Web3 is the latest transformation of the World Wide Web, centred on public blockchains, Crypto tokens, and an ideology of decentralisation. Defining Web3 presents the state of the art in socio-cultural and economic research from leading scholars in the field of cryptocurrencies and blockchains.

Exploring Web3 as a 'crypto-carnival,' the papers in this collection take the carnival as their central motif and organising frame to mirror how Web3 is permeated by the carnivalesque, with its games, play, politics, anarchy, dissimulation, humour, vulgarity, excessive consumption, and counter-cultural aesthetics. Walking the line between both enthusiasts and critics, the authors analyse the token economy's messy complications, excesses, dangers, and tensions, and how they might play out for the future of the Internet.

Bringing together researchers, artists, and organisational designers to explore Web3's potential as a progressive platform for creative social coordination, this uniquely experimental volume tackles the deceptively simple question, 'What is Web3?' and imagines where it might take us next.

This volume discusses strategic approaches and relevant decisions of business, government, and civil society to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which were adopted by all UN member states in 2015. The book presents the proceedings of the 4th International Scientific Conference on Sustainable Development (ESG 2023), St. Petersburg 2023. At present, the economies of different countries are in a zone of turbulence and the current agenda pushes the transformation of all customary systems to maintain and keep the achieved positions.

This volume brings together material on sustainable development in economics and finance as well as industry. It is intended for scholars and professionals involved in public and corporate finance, financial accounting and auditing, sustainable development risk management, as well as economic growth, macroeconomics, monetary policy in a sustainable development environment, public and corporate governance and economics, corporate communications and public relations.

In the decade since the UN SDG agenda was established, how much progress have we really made? What can we be doing to ensure that we're on the right track? Is it too late to meet the 2030 Agenda?

Written by John Ure, an economist and academic turned consultant for UN agencies such as the World Bank, the IFC, the ITU, UNDP, UNESCAP, and more, Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is an accessible contemporary account of a fast-developing field of literature, evidence, and science around the SDG challenges. Dividing the SDGs into four core themes - poverty, environment, civil society, and global partnerships - Ure delves into the current status of each, identifying the main challenges to be overcome and examining what we can be doing to get there. With policy implications and practical guidelines for building momentum both at an individual and collective level, Ure provides a balanced yet a definitive and compelling assessment of the SDGs.

Cutting through the huge volume of literature for each of the SDGs as 2030 closes in, this immensely readable primer makes sense of the state of play for some of the most pressing existential questions of our time. It calls on policymakers, business professionals, educators, NGOs, media professionals, and the public to reevaluate policies and their role in the sustainable development agenda.

This open-access book provides fresh and much-needed insights into the interconnections between law, society and governance in Central Asia. By taking the interdisciplinary perspective of law and society, the book explores the social life of law and legal institutions in Central Asia in broader terms, encompassing not only the state legal system and institutions but also various informal (non-legal) forms of normative ordering. The topics covered within this book will be of interest to many scholars considering various theoretical and methodological challenges in studying law, governance, and informality in authoritarian regime contexts such as Central Asia. Considering interdisciplinary approaches taken within the volume, we aim to reach out to the students and scholars within the following disciplines and fields of study.

* Central Asian Studies

* Communist and post-communist studies

* Anthropology: Economic Anthropology, Legal Anthropology, Anthropology of Law

* Business sciences

* Socio-legal studies

* Transnational Politics and Governance

* Law and economics

What did Mao Zedong bring to China? Mao Zedong, a rare leader who is still regarded as a great hero on the Chinese continent, despite the large number of victims caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He called himself "Qin Shi Huang ?First Emperor of Qin?plus Marx". It can be said that he is an entity that combines the power of the emperor and the authority of Marx into one person. This book analyzes the features of Mao Zedong's thought and philosophy, his understanding of Marxism and class struggle, in particular, his peculiar attitude toward intellectuals, his actions leading to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which he initiated and involved the entire nation, as well as the analysis of the mechanisms that caused such catastrophes and tragedies. Finally, through these analyses, this book attempts to evaluate Mao Zedong with diverse personalities and his behavior, positive and negative, whether in political, social, economic, or philosophical areas.

The publication of scholarly research is both a major driver of social progress and a significant industry in its own right. Scholarly research is the focus of attention for countless numbers of scholars globally and a key measure of scholarly excellence. Much has been written about the conduct of research that is designed to help scholars attain appropriate standards of rigor and relevance, and indeed craft their research outputs in ways appropriate for different venues, notably as journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, and books. However, although scholarly researchers fulfill roles other than as authors, for instance as journal reviewers and editors, there is a dearth of consolidated information about the nature of editorial work. Drawing on over two decades of experience in editing scholarly journals, the author offers a more systematic guide to scholarly journal editing.

The book begins with an introduction to the art of scholarly journal editing,the nature of that art (Chapter 1), and an examination of editorial promulgation of cultural values of scholarly journals with an emphasis on responsible research (Chapter 2). Chapter 3 examines the many issues associated with sourcing content, and opines on the novelty, breadth, and depth of research, including discussions of indigenous theorization, serendipity, iconoclastic research, and the value of special issues. Chapter 4 deals with the review process and offers advice for formulating effective reviewer guidelines that lead to constructive and developmental advice for authors. The next two chapters discuss the audience of the journal as well as publisher relations. Finally, the book is concluded with thoughts and recommendations about emerging challenges, such as the ethics of AI tools (like ChatGPT), predatory journals, and the open-access movement.

Offering a practical guide to editing scholarly journals, this book will be a key resource for scholars making the leap from researcher to editor, regardless of discipline.

This book delves into Trinidad and Tobago's development with a fresh lens. It stands as the inaugural empirical exploration of the country's unique attributes, including its diversity, ex-British colony status, small-state categorization by population size, and its dependence on hydrocarbons.

Through meticulous empirical analysis, this book scrutinizes the nation's economic, social, and political outcomes within the context of these four distinctive parameters, offering fresh insights into the country's development trajectory.

What sets this book apart is its unwavering commitment to a data-driven approach. Drawing upon a vast array of databases from both international and national sources, it provides a thorough examination of development indicators, household welfare metrics, firm-level performance, and individual perspectives on a wide range of political, economic, and social issues.

For scholars, policymakers, and anyone with an interest in understanding how unique contextual factors shape a Trinidad and Tobago's development, this book offers an enlightening and data-rich perspective on the nation's journey towards progress and prosperity.

Germanos II (1223-40) was the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople at a critical period after its fall in 1204 to the fourth crusade, when Byzantium looked doomed to irrelevance, as its emperor and patriarch eked out a shadowy existence in exile at Nicaea. Germanos II's major achievement was to give his office renewed substance by obtaining recognition of his ecumenical authority not only from the community of Orthodox churches, but tacitly from the papacy itself. In doing so he also restored a modicum of prestige to the imperial dignity. Remarkable as his legacy was, it has gone largely unrecognised both by contemporaries and by modern scholarship. Why memory of his work was not better preserved is a puzzle to which his unfairly neglected sermons offer a key. They reveal an abrasive character, whose humble origins put him at odds with both the court nobility and the higher clergy. He was more concerned with the promotion of the evangelical ideal through preaching and social justice than he was with church administration and the performance of the liturgy. He was in conventional terms an embarrassment, who was best forgotten. The twenty-one sermons translated here were not, as was so often the case, exercises in belles-lettres but a sustained effort to bring about both social and moral reform as a precondition for the recovery of Constantinople from the Latins. They bear comparison with those of John Chrysostom, whose influence is evident in the way Germanos II used his sermons to create a dialogue with his audience. This new translation of a neglected source casts light on the surprising survival of Byzantium at a critical moment in its history.