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How do we hold onto friends and communities in a world that feels increasingly fragmented?

This timely collection explores how social connection unfolds across personal, physical, community and digital spaces. From loneliness to belonging, the collection explores the broader social forces that shape our interactions. Packed with fresh insights and accessible research, the contributors bridge theory and practice.

Offering practical strategies for policy and practice, this book charts paths to meaningful connection. An essential guide for policy makers, academics and anyone seeking deeper connections, it provides hope - and action - for a more connected future.

Informed by transdisciplinary research in social and environmental justice, Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19 is a contribution to the scholarly discourse as well as a form of activism for environmental, climate, and health justice. Using race and Indigeneity as an analytical lens, the book explores how justice in the era of climate change and COVID-19 is envisioned, depicted, and achieved. With a focus largely on humans and environments, its explorations of (in)justice illustrate the wide health and safety gaps between individuals, communities, and even nations living under different environmental conditions. The volume also moves beyond the human toward justice for all beings. This book foregrounds voices from world communities, provides solutions to environmental and health crises, and advances environmental justice.

As Canada takes stock of its immigration programs, the factors that promote successful settlement have taken centre stage - for researchers, service providers, policymakers, and for the migrants themselves.

Social Resilience and the Urban Migrant Experience explores the conditions and supports that help international migrants thrive, not just survive. Focusing on resilience, chapters examine how immigration status and family dynamics shape migrants' agency and their responses to the inevitable challenges of building new lives. They draw attention to the issues created by societal constructs, while highlighting the resources from social institutions of all types: governmental, professional, educational, and faith-based. Emphasizing the experiences of structurally oppressed migrant groups, contributors note the varied ways that capitalism, as well as class, gender, and race, can contribute to inequality in settlement practices.

Directed at a wide audience of community and government practitioners, policy experts, academics, and civil society activists, Social Resilience and the Urban Migrant Experience illuminates both the impediments to newcomer integration and the ability of newcomers to engage successfully in adaption and resistance.

Engaged public scholarship is transforming the humanities. Divided into four parts, this provocative volume examines historical and contemporary sites of education and pedagogy, challenges dominant narratives about certain symbolic sites in the United States and across the Americas, highlights the struggle of marginalized communities as they wrestle to rewrite individual and collective memories of violence and trauma, and features public humanities projects that address themes relating to place and environment. Each chapter is concerned with the importance of personal relationships in educational settings, power relations in public humanities projects, and the nurturing of "new" civic spaces and places. This volume makes an important contribution to timely debates about public-facing and publicly engaged scholarship, especially in the humanities.

Being before God offers a thorough account of Cornelio Fabro's Thomistic reading of Soren Kierkegaard's theology, speaking both to systematic theology and Kierkegaard studies.

Italian Stigmatine priest and Thomist philosopher Cornelio Fabro is well known for his work on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Yet despite also authoring many studies on Soren Kierkegaard, Fabro remains virtually unknown among Kierkegaard scholars outside of Italy. Being before God sheds light on the influence of Kierkegaard's writings on Fabro's Thomism and provides a detailed historical account of Fabro's contributions to Kierkegaard studies and systematic theology. Drawing upon rare archival material, including materials that have never been translated into English, Joshua Furnal speaks to Kierkegaard's relationship to Catholic theology, the Kierkegaardian aspects of Fabro's Thomism, and Fabro's Thomistic approach to Kierkegaard in turn. Being before God also highlights how Fabro's work brings together ideas from both Aquinas and Kierkegaard to broaden the horizon of contemporary theology.

Through his meticulous research, Furnal contends that, despite his lack of modern recognition, Fabro remains one of the most important European interpreters of Kierkegaard in the twentieth century.

Intersectional Activism in Environmental Communication explores the representation of environmental activism around the world. Exploring issues from Indigenous women's activism in Brazil and India to energy protests in South Korea, to the Dakota Access pipeline construction on Standing Rock Sioux territory, to the contours of the internet, this collection offers critical reflection points for the representation of environmental activism and theorizes the various channels and audiences for embodied and mediated environmental communication. The intersectional approach reflected in this work explores circumstances where powerful interests distract, dissuade, and undermine emergent voices and the ecological values they articulate. This volume addresses how intersectional environmental activism can effectively challenge systems and practices that perpetuate ecological degradation and environmental injustices.

Transcultural Exchange through Art provides an exploration of two countries and their capital cities, two regions and their growing cultural engagement with one another, soft and hard power and their impact on the arts, multiculturalism, museums, globalization, cosmopolitanism and postcoloniality.

Drawing on the author's experiences of working in Kenya and living in South Korea, as well as interviews with artists, curators and other practitioners, the book demonstrates that experiencing "otherness" through the imaginative engagement of art can cultivate appreciation of cultural diversity. Various case studies from Nairobi and Seoul are analyzed to unpack narratives about nation, self and other through the cultural and creative industries. By focusing on two non-Western regional capitals whose urban contemporary development is affected by their colonial pasts, the book explores the larger dynamics of postcolonial nation building and the formulation of cultural identities in the face of rapid economic development and demographic changes. The issues identified in the study are linked to wider debates concerning the role of the arts and art museums in relation to migration, globalization and multiculturalism.

Transcultural Exchange through Art will be of great interest to academics and practitioners working in the cultural and creative industries, museum and curatorial studies, visual culture studies, African studies and Asian studies. The book transcends disciplinary boundaries and relates academic research to pragmatic issues such as diversity and inclusion in public cultural spaces.

The anthology also includes contributions from prominent scholars such as Glen Coulthard, Dara Culhane, Michael Fabris, Sarah Hunt, and Heather Dorries. Five complementary essays explore various aspects of structural change, institutional constraints, and broader commitments to Indigenous knowledge within university settings. Aimed at readers in Indigenous law, environmental studies, anthropology, and geography, The RAVEN Essays is a book created by students for students, and by academics for the academy.

Together, the contributors reflect on the powerful formation and enactment of Indigenous law, environmental stewardship, place-based knowledge, pedagogy, and literacy - both within the academy and in the broader community, across land, water, and culture.

The green digital transition is underway. But what does this transition look like when dictated by the energy and resource demands of monopoly tech? How has this situation come to be? And where is it being resisted?

This provocative book uncovers the hidden intersections of land, resource extraction and climate policy in the transition to "greener" and "smarter" economies. Challenging eco-modern and techno-solutionist approaches, the book links narratives of sustainability with colonial histories and uneven development, arguing that tech-driven transitions replicate exploitative patterns of imperial capitalism. Using Ireland as a focal point, the authors show how the history and depth of the country's postcolonial dependency on multinational investment, especially US technology companies, comes into friction with disparate land-based struggles.

Thinking with these movements, the book offers a critique of dependent models of development and proposes an anti-imperialist approach to environmental politics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of biochar as a sustainable solution within the context of agriculture, waste management, environmental remediation, and the circular economy. The initial chapters introduce the concept of biochar and its alignment with circular economic principles and presents the mechanisms of action and multifunctional benefits across different sectors. The chapters explore innovative biochar production techniques using agricultural residues, food waste, and municipal sludge, highlighting efficiency, scalability, and environmental impact. The book also details the application of biochar in soil enhancement, wastewater treatment, and bioenergy systems including biogas and biohydrogen production. The final chapters emphasize the pivotal role of biochar in carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, solidifying its relevance to global sustainability goals.

Key Features:

• Explains the concept of biochar within the framework of the circular economy and sustainable development
• Details innovative production techniques using various biomass feedstocks including agricultural waste, food scraps, and sewage sludge
• Explores agricultural applications, such as improving soil structure, fertility, and crop yield
• Presents industrial uses of biochar in removing contaminants like heavy metals and dyes from wastewater
• Highlights its role in anaerobic digestion and renewable energy, especially in biogas and hydrogen generation

This book is useful for researchers and professionals of biotechnology and environmental sciences.

An examination of male screen sex appeal and the ways that race, ethnicity, and national origin combine with performance tools and film and television style to aid or inhibit actors' circulation on an increasingly global stage.

Sex appeal is complicated, especially for screen actors. Looking good is not enough. Charisma and charm have to register when the camera rolls. And sexiness has to travel. Today's heartthrobs are expected to raise temperatures all around the world.

Cosmosexuals theorizes male sex appeal as a form of capital in an age of international stardom. Screen scholar Mark Gallagher assembles a diverse cast - Idris Elba, Pedro Pascal, Simu Liu, Ryan Gosling, and more-analyzing how each actor uses his appearance, voice, and movement to perform in ways that viewers across cultural divides register as sexually appealing. Cosmosexuals also explores the intersection of global sex appeal and exoticism in historical and contemporary contexts-from the malleable racial identities of Omar Sharif and Conrad Veidt to Mads Mikkelsen's "accented whiteness"-and assesses the barriers that confine nonwhite actors, in spite of their talent or celebrity. Far more than handsome faces and chiseled abs, male sex symbols emerge as laborers subject to disciplinary regimes steeped in patriarchy, racism, and structural inequity. As such, they have much to tell us about the economies of taste at work in the construction of screen masculinity and the terms of human desire.

In Becoming a Plebeian Leader, Jose Antonio Villarreal Velasquez examines situations where ordinary women and men become plebeian leaders in urban-popular neighborhoods.

Combining oral history, archival research, and ethnography, the book examines plebeian leaders' moral careers through and within the meaningful and fluctuating connections among urban-popular neighborhoods in the city, and the nation-state from 1960 to the present time. Specifically, Villarreal Velasquez reconstructs, compares, and explains the historical, sociological, and political formation of two plebeian leaders' moral career paths in Guayaquil (Ecuador); the skills, feelings, and knowledge they acquired to perform their tasks and operate within societal hegemonic frameworks and large-scale structural transformations.

Becoming a Plebeian Leader will be of interest to researchers studying urban popular politics in the Global South.

Environmental Hermeneutics in the Anthropocene is a diverse collection of essays that approach contemporary environmental problems with the tools and perspectives provided by the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, advanced by philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Paul Ricoeur.
Engaging both established and new voices, this book presents a significant contribution to the field by expanding the scope of philosophical hermeneutics to environmental issues. It addresses a broad scope of environmental topics such as the Anthropocene, climate change, degrowth, environmental justice, the limits of language in understanding nature, and environmental aesthetics in environmental practice. Together, the chapters show the crisis of regional and global environmental problems to be in part a crisis of interpretation. The ways that human beings understand their relationship to environments shape and determine how to act and live within places. Yet the values and ideals that different people have about their lived environments often come into conflict. Thus hermeneutics plays an important role in environmental discourse: it helps adjudicate these conflicting understandings.
This collection of essays demonstrates the unique way that environmental hermeneutics can be employed to understand environments in this age of the Anthropocene. It will appeal to researchers and upper-level students in environmental humanities, environmental studies, ethics and philosophy.

Everyday Life and Urban Studies revisits the ordinary routines that shape urban life during the crises-ridden last century and early new millennium. Vast parts of Henri Lefebvre's intellectual work on everyday life however remain underappreciated in urban studies. This book seeks to re-integrate Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life into studies of urbanization. Starting in the 1920s, the book realigns historical insights with contemporary urban phenomena to uncover patterns of capitalist urbanization. By showing the relevance of grasping the minutiae of everyday life to understanding cities, the urban and urbanization today; everyday life, space, and philosophy are brought back in tension. This work combines analytical-methodological exploration, pedagogic mission, and theoretical advances to carve out an everyday-theory-based approach to urban studies situated at the interface of the spatial arts, the humanities, and the social sciences. This book examines the transformative potential that lies hidden in everyday life thereby unravelling a way to nurture hope amid unsettled urban conditions.

The book is essential for students, faculty, and researchers in the fields of urban studies, city planning, urban design, human geography, sociology, cultural studies, and political science.

Data increasingly forms the backbone of systems and processes that shape how we do things and how we relate to each other. Datafication - the uptake of data to reorganize social processes - is reshaping everything from loyalty programs and digital identification systems to credit card payments and rental pricing platforms. Artificial intelligence accelerates these processes.

Making sense of what these changes mean for our everyday lives is no easy task. Datafied systems are highly technical and designed to be convenient and seamless; we tend to encounter them in brief moments of individualized transaction, which makes them difficult to see, let alone read, and their illegibility makes them very challenging to respond to. Communing Data Literacy offers a novel set of concepts and tools to help people make sense of how technology is altering their communities and their social interactions. Building on three years of design research by digital rights organizations in Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, the volume analyzes people's everyday experiences with datafication, rethinking data from the perspective of community and offering practical techniques for community engagement.

Communing Data Literacy pushes back against the individualism and techno-centrism of Western data literacy practice and scholarship, providing English readers with the opportunity to engage with Latin American perspectives.

In the context of authoritarian rule, torture has repeatedly emerged as a tool of social control. When we ask why and how through a comparative lens, patterns become visible. The right-wing military regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain and Augusto Pinochet in Chile exemplify how militarized masculinity served to enforce political repression and instill fear.

Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile proposes that, until we connect the dots between masculinity, militarism, and violence, we cannot fully comprehend the causes and consequences of dictatorial brutality. Lisa DiGiovanni provides an in-depth examination of how literature and film illuminate these often-overlooked relationships, bridging historical and cultural contexts.

The book presents a comprehensive exploration of militarized masculinity as it pertains to these interconnected regimes, revealing the intersections between gender constructs and state violence. By analyzing representations in various cultural texts, Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile sheds light on the enduring mechanisms of power and control that continue to resonate today.

Drawing on extensive empirical research, this book examines paternal involvement in caregiving practices and asks what is currently happening to 'involved' fatherhood?

The book investigates fatherhood in various everyday settings, such as outdoor spaces, workplaces and the home, while considering the influence of policy frameworks across different European countries. By analysing fathers' experiences and the impact of policy on familial roles, it provides fresh insights into the concept of 'involvement' and progression towards practices of more equitable fatherhood.

Encouraging new thinking on paternal engagement, this is a critical look at how fatherhood is navigated, negotiated and understood within diverse cultural and policy contexts in everyday life.