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Health Communication and Breast Cancer among Black Women: Culture, Identity, Spirituality, and Strength addresses how the discourse of strength constructs the identity of Black women even during times of chronic illness through the lens of Black feminist thought and womanist ideology. In doing so, Madlock Gatison explores how the narratives surrounding pink ribbon awareness and survivorship culture, religion and spirituality, and the myth of the strong Black woman impact Black female breast cancer survivors' self-perceptions, views others had of them, and their ability to express their needs and concerns including those involving their healthcare. This book will be of interest to scholars of public health, health communication, and sociology.

Drawing on reinterpretations of melancholia and collective remembrance, Memory, Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide explores the multi-layered implications of divided Koreas liminality, or its perceived in-betweenness in space and time. Offering a timely reconsideration of the pivotal period following the inter-Korean Summit of June 2000, this book focuses on a series of emotionally charged meetings among family members who had lost all contact for over fifty years on opposite sides of the Korean divide. With the scope of its analysis ranging from regional geopolitics and watershed political rituals to everyday social dynamics and intimate family narratives, this study provides a lens for approaching the cultural process of moving from a disposition of enmity to one of recognition and engagement amid the complex legacies of civil war and the global Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.

Truth and Method, and the works of those following him as footnotes to it. Gadamer and the Question of Understanding: Between Heidegger and Derrida dismantles this paradox by showing, on the one hand, that Gadamer's translation of Heidegger involved, as he himself says, a series of ';essential alterations' to the original which make philosophical hermeneutics a more coherent and better articulated hermeneutic theory, one offering a more faithful description of the phenomenon of understanding than Heidegger's. And, on the other hand, by taking the dossier of the famous encounter between Gadamer and Derrida as its cue, Adrian Costache demonstrates that in light of Derrida's deconstruction, every step Gadamer takes forward from Heidegger as well as from Schleiermacher and Diltheyhowever necessary--is problematic in itself.The insights in this book will be valuable to students and scholars interested in modern and contemporary European philosophy, especially those focusing on philosophical hermeneutics and deconstruction, as well as those working in social sciences that have incorporated a hermeneutic approach to their investigations, such as pedagogy, sociology, psychotherapy, law, and nursing.

This book proposes an approach to Eurocentrism as a paradigm of knowledge production and interpretation rooted in the Western narrative of modernity and its racial governmentalities. Accordingly, it interrogates the relationship between knowledge, race and power at the heart of debates on the making and circulation of history, opening up a tension, not so much with other histories, but with Eurocentrism's formulas of self-assurance, and attempts to accommodate other narratives. The book is an interdisciplinary endeavor that engages with diverse political and academic contexts and debates that reveal understandings of coloniality/modernity, specifically in education. Education, and in particular history teaching, is approached as a key arena in which to explore the (re)configuration of broader political and academic discourses and silences on power and race. Moving beyond discussions on national identity and the multicultural curriculum, it critically examines textbooks in Portugal and the discussions raised during empirical research with actors from a wide variety of fields, such as academia, policy and decision-making, schooling and the media. These are addressed in relation to the international context that saw the consolidation of global and regional organizationssuch as UNESCO and the Council of Europewhich established scientific knowledge as a key solution to political conflicts (conventionally defined as exacerbated nationalism, ethnocentrism and cultural misunderstandings). Central to these discussions are the ideas of multiperspectivity and the inclusion of content about the ';other', which are addressed in detail through a case study on depictions of the African national liberation movements. This book aims to contribute to the critique of the contemporary workings of Eurocentrism and racism that have frustrated the struggles for the decolonization of knowledge and continue to shape our understandings of the world order in racially hierarchical terms, by re-centering the West/Europe.

Contemporary Conversations on Immigration in the United States: The View from Prince George's County, Maryland contextualizes the narratives of international migrants arriving to Prince George's County, Maryland from 1968 to 2009. The life course trajectories of seventy individuals and their networks, organized chronologically to include life in the country of origin, the journey, and settlement in the county, frame migration as social issue rather than social problem. Having internalized the American dream, immigrants toil to achieve upward social mobility while constructing an immigrant space that nurtures well-being. This book demonstrates that an immigrant's experience is grounded in personal, social, economic, and political spheres of influence, and reflects the complexity of migrants' stories to help demystify homogenous categorization.

Are civil society organizations in Africa agents of democratization, legitimators of corrupt ruling elites, agents of imperial control, or all of these things and more? Based on nearly five years of engagements with civil society organizations in Malawi, including interviews and broader ethnographic methods, this book presents a contemporary account of civil society activism in a country which provides some intriguing contextual background to these questions. Since Malawi adopted multi-party democracy in 1994 international donors have expended sustained energy on building civil society groups dedicated to accountability, good governance, and development. This effort appeared to pay off in the early 2000s with important development milestones being reached, and most spectacularly in 2011 when civil society organizations took to the streets in protest against the increasing authoritarianism of the democratically elected Bingu wa Mutharika. This book takes a critical approach to the events which have marked out the post-1994 civil society journey in Malawi, from the disciplinary relationship between civil society organizations and international donors, to the political economy of the activism which has marked these organizations through the period. In doing so this book reveals the ambiguities that plague the donor project in Malawi, with lessons for other African countries as well. While this donor project may be more embedded now than it ever has been, this book illustrates how it continues to suffer from the deleterious effects of domestic class and international neo-imperial relations.

Madagascar's constitution of August 19, 1992 brought hope to a population exhausted by economic failures associated with a failed experiment in scientific socialism and years of mismanagement. The repetition of transparent elections and the promulgation of ';good governance' in the years that followed appeared to serve as an indicator of institutional strengthening and, by extension, progress. Unfortunately, a broader institutional analysis points toward a series of shocks to the political system by way of legal, but highly detrimental, juridical and constitutional shifts to the system. These shocks were meant to serve particularized political networks with long clientalistic roots and were made possible by the narrow vision of institutionalism that did not take careful stock of those networks or the leaders at the top of them. Little effort was made to look beyond a legislature brought in by careful elections but producing legislation serving individuals, the ways in which inchoate political parties distort institutional outcomes and the potential for institutionalization, the weakness of civil society to offer opportunities for popular engagement, or the use of donor-funded decentralization programs to build ministries that served as powerful and rapid proxies for leadership centralization. By the time the celebrated president, Marc Ravalomanana, was overthrown in March 2009 it became clear that there were few opportunities to seed political opposition and such limited space between individual leaders and primary institutions of public management that critical state functions immediately began to unravel. In this book the author considers the institutions of the Third Republic, how they formed, and why they looked like models for democratic change before turning to consider how the institutions themselves have been manipulated in plain sight by leaders looking to champion their own networks. He concludes that the rise of the Fourth Republic in 2010 did little to address these underlying concerns and argues that a new agenda is in order to consider not just the way in which institutions form, but the way in which networks of power, and leaders at the top of those networks, grow and change malleable institutions in young democracies with few avenues of accountability.

The American Civil Rights Movement 18651950 is a history of the African American struggle for freedom and equality from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It synthesizes the disparate black movements, explaining consistent themes and controversies during those years. The main focus is on the black activists who led the movement and the white people who supported them. The principal theme is that African American agency propelled the progress and that whites often helped. Even whites who were not sympathetic to black demands were useful, often because it was to their advantage to act as black allies. Even white opponents could be coerced into cooperation or, at least, non-opposition. White people of good will with shallow understanding were frustrating, but they were sometimes useful. Even if they did not work for black rights, they did not work against them, and sometimes helped because they had no better options. Until now, the history of the African American movement from 1865 to 1950 has not been covered as one coherent story. There have been many histories of African Americans that have treated the subject in one chapter or part of a chapter, and several excellent books have concentrated on a specific time period, such as Reconstruction or World War II. Other books have focused on one aspect of the time, such as lynching or the nature of Jim Crow. This is the first book to synthesize the history of the movement in a coherent whole.

Neoliberalism, Social Exclusion, and Social Movements critically examines struggles for social justice in an era of neoliberal globalization. Chollett perceptively elucidates the intertwining of debt restructuring, the debacle of privatization, NAFTA-generated distortions in the sugar market, and social and economic exclusion of Mexican sugarcane growers and mill workers. The enclosure of community commons is but one of the devastating impacts of neoliberal policies that generated social movements across Latin America and beyond. Closure of one of Michoacn, Mexico's five sugar mills following privatization brought unemployment and economic havoc to the region. This region is unique in that it is the only locality where a social movement repossessed the closed sugar refinery and created a cooperative, worker-run workplace. The book offers a historically contextualized, globally situated, and ethnographically grounded analysis of the social movement as sugarcane growers and mill workers challenged the end to their way of life as they knew it. It takes the reader into the very real lives of movement participants, their aspirations, struggles, and accommodations. Chollett skillfully peels back the layers of this social movement as activists sought to remake their own history, but under circumstances that did not, in the end, ensure social justice. The author demonstrates empathy for collective struggles confronting the ravages of neoliberal globalization, yet explodes the myth that intuitively exalts social movements as morally noble forces for democratization and solidarity. She offers a critical perspective on the internal factions and lack of democratization of a social movement gone awry and presents a sorely-needed critique of social movement theory. While focusing on a particular social movement, this book carries wide applicability for all social movements concerned with social justice in an era of enduring neoliberalism. It is essential reading for students, academics, activists, and policy-makers concerned with global inequalities.

Beginning in the mid-19th century tremendous gains were made in the historical struggle with infectious diseases. The emergence of modern medicine and epidemiology, and the establishment of public health measures, helped urban populations overcome a historical death penalty. The conquest of infectious disease has created a human hubris. It is a collective self-delusion that infectious diseases, once exposed to the light of modern medicine, science, and public health would inevitably become eradicated.When these advances began in the mid-19th century the world's population was under two billion, mostly non-urbanized. At the dawn of the 21st century the world's population already surpassed seven billion. The world's once far flung urban populations have exponentially expanded in number, size, and connectivity.Infectious diseases have long benefited from the concentration of human population and their opportunistic abilities to take advantage of their interconnectedness. The struggle between humans and infectious diseases is one in which there is a waxing and waning advantage of one over the other. Human hubris has been challenged since the late 1970s with the prospect that infectious diseases are not eradicated. Concerns have increased since the latter third of the twentieth century that infectious diseases are gaining a new foothold. As pandemics from AIDS to Ebola have increased in frequency, there has also developed a sense that a global pandemic of a much greater magnitude is likely to happen. Tracing the historical record, this book examines the manners in which population concentrations have long been associated with the spread of pandemic disease. It also examines the struggle between human attempts to contain infectious diseases, and the microbial struggle to contain human population advancement.

Through a literary lens, Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984-2008: Market Fictions examines the ways in which the reprise of market-based economics has impacted the forms of social exchange and cultural life in a settler-colonial context. Jennifer Lawn proposes that postcolonial literary studies needs to take more account of the way in which the new configuration of dominanceincreasingly gathered under the umbrella term of neoliberalismworks in concert with, rather than against, assertions of cultural identity on the part of historically subordinated groups. The pre-eminence of new right economics over the past three decades has raised a conundrum for writers on the left: while neoliberalism has tended to undermine collective social action, it has also fostered expressions of identity in the form of ';cultural capital' which minority communities can exploit for economic gain. Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984-2008 advocates for reading practices that balance the appeals of culture against the structuring forces of social class and the commodification of identity, while not losing sight of the specific aesthetic qualities of literary fiction. Jennifer Lawn demonstrates the value of this approach in a wide-ranging account of New Zealand literature. Movements towards decolonization in a bicultural society are read within the context of a marginal post-industrial economy that was, in many ways, a test case for radical free market reforms. Through a study of politically-engaged writing across a range of genres by both Maori and non-Maori authors, the New Zealand experience shows in high relief the twinned dynamics of a decline in the ideal of social egalitarianism and the corresponding rise of the idea of culture as a transformative force in economic and civic life, tending ultimately to blur the distinction between these spheres altogether. This work includes well-recognized authors such as Alan Duff, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Eleanor Catton and Maurice Gee, but also introduces a number of non-canonical or emergent writers whose work is discussed in detail for the first time in this volume. The result is a distinctive literary history of a turbulent period of social and economic change.

If we were to ask what is the root cause of our current and unprecedented environmental crisis, climate change, many, particularly on the progressive Left, would refer to the excesses of capitalismand they'd be right. In Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse, Wendy Lynne Lee demonstrates that there are no versions of conquest capital compatible with the fact of a finite planet and that a logic whose operating premise is growth is destined to not only exhaust our planetary resources, but also generate profound social injustice and geopolitical violence in its pursuit. Nonetheless, it is clear that the violence and injustice of capital is selectivesome benefit greatly while others are subjugated to its pathological drive to profit. Hence, Lee argues that any comprehensive analysis of what Jason Moore has dubbed the Capitalocene must include an equally probing account of human chauvinism, that is, the axes along which capital is supplied with resources and labor. Defined in terms of race, sex, gender, and species, these axes come ready-made to the advantage of capitalist commodification. Without an understanding of how and why, humanity will remain doomed to settling for a sustainably unjust world as opposed to realizing a just and desirable one. Indeed, on our current trajectory, we may not even achieve the sustainable. The introduction of climate change into the mix of environmental deterioration, the ever-widening economic gap between global North and global South, and the accelerating violence of terrorism, civil war, and human slavery make of a warming planet a combustible world. The only way out requires ending the myth of endless resources, a rejection of climate change denial, and a radical re-valuation of human-centeredness, not as a locus of power, but as an opportunity to take moral and epistemic responsibility for a world whose biotic diversity and ecological integrity make the struggle to realize it worthwhile. This solution demands not only an end to capitalism, but the deliberate reclamation of valueaesthetic, moral, and civicand a radical transformation of both personal and collective conscience. Lee appeals to the experiential aesthetics of John Dewey and the feminist concept of the standpoint of the subjugated. She argues for a version of the precautionary principle informed by an environmentally and socially responsible concept of the desirable future as the clearest path away from the precipice.

Yezidis in Syria: Identity Building among a Double Minority traces the development of Yezidi identity on the margins of Syria's minority context. This little known group is connected to the community's main living area in northern Iraq, but evolved as a separate identity group in the context of Syria's colonial, national, and revolutionary history. Always on the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy, the two sub-groups located in the Kurdagh and the Jezira experience a period of sociological and theological renewal in their quest for a recognized and protected status in the new Syria. In this book, Sebastian Maisel transmits and analyzes the Yezidi perspective on Syria's policies towards ethnic and religious minorities.

Medieval scholars and cultural historians have recently turned their attention to the question of ';smells' and what olfactory sensations reveal about society in general and holiness in particular. Sacred Scents in Early Christianity and Islam contributes to that conversation, explaining how early Christians and Muslims linked the ';sweet smell of sanctity' with ideals of the body and sexuality; created boundaries and sacred space; and imagined their emerging communal identity. Most importantly, scentitself transgressive and difficult to controlsignaled transition and transformation between categories of meaning.Christian and Islamic authors distinguished their own fragrant ethical and theological ideals against the stench of oppositional heresy and moral depravity. Orthodox Christians ridiculed their ';stinking' Arian neighbors, and Muslims denounced the ';reeking' corruption of Umayyad and Abbasid decadence. Through the mouths of saints and prophets, patriarchal authors labeled perfumed women as existential threats to vulnerable men and consigned them to enclosed, private space for their protection as well as society's. At the same time, theologians praised both men and women who purified and transformed their bodies into aromatic offerings to God. Both Christian and Muslim pilgrims venerated sainted men and women with perfumed offerings at tombstones; indeed, Christians and Muslims often worshipped together, honoring common heroes such as Abraham, Moses, and Jonah. Sacred Scents begins by surveying aroma's quotidian functions in Roman and pre-Islamic cultural milieus within homes, temples, poetry, kitchens, and medicines. Existing scholarship tends to frame ';scent' as something available only to the wealthy or elite; however, perfumes, spices, and incense wafted through the lives of most early Christians and Muslims. It ends by examining both traditions' views of Paradise, identified as the archetypal Garden and source of all perfumes and sweet smells. Both Christian and Islamic texts explain Adam and Eve's profound grief at losing access to these heavenly aromas and celebrate God's mercy in allowing earthly remembrances. Sacred scent thus prompts humanity's grief for what was lost and the yearning for paradisiacal transformation still to come.

Self-Deception's Puzzles and Processes: A Return to a Sartrean View, Jason Kido Lopez argues that this departure is a mistake and that we should return to thinking about self-deception in a Sartrean fashion, in which we are self-deceived when we intentionally use the strategies and methods of interpersonal deception on ourselves. Since literally tricking ourselves cannot workwe will always see through our own self-deception, after allself-deception merely consists of the attempt to trick ourselves in this way. Other scholars have rejected this notion of self-deception historically, dismissing it as paradoxical. Lopez argues first that it isn't paradoxical, and he further suggests that moving away from this notion of self-deception has caused the contemporary literature on the topic to be littered with disparate and conflicting theories. Indeed, there are a great many ways to avoid the allegedly paradoxical Sartrean notion of self-deception, and the resulting plethora of accounts lead to a fragmented picture of self-deception. If, however, the Sartrean view isn't paradoxical, then there was no need for the host of contradictory theories and most researchers on self-deception have missed what was originally so intriguing about self-deception: that it, like bad faith, is the process of literally trying to trick oneself into believing what is false or unwarranted.Self-Deception's Puzzles and Processes will be of great interest to students and scholars of epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychology, and continental philosophy, and to anyone else interested in the problems of self-deception.

Growing alarm over the harm done by humans to the natural world, and even to the viability of our own industrial civilization, compels us to ask the deeper moral question: What should be the human relationship to nature? Matthew R. Foster starts by assessing three contrasting patterns of moral reasoning: the Progress Ethic that created the world we live in; the biblically-inspired Stewardship Ethic; and the Connection Ethic based on scientific understanding of the interdependence of all natural entities.Critical analysis reveals that none of these ethics is able to sustain the values it advocates due to two unsupportable presumptionsthat the norms of human morality are commensurate with the natural world, and that the value of an entity is an intrinsic property. Foster argues that in order for a future environmental ethic to be both logically coherent and environmentally constructive, it must start from unconventional notions. First, because nature will never be commensurate with human moral reasoning, non-rational resources must be employed despite the risks involved. Second, value resides in the relationship of one entity to another, and does not belong intrinsically to eitherin short, value is foremost a verb, rather than a noun. Foster proposes a new paradigm attentive to the realm of value relations among all natural entities, one which offers mediating opportunities between nature and morality. In this new ethic there are no ';shoulds.' Rather, moral responsibilities to the natural entities around us are elective, placing us in an unfamiliar yet potentially liberating network of relationships.This book will be of interest to scholarsboth instructors and studentsof environmental ethics, philosophy, religion, and intellectual history, and all who are concerned about the environmental challenges of our time.

Although the human genome exists apart from society, knowledge about it is produced through socially-created language and interactions. As such, genomicists' thinking is informed by their inability to escape the wake of the ';race' concept. This book investigates how racism makes genomics and how genomics makes racism and ';race,' and the consequences of these constructions. Specifically, Williams explores how racial ideology works in genomics. The simple assumption that frames the book is that ';race' as an ideology justifying a system of oppression is persistently recreated as a practical and familiar way to understand biological reality. This book reveals that genomicists' preoccupation with ';race'regardless of good or ill intentcontributes to its perception as a category of differences that is scientifically rigorous.

In this unique and important book, William Altman shines a light on the pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student. Reviving an ancient concern with reconstructing the order in which Plato intended his dialogues to be taught as opposed to determining the order in which he wrote them, Altman breaks with traditional methods by reading Plato's dialogues as a multiplex but coherent curriculum in which the Allegory of the Cave occupies the central place. His reading of Platos Republic challenges the true philosopher to choose the life of justice exemplified by Socrates and Cicero by going back down into the Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good.

China has been experiencing great economic and social changes since the late 1970s when the Reform and Opening-Up policies were accepted. While some Sinologists argue that such changes have made the Chinese structure of authority fragmented and discrepant, and have weakened the directive power of the Central Government, a few others emphasize that despite a certain degree of economic decentralization and segmentation of public power, the Central Government has been seeking ways to hold the nation together. Consequently, while the former argue that due to the centrifugal nature of the political system, policy implementation is bound to deviate from the route specified by the Central Government, the latter hold that national policies are carried out faithfully, with minor deviations only in certain circumstances.This book studies the processes of policy implementation in contemporary mainland China by taking minban/private education at the level of basic education in Shanghai as an example. Based on 65 interviews conducted during 2001 and 2004, three moduses of policy implementation are proposed, and the Model of Structural Fracturation is advanced as the prevailing modus of policy implementation in contemporary China. The model argues that policy metamorphosis during implementation is not something random; in contrast, it is determined by structural factors that no single policy actor can manipulate. The pyramid of Chinese politics is a loose construction, with vertical and horizontal fracturations between different layers. The model highlights the fact that governments at the county/district level are remote from and beyond the control of the Central Government and the provinces. They deserve more attention than they have received.Contrary to Western perspectives which regard the structural fracturation in the Chinese polity as dangerous for national stability and unity, this book takes the fracturation as an important and delicate element of the Chinese mode of governance, and suggests that the very strength of the state lies in its capacity to tolerate local deviation and to embrace it into national institutions.

Entrepreneurialism and Tourism in Contemporary Vietnam examines the intersection of entrepreneurialism and the tourism industry in modern-day Vietnam and uses case studies from tourism operators in Ho Chi Minh City to understand the effects of market reforms on Vietnam's society. The primary argument undertaken in this study is that in order to understand changes to the Vietnamese economy, one must take an approach that combines the ';cultural' with the ';economic.' The tourism case studies presented here collectively demonstrate that there is no easy analytic distinction between the cultural and economic dimensions of the Vietnamese tourism industry. The empirical material is primarily drawn from interviews with private tour operators and participant observation on tours. This book also examines the collaboration between the private sector and the Vietnamese government in the tourism industry. These coordinative entrepreneurial relationships between two unlikely bedfellows are shaped by the interpersonal exchanges that produce the tourism cultural-economy. Lastly, there are links between entrepreneurialism, tourism, and other case studies in urban Southeast Asia illustrated in the conclusion.

Identity and Schooling among the Naxi examines the identity construction of Naxi students in Lijiang No.1 Senior Secondary School in China, focusing on the changing roles of school, community, and family in the identity construction of the students. Through participant observation, interviews, and student essays, Yu finds that Naxi students of the school retain a strong Naxi identity while also managing to fit into mainstream culture through a process she characterizes as 'harmonious creative identity engagement'. Three main forces affecting the identity construction of the Naxi students are highlighted: the state and the school, Naxi intellectuals, and socialization in the family and community. As an institution of the state, the school conveys national ideology and instills a sense of ethnic unity and an understanding of the culture of the Chinese nation. However, the school also takes an active role in ethnic identity construction of the Naxi students. At the same time, Naxi intellectuals, through their research publications and responses to state policies, preserve and revitalize Naxi culture. Socialization within the community and family allows the Naxi students to learn about their heritage. These factors result in both an asserted and assigned identity of the Naxi.

Becoming a Model Minority: Schooling Experiences of Ethnic Koreans in China looks at the manner in which ethnic Korean students construct self-perception out of the model minority stereotype in their school and lives in Northeast China. It also examines how this self-perception impacts the strength of the model minority stereotype in their attitudes toward school and strategies for success. Fang Gao shows how this stereotype tends to obscure significant barriers to scholastic success suffered by Korean students, as well as how it silences the disadvantages faced by Korean schooling in China's reform period and neglects the importance of multiculturalism and racial equality under the context of a harmonious society.

Framed by a comprehensive review of international research, literature, and film, this book is an intimate journey into the experiences and insights of 79 Australian women in relationships with bisexual men. It takes us into the daily lives, sexual intimacies, and families of MOREs (mixed-orientation relationships) that span the gamut from extremely oppressive experiences with bi-misogynist men to extremely liberating with bi-profeminist men. Aged 19 to 65, the women are in monogamous, open, and polyamorous relationships with bisexual-identifying and/or bisexual-behaving men. The women themselves are bisexual, lesbian, heterosexual, while others refuse to categorize their own sexualities. The book addresses the discovery or disclosure of the mans bisexuality, how the relationships work and where they flounder, how the partners negotiate and establish new rules and boundaries to maintain their relationship, and the impact of class, rural/urban setting, ethnicity, indigeneity, race, religion, and education on these relationships.But this book isn't only about MOREs. The research, revelations and reflections in this book tell us much about current and shifting global constructions and understandings of intimate relationships, sexual desires and love, and the socio-cultural representations and labeling of genders and sexualities.

In Tempered in the Revolutionary Furnace, Yihong Pan tells her personal story, and that of her generation of urban middle school graduates sent to the countryside during China's Rustication Movement. Based on interviews, reminiscences, diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts, the work examines the varied, and often perplexing, experiences of the seventeen million Chinese students sent to work in the countryside between 1953 and 1980. Rich in human drama, Pan's book illustrates how life in the countryside transformed the children of Mao from innocent, ignorant, yet often passionate, believers in the Communist Party into independent adults. Those same adults would lead the nationwide protests in the winter of 1978-79 that forced the government to abandon its policy of rustication. Richly textured, this work successfully blends biography with a wealth of historical insight to bring to life the trials of a generation, and to offer Chinese studies scholars a fascinating window into Mao Zedong's China.

This book deals with Chinese immigrants' role in the struggle for Cuban liberation and in Cuba's twentieth-century revolutionary social movement; the history of the Chinese economy in Cuba; and the Chinese contribution to Cuban music, painting, food, sport, and language. The centerpiece of the book is a translation of a study by Mauro Garc'a Triana and Pedro Eng Herrera on the history of the Chinese presence in Cuba. Over many years, Garc'a and Eng have collaborated closely on scholarly research on the Chinese contribution to Cuban life and politics, although their work is not widely known. Both are well equipped for such an enterprise: Eng as a Cuban of Chinese descent and a participant in the ethnic-Chinese revolutionary movement in Cuba, starting in the 1950s; Garc'a as a participant in the struggle against Batista and Cuban Ambassador to China during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The study is supplemented by an extensive collection of archival photographs and of paintings on Cuban-Chinese themes by Pedro Eng, who is not just a chronicler of the community but a well-known worker-artist who paints in a style described by commentators as 'naive.' The volume has three appendices: excerpts from the Cuba Commission's 1877 report on Chinese emigration to Cuba; the rebel leader Gonzalo de Quesada y Ar-stegui's pamphlet 'The Chinese and Cuban Independence,' translated from his book Mi primera ofrenda (My first offering), first published in 1892; and the chapter on 'Coolie Life in Cuba' from Duvon Clough Corbitt's Study of the Chinese in Cuba, 1847-1947 (Wilmore 1971).

Moving away from the domain of commemorative, iconicity, monumentalization, and memorialization, Sithole uses Steve Bikos meditations as a discursive intervention to understand black subjectivity. The epistemological shift of this book is not to be bogged down by the cataloging of events, something that is popular in the literature of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness. Rather, a theoretical imagination and conceptual invention is engaged upon in order to situate Biko within the existential repertoire of blackness as a site of subjectivity and not the object of study. The theoretical imagination and conceptual invention fosters an interpretive approach and an ongoing critique that cannot reach any epistemic closure. This is what decolonial meditations are all about, opening up new vistas of thought and new modes of critique informed by epistemic breaks from ';empirical absolutism' that reduce Biko to an epistemic catalogue. It is in Steve Biko: Decolonial Meditations of Black Consciousness that the black subject is engaged not only in the politics of criticism for its own sake, but philosophy of existence.

Earl Warren and the Strugglefor Justice explores the remarkable life of one of the leading public figures and jurists of twentieth century America. Based on newly available source materials, it traces Warren's progressive vision of government from its origins in the fight against urban corruption in Oakland, California during the 1930s to its culmination in the effort to professionalize public school administration, law enforcement, and the management of the electoral process under the auspices of the U.S. Constitution. Although Warren's major social justice decisions strengthened democracy at a crucial juncture in American and world history, in times of crisis his excessive deference to national security officials sometimes jeopardized other core human rights, as shown in his approaches to the Japanese internment and the investigation into the assassination of President John Kennedy. The book offers accessible and fresh insights into the dynamics of the Supreme Court and the accomplishments of Earl Warren, the man, jurist, and political leader.

Screenplay and Narrative Theory draws attention to the notion that in order to comprehend complex narrative dynamics, which are encountered in a great variety of narrative genres, forms, and formats, a more comprehensive theory of narrative is required. George Varotsis explains how a work of narrative functions synergistically and systemically, as well as elucidates the heuristic problem-solving mechanisms that are employed in various structural levels of thought processes, which allow the coherent accumulative derivative we call a story to emerge. The transition from an empirical to theoretical perspective is achieved by introducing characteristics of complex narrative systems: a network of narrative components, i.e. characters, structure, goals, motivations, theme, plot and subplots, narrative action, etc., which are arranged hierarchically over three fundamental levels of structure, i.e. deep, intermediate, and surface structure, that interact parallel to one another in non-linear ways. Varotsis tackles questions about how stories semantically emerge in the underlying dynamics that allow a work of narrative to function as a unified whole.

Global Strategic Engagement analyzes the changes brought about in global politics by the phenomenon of globalization in the last thirty years. The primary point of view of the text is the micro-perspective of the new practitioners of global governance: international public officers, transnational activists, global entrepreneurs, and world leaders.The novelty of the book derives from its two outputs: a micro description of the new way of playing the political game in the age of globalization, and a constructivist mapping of the current political terrain which is centered on the identification of the new references of contemporary politics beyond the traditional cleavage left vs. right.