This book provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of all the materials making up the Star Wars franchise relating to the portrayal and representation of real-world history and politics.

Drawing on a variety of sources, including films, published interviews with directors and actors, novels, comics, and computer games, this volume explores the ways in which historical and contemporary events have been repurposed within Star Wars. It focuses on key themes such as fascism and the Galactic Empire, the failures of democracy, the portrayal of warfare, the morality of the Jedi, and the representations of sex, gender, and race. Through these themes, this study highlights the impacts of the fall of the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, and the failures of the United Nations upon the 'galaxy far, far away'. By analysing and understanding these events and their portrayal within Star Wars, it shows how the most popular media franchise in existence aims to speak about wider contemporary events and issues.

The History and Politics of Star Wars is useful for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of a variety of disciplines such as transmedia studies, science fiction, cultural studies, and world history and politics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This book illustrates tensions, absences, and unresolved challenges experienced in research - experiences that are so often left out of the conventional, smooth, and linear discussion of research that generally appears in academic publications.

Laying bare the messy details of research is increasingly important because leisure scholars' engagement in reflexive, collaborative, critical, arts-based, participative, and social justice-oriented research heightens the need to explore and examine significant moments that punctuate and undoubtedly shape both research and researchers. The chapters in this book make explicit the negotiations, contradictions, questions, doubts, and uncertainties often underlying research. As loose ends of the research process are unravelled, this book inspires researchers across disciplines to expand the ways we come to know and do research.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Leisure Sciences.

This book introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK.

Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt.

Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.

This book explores the impact of digital media on young children's lives and the role that the media and news industries play in the social construction of childhood. It highlights the pressing issues relating to young children's media use drawing on key research and examines the impact of digital media on their learning, development and socialization.

The chapters recognise the challenges digital media presents children and families, but also demonstrate how media use and engagement can have a positive impact on children's academic attainment, social capital and opportunities to create and curate online content. Covering key areas of concern such as safety, violence and children's mental health, the authors provide strategies to help children and families reduce the risks that can arise with digital media use and capitalise on the opportunities it can offer.

Including case study examples and opportunities for reflective practice, this is an essential text for students on Childhood and Early Childhood Studies courses and Early Years Foundation Degrees as well as practitioners wanting to develop their critical understanding of the role of the media in young children's lives.

This book is an accessible, practical, and systematic guide to stadium naming rights sponsorship within sport, designed to help practitioners and students gain a better understanding of how naming rights work and the benefits that sport and corporate organisations may get from this kind of arrangement.

The book explains the key principles underpinning naming rights deals and sports sponsorship in non-specialist language for readers with little prior knowledge of the subject. Drawing on examples and case studies of naming rights sponsorships in international markets, across both professional and amateur sport, the book examines key practical issues such as how naming rights differ from other types of sponsorship, why brands should sign a naming rights deal, and how organisations can maximise their return on naming rights sponsorship.

Concise, informative, and practice-focused, this book offers essential insights for all sport management practitioners, for any marketing executives considering sport sponsorship, and for any students or researchers with an interest in sport marketing, sport management, marketing, or events and facilities management.

The book's core argument is that an artificial intelligence that could equal or exceed human intelligence-sometimes called artificial general intelligence (AGI)-is for mathematical reasons impossible. It offers two specific reasons for this claim:

2. Human intelligence is a capability of a complex dynamic system-the human brain and central nervous system.
4. Systems of this sort cannot be modelled mathematically in a way that allows them to operate inside a computer.

In supporting their claim, the authors, Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith, marshal evidence from mathematics, physics, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, and biology, setting up their book around three central questions: What are the essential marks of human intelligence? What is it that researchers try to do when they attempt to achieve "artificial intelligence" (AI)? And why, after more than 50 years, are our most common interactions with AI, for example with our bank's computers, still so unsatisfactory?

Landgrebe and Smith show how a widespread fear about AI's potential to bring about radical changes in the nature of human beings and in the human social order is founded on an error. There is still, as they demonstrate in a final chapter, a great deal that AI can achieve which will benefit humanity. But these benefits will be achieved without the aid of systems that are more powerful than humans, which are as impossible as AI systems that are intrinsically "evil" or able to "will" a takeover of human society.

This text responds to changing literacy practices in the digital age by developing an interdisciplinary framework for analysis of digital content created by students. Drawing on scholarship that expands traditional understandings of literacy to account for new ways in which students engage with interactive text and media, Aguilera develops a methodological toolkit for formal analysis of multimodal representations. This book frames the central challenges faced by researchers entering the field of digital literacy studies, presents a nuanced discussion of digital mediation, and brings these topics to life in the case study of a Code Club, a library-based computer programming club for elementary, middle, and high school students.

The three-dimensional framework, which offers a schema for analysis of multimodal content, computational procedures, and contextual factors involved in the creation and interpretation of digital content, serves as a much-needed framework for the critical analysis of digital multimodal composition. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators in the areas of language and literacy, multimodality, and technology and digital innovation in education.

Youth Without Family to Lean On draws together interdisciplinary, global perspectives to provide a comprehensive review of the characteristics, dynamics, and development of youth (aged 15-25) who have no family to lean on, either practically or psychologically.

In this timely volume, Mozes and Israelashvili bring together leading international experts to present updated knowledge, information on existing interventions, and unanswered questions in relation to youth without family to lean on, in pursuit of fostering these youth's positive development. The various chapters in this book include discussions on different topics such as social support, developing a sense of belonging, parental involvement, and internalized vs. externalized problems; on populations, including homeless youth, residential care-leavers, refugees, asylum-seekers, young women coming from vulnerable families, and school dropouts; and interventions to promote these youths' mentoring relationships, labor market attainment, out-of-home living placements, use of IT communication, and participation in community-based programs. Additionally, various problems and challenges are presented and elaborated on, such as: Who needs support? Who is qualified to provide support? How should related interventions be developed? The book takes a preventive approach and aims to emphasize steps that can be taken in order to promote young people's positive development in spite of the absence of a family to rely on in their life and examines the best practices in this context, as well as the international lessons that deserve further dissemination and exploration.

This book is essential reading for those in psychology, sociology, public health, social work, law, criminology, public policy, economics, and education and is highly enriching for scholars and practitioners, as well as higher education students, who wish to understand and help the gradually increasing number of youth who are forced, too early, to manage their life alone.

Taking the reader on a journey through queer manifestations in games, this book advocates for video games as a rich, political and cultural medium, which provides us with tools to navigate the future of gaming.

Situated at the intersection of New Media, Game, Cultural and Queer Studies, the book navigates diverse interspecies relationships, queer villains from the past, Pokemon memes on border politics, flanerie in post-industrial cities and one-sided erotic fights. It provides new critical engagements with the works of Jose Esteban Munoz, Bonnie Ruberg, Guy Debord and Jack Halberstam, examining queer representation, gaming subcultures and dissident play practices. Making the bold claim that video games might be the queerest medium today, this book provides organic, self-reflective and, ultimately, thought-provoking thinking in which both games and gamers are queered.

This book will be of interest to scholars researching game studies, sex, gender and sexuality in new media, but also readers interested in literature, digital media, society, participatory culture and queer studies.

From the perspective of the philosophy of science, this book analyzes the Internet conceived in a broad sense. It includes three layers that require philosophical attention: (1) the technological infrastructure, (2) the Web, and (3) cloud computing, along with apps and mobile Internet. The study focuses on the network of networks from the viewpoint of complexity, both structural and dynamic. In addition to the scientific side, this volume considers the technological facet and the social dimension of the Internet as a novel design.

There is a clear contribution of the Internet to science: first, the very development of the network of networks requires the creation of new science; second, the Internet empowers scientific disciplines, such as communication sciences; and third, the Internet has fostered a whole new emergent field of data and information. After the opening chapter, which offers a series of keys to the book, there are nine chapters, grouped into four parts: (I) Configuration of the Internet and Its Future, (II) Structural and Dynamic Complexity in the Design of the Internet, (III) Internal and External Contributions of the Internet, and (IV) The Internet and the Sciences.

Following this framework, The Internet and Philosophy of Science will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of technology as well as science and technology studies.

Although sport participation decreases on average for women once they become mothers, female athletes from the recreational, to the competitive, to the elite level have demonstrated that motherhood does not signal the end of sport engagement and athletic identities, or career and leadership roles. This is the first book to offer an in-depth examination of the nexus of women, sport and culture within the context of motherhood, uncovering new narratives that raise the profile of non-conformist performances.

The book brings together international researchers using innovative and rigorous qualitative methods to show how sport affords or constrains women's agency to devise, negotiate and live alternative versions of motherhood in and through sport. Presenting stories of sporting mothers in contexts including martial arts, leisure swimming, recreational running, triathlon and climbing, the book explores the shifting meaning and practices of motherhood across social, cultural and media/digital landscapes.

Deliberately challenging taken-for-granted ways of thinking about motherhood and sport, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the socio-cultural study of sport, gender and sport, women's studies, sport coaching, sport leadership, sport development, or qualitative and digital research methods.

This book is the first national study of the football pools in Britain which examines the politics and culture of the gambling on the football pools. It charts the rise of the football pools, focusing upon its rapid growth from the 1920s and its prolonged decline in British culture from the 1990s, partly as a result of the National Lottery. The book explores how this new gambling activity became a significant leisure opportunity for the working class - a way to feel that the individual skill of the punter could lead to the winning of some life-changing jackpot cheque being presented by a sporting personality of celebrity. Dominated by Littlewoods, and other large commercial companies, the weekly filling-in of the coupons was considered to be a safe form of investment, guaranteed by the integrity of the pool companies, rather than some seedy gambling operation.

The Football Pools and the British Working Class looks at different elements of the football pools from what attracted people to this form of gambling to how the industry developed and adjusted to the suspension of the football fixtures in 1936, and the bad winter of 1962-3. Above all, it examines the deep hostility that surrounded the filling in of the football pools arising from the National Anti-Gambling League, religious groups, the football authorities and MPs.

This book will appeal to all those interested in the history of British football and 20th century British working class culture.

This book looks at how sport and sports organisations have had to innovate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Against a backdrop of lockdowns, empty stadia and a fast-moving public health crisis, the book presents fascinating case studies of innovation and crisis management in sport, with valuable lessons to be learned for preparedness and resilience in future crises. The book explores how managerial processes have evolved during the pandemic in areas as diverse as sports communication, youth sport, sports events, esports, sports tourism, and physical activity, in both professional and community settings. It considers the fundamental importance of technology as a tool of innovation, and considers how different stakeholder groups, from governing bodies to athletes to fans, have developed new pathways of engagement and what that might mean for the future development of the sport industry.

This book is fascinating reading for any student, researcher, practitioner or policy maker looking to better understand this profound moment in the history of sport and society, and to anybody with an interest in key themes in sport business and management, such as innovation, crisis management or consumer behaviour.

Bringing together leading match-fixing researchers from different fields, this book offers new theoretical and applied perspectives on this persistent problem in sport and wider society.

The book explores the foundations of match-fixing from multiple viewpoints, from sociology and criminology to policy and governance, exploring topics such as the use of network governance theory, ethics and integrity, and management aspects that position match-fixing in sport's commercial landscape. Featuring cases and data from all around the world, the book explains how match-fixing has become a prominent feature of contemporary sport, and considers the efficacy and practicability of interventions to solve these problems.

This is fascinating and important reading for any advanced student, researcher, practitioner, or policymaker with an interest in sport management, sports business, sport policy, sport development, sport law, or criminology.

This book analyses how contemporary genre cinema represents trans-identified characters.

Informed by key debates within transfeminism, queer theory, contemporary trans studies - and engaging with the concerns voiced by gender critical feminism - this culturally oriented book critiques the representation of trans characters in a range of cinematic genres, including the musical, period costume drama, the road movie, melodrama, coming-of-age stories, and romances. The case studies address the ways in which trans identifications have been coded within the narrative and stylistic expectations of the genres. Are genre films successful in affirming trans identifications or do they reinforce trans stereotypes and anti-trans discourses?

This is a timely and accessible book, which addresses Anglophonic, European and Latin American cinemas, and is ideal for students studying courses in Film Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies or Gender Studies.

This volume explores drag in global online spaces as a distinct departure from the established success, and limitations, of RuPaul's Drag Race. Centred around discourses of LGBTQ+ visibility and political mobilization, the volume addresses how these discourses have moved beyond the increasingly limited qualities of the television series to reconfigure the parameters of drag in emerging communities and spaces.

By reconceiving of drag in new settings, this volume uncovers the crucial social and political potential for community-building in an increasingly fragmented and isolated global space. Chapters by a diverse team of authors delve into the recognition of new articulations of LGBTQ+ visibility and political mobility through drag in online space; the implications of drag celebrity for issues such as labor and profit in the digital sphere; the (re)appropriation of mainstream drag in emerging online environments and communities; and the reverberations of drag in underrepresented and underresearched areas of the world.

Offering new insights into the rise of drag in a global digital public sphere, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of media studies, cultural studies, digital media and cultural studies, critical race studies, gender studies, sexuality studies, queer theory, film, and television studies.

This volume explores how horror comic books have negotiated with the social and cultural anxieties framing a specific era and geographical space.

Paying attention to academic gaps in comics' scholarship, these chapters engage with the study of comics from varying interdisciplinary perspectives, such as Marxism; posthumanism; and theories of adaptation, sociology, existentialism, and psychology. Without neglecting the classical era, the book presents case studies ranging from the mainstream comics to the independents, simultaneously offering new critical insights on zones of vacancy within the study of horror comic books while examining a global selection of horror comics from countries such as India (City of Sorrows), France (Zombillenium), Spain (Creepy), Italy (Dylan Dog), and Japan (Tanabe Gou's Manga Adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft), as well as the United States.

One of the first books centered exclusively on close readings of an under-studied field, this collection will have an appeal to scholars and students of horror comics studies, visual rhetoric, philosophy, sociology, media studies, pop culture, and film studies. It will also appeal to anyone interested in comic books in general and to those interested in investigating intricacies of the horror genre.

This volume of primary source material examines the organisation of music in Britian during the ninteenth century. Sources explore music careers and professions, music societies, festivals and concerts, and popular music. The collection of materials are accompanied by an introduction by Rosemary Golding, as well as headnotes contextualising the pieces. This collection will be of great value to students and scholars.

This book about Miles Davis is more psychologically driven than a straight biography; but it does cover his musical career, as well his spirituality as a jazz musician. Davis rocketed to jazz fame as a trumpeter, making a plethora of jazz recordings during his life time; and his music kept the "jazz world" on edge for almost fifty years. This book also discusses Davis's religion, politics, civil rights activism, and his personal struggles as a Black man in the United States.
Miles Davis and Jazz as Religion: The Politics of Social Music also shows how Miles Davis made a political statement, as he challenged racial stereotypes in jazz or "social music." Artistically, Davis was able to integrate rock, jazz, classical music, rap and blues, in his music, as he had a passion for changing his "social music." In this regard, Miles Davis's music was important to him intellectually, spiritually, and psychologically, because he wanted to make his musical contributions count.

This book investigates the activities undertaken by the variety of actors that contribute to accomplishing cultural policy in Europe. These range from policy formulation and administration at the national and local levels, to artistic and cultural production activities to institutional governance.

Arts and culture are an essential component to individual and collective quality of life. States, regions and municipalities increasingly recognize this intrinsic importance, as well as the instrumental values of the arts and culture. This has led to an increased interest in cultural policy, usually focusing on the policy process and policy effects. How cultural policy is accomplished is a matter of correspondingly increased importance, but less researched and understood. This volume shows how accomplishing cultural policy encompasses a vast expanse of activities, all unique but bound together as part of the continuous process of producing publicly subsidized art and culture for social and aesthetic purposes. The chapters also explore a range of thematic tensions that commonly arise in accomplishing cultural policy, such as the commercialization of arts and culture and counter-reactions; the challenges and means of promoting inclusiveness; the politics and effects of funding of the arts and culture; and good governance and vested interests in the arts and culture. Read together, these vivid case studies present a broad and unique picture of the wider and interconnected accomplishing process by expounding on the middle-ground between the policy formulation process and artistic and cultural production.

Adding a novel conceptual formulation to studies of cultural policy, this book will appeal to practitioners, scholars and advanced students with interests in the sociology of the arts and culture, arts and culture management, cultural policy and cultural governance.

This volume of primary source material examines music and British national identity during the ninteenth century. Sources explore the reception of British music, continental and other foreign music, English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish music, and Empire. The collection of materials are accompanied by an introduction by Rosemary Golding, as well as headnotes contextualising the pieces. This collection will be of great value to students and scholars.

A must-read guide to conducting qualitative field research in the social sciences

Doing Field Projects: Methods and Practice for Social and Anthropological Research delivers a thorough and insightful introduction to qualitative field methods in the social sciences. Ideal for undergraduate students just starting out in fields like anthropology, sociology, and related subjects, the book offers readers twenty instructive projects. Each project is well-suited as a standalone exercise, or several may be combined as a series of field work assignments.

From interview techniques to participant observation, kinship analysis, spatial mapping, photo and video documentation, and auto-ethnography, Doing Field Projects covers each critical area of qualitative fieldwork students are likely to encounter. Every project also contains discussions of how to execute the research, avoid common problems and mistakes, and present the uncovered data in several different formats.

This important resource also offers students:

• A thorough introduction to fieldwork, including the history of fieldwork methods, the shift from colonial to post-colonial anthropology, and discussion of fieldwork vs. ethnography
• Comprehensive explorations of getting started with fieldwork, including necessary equipment, research design, data presentation, and journal keeping
• Practical discussions of the ethics of fieldwork, including the "Do No Harm" principle, institutional approval, openness, and anonymity
• In-depth examinations of autoethnography, proxemics, mapping, recorded interviews, participant observation, and engaged anthropology
• The opportunity to conduct a complete fieldwork course using digital and online resources only
• Supporting learning material for each chapter, including a brief outline of Learning Goals and a paragraph summarizing the contents

Doing Field Projects: Methods and Practice for Social and Anthropological Research is the perfect guide for undergraduate students taking courses and programs in which qualitative field methods are central to the field, like anthropology and sociology.

A timely and incisive exploration of disinformation and its impact in the Global South

In Disinformation in the Global South, media and communications scholars Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales deliver a unique and geographically diverse collection of perspectives on the phenomenon of disinformation as it manifests in the Global South. In many parts of the Global South, coordinated political disinformation campaigns, rumor, and propaganda have long been a part of the social fabric, even before disinformation has become an area of scholarship in the Global North. The way disinformation manifests in this region, and responses to it, can therefore be highly instructive for readers around the world.

Through case studies and comparative analyses, the book explores the impact of disinformation in Africa, Latin America, the Arab World and Asia. The chapters in this book discuss the similarities and differences of disinformation in different regions and provide a broad thematic overview of the phenomenon as it manifests across the Global South. After analyzing core concepts, theories and histories from Southern perspectives, contributors explore the experiences of media users and the responses to disinformation by various social actors drawing on examples from a dozen countries. Disinformation in the Global South also includes:

• A thorough introduction to Southern perspectives on national histories, theories of disinformation, and research methods in disinformation studies
• Global case studies of cultures of disinformation, including ethnographic insights into how audiences engage with disinformation
• Comprehensive explorations of responses to online and offline disinformation, including discussions of news literacy and the management of disinformation

Praise for the Third Edition of The Ethical Journalist

"A riveting examination of journalism ethics, updated for the seismic change that is now an industry constant. The Ethical Journalist is written to fortify journalism students, but real-life examples of everything from faked photographs to reporting on presidential lies make it valuable to all of us who care about the news."
ANN MARIE LIPINSKI, CURATOR OF THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY AND FORMER EDITOR OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Praise for the Earlier Editions

"The book is superb - the definitive work on journalism ethics and practices. It should be a basic text in every school of journalism."
GENE ROBERTS, FORMER EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER AND FORMER MANAGING EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

"At a time when the internet has turned journalism inside out and blown up long-held traditions, the need for media ethics is even more critical. This is the book to help guide students and the rest of us through the revolution."
ALICIA C. SHEPARD, FORMER NPR OMBUDSMAN

The third edition of The Ethical Journalist is a comprehensive examination of current issues in the field of journalism ethics, researched and written by four journalists with experience in both the newsroom and the classroom. It gives students and professionals the tools they need to navigate the challenges of journalism today, first explaining the importance of ethics in journalism and then putting a decision-making strategy to work. The text is supplemented by case studies and essays, and two companion websites provide additional materials for educators and a forum for all users to discuss new topics in journalism ethics as they arise.