Social Sciences (R0)

This book analyzes the importance of informal social protection provided by religious institutions such as madrassas in a low-income country such as Pakistan. This book explains that Madrassas are religious schools that have existed in many Muslim countries for centuries and contributed significantly to preserving, forming, and extending human knowledge in medieval times. Further, madrassas are now more commonly viewed as the providers of a narrow education, supporting religious fundamentalism, that may lead to terrorism. However, this book asserts that education is not the only function performed by madrassas. They are a significant source of welfare support for the vulnerable and marginalized households in many low-income countries. 

In one of the only works drawing on interviews with both Uyghurs and Han in Xinjiang, China, and postcolonial perspectives on ethnicity, nation, and race, this book explores how forms of banal racism underpin ideas of self and other, assimilation and modernisation, in this restive region.

Significant international attention has condemned the CCP’s use of forced internment in ‘re-education’ camps, as well as its campaign of cultural assimilation. In this wider context, this book focuses upon the ways in which ethnic difference is writ through the banalities of everyday life: who one trusts, what one eats, where one shops, even what time one’s clocks are set to (Xinjiang being perhaps one of the only places where different ethnic groups live by different time-zones).

Alongside chapters focusing upon the coercive ‘re-education’ campaign, and the devastating Ürümchi Riots in 2009, this book also unpacks how discourses of Chinese nationalism romanticise empire and promote racialised ways of thinking about Chineseness, how cultural assimilation (‘Sinicisation’) is being justified through the rhetoric of ‘modernisation’, how Islamic sites and Uyghur culture are being secularised and commodified for tourist consumption. We also explore Uyghur and Han perspectives, including of each other, giving insight into the diversity of opinions within both groups.

Based on many years of living and working in China, and fieldwork and interviews specifically in Xinjiang, this book will be valuable to a variety of readers interested in the region and Uyghur and Han identity, ethnic/national identities in contemporary China, and racisms in non-western contexts. 

This book examines the origins and basic concepts of sociology in China and traces the discipline’s evolutionary trajectory. Building on the premise that qunxue, which goes back to Xunzi, is essentially the Chinese antecedent of modern/Western sociology, contributors try to show the distinctive ways qunxue addresses a wide range of both foundational and practical issues related to society using its own set of conceptual, analytical and methodological apparatus. The book argues that the rise of Chinese sociology will depend crucially on whether the rich heritage of traditional Chinese sociology can be fully appreciated and integrated with the Western tradition of learning. Following two preliminary chapters laying out qunxue’s basic paramters, the four remaining chapters focus on its four primary concerns: cultivation of the self (xiushen), regulation of the family (qijia), governance of the state (zhiguo), and realization of universal peace (pingtianxia).

This book introduces the policies surrounding legal gender recognition of trans people in Kazakhstan. Generally, the research in this sphere focuses on medical professions, described as gatekeepers or judges deciding who fit the prescriptions of being a woman or a man, and on trans people themselves, who are often portrayed as victims. However, this process is more complex than only describing the interaction of these two groups or by labelling them either as gatekeepers or victims. The project provides a critical approach and attempts to expand our understanding of the process, the dynamics and the actors involved. This study will be of interest to scholars of contemporary Kazakhstan, and of feminism and LGBTQ activism more generally.

This book provides an alternative agenda to deepen understanding of grassroots governance and interaction in Taiwan. Through to the Taiwan Local Council origin, the judicature, the finance, the political party, the election behavior, the political participation, the government and the local government relations, and so on have carried on the more thorough research. It not only attracts students' interest, but also deserves a broader readership, especially for any course on Taiwan politics, Chinese politics, and East Asian politics.

This book identifies and analyzes the significant regional differences in suicide rates of various age groups and different sexes among Chinese rural residents. It goes beyond the analytic dichotomy in traditional Western suicide studies and argues that the phenomena of suicide among Chinese farmers are the result of a combination of social structure and social action, rather than being determined by either of these two factors alone. This study analyses suicide rates among young married women in rural areas as well as those of elderly people in rural areas. The responsive trend for the near future is also projected. The underlying dynamics and causal mechanisms of these phenomena are carefully analyzed using an innovative “structure – action theory” framework.

This book brings a much-needed re-examination of the concepts of social fairness and justice in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Through careful analysis of issues as diverse as the allocation of vaccines through the global system COVAX, women and gender, migrants and refugees, the environment, and social justice, the authors bring novel perspectives on openness, freedom, and well-being. This ambitious collection combines political, economic, historical, philosophical, and cultural analyses to examine whether it is possible to envision a “fair society” after the global COVID-19 pandemic. 

This book describes how modern industry affected people in Japan and their communities by polluting their living environment with toxic emissions. It also shows how the populace endeavored not only to restore their once-clean environment but also to rebuild communities that had been damaged by pollution and its accompanying effects. 

Environmental pollution is usually referred to in Japan as kogai, public damage, meaning that such pollution not only harms the physical environment—air, water, soil, and the human body—but also destroys the social and personal relationships in the polluted area. Those people who took action recognized that industrial and economic development had been given the highest national priority even at the cost of their health and welfare. In this sense, anti-kogai movements led them to alternative community development and to rethinking what kind of environment and community they wanted. 

This book also explores the efforts driven byresidents in several parts of Japan after the middle of the twentieth century and the endeavors of museums and archives as a memorial to those who suffered from the pollution and for the prospect of a better society with a good environment.

The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation shows that we have unwittingly fallen into an existential crisis of our own making. We have allowed large corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture governments and influence public opinion excessively. We have created a god called ‘the market’ and allowed our most important decisions to be made by this imaginary entity, which is in fact a human system controlled by vested interests. The result has been the exploitation of our life support system, our planet, and most of its inhabitants, to the point of collapse.

This book aims to explore how sustainability transitions can be explored in current and future cities and how research and policy approaches can be applied to change urban life as we know it, hence aligning the two thematic of urban science and future science, for achieving deep decarbonization. On this, the discourse on philosophy, ethics, and morality appertaining to sustainable cities and urban transitions, across disciplines, are also welcomed as it provides a deeper understanding of humanity in future scenarios.

Chapter 08 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book offers an examination of Africa’s scientific landscape based on extensive empirical data encompassing fifty-four African countries. It traces the evolution of science on the continent, highlighting research areas, global partnerships, funding sources, research capacity, and the impact of science policies. Acknowledging that Africa relies heavily on external sources, particularly from the Global North, for scientific research, the book identifies and addresses obstacles hindering self-reliance and underscores the urgent need for revitalized partnerships and cooperation to bolster Africa's scientific autonomy. It offers valuable recommendations to promote self-reliance, making it an indispensable resource for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.

This book opens new pathways for decolonial autoethnography, presented as a series of reflective stories that showcase how Māori have negotiated and navigated their personal and professional identities within contemporary society. Framed within the academic methodology of Indigenous Autoethnography, authors recount their personal and professional experiences to address their encounters with cultural trauma and personal enlightenment. As a culturally responsive methodology, Indigenous Autoethnography embraces reflective practice and critical awakening to validate Indigenous knowledge, ensuring that it remains meaningful and responsive to the needs of Māori. Utilising metaphorical storytelling as a primary means of sensemaking, this work reinforces the importance of Māori and other Indigenous People to seek wisdom from the past to guide them into the future. With Indigenous knowledge historically ignored and misrepresented in higher education, this seminal text provides invaluable guidance for global Indigenous researchers seeking to produce story work that genuinely encompasses physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions.

With multidisciplinary examination, this book explores Waiting for Visa, Ambedkar's autobiographical writing. This investigation ranges from Dalit Studies to Discourse analysis. It aims to provide the reader with in-depth knowledge of Ambedkar's unexplored autobiographical memoir and supplement a range of generalized works. The issues addressed in this book are essential to Ethnic and Race studies in general, to which Dalit Studies is but one contributing discipline. The Dalit Studies already have many texts. These texts are primarily concerned with Dalit identity politics, socio-mythological explorations, and Ambedkarian thoughts on economics, politics, and racial-religious discriminations. These are not discussed with Ambedkar's life stories narrated by himself. This book bridges the gap between Dalit Studies and Ambedkar Studies to project how Ambedkar attempted to forge into an impregnable South Asian social, educational, and political fabric. This reference book aims to attractacademics and students of Asian, South Asian, and Dalit Studies. The book appeals to educators, policymakers, and comparative literary scholars.

This open access book explores Japanese involvement in Asian development through selected development ideas and lexemes that are widely regarded in Japan as 'untranslatable' into other languages. Each chapter traces the genealogy of locally nuanced development ideas and lexemes in Japan and the process by which they have spread across Asia and beyond through Japan's development cooperation. The Semantics of Development in Asia critically examines the diverse (Western and non-Western) roots of Japanese development ideas and lexemes and their shifting semantics, shaped by the ever-changing national/international political economies and dominant development thinking of different eras. The volume contributes to a more pluriversal approach to knowledge production in development studies through its in-depth examination of vernacular Japanese ideas. This book is useful to researchers, students and teachers in the fields of Asian studies, development studies and international relations. It is also of value to policymakers and practitioners whose professional interests include development cooperation by, and with, Asian countries.

This study examines the management strategies of representative companies in each country to gain insight into the value of ESG management strategies for corporate innovation and how design thinking and artistic interventions can foster creativity both internally and externally to drive corporate innovation. It compares the current state of design and/or art-driven innovation strategies in Korean and Chinese companies under ESG frameworks, and then discusses the challenges of corporate innovation in these countries. Based on the results of the comparison, the study suggests the future of corporate innovation in China.

This book provides an accessible overview of one particular type of social panic: that of the phantom attacker. Such panics are characterised by outbreaks of sensational claims of attacks by mysterious figures that seem to emerge from nowhere, attack their innocent human and animal victims, only to vanish without a trace. Taking the recent wave of needle-spiking reports in Europe as a starting point, this book does more than just catalogue such outbreaks historically and geographically. It also ties the phenomenon of phantom assailants to the moral panics literature.

Meticulously investigating archival sources, the authors examine the social construction of social panics and unearth the parallels between contemporary episodes and historical antecedents in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Focusing on the sociohistorical and -cultural context, they uncover the role of mass media in creating and perpetuating these panics, which respond to anxieties pervading societies at particular points in history.

Written in a lively style, this book is not only of interest for scholars and students of sociology, criminology, social psychology, media studies and history but also appeals to a lay audience interested in urban legends and true crime.

This book provides a timely study of community-based activism in contemporary South Africa. Grounded in oral history, the book examines the acquired expertise and life experiences of an impactful South African activist, Mandla Majola, within the context of the people, circumstances, and affiliations that have shaped his strategic thinking and practice. The authors situate Mandla Majola’s activist and everyday experiences within histories of the complex connections between post-apartheid political and social movements and human rights discourse as they emerged after 1994. The book illuminates the relationship of state power to public health activism for HIV, tuberculosis and COVID-19 and for a life of basic human dignity, including access to sanitation and housing. Mandla Majola’s life spotlights the inspiring, sometimes grueling, and tireless quotidian work of thousands of “invisible” community-based activists whose collective actions have impacted the entire spectrum of social and economic rights of untold numbers of people in South Africa and beyond. 

This open access book aims to review the history, achievements, and challenges of trilateral cooperation among China, Japan, and South Korea in a systematic way. It offers numerous perspectives to explain the emergence of trilateral institution-building processes and the fluctuations of trilateral cooperation, and underscores three countries’ respective policy stances towards the building of the triangle. The evolvement of political and economic ties among China, Japan, and South Korea has vital importance to the peace and prosperity of East Asia. Recent years have witnessed the ups and downs of the trilateral cooperation among the three countries. The development of trilateral institution building emerged as a joint gesture in response to the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s. The three countries jointly established multilayered cooperative mechanisms in a wide range of fields. Nonetheless, trilateral cooperation among the three major powers has been proceeding in hardship in the shadow of longstanding geopolitical complexity and the deepening Sino-US confrontations. This book argues that, despite growing economic and social linkages, political animosities have constantly impeded the trilateral cooperation. Relevant to scholars and advanced students in international relations and political economy, this is a vital read in East Asian studies.

This book delves into the background of fragmentation and solidity of Indonesia’s Islamic parties. By examining the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) as a research subject, this book exhibits the critical nature of a party’s internal institutionalization, both in fragmentation and solidity. In addition, this book challenges popular perceptions that individuals or actors are the primaries, if not the only, factors that impede or promote a party’s unity. In short, this book explores and scrutinizes the many aspects and reasons for the division and cohesion of Islamic political parties concerning the presence of a party institutionalization throughout the first decade of the Reform Era (1998–2008).

This book introduces the ecological, low-carbon, and sustainable concept of ideal cities from different views. With beliefs and practices of scholars in the past in pursuit of ideal cities, it is written with historical events in the development of low-carbon cities. In this way, activities about carbon peaking and carbon neutrality happening worldwide at present can be shown, and efforts variety countries have paid off can be exhibited. Besides, as for the centralized and the distributed space structure in urban evolution, the book discusses their trends and comes up with an ideal model, the distributed city, to realize carbon neutrality based on the distributed structure. Therefore, with a practical example in planning, the feasibility of the distributed city is analyzed in several fields, including space, energy, traffic, water, waste disposal, etc. The book can be used as materials for professionals in city planning and construction, low-carbon development and other fields, as well as a way for ordinary people to learn about the complex city.

This Open Access book reimagines social connection beyond the crisis narrative of loneliness, presenting an innovative interdisciplinary model that bridges individual experiences with community infrastructure. Drawing on research with urban fringe residents, the authors reveal how meaningful connections form through complex interactions across physical and digital spaces, shaped by environmental contexts and personal capabilities.

Beyond Loneliness offers a strengths-based framework through rich thematic analysis and six powerful, detailed personal narratives that illuminate connection journeys. It demonstrates how people actively navigate their social worlds and shows how contextual factors, including social, built, technological, and institutional, influence connection opportunities.

For practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, this accessible book provides practical insights for fostering environments where diverse pathways to social connection can flourish. By moving beyond deficit-focused interventions toward comprehensive strategies that recognise social connection as a dynamic, relational process, Beyond Loneliness offers a transformative approach to building more connected, resilient communities.

This book approaches the field of mindfulness research from the perspective of self-determination theory (SDT). It is a timely presentation of work promoting better understanding of the mental and socioemotional well-being of individuals; of need-based satisfaction for one’s own work and learning; of mindfulness of self and others; of awareness and conflict resolution, with strategies for dealing with critical situations. As the first book employing SDT to examine mindfulness research in schools, institutions, workplaces, the authors show in what ways mindfulness involves self- and social awareness, self-regulation, and cognitive, and socioemotional skills. These, in turn, lead to well-being competencies in combinations of behaviours, cognitions, and emotions that are essential for all individuals’ success across various settings, including educational and working contexts. It draws on SDT which emphasises on motivation processes and relations among people engaged in activities to promote or nurture mindfulness, ranging from schools and tertiary institutions to various workplaces. It is an essential resource for practitioners and educators, as well as researchers and graduate students in special and general education, educational psychology, well-being, organisational culture, and family-related fields.

This open access book, comprising thirty-nine chapters divided into social, cultural, economic, and political spheres, offers a unique opportunity to dive into the complex, dynamic, and sometimes contradictory transformation of Gulf societies in the last few decades. Whilst the Gulf region has at times been seen as impervious to this natural phenomenon of transformation—timeless, never changing, deeply rooted in its ancient tribal customs and traditions and able to blend past and present seamlessly without suffering the wrenching trauma of change—this is clearly not the case, and the region is not immune to the inevitable forces of social change. There is no doubt today that the social change sweeping the Gulf has been profound, affecting almost every aspect of life in the Gulf societies. This volume has an encyclopedic value as the chapters collectively offer multifaceted and multidisciplinary perspectives to understand social change inthe Gulf region. Through these chapters, the role of economic and educational transformation, and the impact of social media, migration, and urbanization have in driving social change in the Gulf societies is examined in detail with a focus on their directions, magnitudes, and relevant policy options. It also considers how COVID-19 is affecting the lives of the people in the Gulf. This book bridges gaps in the understanding of the rapid pace of social change in the Gulf, offering practical solutions for policy interventions. It is of interest to scholars and students in Middle Eastern studies, specifically, as well as sociology, media studies, migration studies, and educational policy.