An acclaimed historian's bold response to two simple, yet vexed, questions: What counts as China, and who counts as Chinese?

China became a capitalist superpower by investing in globalization. Now that it has established its credentials-and emerged as a major US competitor-its leaders are looking within, focused on suppressing dissent and fostering cohesion. The result has been an increasingly nationalist cultural agenda, celebrating a Chinese identity steeped in the mystique of the Middle Kingdom and nostalgia for heroic twentieth-century resistance. Yet Chinese nationalism, like nationalism everywhere, is fraught. Few Westerners, and even fewer Chinese, recognize that the very idea of China is up for grabs.

In this sweeping history, Xu Guoqi explores the transnational construction of Chineseness. The Idea of China describes an identity constantly under renovation. Through dialogue and confrontation with neighbors, more distant outsiders, and Chinese speakers and writers within the state, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the diaspora, the idea of China has been reshaped repeatedly across time. Even bedrock cultural formations like Confucianism have been reimported to China after their translation in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The idea of China has always been and remains a continuing process, invented, subverted, and reinvented to serve the shifting needs of kings and bureaucrats, industrialists and intellectuals, allies and adversaries.

Xu's chronicle is as provocative as it is rigorous, and his conclusion could hardly be starker: China, fundamentally, is constituted by a shared history. To accept this is to begin moving past the heated great-power rivalries that threaten international peace and stability today.

This book unpacks the multifaceted ways of living with heritage in contemporary Vietnam. It shows how heritage shapes our community and shines possible directions of pathways to the future(s). It also shows that heritage is something being reconfigured, recombined, or compounded (and sometimes erased) over time and across space through changing contexts. Within this collection, the chapters cover a broad range of these aspects of heritage: The first shows how heritage is mobilized as a key instrument in constructing a national cultural identity, followed by a call for the preservation of the collective housing complex, a significant architectural symbol of life during the Subsidy Period. Another then examines passive design in the traditional Cham house, a living heritage hiding in plain sight, and the book goes on to highlight the dark aspect of heritage by recounting the construction process of the Dian-Vi?t Railway. Using the case of the arch bridges of Hu? Imperial City across Ng? Ha River, another chapter demonstrates the contradiction between preservation and living with the needs of the present. One author shows how performance of intangible cultural heritage is a collaborative process that involves diverse actors, and the next unveils the dedicated commitment of folklore practitioners and heritage scholars in ensuring Mother Goddesses worship belief practices lives on in the face of political and social challenges. Finally, the book recounts the dedicated contribution by heritage researchers working on the Complex of Hu? Monuments, key actors in the heritage field whom we often take for granted. Relevant to scholars in cultural studies, history, archaeology, and heritage studies, specifically, and to Southeast Asian humanities and social science researchers more broadly, particularly those with a specific interest in Vietnam, this is a timely contribution to discussions on Vietnamese heritage - past, present, and future.

This book reconsiders Iamblichus' Response to Porphyry, Late Antiquity's seminal work on theurgy, which is often referred to as De Mysteriis. Was this text intended to be more than just a defence of ritualism or a philosophical crossing of metaphysical wits between Porphyry and Iamblichus? This volume examines whether De Mysteriis constituted a manifesto of restoration, a call to resignify and revive a religion that Iamblichus felt was spiralling into barren traditionalism.

Through a nuanced examination of Iamblichus' theurgy, this book shows the emergence of a sophisticated philosophico-ritualistic system, one designed to reform religious practice through divine epiphanies and direct communication with the gods. Using a thorough textual analysis, this book uncovers crucial distinctions between theurgy and magic and explores the mechanics of divine illumination during theurgic rituals in the context of Iamblichus' intricate hierarchy of spiritual beings. In this system, this book demonstrates, material objects could become vessels of divine power and humans could become interlocutors with the divine itself.

Explores silence in its philological dimensions: as a vehicle of meaning, a narrative device and a medium for expressing or concealing emotion.

This book explores how silence occurs across languages, literatures and cultures, fulfilling a wide range of communicative functions. It examines how silence can be collective or individual, intentional or unintentional, conveying meanings that extend beyond words and shaping interaction, perception and expression.

The volume investigates the multifaceted nature of silence from literary, semiotic and cultural perspectives, weaving together analyses that reveal its complexity across different media and contexts. The chapters address silences both within and beyond interaction, including interaction-like contexts, encompassing such diverse phenomena as animal silence, the silence of trauma and the iconic phase of silence.

Taken together, the contributions provide a comprehensive and multidimensional understanding of silence in auditory and visual forms of expression, and across varied linguistic and cultural contexts.

Since its debut in 1996, Tomb Raider has profoundly impacted gaming and popular culture, solidifying Lara Croft's status as a lasting pop culture icon. As the franchise celebrates its 30th anniversary, this academic collection delves into Tomb Raider's legacy from interdisciplinary perspectives, examining gender representation, fan culture, and broader cultural influence.

Organized into four sections, the collection transitions from character-focused critiques to broader cultural and genre-based discussions, demonstrating how Lara's legacy intersects with diverse scholarly perspectives. From being hailed as a feminist icon to facing criticism as a "cyberbimbo," Lara Croft has sparked diverse interpretations and discussions. This collection explores Lara's role in shaping gender representation in gaming, her contested feminist icon status, and how fans engage with the franchise's evolving narrative. It also examines Tomb Raider's impact on the action-adventure genre and critiques its portrayal of colonial themes and cultural heritage.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Lara Croft is a critical resource for understanding Tomb Raider's multifaceted impact over the past three decades of interest to scholars across Social Media Studies, Communication Studies, Digital Communication and Digital Sociology.

Night Sweats: Cyberfeminist Practices intervenes in this moment of rapid biotechnological development and international political turmoil with thought-provoking, creative, and justice-oriented essays on art and life: opting out of the sludge and consent theatre presented by standard "terms and conditions"; creating plant-assisted reproductive technologies (pARTs) such as indecision trees; practicing compassionate inquiry; and becoming a cyborg-elder. Refusing the authoritarian turn and backlash against reproductive, LGBTQIA+, and racial justice movements, its authors and contributors-artists, writers, scholars, designers, activists, and educators-draw on the twenty-five years of cyberfeminist art work from the subRosa art collective, as well as Black, postcolonial, and environmental feminisms.

The overall motto of the book is "we will save ourselves," with examples taken from critical and revisionist histories of alchemy, the automation of writing systems, and reproductive mutual aid. In doing so, the authors develop new analyses of (cyber)feminist contributions to bioart, tactical media, gender, women's, and sexuality studies, media studies and communication, technoscience studies and STS, durational art, and performance studies.

This book offers the most comprehensive and in-depth exploration of applied psychology in fashion to date, drawing on cutting-edge research and theory from across psychology and related disciplines. It examines the relationship between fashion, dress, and the self; the psychological impact of dress and fashion industry practices on consumers and the industry's workforce; and the role of psychology in understanding fashion consumption, sustainability, and digital innovation.

Bringing together perspectives from areas such as social, personality, cognitive, clinical, occupational, and positive psychology, the authors investigate how fashion influences the self, mental health, and well-being. They also explore how psychological insights can inform inclusive design, ethical marketing, and sustainable fashion practices. The volume highlights the concrete contributions psychologists can make to steer the fashion industry towards a healthier, more inclusive, and environmentally responsible future.

This is an essential resource for students, researchers, and professionals working in fashion psychology, fashion design, marketing, and management. It will also appeal to those interested in the broader cultural and psychological dimensions of fashion.

This book examines one of the most important questions in peace research: What leads to enduring peace after civil wars, and what leads to the resurgence of violence? For decades, intrastate conflicts have been the predominant form of armed conflict, and most recent civil wars were conflicts that recurred. The research presented in this book focuses on influenceable factors, first and foremost on the type of civil war termination and on the post-civil war order that is shaped by the distribution of military power between the former warring parties and the scale of political compromise. Moreover, it shows that the peacekeeping environment has a major influence on whether peace endures. The insights provided in this book are relevant for the academic community, and for decision-makers and practitioners involved in civilian or military efforts to establish and preserve peace.

This book brings together recent results of extensive and varied archaeological, stable isotope and ancient DNA research from the south coast of Tierra del Fuego and carefully integrates them with earlier archaeological, ethnographical and paleoenvironmental works in the region. Fuegian societies have fascinated travelers, naturalists and scientists during the last two centuries. The chapters analyze and review data on demographic trends, the trophic relations between human and faunal communities in ancient food webs and population genetics, providing a comprehensive picture of the hunter-gatherer history in the Fuegian Andes.

During the last decade, new perspectives and methodologies in archaeological research have taken place in the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego. Now, new results are emerging on the long-term interaction between human and coastal ecosystems. This book attempts to tell this state of the art in a comprehensive and approachable manner. In this sense, the book synthesizes current research that will be accessible to students and professionals alike.

The purpose of this book is to help health professionals learn how to enhance resilience in patients with serious health problems such as somatizing disorders and specific physical diseases who are usually resistant to psychosocial approach. Furthermore, this book will be able to help the general public learn how to enhance resilience and promote health in difficult situations.

'Resilience-enhancing approach' (REA) refers to a variety of therapeutic modalities enhancing resilience, that is, biopsychosociospiritual approach. It includes biological therapy (psychopharmacotherapy), stress management, cognitive behavioral therapy, and spiritual approach. Therefore, therapists should have knowledge about resilience and spirituality as well as these therapeutic modalities.

A variety of clinical cases are illustrated, helping therapists understand how to enhance resilience in patients with somatizing disorders and specific physical diseases. Therefore, the REA can be not only a therapeutic but also a preventive intervention.

Sacred Journeys and Institutional Rivalries is a detailed and richly illustrated exploration of pilgrimage mandalas (sankei mandara). These large-scale, brightly colored landscape paintings, which appeared in late-medieval Japan, present aerial views of sacred sites, the roads leading to them, and the rites performed there. Carried by itinerant monks and nuns throughout the country, pilgrimage mandalas were used in lively narrative performances called etoki. These paintings displayed a new kind of artistic language by mixing depictions of otherworldly miracles with everyday pleasures accessible to all would-be visitors.

After exploring the origins of this art, Talia Andrei engages in a series of detective-like analyses, unraveling the subtle hints of institutional networks and power struggles concealed within the figural and architectural motifs of the paintings. This approach shows how visual sources, when read with and against textual records, can fundamentally change, shift, or enhance what we know about a given time and place in history. Studied in this way, a pilgrimage mandala not only reveals hidden clues to historical uncertainties left murky in the textual archive but also serves as a visual testament to the cultural and institutional forces that shaped its creation.

Policy recommendations and strategies to support teachers in addressing the violent past.

Education plays a vital role in fostering reconciliation and teaching peace in conflict-affected societies. In particular, teaching about the violent past from multiple perspectives helps replace fear and hatred with mutual understanding. While conflict-history education has been explored across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, curricular reforms often overlook teachers-despite their key role in achieving success.

Building on insights from education sciences, sociology, political sciences, memory studies and social psychology, this book introduces a novel and interdisciplinary framework to analyse secondary school teachers' engagement with conflict-history education, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It focuses on three distinct locations-Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo-that differ in the intensity of violence experienced and the time elapsed since conflict ended.

This practice-oriented book aims at identifying teachers' needs to feel confident and competent in driving reconciliation in their classrooms and provides actionable policy recommendations and teaching strategies to support them in this essential role.

An illuminating ramble along the American sidewalk: routinely unnoticed, yet central to daily life, neighborhood vitality, and significant legal controversies.

Public infrastructure is as essential to our communities as it is easily overlooked. A case in point is the humble sidewalk: constantly taken for granted, yet linked to nearly every pressing issue of local governance in urban, suburban, and even rural areas. From commerce, taxes, and property rights to policing, homelessness, and surveillance; from free speech and socioeconomic equity to public health and climate resilience-sidewalks, surprisingly, are at the core of numerous major debates.

Sidewalk Nation offers a vivid travelogue spanning more than a dozen cities and towns across the United States to show how diverse communities are grappling with big challenges. Some are prosaic, if critical: How do we ensure that sidewalks facilitate mobility for disabled people? Whose job is it to clear snow from public space? And some touch on the most profound issues in law, including our rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. While traversing the country, Michael Pollack provides expert insight into the property, tax, and zoning laws that shape sidewalk management and land use more broadly. Offering a holistic vision for improving a vital resource, Pollack argues for reforms to ensure that local governments have both the obligation and the funding needed to give due attention to sidewalks and all that they offer.

Whether elected officials, civil servants, engineers, developers, or voters, everyone has a stake in the question of where sidewalks should be placed and how they should be used. Indeed, as Sidewalk Nation makes clear, what's under our feet should be at the front of our minds as we decide how to build, regulate, and protect our neighborhoods.

The definitive biography of Tojo Hideki, the controversial general who redefined military leadership in Showa-era Japan before his downfall during World War II.

The military general who became Emperor Hirohito's prime minister, Tojo Hideki is most often remembered as an iron-fisted leader who dragged Japan into World War II and-after spectacular losses-was eventually executed as a war criminal. Yet Tojo was far more than his ignominious end. In fact, as Peter Mauch argues, he was one of the twentieth century's most accomplished military statesmen.

Over a career of some forty years, Tojo successfully launched himself into the highest echelons of political power. He was not only a tactical genius, Mauch shows, but also a savvy administrator, a fierce imperialist, and a deeply loyal advisor to the emperor. Tojo's career took off with the notorious Kwantung Army in Manchuria, where he played a key role in escalating the Sino-Japanese War during the 1930s. As he rose through the ranks, becoming minister of war and then army chief of staff, he honed the efficiency of the Imperial Army and enhanced its influence within the emperor's court. All the while, he deftly negotiated the fractious military rivalries that arose wherever he went. Brilliant, ambitious, and often ruthless, Tojo reached political heights that were perhaps matched only by his precipitous fall in the final months of World War II.

Layered and evocative, Tojo is at once a riveting military history of Showa-era Japan and a nuanced portrait of the relentless personality at its center.

Decolonizing Bodies explores processes of racialization through decolonial and radical relational lenses. It weaves together theory and the author's personal stories to examine how human bodies and whole nations are racialized by late capitalism's colonial legacies. It begins by introducing Radical Relational Individuality, a decolonial and relational perspective on embodied humans. It then discusses mixed-race myths in Mexico and Canada that reveal the persistence of systemic racism as global white ignorance and structural gaslighting. It engages with the trauma of racism embedded in human bodies, how institutions perpetuate white supremacy, and the need for racial healing for everybody. Decolonizing Bodies includes an interview with educator and leadership coach Tovi C. Scruggs on her transformational teachings and concludes by discussing decolonial cosmopolitan localism based on pluriversality, a shared world, shared humanity, and an expansive form of radical relational freedom that centers an ethic of love and our deep interconnections and dependencies on everybody and everything. This book will be of interest to scholars of sociology, race and racism, and decolonial approaches.

The seven Indigenous directions-east, south, west, north, up, down, and center-provide a map of understanding gender in media history.

In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholarGabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters-each one of the directions-look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as DinE, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak. Estrada discusses how the cinema brings into focus the ways that many Indigenous genders do not conform with the male/female binary, genders and sexualities that may or may not overlap with contemporary constructions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and two-spirit (LGBTQI2 ) identities.

Highlighting the struggles and resistances of two-spirit peoples, Estrada's analysis engages with films that represent the diverse and sovereign identities of queer Indigenous peoples. Estrada provides a framework for understanding how queer Indigenous media producers confront colonial trauma and reclaims space for the spiritual and bodily sovereignty of LGBTQI2 peoples.

Bringing together experts from across the region, this book examines the impact of gender on political behavior in Latin America. Eighteen country-case studies provide invaluable insights into the distinctive characteristics of women's political behavior, paying particular attention to themes such as female-voter turnout, voter ideology, support for populist radical parties, and support for female candidates. The volume also seeks to explain how female political behavior has changed over the last few decades, and how it has permutated in different ways both within and across countries. This includes several factors, including changes to the labour market, attitudes toward religion and marital status, as well as political reforms and the growth of feminist movements. The first book to comprehensively analyse female political behavior across Latin America, the volume is an essential resource for those interested in democracy studies, gender studies, and Latin American politics.

This book brings together a range of scholarly essays on the Catholic Church's commitment to education through an examination of both its traditional teaching congregations and some new educational movements in the Church. This book integrates both historical and contemporary approaches and addresses the current state of play in Catholic schools internationally, whereby laity are tasked with maintaining the charism of the Congregations and Orders as the presence of religious schools has become less. This book provides an introduction to the Orders and Congregations in Catholic Education before providing the historical and contemporary perspective of specific Congregations. It explores both the historical and intended charism before discussing the contemporary and future focused directions of charism in education.

This interdisciplinary volume situates British Chinese cultures and identities at the centre of contemporary discourses that negotiate the complex entanglements between diasporic communities and belongings, migration and transculturality, representation and plurality. The six parts of this book focus on British Chinese agency, voices, and cultural production, shedding light on resistance to racist 'othering' and the complexities of self-definition. At their core, the chapters discuss notions of transnationalism, immigration, and national identity, British Chinese Christianity, the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, (in)visibility and representation, mediations of cultural identity in community magazines as well as literary renditions of (post-)migrant British Chinese identities. Bringing together contributions from fields as diverse as history, sociology, theology, heritage studies, cultural and literary studies, this volume aims to diversify the understanding of what it means to be 'British Chinese' and extends existing conversations in and beyond British Chinese studies into the 2020s.

All cultures change - but some aspects change more rapidly than others. Drawing on extensive experience of various cultures, in this book David Lewis develops a model that differentiates between the rates of change in different aspects of a culture.Culture teaches us how to relate to other human beings, so David also explores aspects of what it means to be human. Some distinctively human features that are influenced by culture include the development of a sense of humour, a sensitivity to the voice of one's conscience and a capacity to look towards the future with hope.

This Open Access book explores the role and agency of stories and storytelling in understanding places and in revealing how places tell stories. It addresses themes of colonialism, more-than-human agency, environment, atmospheres, borders, dwelling, enchantment, haunting, care and hope, revealing the power of stories to make and unmake worlds. Contending with the ethical complexities of storytelling and the political implications of the stories that are shared and heard, it illuminates how some stories dominate ways of being and knowing while others are excluded and overlooked. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how stories can provide alternative, critical and progressive ways of knowing and encountering place.

Written by the Storying Geographies Collective.

This is an international, interdisciplinary and research-based handbook about various educational and life transitions. This handbook has 30 chapters, divided into five parts according to their focus: theoretical/conceptual, multiple transitions, multi-dimensional transitions, dynamic environment, and research/practice/education. Editor Jindal-Snape's Multiple and Multi-dimensional Transitions (MMT) Theory runs as a thread through and between each chapter. MMT Theory takes a complex view of transitions and proposes that each individual experiences multiple transitions simultaneously, and in doing so can trigger transitions for significant others, and vice versa. Chapters lean into this complexity as they delve into childhood and youth transitions into education and care and between school and work, as well as professional transitions into leadership, and family and life transitions.

The handbook is the first reference work to establish transitions research as a field in its own right. It presents two new frameworks and principles for undertaking effective multiple and multi-dimensional transitions research and practice. This handbook will be of relevance to researchers and professionals, from a range of sectors, disciplines and regions. The engaging style of the chapters, make complex concepts accessible to those with varied levels of expertise in transitions research and practice.