Social Sciences (R0)

This edited collection focuses on tourism development, sustainability and local change in southern Africa. The book offers a range of both conceptual and applied perspectives that address various changes in southern African tourism and community development relations. The key drivers of change that include climate change and globalization form the context for the diverse and interesting set of case studies from the region. The main conceptual grounds of the book cover sustainability, sustainable development goals (SDGs), responsibility, vulnerability, adaptation, resilience, governance, local development and inclusive growth. In this book sustainability is seen as one of the most important issues currently facing the tourism sector, affecting all types and scales of tourism operations and environments in the region. Tourism is an increasingly important economy in the southern African region and the industry is creating changes for communities and environment while also facing majorchallenges caused by global trends and changes. The book offers a case study driven approach to sustainability needs of tourism development in local community contexts. The case study chapters are linked through the book’s focus on sustainable tourism and local community development. Through emphasizing the need to understand both global change and local contexts in sustainable tourism development, this book is a valuable resource for all those working in the field.

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 investigates indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in sub-Saharan Africa, thereby highlighting its role in facilitating adaptation to climate variability and change, and also demystifying the challenges that prevent it from being integrated with scientific knowledge in climate governance schemes. Indigenous people and their priceless knowledge rarely feature when decision-makers prepare for future climate change. This book showcases how Indigenous knowledge facilitates adaptation to climate change, including how collaborations with scientific knowledge have cascaded into building people’s resilience to climatic risks. This book also pays delicate attention to the factors fueling epistemic injustice towards Indigenous knowledge, which hampers it from featuring in climate governance schemes across sub-Saharan Africa.

This book addresses the manifold crisis of current societies and understands it as a failure of normative social structuration. As an exemplar for this development, it analyses the decline of welfare state models and the corresponding societal compromise. Yet, it evaluates them as a symptom of a wider malaise of normative orders in complex societies. The question thus arises as to how social science can study the ongoing societal transformation. The book frames the phenomenon as ‘normative intermittency’ to capture its fluid alternation of social structuration and destructuration and develops its analysis in three steps: first, it draws a theoretically reflected symptomatic of its occurrences; it then establishes the sociological diagnosis necessary to understand its unfolding and finally evaluates its political outcomes. Methodologically, the book advocates a complete overhaul of the analytical frames of sociology to gauge the intermittent rhythm of the ongoing societal transformation. Thus, it develops an innovative reading of classical sociological theory beyond a number of unreflected axiomatic assumptions of the current sociological mainstream. Thanks to the assessment of the political outcomes of failing social structuration the book turns to a discussion of the development of possible emancipation paths in the form of ‘transformative social action’; reflexively, this accounts for the results of the sociological diagnosis of the crisis of normative social orders. The main analyses within the book scrutinise a number of empirical phenomena that establish normative intermittency in current societies and refer to the major debates that are taking place on the related topics in the state of art of sociological and political theory.

This book locates #MeToo’s traction among elites with “womenomics” theories that attribute feminized poverty, welfare dependency, and sexual violence to traditional femininity and toxic masculinity. Such neoliberal anti-sexual violence policies seek to empower women through paid work and reform men through fatherhood. This volume shows that men’s movements and conservative concerns about “fatherless families” developed toxic masculinity discourse before popular feminism incorporated it. It analyses how discourse on #MeToo issues in the workplace reveals a shift away from representations of women as traumatized victims in need of empowerment toward a focus on men as both problem and solution, setting new standards for masculine workplace conduct. However, this discourse reproduces a toxic/good men binary that serves to consolidate a new form of hegemonic masculinity. The book concludes that neoliberal sexual violence politics obscures how globalization fosters inequalities and sexualviolence by blaming these and other social ills on toxically masculine men.

This book will be of interest to scholars whose research focuses on sexual violence, feminist studies, masculinity studies, and neoliberalism.

This book uses survey data in "hot spots" around the globe, to analyse various models of social justice, particularly the principle of equality, from a pragmatic perspective. Starting with ordinary actors, social movements, and concrete contexts, the authors question foundations of social and political democracy in our times. They focus on how social actors deal with the principles of justice and judgments of justice at work and in their social lives. The book suggests that the increase in social inequalities in recent decades contrasts with the blurring of the aims of social justice. At a time when the reconsideration of politics largely depends on its relevance to and aspirations for social justice, the authors of this book question contemporary developments by illustrating its variety,  according to specific historical, institutional, social and organizational contexts.The book will be useful to  students and scholars in the social sciences, especially those interested in moral questions regarding social justice, from an empirical and practical point of view.

This book explores men's attraction to violent extremist movements and terrorism.

Drawing on multi-method, interdisciplinary research, this book explores the centrality of masculinity to violent extremist recruitment narratives across the religious and political spectrum. Chapters examine the intersection of masculinity and violent extremism across a spectrum of movements including: the far right, Islamist organizations, male supremacist groups, and the far left. The book identifies key sites and points at which the construction of masculinity intersects with, stands in contrast to and challenges extremist representations of masculinity. It offers an insight into where the potential appeal of extremist narratives can be challenged most effectively and identifies areas for both policy making and future research.

This book explores the powerful role of ordinary people's agency in times of violent conflict. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a Critical Discourse Analysis, the author draws out the motivations, drivers and strategies at individual and community levels. With a focus on people’s own voices, this research highlights rich findings showing a wide range of experiences and actions that people engaged in during the violent conflict, and dimensions that are often missed in dominant explanations of violent conflict. Therefore, while looking at peace and conflict from an everyday perspective, the question of power and the meaning of peace knowledge become central. This monograph addresses the power of people’s agency not only in shaping the politics and dynamics of violence, but also in redefining what ‘peace’ and ‘change’ ought to look like. Essential reading for researchers and students of Peace and Conflict Studies, and also International Relations, Security Studies, Resistance Studies, Anthropology, Politics, International Development.

Although several publications cover the topic of urban resilience, this book provides a more nuanced exploration of urban climate governance and citizen engagement in urban climate resilience policies through the lenses of political ecology, environmental justice and co-production. In this regard, the volume moves beyond the approach of multilevel urban climate governance by critically addressing the unexpected impacts of top-down strategies of urban resilience with the goal of expanding the reflection on citizen engagement. The book also explores the emerging possibilities behind the co-production of urban resilience as well as the critical role of grassroots and citizens in promoting such alternative strategies. While the primary target audience is scholars from different disciplines (e.g. geography, urban studies, planning, political ecology, architecture, urban sociology, environmental studies) focusing on urban resilience, the editors also aim to reach urban resilience practitioners from local, national and international organisations as well as environmental grassroots and climate activists.

In light of recent global trends and crises, including the hasty withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan and the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, this book sheds new light on global power shifts in multiple areas of international relations between industrialized countries and emerging powers.

This book argues that “the global age” is rapidly supplanting “the modern age”, and that modernity is paving the way for globality. The events that are taking place in the 21^st century can no longer be effectively described, understood or explained by the concept of modernity which originated more than 500 years ago.

Further, this book challenges the academic and societal tendency to view international power-related phenomena on the basis of a dichotomy between hard and soft power. It assumes that another power source, independent of hard and soft power, does exist. Invisible, structure-manipulating, and effectively leveraged, it is precisely this “third power” that drives and shapes power phenomena in the “global age” more intensively than either hard or soft power.

This book provides a new interpretation of international law specifically dedicated to Indigenous peoples in the context of a climate justice approach. The book presents a critical analysis of past and current developments at the intersection of human rights and international environmental law and governance. The book suggests new ways forward and demonstrates the need for a paradigmatic shift that would enhance the meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples as fundamental actors in the conservation of biodiversity and in the fight against climate change. The book offers guidance on a number of critical intersecting and interdependent issues at the forefront of climate change law and policy – inside and outside of the UN climate change regime. The author suggests that the adoption of a critical perspective on international law is needed in order to highlight inherent structural and systemic issues of the international law regime which are all issues that ultimately impede the pursue of climate justice for Indigenous peoples.

This book offers a model for understanding securitization in terms of hegemonic discourse formations. It re-thinks the very meaning of security as well as the relationship between the understanding of security in traditional and critical approaches in security studies to find a common denominator between them. Deduced firmly from realist political philosophy and its analytic categories, such as state-based sovereignty, security is presented as a function of discursive formations. Providing a sound discourse-theoretical foundation which includes both linguistic and non-linguistic practices as well as a focus on relationships of power, the book offers a basis for the integration of insights generated by the different approaches to securitisation, and enhances the analytical and explanatory depth of the concept.

This book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars of political science and international relations (IR) interested in a better understanding of IR theory, realism, critical security studies, and discourse analysis.

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.

The Second Edition of this book is completely revised and updated throughout providing an overview of current challenges faced within the area of Agri-food in relation to policymaking, ecological conservation and socio-environmental justice. Including a range of new chapters, the book explores some of the conceptual and analytical gaps that are presented by current approaches to this topic. The series of interconnected chapters offers a critical reinterpretation of the tensions associated with the failures of mainstream regulatory regimes, land and resource grabbing, and the impacts of global agri-food chains at local, regional and inter-sectoral scales. The book also examines past legacies and emerging challenges associated with agriculture modernisation, politico-spatial disputes, climate change, social movements, gender, ethnicity and education. It likewise addresses the transformative potential of different combinations of biophysical, socio-technical and socio-spatial practices of food sovereignty.

This open access book is the first monograph that brings together insights from comparative politics, political sociology, and migration studies to introduce the current state of knowledge on external voting and transnational politics. Drawing on new data gathered within the DIASPOlitic project, which created a comparative dataset of external voting results for 6 countries of origin and 17 countries of residence as well as an extensive qualitative dataset of 80 in-depth interviews with four groups of migrants, this book not only illustrates theoretical problems with empirical material, but also provides answers to previously unaddressed questions.

The empirical material focuses on the European context. The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (2004-2007) triggered a westward wave of migration from Central and Eastern European countries which faced the expansion of existing émigré communities and the emergence of new ones. As this process coincided with the expansion ofmigrant voting rights, the result is a large set of populous diaspora communities which can potentially have a significant impact on country electoral politics, making the study of external voting highly relevant.

This book’s introduction takes stock of current research on transnational politics and external voting, presenting core puzzles. The following chapter introduces the context of intra-European migration and the political situation in Central-Eastern European sending countries. The next two sections address the empirical puzzles, drawing on new quantitative and qualitative. The conclusion takes stock of the evidence gathered, discusses the normative problem of non-resident voters enfranchisement, connects external voting to the broader debate on political remittances and finally, maps the terrain ahead for future research.

This concise, empirically grounded introduction to external voting is critical reading in structuring the debate around migration and shapingresearch agendas for the future.

This book advances the growing area of language policy and planning (LPP) by examining the epistemological and theoretical foundations that engendered and sustain the field, drawing on insights and approaches from anthropology, linguistics, economics, political science, and education to create an accessible and inter-disciplinary overview of LPP as a coherent discipline. Throughout the book, the authors address LPP from different perspectives, exploring the interface between planning in theory and its practical problems in implementation. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in LPP in particular, and educational, social, and public policy more broadly. 

Going beyond the national scales and focussing on several socio-ecological zones, this book captures stories written by engaged scholars on recent attempts to develop cross-sectoral and cross-scaler solutions to assess and mitigate risks to water security across Asia and the Pacific. Identifying lessons from successes and failures, it highlights management and strategic lessons that water and climate leaders of Asia and the Pacific need to consider. This book showcases reflective and analytical thought pieces written by key actors in the climate and water spaces. Several critical socio-ecological zones are covered  – from Pakistan in the west to pacific islands in the east. The chapters clearly identify strategies for improvement based on the analysis of emerging responses to climate risks to water security and gaps in current practices. The book will include an editorial introduction and a final synthesis chapter to ensure clear articulation of common themes and to highlight the overall messages of the book. 

This book asks if it is time to “reboot” the fundamental institutions of global international society. The volume revisits Hedley Bull’s seminal contribution The Anarchical Society by exploring the interconnected nature of change, contestation and resilience for maintaining order in today’s uncertain and complex environment. The volume adds to Bull’s theorizing by recognizing that order demands change, that contestation should be welcomed, and that resilience is anchored in local and agent-led forms of ordering. The contributors to Part One of the book focus on theoretical and conceptual issues related to order in the global international society, whilst the contributors to Part Two of the book focus on the primary institutions as listed by Hedley Bull with the addition of a chapter on the market adding a distinctive commentary on new and important dynamics of change, contestation and resilience of the existing institutions.

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 volume develops a theoretical framework for the modelling of meaning-making and cultural processes as crucial to the scientific study of contemporary complex societies. It focuses on the methodological and empirical aspects of the analysis of culture and its dynamics that could be applied to policymaking and to the understanding of social phenomena. It covers culture-based segmentation, ad hoc survey instruments like the VOC and PROSERV questionnaires, discourse flow analysis, the Homogenization of Classification Functions Measurement, and others. It also presents a detailed discussion of the methodology of cultural analysis in contexts of health and education. The volume showcases a top-down approach by including quantitative methods and/or automatized or semi-automatized procedures, and at the same time supports a hermeneutic, bottom-up, abductive approach, focused on the situated dynamics of meaning-making. It provides insights from cultural studies, socialstatistics, social policy, and research methodology in the social sciences. This is a useful resource for academics involved in studying cultural dynamics and for policy-oriented researchers and decision-makers who are interested in cultural dimensions of the design, implementation and reception of public policies. 

Covering the period from 1998 to 2018, this book begins its analysis with the detention of Augusto Pinochet in London and concludes with the end of the second term of Michelle Bachelet. The seven organizations studied range from family groups and survivors to sites of memory and consciousness. Through analyses of the discourses produced by these organizations, it examines particular historical periods(1998-2000, 2001-2008, 2009-2010, 2011-2013 and 2014-2018) by focusing on strong debates and events of these conjunctures in order to highlight the struggles of meaning and the conflicts of legitimacy relating to these times. In concrete terms, particular attention is paid to the analysis of the main themes of litigation, the way in which the actors are mobilized, their objectives and how the past is evoked in the public space.

Battles for Memory and Justice in Chile: Struggles for Remembrance, Legitimacy and Accountability will be of interest to researchers from different disciplines and fields of study within the human and social sciences, such as sociologists, historians and anthropologists working in fields such as Latin American studies, sociology of memory, sociology of social movements and human rights studies.

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 an evolutionary theory of the origin and step-by-step development of linguistic structures and cognitive abilities from the early stages of anthropogenesis to the Upper Paleolithic. Emphasizing the social nature of the human mind and using an extended version of C.Hempel's explanatory logic, the author proves that language and consciousness emerged and evolved through the daily efforts of our ancestors to overcome mutual misunderstandings in increasingly complex social orders with increasing tasks on memory, thinking, and normative regulation of behavior, with the addition of new and new communicative concerns.

The book addresses questions such as the following:

• What unique social conditions led to the emergence of the first protosyllables and protowords?
• What steps enabled the crossing of the "linguistic Rubicon" (between animal communication and human speech)?
• Why were syllables and phonemes needed?
• How did ourancestors overcome the difficulties of misunderstanding?
• How, when, and why did ancient people learn to speak in turns? Why did they begin to talk about past and distant events?
• What is consciousness and how did it evolve along with language?
• How many original languages were there and why are there roughly 200 philas (language macrofamilies)?
• How and why did the number of languages and the degree of their complexity change in pre-written history?
• Did the Romance languages really evolve from Latin?

Accordingly, the book will appeal to scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the cognitive aspects of anthropogenesis and the ancient origins of language and consciousness.

This book is focused exclusively on water problems in the 48 U.S. states. The authors provide an accessible overview of the work of many federal, state and academic researchers and water system administrators whose investigations have focused on the state of water and the water crisis now accelerating in the United States. David McNabb and Carl Swenson seek to bring to a wider audience some of the current research findings and data on the perilous state of the United States’ surface and groundwater resources during this time of climate change and the extreme drought taking place in many sections of the nation. Descriptions of the water resource systems are based on research and the subsequent findings published by water scientists in the United States Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Corps of Engineers and water related agencies of the Departments of Agriculture and of the Interior and state and local water management agencies.

This book speaks to those interested in topics related to punitiveness and public attitudes to crime and punishment. Punitiveness has been the focus of increasing criminological attention in recent decades. This book extends this focus by taking a multi-disciplinary approach to examining punitiveness in the criminal justice system, the welfare system, and the education system in British society today. In doing so, this study uses new survey data (n=5,781) applying ordinal and linear regression and structural equation modelling to examine the relationship between public punitiveness towards ‘rulebreakers’ and political values. This is explored through assessing punitive attitudes towards the treatment of i) school pupils who break school rules, ii) towards the treatment of benefit recipients who fail to comply with the rules, and iii) towards people who break the law. It examines the relationship between political attitudes (neo-conservative values, neo-liberal values), nostalgic values (social, economic, and political), and public punitive attitudes towards the three rule-breaking groups. This book’s appeal may extend to an interdisciplinary audience including welfare, education, and social policy disciplines.

This book explores the discourses in learning and teaching policy in UK higher education, traces how these ideas are recontextualised at institutional level and reveals the differences between policy discourses and lecturers’ and students’ experiences. The author argues that policy ideas around learning and teaching are not simply value-free ‘best practice’ but reflect the socio-political context of higher education. The study uses an innovative conceptual framework of critical discourse studies (CDS) and Bernstein’s sociology of pedagogy to provide critical lenses to uncover the underlying messages of policy. The book will interest a wide academic audience including anyone involved in higher education globally.

This book offers the first empirical and holistic analysis of the design, implementation and effects of the new naturalisation regimes in the United Kingdom and Germany introduced in the 2000s. Based on a multi-sited state ethnography, it uniquely compares the law on the books, the local administration, and the lived experiences of citizenship tests, courses, and ceremonies from an interdisciplinary social science perspective.

The book argues that naturalisation procedures in both countries suggest to migrants to constantly optimise themselves in the state’s interests toward the subjectivity of the “Super Citizen” – a political, economic, and cultural asset to the liberal-democratic, capitalist nation-state. The concept of the Super Citizen enables us to highlight and criticise the overburdening expectations toward citizens by application as opposed to citizens by birth. The analysis reveals that the self-presentation of Britain and Germany as liberal and meritocratic politiesis in stark contrast to migrants’ lived experiences of the naturalisation process.

By shedding light on naturalisation policies’ efficacy, this book is aimed at students and scholars in sociology, politics, law, anthropology, and education, as well as policy-makers in the areas of citizenship and migration.

This book focuses on private tutoring (sometimes also known as “shadow education”), an important but neglected topic in applied linguistics and language education research. Private tutoring has become a popular out-of-school learning activity worldwide. While its scope and definition are expanding, private tutoring commonly refers to the “paid service students used to supplement their learning of academic subjects at school outside school hours” (Yung, 2019). Around the world, English language is one of the most popularly enrolled subjects in private tutoring, including both English as a first language and English as an additional language (EAL). Despite its popularity and implications for theories, practices, and policies, research on English private tutoring is still in its infancy. This book aims to provide an international perspective on the interface between applied linguistics and comparative education and open up an agenda for discussion in theories, practices,and policies in English language teaching (ELT). It will be of interest to students, scholars, and policy-makers in these and related areas. 

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 is the first to focus on state-led ‘extractive bargains,’ designed to reach a social consensus on the extent of extractive activities, how they should be governed and their negative consequences mitigated. These state-led ‘bargains’ have taken a number of different forms and offer varying degrees of promise in meeting environmental and social concerns. The book critically examines ‘bargains’ in states across the Global North and the Global South, incorporates Indigenous issues, and judiciously assesses their prospects for promoting long-term sustainability. It focusses on mineral and fossil fuel extraction in particular including bargains designed to govern the former as the demand for minerals used in “green energy” increases and to limit the use of the latter.

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 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 open access book draws together key research from the UK Climate Resilience programme. It focuses on topics central to the programme’s research agenda, including improved characterisation and quantification of climate risks, enhanced understanding of the management of climate risks, and the development and delivery of climate services. Key chapters address the challenges inherent to undertaking resilience research, including how to make the term ‘climate resilience’ usable and useful, co-producing research between academics, policy makers and practitioners, and engaging and communicating outside of academia. This book is unique in providing a concise and accessible overview of the programme’s key lessons, placing the findings into a wider context and it will inform future research, policy and practice agendas.

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 edited collection conceptualizes professional basketball not just as a sport but as an historically, culturally, and economically embedded entity. The chapters analyse the fact that the sport of basketball contains alternative logics that can easily clash, and by treating professional basketball as the negotiation place of these multiple demands, ideas, and logics, the editors have identified three areas in which these clashes manifest: the realization of the game; the cultural impact of professional basketball and the global outreach of professional basketball.

The book is explanatory and qualitative, offering new perspectives and touching on topics including gender, diversity, racism, and minority experiences within professional basketball. As such it will be of interest to sport sociologists, as well as those researching the history of sport, sports marketing and cultural studies.

This book claims a discursive space in academic scholarship for knowledges and ways of knowing that capture the diversity, complexity and full humanness of Australian Muslim women’s subjectivities. It draws on in-depth conversational interviews with 20 Australian Muslim women from various ethnic backgrounds during which the women shared their experiences of being at the crossroads of their religious, gendered, racialised and ethnic identities. The book puts forward a decolonial feminist border methodology by weaving the work of decolonial feminist philosophers Maria Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa with postmodern feminist thinking on subjectivity and with discourse analysis. This methodology is used to centre and attend to the fluidity and plurality of Muslim women’s subjectivities, at the intersections of race, ethnicity, patriarchy, gender, sexuality and Islam.

This book is an interdisciplinary work that reveals the contemporary sustainability narratives in India within the context of various SDGs. Several case studies are presented, each of which sheds light on the challenges and constraints that are impeding the process of achieving SDGs and investigates potential long-term answers to socio-economic and environmental issues. Through empirical case studies from different parts of India, the book explores the current status of achieving sustainable development goals in India. The volume immensely benefits scientists, researchers, policymakers and practitioners as it offers a thematic and comprehensive understanding of challenges associated with mainstreaming SDGs at national, sub-national, and micro scales in India.

This edited volume focuses on the (un)equal access to the public space granted to the various groups that make up hybrid and multicultural societies: i.e. majority vs minority groups, immigrants vs non-immigrants, and so forth. With ‘access to public space’ the authors refer not only to participation through discursive practices in the public arena (e.g. political, social and institutional debates) but also to a full operationalization of the knowledge, habits and opportunities attached to true citizenship. Furthermore, in contexts of inequality and sociocultural conflict, the role of mediators has always been underscored as third-party figures (in)formally acknowledged and authorized–by participants in the interaction and/or external bodies–to set the ground for mutual understanding and foster balanced communication. Such mediation can range from interpreting in legal and medical encounters to dispute-resolution practices in situations of sociocultural clash among groups or individuals. Therefore, as is shown by the contributions in this volume, (intercultural) mediators are key agents in facilitating integration and providing disadvantaged groups with effective tools to gain access to the public sphere.

Drawing on theories in politics, sociology, gender and feminist studies, and social movement studies, this book compares and contrasts NGOized feminist organizations and informal street feminist groups in Belgium and Romania in order to understand the transformation of modern and contemporary feminist movements. Chapters trace the development of this NGOization process and its entanglements with neoliberal modes of governance and techniques and proposes an historically and empirically grounded analytical model to studying the NGOization of feminist movements as a multidimensional process. By analyzing the NGOization process through a cross-national comparison based on very different cases, the book disentangles the links between institutionalization, professionalization, bureaucratization and precarization and brings clarifications concerning the outcomes associated with them, such as demobilization, depoliticization, co-optation and burn-out. This book places the NGOization offeminist movement organizations within the specific context of relations between the state and the market in neoliberalism.

This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers across Gender & Feminist Studies, Social Movements, Sociology, and Politics.

Through a case study of Guyana, a society in which structural pluralism and ethnic/racial divisions coincide to a large extent, this book explores the specific way in which social structures interact with and affect social institutions, ethnic stratification, social actions, and both group-based and purportedly universalist ideologies. The book examines how a system of differentiation and stratification, inherited from colonial times, persists in its essential form in the current time despite attempts to dislodge it. While not falling prey to a structural determinism, the book argues, based on the evidence provided through both a historical sociological review of historical evidence and a presentist analysis of cross-sectional data on business ownership, that actions which coincide with the logic of social structures tend to prevail over actions which take that logic for granted. It is for this reason that political and social players with grand ideals have been less successful in their attempts to bridge the social and economic divides in the country, than those players whose interests coincided with the structural divides.

This book examines contemporary culture wars around gender in Italy. Applying methods from European cultural studies, the authors reconstruct the ways in which gender issues have become part of the contemporary culture wars in Italy. Recently the convergence between neoliberalism and populism has emphasised the centrality of gender in the political arena at the global level, as well as its crucial place in the rise of far-right and alt-right formations. By examining the cases of three key debates from the last five years, this book traces the moments, actors, and argumentative strategies that triggered these culture wars around gender issues. 

This book is a long-overdue contribution to the history of Black feminist activism in the UK. It provides unique insights into both historical and contemporary issues that impact Black women, their families and their communities, including immigration, education, policing, domestic violence and poverty. It fills a void in sociological and feminist literature by centring the voices, lived experiences and perspectives of women of the African and Caribbean Diaspora in the UK. Through the use of research, archival materials, narrative interviews, photographs, poems and reflective conversations, the authors explore the social issues which inspired these women's action for change. In drawing on personal and professional testimonies grounded in over two decades of community activism and scholarly analysis, the authors weave together the story of the Abasindi Cooperative, a woman’s organisation famed for its progressive and far-reaching social justice programmes. In so doing the authors reveal narratives of political struggle that have their resonance in present-day society. This book is an acknowledgment and celebration of the sociopolitical activism and achievements of Black women in the UK and represents the hope, solidarity and triumph possible when women organise collectively to tackle social and racial injustice.

This book is about the role that social media plays in the lives of individuals, societies, economies and polities. It therefore takes in a wide view of the emergent and changing impacts of social media platforms, and social media practices. As a consequence, it examines social media use through various intellectual and scholarly traditions --psychology, sociology, cultural studies, economics, and (national and global) politics – but it is primarily situated in the field of media and communications studies. As such, it frames its analysis of social media impacts using media studies concepts and terminology, and places media texts, forms, industries and agents (producers, audiences and other users) at the centre of each thematic chapter.

 This book offers a unique and much-needed perspective on disability and accessibility in urban context in South Africa. Drawing on lived experiences of disabled people, it documents the multidimensional aspect of poverty in the context of disability and built environment to show how poorly planned cities create physical and social barriers that impact the life of people with disabilities.

People Living with Disabilities in South African Cities is structured around three main insights and themes that inform the author's approach to disability and cities. The first is disability research; drawing on studies on planning and the built environment, the author highlights the role of physical environment in promoting inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities. The second theme is social protection, i.e. ways to provide support and resources for people with disabilities to enable them to participate fully in society. Finally, the author explores the policies and legislative context needed to create an inclusive society, challenging the role of governments and policy makers. Offering a comprehensive approach to studying disabilities and cities, the author aims to bridge the gap between disability studies, inclusive planning, and design to support the development of accessible cities in the African context. This invaluable book not only raises awareness on social inclusion, but also offers an invaluable guide to policy makers across the Global South to tackle and address inequalities.

This book explores current research on online instructed L2 acquisition, with a specific focus on the nature and impact of learner engagement in online L2 classroom interaction. It examines the topic of online learner engagement from various theoretical perspectives, discusses conceptual and methodological issues, synthesizes research on the role of learner engagement in online L2 classroom interaction, and critically assesses its connection to teaching practices across different L2 settings. The book is intended for a wide audience, including undergraduate and postgraduate Applied Linguistics, TESOL and Second Language Education students seeking to understand the significance of learner engagement in online L2 learning. It will also be useful for researchers interested in staying updated on recent findings regarding the benefits of learner engagement in online classroom interaction for L2 learning. Additionally, teachers, teacher trainers and educators in Teacher Education (TE) and/or continuous professional development (CPD) programs can benefit from the pedagogical insights offered in this book regarding online L2 instruction in various contexts.

This open access book explores epistemic justice in mental healthcare, bringing together perspectives from psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, activists, and lived experience researchers. Through eight chapters, authors identify threats to the agency of people who hear voices, experience depression, have psychotic symptoms, live with dementia, are diagnosed with personality disorders, and face serious mental health issues while receiving palliative care. Considering the power asymmetries in clinical interactions, where patients are vulnerable and healthcare professionals are uniquely placed to offer support, this book reaffirms the importance of recognizing patients as agents and collaborators. Topics covered include trust in the therapeutic relationship, dignity at the end of life, the social dimension of health, stigma in an acute ward, the harm caused by biases and stereotypes, the role of clinical communication, and the promise of digital health. Students, academic researchers, practitioners, as well as mental health charities will benefit from this timely collection.

This open access book unveils the hidden elite of Italy's third sector, offering a rare glimpse into the lives and minds of civil society's most influential leaders. Bridging elite and civil society studies, it presents pioneering research on these powerful yet understudied figures. Through in-depth analysis, the chapters reveal surprising insights about the elite's composition, attitudes, career trajectories, and views on power. Essential reading for scholars of democracy, civil society, and social policy, this volume challenges conventional wisdom about leadership in the nonprofit world. By illuminating the dynamics of Italy's third sector elite, it reshapes our understanding of civil society's role in modern democracies.

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 book brings together transformative perspectives on creative education. Creativity, creative education and pedagogy are not exempt from the impact of the complexities of our world. In fact, there seems to be an increasing demand for designing learning environments that are more able to support multiple modes of (inter)acting with the other and the world. It is a mandate of our time to increase learning opportunities in socioculturally diverse contexts. In this light, this book examines how creativity is shaped by sociocultural factors, and how it can be pivotal in challenging dominant narratives and entrenched pedagogies. Drawing on a diverse range of conceptual and practice-oriented chapters that include voices from the Global North and the Global South, this edited collection offers a pragmatic analysis of how the future of creativity in education could be shaped. Ultimately, it seeks to contribute to an understanding of creativity as a necessary tool for social transformation and the recognition that this transformation happens in multiple spheres. A thought-provoking analysis of how the future of creativity in education could be shaped to promote equitable learning environments, this is an ideal resource for creatives, academics, and students in the fields of education, psychology, and pedagogy, as well as practitioners and professionals interested in implementing creative diversity in education.

The volume offers a unique and comprehensive reflection on the role of sociology and sociologists in the transformation of post-socialist Eastern European societies. It provides detailed insight on the status of sociology in Eastern Europe, its institutional development, specifics of national sociological traditions, the controversial and ambiguous relationship with the political system and, importantly, state-of-the-art knowledge about the role of sociology as a discipline and sociologists as academics, educators, public intellectuals, experts, politicians, or civil society activists in three decades of transformation. The volume follows a cultural political economy approach and provides a series of national case studies that analyse the role of sociology in re-imagining Eastern European societies. This topical volume is of interest to a wide, interdisciplinary readership in the social sciences, especially students and researchers working on Eastern Europe and on post-socialist societies.   

This book analyses political leadership, addressing key questions central to the ongoing debate on the transformation of contemporary democracies. What exactly is political leadership? How does the relationship between leadership and power shape democratic transformations? What role do individuals play in broader historical processes? How does the personalisation of politics manifest, and how does it differ between leader democracy and populism? Is there still room for charismatic leadership in modern democracies and societies?

These are some of the critical questions explored in this volume. The book traces the sociological relationship between leadership and power from foundational theories in the social sciences, through the personalisation of politics, to the rise of leader democracy and populist leadership. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of political sociology, political science, and leadership studies, as well as anyone engaged in understanding the evolving dynamics of leadership in contemporary democracies.

This book draws upon genre fiction studies, forensic linguistics, and media studies to investigate the overlap between crime fiction conventions and the writing of missing persons appeals to the public. This book is based on a pilot project funded by the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, entitled 'Genre, Pacing, and Narrative in Police Missing Persons Appeals' (Aug 2021-Nov 2022). The authors identify a missing persons appeal as a literary and linguistic genre in its own right and illustrate the problems that arise when the appeals writing process goes unregulated or unstudied: there is currently little-to-no official, national police guidance, regulation, or standard procedure for writing a missing persons appeal in the UK. The authors also identify opportunities for improving the writing and delivery of appeals by further (and more intentionally) applying crime fiction conventions, narrative devices, and pacing, to maximise audience reach and increase the chances of recovering a missing person. This book will be of particular interest to genre fiction scholars (particularly those interested in crime fiction), forensic linguists, and media studies scholars.

This volume delves into how cutting-edge geospatial tools are revolutionizing social physics—the quantitative study of human behavior and spatial dynamics. Through real-world case studies, the book demonstrates how geospatial analysis is applied to pressing social and environmental challenges, from migration flows and resource distribution to healthcare access, crime, disaster management, and urban planning. Readers will explore how these tools reveal the complexities of human movement, socio-spatial interactions, and behavioral patterns.

The book is structured into five sections, each tackling key topics at the intersection of social physics and geospatial analysis:

• Population Dynamics and Social Behavior: Examines refugee settlements, migrations, resource allocation, and the socio-spatial impacts of political violence and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Social Learning and Environmental Management: Highlights how social learning influences agriculture, healthcare, and environmental management, with geospatial techniques improving outcomes like riverbank stability and crop yields.
• Spatial Heterogeneity and Social Behavior: Investigates how social behavior shifts across different spatial contexts, with a focus on crime, inequality, and pandemic response, including detailed insights into Kolkata’s COVID-19 management.
• Social Physics and Sustainability: Demonstrates how geospatial tools can advance sustainability efforts, including waste management, transportation optimization, and urban planning for peri-urban areas.

Ideal for academics, researchers, urban planners, and policymakers, this volume provides innovative methodologies to address complex social, environmental, and economic challenges. Whether examining migration trends or advancing sustainability, this book equips readers with the tools to transform how we understand human behavior and space.

Liberal democracy is usually treated as an independent variable, as possessing the absolutes of democratic rule. Its variable forms, changing principles and practice, and conscious destruction by its own advocates, in particular the United States, however, suggest that it is not what it appears to be. This book argues that it is a dependent variable, the political form required by the changing configurations of national capital and their countervailing forces. The forms of liberal democracy have always shifted in concert with the mode of production as their premise.

The absolutes of liberal democracy, the author contends, have never been anything but the abstracted principles of the marketplace. Their nature has now become especially visible for what they have been because the premise as national capital development has changed, leaving liberal democracy as a form without its original content, and its present content out of keeping with a national jurisdiction. As a political form, it persists, but its role has been transformed from the regulation of national capital accumulation to the enforcer of the demands of global configurations of capital.

It is a role that its citizens implicitly understand, as revealed in widespread political cynicism, decreasing electoral participation, and declining legitimacy that require ever greater measures of deceit from political leaders and increased means of coercive social control, including militarized police forces and pervasive electronic surveillance. There can be no going back to the stage of national politics because the neoliberal content of liberal democratic policies represents the necessities of global capital. And it is the contradictions of global capital that define the character of early 21st century political conflict.

This book asks readers to rethink youth activism in the political field as a lifestyle whose sense goes beyond the logic of political action. Reviewing the debate on the relationship between young people, politics and political participation, it shows that a significant portion of young people are involved in more social forms of participation, rather than with political ones, because their references to political values and ideologies, as well as their trust in political actors, are weak. But, in parallel, it also challenges the hypothesis that the various ways in which young people are present in the political sphere can be considered simply as forms of political participation. Presenting the results of research on young activists from radical-left groups in Italy, the book shows that their involvement is only partly attributable to reasons of political intervention; instead, desires for experimentation and self-expression, as well as shared tastes and sensibilities that far exceed the boundaries of the political, characterize their participation, and are therefore a component of a broader, distinctive lifestyle. Based on these findings, the book calls for a rethinking of youth engagement, the reasons for which could be largely outside the field of politics.

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 book privileges Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in research and serves as a voice in taking on some of the more marginal topics within methodologies. It is significant in that it is written by indigenous scholars themselves. The contributors shed light, for example, on Queer BlaQ bodies and place Indigenous women as central in reimagining fair academic practice; others return to their foundational texts to reflect on the growth of Indigenous Standpoint Theory. This book sees Indigenous Peoples as holding greater significance within research objectives and institutional practices and reimagines a research world embracing storytelling as foundational to academia. It is intended for students and early researchers, particularly Indigenous researchers, whilst also serving as an invaluable textbook for non-Indigenous people as it aids in explaining and outlining Indigenous research and is a valuable tool in the classroom and with research students. It demonstrates that Indigenous research approaches can sit beside and be equal to Western research, especially when engaging with the ethics process and for PhD students. This book is invaluable for non-Indigenous allies and researchers globally to further explain and outline Aboriginal (Australian) Indigenous research.

This volume is the first book-length collection of research on language, gender and sexuality in the societies of central and eastern Europe. Spanning a range of languages and political contexts, the chapters shed light on the intense debates that connect language use, gender equality, sexuality, history and belonging in this region today, while advancing perspectives on semiotic resignification that complicate some western-dominated frameworks in the discipline. Focused on a space increasingly described as a hub of ‘anti-gender’ hostility – as we currently witness in the curtailing of abortion rights, removal of gender from curricula and institutionalisation of anti-LBGTQ rhetoric – the book also foregrounds the rich continuities of feminist theory and protest in post-socialist societies, and their import for rethinking transnational sociolinguistic perspectives on heteronormative patriarchy, ‘anti-genderism’, neoliberalism, imperialism and conflict. Showcasing a range of approaches, themes and angles of inquiry, the book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students researching the topics of gender and sexuality within linguistics, but also within other interdisciplinary areas of the humanities and social sciences.

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 analyzes social research and genres of comics from cross-cultural perspectives. It disentangles the impact of comics in understanding social, cultural and political issues and considers the challenges they may raise from an ethical point of view. In nine case studies focused on topics such as migration, science and technology innovation, urban sociology and criminology, the book aims to answer the following questions: How can the comic medium help understand research’s narratives? To what extent can comics can be incorporated within traditional social research steps? What body of knowledge is being created by research-based comics? How can they represent social class without eliminating it or reproducing its stereotypes and how they deconstruct, without removing the “color line” the cultural difference or the naturalization of gender corporality? What are the barriers (theoretical and methodological) that researchers might encounter using comics to communicate sensitive topics? What are the main ethical considerations researchers must consider? While, at first glance, comics-based research seems to be tied mostly to Sociology, Anthropology and Geography, it also is relevant to a host of other disciplines including cultural studies, feminist studies, environmental studies, disability studies, science and technology studies, critical race studies, queer studies and animal studies. This book will also facilitate international and interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers with an interest in exploring the utility and limitations of the graphic medium.

This open access book paves the way for transformative strategies that increase the role of railway stations and other related transit environments in contributing to the global goals for sustainable development (the UN’s sustainability goals in Agenda 2030). Drawing on insights from a Swedish case, this book adopts a systems thinking approach to investigate how environments impact transit safety and provide strategies to address the diverse safety needs of users. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, including field inspections, analysis of official data, questionnaire surveys, and interviews. These data sources are analysed using statistical techniques, GIS mapping, and regression modelling. Building on these findings, the book also critically examines how future railway station designs are currently being planned to enhance accessibility and safety. This book answers the following questions: Why are certain station environments perceived as more unsafe than others, even though fewer crimes are committed there? Why do different groups of travelers differ about victimization and safety? From a governance perspective, what would make these places safer? What are the patterns of victimization of vulnerable groups, such as women and individuals with disabilities? The findings have international resonance as this book demonstrates the connection between safety and sustainability, offering useful insights and recommendations for researchers, practitioners and policymakers committed to shaping safer, more inclusive transit environments.

This Handbook offers an array of internationally recognized experts’ essays that provide a current and comprehensive examination of all dimensions of international population policies. The book examines the theoretical foundations, the historical and empirical evidence for policy formation, the policy levers and modelling, as well as the new policy challenges. The section Theoretical Foundations reviews population issues today, population theories, the population policies’ framework as well as the linkages between population, development, health, food systems, and the environment. The next section Empirical Evidence discusses international approaches to design and implement population policies on a regional level. The section Policy Levers and Modelling reviews the tools and the policy levers that are available to design, implement, monitor, and measure the impact of population policies. Finally, the section New Policy Challenges examines the recurrent and emerging issues in population policies. This section also discusses prospects for demographic sustainability as well as future considerations for population policies. As such this Handbook provides an important and structured examination of contemporary population policies, their evolution, and their prospects.

This book provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in Operations Research (OR) and Management Science (MS) as applied to sustainability. Its goal is to identify and describe ways in which OR and MS have been applied to and influenced the development of sustainability. Many of the issues we face today stem from the interconnectivity of the economy, society, and the environment, and from how both the economy and society are affecting the environment. In response, there have been a range of local and global efforts to advance society without harming the natural environment. The book showcases how OR/MS can help to address these issues, specifically with regard to renewable energy, smart industry, smart cities, transportation, smart homes and devices, etc.

This book is intended for professionals in the fields of energy, engineering, information science, mathematics and economics, and for researchers who wish to develop new skills in connection with sustainability, or whose work involves sustainability.