This book offers a new analysis of the Nordic Peace after its onset in 1814, the year that marks the end to centuries of warfare between the Nordic countries, and the applicability of the Nordic solutions and principles for North East Asian conflicts. Through an analysis of three key post-1814 conflicts that the Nordic region resolved peacefully - the Union of Norway and Sweden (1814-1905), the issue on the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein between Denmark and Germany (1864-1920 & 1955), and the Aaland Islands problem between Finland and Sweden (1809-1922), the book examines how the solutions that underlie the Nordic Peace transcended causes for conflict, and if there is universal potential in the Nordic solutions for similar conflicts in North East Asia

This book explores how Australia managed the prisoner of war issue throughout the Second World War and the immediate post-war period. It examines how the Australian government responded to the captivity of thousands of Australians in Italy and the detention of an even greater number of Italians in Australia. The war, it finds, created a series of diplomatic and political challenges for belligerent governments, including Australia. The author contends that Australia's response was guided not only by other pragmatic considerations such as reciprocity, the practicalities of war and, importantly, national interest. The Australian government was not the only one to manage its prisoner of war policy in this way. By exploring the Australian government's relationship with Britain as part of the British Empire, this book clarifies under what circumstances and to what extent Australia sought to assert a level of independence in pursuing its national interest, even when that approach did not align with British policy.

This book examines Occidentalism, or the set of cultural, literary and political uses of 'the West', in the works of canonical 20th and 21st century Egyptian novelists. Beginning with the writings of Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Lorenzo Casini here traces the way that imaginaries and representations of the West became bound up with the notions of modernity and national identity with which Egyptian novelists grappled, from the works of Tawfiq al-Hakim to those of Taha Husayn. The book also explores the trope of the European woman as an embodiment of the free, modern, seductive West as an essential facet of Occidentalism in this formative period.

The second part of the book examines the ways in which later novelists -from Latifa al-Zayyat and Yusuf Idris, to Radwa Ashur and Ahdaf Soueif- subverted dominant Occidentalist themes as a way of re-examining concepts of personal, political, and national identity. The author argues that these later novelists reacted to the changing political circumstances in Egypt, from Nasser's rule and the slide to authoritarianism to the 2011 Revolution, to envisage different kinds of Egyptian political community with a more complicated and less binary relationship with the imagined West.

This book analyses America's alliances and strategic culture in the Indo-Pacific, from the Presidency of George W. Bush to Joe Biden. It advances the notion of the 'Pacific Dream', an American vision for Indo-Pacific integration. Its historical chapter covers the period from 1951 to 2001, presenting the reader with the evolution of Washington's most successful Indo-Pacific alliance network, the San Francisco System. The chapters that follow analyse every presidency from 2001 onward, focusing on defining the Pacific Dream and arguing that the San Francisco System is becoming outdated and slowly replaced by formats like the Quad, Quad Plus, or AUKUS. There is particular attention given to the growing importance American allies have in Washington's Pacific Dream and strategic culture. A case is made that American strategic culture is blending with concepts from allied strategic cultures, such as Japan, Australia, or South Korea.

This book sheds light on a particularly complex aspect of post-conflict security reform: the transformation of the Kosovo Liberation Army into the Kosovo Security Force, a unique political and legal process. The authors demonstrate how different international and domestic actors played a role in this process and navigated a complex web of international law, political interests and the requirements to maintain peace and security in Kosovo and the region. It makes a special contribution to ongoing discussions on state development and peacebuilding, while acting as a case study for upcoming post-conflict scenarios.

This book explores the news media's coverage of Indigenous-settler reconciliation following the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Using a comparative case study research design, the book examines news coverage of three significant Indigenous rights issues and events during the post-TRC era. The findings presented demonstrate that in the post-TRC era, the Canadian news media continue to produce systemic patterns in coverage which reject, marginalize and erase the territorial rights and claims of Indigenous Peoples. The author concludes that rather than helping to move the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and settlers forward along a path of reconciliation, power-sharing, and the resurgence of land-based self-determination, the news media are continuing to construct discourses and representations that work against the political objectives of Indigenous Peoples and reinforce settler colonial power relationships in Canada.

This book examines the various ways in which policymakers and political actors across different governmental levels have responded to the recent European refugee 'crisis', and the effects of these responses. Whereas previous studies have often focused on the discourses and policies implemented by national and local governments, this book shifts the focus to knowledge-formation and decision-making processes. Drawing on evidence from Italy - a country that has been centrally affected by the refugee 'crisis' - the book examines policy processes regarding asylum-seeking migration at sub-national, national and EU level. It argues that policymakers at all levels of government can be influenced by perceptions of public attitudes towards immigration, and that these perceptions are often divorced from objective evidence. The book will appeal to all those interested in multilevel governance, migration studies, public policy, and European politics.

This open-access book offers a clear and thorough exploration of Asia's history from an international relations perspective. The book investigates key political, economic, and cultural forces defining Asia. It highlights the historical and current significance of the Indo-Pacific region, particularly shedding light on its strategic role in global geopolitics. Through detailed historical analyses, the authors guide readers toward a comprehensive understanding of Asia's complex international relations, from colonization and imperialism, through the Cold War, into decolonization and the wave of democratization in the region, to the rise of China, unpacking the various dimensions of regionalism in Asia. This book serves as a practical scholarly resource for advanced students, researchers, and lecturers interested in understanding the region's past and its implications for future geopolitical dynamics. It is relevant to historians focused on Asia and to international relations and political science scholars interested in the shift to an Asian world order, from past to present.

Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that challenges us to think beyond warfare's acute violence of bullets and bombs to the "slow violence" of toxic exposure and lasting trauma.

In alternating chapters, Lemons vividly describes his time in Fallujah and elsewhere during the worst of the Iraq War, his descent into a decade-long battle with mysterious and severe sickness, and his return to health; Howe explains, with clarity and scientific insight, the many toxicities to which Lemons was exposed and their potential consequences. Together they cover the whirlwind of toxic exposures military personnel face from the things they touch and breathe in all the time, including lead from bullets, jet fuel, fire retardants, pesticides, mercury, dust, and the cocktail of toxicants emitted by the open-air "burn pits" used in military settings to burn waste products like paint, human waste, metal cans, oil, and plastics. They also consider PTSD and traumatic brain injury, which are endemic among the military and cause and exacerbate all kinds of physical and mental health problems. Finally, they explore how both mainstream and alternative medicine struggle to understand, accommodate, and address the vast array of health problems among military veterans.

Warbody challenges us to rethink the violence we associate with war and the way we help veterans recover. It is a powerful book with an urgent message for the nearly twenty million Americans who are active military or veterans, as well as for their families, their loved ones, and all of us who depend on their service.

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritise humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes, often unnecessarily. We also plan to use animals, AI systems and other non-humans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which non-humans matter, how much do they matter and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?

In The Moral Circle, philosopher Jeff Sebo challenges us to include all potentially significant beings in our moral community, with transformative implications for our lives and societies.

This book explores provocative case studies such as lawsuits over captive elephants and debates over factory-farmed insects, and compels us to consider future ethical quandaries, such as whether to send microbes to new planets and whether to create virtual worlds filled with digital minds. Taking an expansive view of human responsibility, Sebo argues that building a positive future requires the shedding of human exceptionalism and radically rethinking our place in the world.

This open access book provides the first in-depth study of the development of federal gender equality politics and policy in Australia from the 1970s to the present day. Australia has a history of gender equality innovation, including granting women's suffrage long before equivalent countries. From the 1970s on, it became the first country to introduce a women's adviser, femocrats (feminist bureaucrats) and gender responsive budgeting but then fell behind, partly due to the influence of Anglosphere neoliberalism. However, the Albanese government has pledged to make Australia a world leader in gender equality again. The book situates Australia in an international context, assessing the useful, though sometimes salutary, lessons which the Australian experience provides. It engages with key literature, including feminist political theory, discursive framing analysis, gendered public policy analysis, LBGTIQ+ issues, path dependency, and gender and leadership. It will interest academics, undergraduate and postgraduate researchers, public policy experts and practitioners, and a broader readership interested in issues of gender equality. The book makes innovative contributions to the study of the politics of gender equality policy, addressing what a gender equality policy agenda could look like if the needs of women, in all their intersectional social diversity, were the driving force. In doing so, it addresses a range of issues that are impacting the future of women, including an ongoing pandemic, technology, education and training agendas, issues of sovereign capability, securitisation, climate change and the growth of campaigns that oppose so-called "gender ideology". It explores how current government agendas, such as the focus on wellbeing, could be made even more gender-inclusive. Finally, the book suggests that Australia, as a multicultural but predominantly Western, settler-colonial society situated in the Asia-Pacific has some potentially unique insights to offer in a world facing major geoeconomic and geopolitical change.

The first English-language translation of former Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's penultimate book, published in Persian on the eve of the revolution that brought the downfall of the monarchy.

In the late 1970s, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran published his third book. In it, he gave his assessment of the progress of Iran in the 15 years since the launching of his White Revolution in 1963 and his vision for his country for the proceeding years and decades - the march towards, what he termed, Iran's Great Civilization. An indispensable source for understanding state ideology and domestic and foreign policy in the late Pahlavi period, as well as the shah's personal philosophy and political thought, this new edition of Towards the Great Civilization is based on the original unpublished English-language translation commissioned by the Pahlavi Library, edited by Robert Steele, with an introduction by Professor Ali Ansari.

This book presents a social, political, cultural, and socioeconomic history of Iranian Kurdistan since the 1979 Revolution.

In this study, Marouf Cabi shines a spotlight on the modern history of Iranian Kurdistan - an area of Greater Kurdistan understudied in comparison to its regions in Syria and Iraq. The book provides a historical narrative and analysis of Kurdistan since the Revolution. It addresses key changes and events in detail, such as the participation of the Kurds in the Revolution, the reinvigoration of the Kurdish movements and the emergence of the women's movement, the armed struggle of the 1980s, socioeconomic and political change of the 1990s, and the emergence of civil society since 2000. Cabi draws on extensive primary sources, including oral history, various newspapers, journals, and books published during the period.

Build an understanding of a country undergoing dramatic and accelerating changes in this new revised edition.

Taking readers from the Saudi Arabia of pre-Islamic times to the present day, this revised edition in the Histories of Modern Nations series examines how the current efforts to transform the Kingdom fits into the long history of the region. The Arabian Peninsula - the birthplace of Islam - has a long heritage of multiple intersecting civilizations. In recent years, major events in Saudi Arabia have left a mark not only within the region itself but also around the world. The country continues to undergo significant developments, as the government, led by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, aims to end its reliance on fossil fuels and build a dynamic society, without bringing into question its authoritarian political system, national security structure, and absolute monarchy.

Bring your knowledge up to date with revised information, based on new findings and historiography, on the political, military, religious, economic, and diplomatic history of the country. In addition, this book discusses events such as:
- The rise of Muhammad bin Salman - known as MBS - as the new crown prince under his father King Salman, who took the throne in 2015
- Vision 2030, a set of reforms designed to create a revived society, a robust economy, and a more vital national state
- The Saudi intervention in Yemen as part of the new King's foreign policy
- Goals to diversity the economy from oil to tourism and biotechnology
- Reforms impacting the status of women and the roles of the religious police

This unique and rich collection of narratives, written or dictated by formerly enslaved Africans between 1820 and 1876, offers a rare snapshot of African voices in the history of slavery. Including narratives from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean trades, as well as testimonies from enslaved people who never left the African continent, it expands the chronological and geographical scope of known accounts of enslavement, highlights the few but important women's narratives and provides thoughtful analysis and context about internal enslavement, the slave trade and the process of liberation.

Made up of 32 narratives, each carefully contextualised and introduced, this volume comprises some of the most substantial and previously unpublished accounts of the slave trade in the archives of the Church Missionary and Methodist Missionary Societies. Bringing new testimonies to light and enriching our understanding of enslaved voices, African Narratives of Slavery and Abolition is an important and much-needed contribution to the 'biographical turn' and study of the slave trade.

This book assesses strategic crisis management in Lebanon during the Covid-19 pandemic. It compares the government's responses to the crisis with those offered by Hezbollah, and assesses how their varying responses were perceived by the public. By shining light on the case of Lebanon, the book broadens our understanding of crisis management into a region that, due to social and political complexity, has been vastly understudied. It will appeal to scholars and students of public administration, crisis management and international relations, as well as all those interested in the Middle East more generally.

This volume illustrates and analyses the stereotypes and prejudices underlying the social representation of violence against women as it is narrated and described in Italy by the press and by court judgements. After a theoretical reflection on the role of culture and socialisation in reproducing the conditions underlying gender-based violence and its normalisation, and after reconstructing the historical evolution of gender roles and the stages of women's condition, the book presents the results of a sociological and of a socio-linguistic analysis on a vast corpus of 16,715 newspaper articles published by fifteen Italian newspapers on gender crimes (specifically: femicide; sexual violence; domestic violence; women trafficking) . The chapters analyze how national, macro-regional and local Italian press narrates violence against women but they also analyze a repertoire of 283 judicial sentences. The results show a clear tendency to redistribute the responsibilities of these crimes between the perpetrator and the victim, leading not only to secondary victimization but also to tertiary victimization, affecting the quality of Italian institutions as well as the democratic fiber of the nation.

The volume finally includes a compendium of the best and the worst practices found in the corpuses of sentences and newspapers' articles and a set of recommendations addressed to the institutional actors and journalists for a correct representation of gender-based violence, free from those stereotypes and prejudices that violate the dignity of male violence' victims and prevent them from accessing justice.

This book offers a biographical, intellectual and academic history of sociology in the late Qing and Republic of China period. The 46 sociologists featured in this volume are chosen from the pantheon of notable scholars who labored in this burgeoning field. Each of the 46 chapters is devoted to introducing one sociologist. Every chapter begins with a short biography that sheds light on how one sociologist became the scholar they were and earned their place in not only sociology, but also, for some of them, other fields in the social sciences and the humanities. This is followed by a review and analysis of the representative works by this sociologist, and how those laid the foundation for and contributed to the early development of a particular field of research in sociology as we know it today. The book weaves together a history of this academic discipline in China over those turbulent decades that organically combines personal details, methodological development, institutional changes and also larger social, economic and intellectual trends.

This book presents the restoration of rural mobile cinema network in the Great Triangle region at the conjunction of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet in China in the new century, which has added a new chapter to the long-standing complex relationship between cinema and social change. Based on five years of multi-sited fieldwork, abundant interviews and oral history narratives, this work shows the entanglement of the State, the projectionists and local film viewers in the historical and social context in a holistic analytic framework. By using the key concept of "being present" to examine the tangling relations between the actors in mobile cinema as social practice, the work argues that mobile cinema and contemporary Chinese society are mutually constructed in both textual and practical level.

This book delves into the profound question of whether moral philosophy rests upon metaphysical foundations. Contrary to the assertions of moral relativists such as John Mackie and Bernard Williams, who contend that ethics is devoid of metaphysical grounding, this work challenges their claims. Designed for those who approach morality and view ethics as a subject firmly anchored in metaphysics, this book is an essential exploration. It delves into the metaphysical underpinnings of morality, examining the source of morality in the metaphysical self, the intricate relations between ethics, self and the world and the interplay between ethics and metaphysics. It tackles fundamental questions, such as why freedom is the foundational postulate of morality and why, akin to Kant, we must acknowledge the importance of moral law. Furthermore, the chapters explore the nature of values and their metaphysical standing, the practical application of morality in the real world, the essence of virtues as attributes of the human soul, the interconnectedness of morality with rationality and spirituality and the challenges ethics faces from relativism and naturalism. The book appeals to moral philosophy researchers and students interested in unraveling morality's metaphysical roots. It offers an investigative exploration of the intricacies surrounding the problems of morality.

Based on a distinguished 35-year career in the RAF as an Air Commodore, Andrew R. Curtis highlights what is wrong with the way defence is managed today, and presents evidence-based proposals to fix it.

Defence is failing to deliver. From the ability of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop defence policy, to the single service's - Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force (RAF) - ability to acquire and maintain military capability. This is not a new problem; indeed, ever since the creation of the MoD in 1964, there have been tensions between the department of state and the armed forces over allocations of responsibility, authority and accountability.

Concerned with political oversight; the allocation of responsibility, authority, and accountability; administration of people; organisational structures; and policies and processes, Curtis compellingly demonstrates the critical need to reform the management of Defence for the UK's armed forces to fight and win in the future.

China abruptly became the second largest economy and, at the same time, the second largest R&D spender in the world, aiming openly to become an innovation powerhouse that holds the edge in critical technologies. The significant consequences on global trade flows, international security, governance and economy are increasingly drawing the attention of policymakers, academics, and industry leaders worldwide. The study highlights the main characteristics and trends of the national innovation system in China, as well as its strengths, challenges, and prospects. It examines in detail public policies, funding mechanisms for innovation, inbound and outbound FDI, IPR mechanisms, public perception towards technology, priority industries, and other factors. It thus identifies the main innovative actors of the system, including government, industry and research institutions, highlighting the patterns of interaction among them. The findings are showcased in a focused case study on the AI industry and further serve to advance policy recommendations for the EU.

Traditionally, China has made more effort and has achieved better results in understanding and learning from 'the West'. It is now vital for other countries to better understand China.