter for whether, when, and how people, governments, corporations and international organisations seek and pursue solutions to social-ecological challenges and sustainability dilemmas. It pays sustained attention to whether and how understandings and applications of accountability can improve international sustainability transformations. The chapters presented in this book consider some pressing questions concerning social transitions and environmental accountabilities: how can they contribute to sustainability transformations, how do they influence the scalability of sustainability transformations, and, how can such sustainability transformations become durable?

This book examines the lives of children and young adults living in residential care systems in Zimbabwe and their unique conceptualization of family. While the importance of family for the development and wellbeing of children can't be overemphasized, the questions of what and who counts as family to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) are under-researched. Gwenzi brings a social constructionist approach to study OVCs in institutional care as well as living with their families in Zimbabwe, finding that they do not have a single definition of family and that they use diverse characteristics to describe what family means to them. With the data suggesting a need for belonging, continuity of relationships, protection, and trust, this study makes recommendations for policy and practice with youth in alternative care in sub-Saharan Africa.

This book tells the story of the German Democratic Republic from “the inside out,” using the lens of generational change to deconstruct an intriguing array of social identities that had little to do with the “official GDR” version authoritarian rulers regularly sought to impose on their citizens. The author compares the “identities” of five societal subgroups (GDR writers and intellectuals; pastors and dissidents; women; youth; and working-class men), exploring the policies defining their lives and status before/during/after the 1989 Wende, as well as the diverging “exit, voice and loyalty” dilemmas encountered by each. The “dialectical” components treated in this work center on the extent to which eastern identities were lost, found and reconfigured across three generations, from 1949 to 1989, from 1990 to 2005, then up to 2020. It explores how the existence of a separate East German state and the socialization processes imposed on each subculture has not only complicated the search for national unity since 1990 but also -- perhaps more controversially—invoked new challenges directly related to ongoing East-West structural disparities since unification and the treatment of eastern Germans by often more privileged western Germans.

This open access book contributes to research on the ascendance of neoliberalism in Canada through the vantage point of professional fundraising in the 1990s and 2000s. Fifty high-ranking fundraisers from across Canada were interviewed through 2008 and 2009 about changes they had witnessed since starting their careers. Fundraising as an occupation was burgeoning in this period in response to the devolution of state responsibility across the major domains of nonprofit activity: education, health care, social services, the arts, recreation, overseas humanitarian activities, and environmental protection. Welfare state retrenchment left the nonprofit and voluntary sector competing for private sources of funding with the help of these newly hired expert staff. As fundraisers worked to instill a culture of philanthropy, while targeting the ultra-rich and advocating for tax-favourable treatment of major gifts, they became both products and promoters of the neoliberal political and culturalreconstruction of Canadian society.

This is an open access book.

This book provides an historical account of the emergence and spread of the climate change counter movement across the globe. Drawing on an extensive database developed by the author,  the book recounts the development of an international network, taking the reader on a journey through the history of the movement before looking closely at a series of comparative case studies examining movement organisations in different countries.

Bringing together a range of scholarship, this edited volume investigates the limits and boundaries of women’s empowerment toward shaping sustainability by unpacking power relationships that affect women’s inclusive citizenship; analyzing concrete examples of limits across different regions; and exploring the rise of new technological innovations that may (or may not) contribute to dissolve those limits. Chapters focus on different dimensions related disempowerment (such as historical, cultural, socio-economic, and normative) to frame a new understanding of how achieving equality around the world. Integrating transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives at domestic and international levels, this book looks at ways to provide new opportunities for removing invisible and visible barriers to ensure gender parity and to make sustainable change irreversible.

This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and policymakers across Law, Sociology, Gender Studies, Politics,and Economics.

This book presents a comparative analysis of the struggles of Latin American indigenous peoples for effective representation in national political systems in the region. Through a detailed exploration of the political dynamics of indigenous groups and examples of mechanisms of political representation, the studies in this book reveal how power relations, cleavages and indigenous civil society organizations are essential to our understanding of indigenous political participation. These studies closely inspect how collective action builds up at local level in grassroots organizations, and how it then articulates or not with larger mechanisms of regional and national political representation, providing a more comprehensive and comparative assessment of why and when representation works and fails for indigenous people.

This contributed volume is organized around one general and comparative chapter on indigenous political representation in Latin America followed by eight case studies, divided into three main groups. The first group includes cases with a more inclusive political environment, such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala. The second group brings together cases with certain representation and/or active indigenous elites: Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay. Tthe third group presents outlier cases with potential indigenous issues: Peru and Chile. Finally, the last chapter brings together reflections on how mechanisms for effective political representation can be improved and how indigenous organizations can be fostered to ensure effective political representation.

Indigenous Political Representation in Latin America will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists studying both indigenous collective action and political representation by presenting a discussion on how to structure representation mechanisms capable of politically integrate the ethnic diversity of Latin American countries in order to build a multicultural citizenship. It will also help policy makers and activists by discussing the successes and failures of effective indigenous political representation in Latin America.

This edited collection situates the migration of children and young people into Europe within a global framework of analysis and provides a holistic perspective that encompasses cultural media, ethnographic research and policy analysis. Drawing on a unique study of young unaccompanied migrants who subsequently became ‘adult’ within the UK and Italy, it examines their different trajectories and how they were impacted by their ability to secure legal status. Divided into three interlinked sections, it begins by examining the cultural repertoires about migration and adulthood to which migrants are sensitized in their countries of origin from a young age. This forms the contexts within which their direct experiences of turning 18 in a different country are explored. These combined insights are framed by an analysis of related policies which bureaucratically and institutionally shape these migratory experiences. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of migration studies, international development, geography, sociology, anthropology, youth studies, law, education, health and wellbeing, social care and cultural studies.

This open access book explores the transformative effects of remittances. Remittances are conceptualized as flows of money, objects, ideas, traditions, and symbolic capital, mapping out a cross-border space in which people live, work, and communicate with multiple belongings. By doing so, they effect social change both in places of origin and destination. However, their power to improve individual living conditions and community infrastructure mainly results from global inequality. Hence, we challenge the remittance mantra and go beyond the migration-development-nexus by revealing dependencies and frictions in remittance relations. Remittances are thus scrutinized in their effects on both social cohesion and social rupture. By highlighting the transformative effects of remittance in the context of conflict, climate change, and the postcolonial, we shed light on the future of transnational society.

Presenting empirical case studies from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka,New Zealand, Turkey, Lebanon, USA, Japan, and various European countries, as well as historical North America and the Habsburg Empire, we explore remittance relations from a range of disciplines including anthropology, sociology, history, design, architecture, governance, and peace studies.

Developing a processual understanding of world statehood, this book combines history, political philosophy, explanatory social science, and critical-reflexive futures studies. While doing so, it poses essential questions about world political integration, especially (i) whether and to what degree elements of world statehood exist today, (ii) whether the development of further elements of world statehood in some stronger sense can be seen as a tendential direction of history, and (iii) whether, and under what conditions, a world state could be viable?

The book is organised into three parts. The first part, “Cosmopolitical processes”, explores whether world history as a whole is directed towards planetary integration, focusing on the emergence of cosmopolitanism, the world economy, and the peace problematic. The second part of the book, “Reflexive futures and agency”, focuses on the contemporary 21st-century processes of world history in terms of how non-fixed pasts, changingcontexts, and anticipations of the future interact. The author explains how certain rational directionality is compatible with the possibility of deglobalisation, disintegrative tendencies, and “gridlock” in global governance in the key areas of the economy, security, and environment. In the final part of the book, “World statehood and beyond”, the author develops further the processual and open-ended account of the formation of interconnected elements of world statehood by discussing the cases of a global greenhouse gas tax and world parliament. He also analyses the feasibility of different paths towards global-scale integration and the potential for conflicts, divisions, and disintegration.

This book is a must-read for students and scholars of political science, international relations, history, sociology, political philosophy, and futures studies interested in a better understanding of world statehood, world political integration, as well as the future of world politics.

This book introduces into the current global ethics debate models of humanism developed in classical Chinese traditions, which have not yet been comprehensively presented to Western scholarship or integrated into the framework of global discourses on social ethics and morality. It creates new paradigms for an understanding of humanism that meets the demands of our time. It begins by presenting European descriptions and critical assessments of this discourse, and then moves to an exploration of humanistic ideas shaped through historical developments in Asia, with a focus on the Chinese tradition. In this sense, the book is written from a transcivilizational perspective. The methods used in the research transcend---that is, surpass and overcome---the rigid, isolating, and essentialist concept of civilization. At the same time, the book points to the possibility of transformation through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between different civilizations. Within this framework, the book starts from the assumption that the ontology of civilizations and cultures is not based on immutable substances, but on the relations between different factors that constitute them as categories. The transcivilizational perspective rooted in transcultural dialogues between philosophies that originated in different cultures and civilizations is particularly valuable because of the globalized world in which we live today. This means that the problems that affect people in different parts of the world and the issues that are embedded in different geopolitical and developmental frameworks also affect all of humanity.

This book is of particular interest to scholars and students of global ethics, globalization, Asian philosophy and Sinology.

This edited volume brings together a range of scholars to reflect on the varied ways in which caste is manifested and experienced in social life. Each chapter draws on different methods and approaches but all consider lived experiences and experiential narrations. Considering Guru and Sarukkai’s path-breaking work on ‘Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social’ (2019), this volume applies the insights of the theories to multiple settings, issues and communities. Unique to this volume, Brahmin and other dominant castes' experiences are considered, rather than simply focusing on the lives of oppressed castes (Dalits). Analysis of cross-caste friendships or romances and marriages, furthermore, brings out the intimate and ingrained aspects of caste. Taken together, therefore, the contributions in this volume offer rich insights into caste and its consciousness within the framework of everyday experiences. 

Engineering Reality offers unprecedented insights into the power of environmental impact assessments in engineering a reality favourable to any investment, focusing on the highly contested environmental study of a large hydroelectric dam project in southern Colombia, El Quimbo. The inclusion of environmental impact assessments to project proposals of environmental influence has been an undeniably important step to environmental governance in many countries around the world. Regarding the science behind these studies as objective and their results as the closest in representing reality, however, is misleading. Many activists and scholars made it their mission to uncover the limitations and work towards filling the gaps. Participation processes are considered key to any successful evaluation, but local knowledges and alternative perspectives are still often disqualified through more widely accepted scientific methods. Engineering Reality systematically walks through andaccounts for the shortcomings and injustices associated with environmental monitoring. It compares the reality as presented in the dam’s environmental impact study with first-hand accounts from the local and affected populations and observations gathered through two periods of fieldwork in 2012 (before) and 2016-17 (after the dam started operating). It explores how the knowledge of the study was used politically and to what end. Bringing the findings in conversation with the wider environmental impact assessment literature, the book proposes a new framework to assess energy projects -Energy Data Justice- that regards the environmental impact assessment a strictly political tool aimed at reaching the just energy transition in Colombia and worldwide.

This edited volume advances the conceptual framework of the 'everyday urban' to unpack the ways in which processes of modernity in India shape young subjects and, in so doing, centers the analytical categories of childhood and youth. In rejecting simplistic binaries of agency, and teleological logics of development and modernity, the authors focus on the complex pathways of negotiation and conflict that mark the lives of young people across various historical and contemporary contexts in urban India. Chapters are organized across two key themes: Shaping Modern Subjects and Being Modern Subjects, while spanning multiple disciplines including anthropology, history, sociology, disability studies, and psychology. Together, the contributions aim to advance the field of childhood and youth studies in South Asia and beyond.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses national security threats and strategic opportunities for the United States and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recognizing that integrated deterrence is not constrained by geography or domain, this book focuses on the complex threats and challenges confronting U.S. national security and foreign policy in a post-Ukraine invasion environment. That is to say, what happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine. It affects everyone from the region to the cyberspace domain to people on the other side of the world, due to changes in commodity prices.

Specifically, this volume explores how revised analyses of Russia may alter U.S. and allied strategies in a shifting international system and within the framing of strategic competition. Experts in this volume examine how the war in Ukraine will influence Russian strategy and foreign policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and globally; what effect the Ukraine invasion could have on global and regional geopolitics and geoeconomics; and the United States’ ability to protect national interests in the Central Region. The reasons for this are multiple and complex.

In this volume, we explore many issues that have confounded security experts by asking questions such as: What happens after the Russian invasion? What lessons did the U.S., Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union learn about Russia? What lessons did Russia learn about itself and its military after the Ukraine invasion? What lessons did the U.S. learn in Afghanistan that apply to Ukraine? Why was the initial analysis of the Russian invasion so wrong? How has power shifted in the international system since the Ukraine invasion? How has the security environment shifted since the Ukraine invasion? For the U.S. to continue supporting its partners in the Middle East and Central Asia, it must anticipate what new opportunities will arise from Russia’s missteps in Ukraine. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses these challenges and opportunities and informs policymakers on the changing contours of the Great Power Competition.

This book addresses a gap in and outside academia: how to help Sociology undergraduates develop skills for career success while maintaining a sociologically rigorous approach. Matching sociological theories, methods, and knowledge with contemporary capitalistic managerial and work practices, it shows how sociology undergraduates are not only employable but have marketable advantages over graduates of other disciplines. A student following the program embodied in this book will actively nurture a strong sociological identity; create a job search plan integrating personal and disciplinary interests, values, and skills; design job application materials that provide the best fit for specific jobs and organizations; and launch a satisfying career path. Beyond an employment guide, it will facilitate the teaching of career development by Sociology faculty; increase students’ ongoing confidence in their potential; and provide a solid foundation for communicating the transformative power ofSociology to employers and managers in the government, business, and non-profit sectors.

This book links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolution of 25^th January 2011 and the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser – through various cultural manifestations. It conceives the concept of “collective dreaming” to map out the subliminal feeling which runs deep through experiences of socially transformative moments. The author has extensively studied the structure of feelings that encompasses the experiences not only of activist minorities but the broader mass of revolutionary movements. In certain historical moments, hopes and aspirations bind together millions of people from all walks of life: students, workers, farmers, and middle-class professionals. Nagaty calls this phenomenon the “collective dream”, something which has been carried through generations of Egyptians. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of social movement studies, cultural studies and cultural sociology. 

This book is an exploration of energy and its unique role to date as one of the fundamental enabling and controlling factors in human development and progress at the scale of global civilization, and how it will be fundamental to the type of future that collective humanity is likely to experience. The first section provides a contextual overview of energy and human civilization through a chronological description of how human energy use has evolved over time and led to the current ‘energy bind’. The second section explores what this energy bind might mean for our future energy choices when trying to meet the various challenges of dwindling resources, costs, and climate change, through exploration of three broad systems-based scenarios for the human ‘energy future’.  The final section draws conclusions as to which scenario is most achievable and desirable, and what this might mean for longer-term human prospects.

This is an original book, covering all the past areas of research anyone would need to know about festivals and ‘event-based culture’. It is based on academic research but written in a way relevant for cultural professionals – uniquely explaining the cultural power of festivals, and with original empirical research, the realities of organisation and management, and social and economic value.  

Dr Jonathan Vickery, Reader in Cultural Policy Studies and Director: Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, Univeristy of Warwick.

This book discusses music festivals in the context of the specific values they convey. Today, music festivals are a permanent feature of national, regional and local cultural policies, a valuable asset in the tourism industry and a significant source of income for an industry that has been adversely affected by the steady decline in physical sales of music. For the audience, on the other hand, it is an opportunity to escape from everyday life, multi-sensory contact with art, an activity that stands for “full-body participation”– a cultural phenomenon that drags people out of their homes like no other. There is one common denominator linking the above-mentioned features of contemporary music festivals – namely the world of values. This is evident from the non-accidental locations, festivals spaces’ design, planning and the line-ups created consciously, with great care. The organisers’ “missions”, logos, and other symbolic organisational artefacts communicate specific values. These values are explicitly mentioned by artists and audiences: they can be easily identified in online forums and media reports; participant behaviour, festival “rituals” and additional festival programs are shaped on the basis of values, and cooperation is built between the festival and the local community.

As the reader will quickly realize, numbers and statistics sit alongside descriptions and quotations in this book, and the organisers’ statements are accompanied by the opinions of academics, but above all the festival audience is given a voice – both through quotations and their drawings. This voice is by no means uniform, as it turned out that research into values was often transformed into a pretext for spinning tales about one’s life situation, one’s political preferences, and one’s understanding of freedom and responsibility. Memories were mixed with declarations, joy with regret, curses with dreams, prose with poetry. Thomas Pettitt was not wrong in noting that “Social history has learnt to appreciate festival as a valuable window on society and its structures”. The authors have tried to open all the windows available. 

Students and researchers in the fields of cultural anthropology, social psychology, folklore studies, comparative religion, sociology of culture, cultural policy, cultural history, and cultural management will find this book highly interesting.

This book offers a detailed and innovative study of the Dutch case of politics of citizenship and nationalism by focusing on public and political controversies in the crucial period of 1973–2015. By foregrounding the crucial role of performance and narration in public and political debates, this book shows how discourses of citizenship and nationhood are deeply shaped by established repertoires and long-lasting lines of disagreement about difference and belonging in the Netherlands.   

While change did occur within the Dutch context during this period, this book reveals that these transformations were not primarily driven by purportedly permissive and accommodating responses to immigration and cultural diversity. Instead, it unveils a Dutch landscape deeply marked by challenges related to race, democracy, and liberal exceptionalism. In doing so, the book contributes to ongoing debates in the study of citizenship, nationalism, and intellectual history around the merits and limitations of liberal politics of inclusion. It critically extends concepts and arguments in cultural pragmatics and problematizes the common hope that public debate may progressively resolve antagonisms over difference.

This book investigates the ways in which new developments in areas of language teaching practice, such as policy-making, planning, methodology and the use of educational technology are locally adopted, adapted, and initiated and implemented in the four nations of the United Kingdom: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. By looking at the drivers, stakeholders, obstacles, and affordances in particular regional contexts, it is possible to gain a deeper insight into the ways in which change processes occur. This will help anyone involved in language development, from curriculum reform to materials development, and from programme evaluation to the setting of assessment standards. The chapters in this book cover all aspects of language education in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, from the primary to tertiary levels in both private and public settings, as well as innovations at local, regional and national levels. The book will be of particular interest to those involved in managing change in language education that attempts to mediate between global trends and local needs.

This open access book explores how polycrises not only generate new forms of inequality and social exclusion but also inspire new political activism, solidarity, and citizenship. It examines how social movement organizations frame their responses to exclusionary policies and regimes, and sheds light on their strategies for mobilization. By focusing on contemporary movements and their framing of social issues in times of crisis, the book offers valuable insights into social movement studies, urban studies, political communication, and frame analysis. It also engages with broader theoretical and public discussions on solidarity and citizenship. This book is ideal for scholars and students interested in social movements, political struggles, and fields such as migration, housing, and care.

This edited book explores the ambiguity and overlap in the usage of terms such as “gender-inclusive”, “gender-fair”, and “gender-neutral” across various disciplines and languages, aiming to achieve conceptual clarity and advocate for standardisation. The authors examine different aspects of gender-inclusivity in European languages including Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of fields such as Linguistics, Psychology, Anthropology, and Cultural Studies. 

This book synthesises narrative research on men convicted of intimate femicide/feminicide in Latin America. Based on repeated biographical interviews conducted across eight countries, it offers a sociological exploration of the perpetrators’ lives and their processes of sense-making through the analysis of their narratives. The book identifies cross-cutting themes and narrative arcs in these men's accounts and examines how these relate to, interweave with one another, and help explain the perpetration of intimate partner violence. By deepening our understanding of harm-doing, it contributes to ongoing debates in criminology, law, public health, the social and human sciences of violence, and gender studies.