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This book answers why anti-trade forces in developing countries sometimes fail to effectively exert pressure on their governments. The backlash against globalization spread across several Latin American countries in the 2000s, yet a few countries such as Peru doubled down on their bets on free trade by signing bilateral agreements with the US and the EU. This study uses evidence from three Latin American countries (Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia) to suggest that geography can play a significant role in shaping trade preferences and undermining the formation and clout of distributional coalitions that seek protectionism. Because trade liberalization can have uneven distributional impacts along regional lines, trade liberalization losers can find themselves in unfavorable conditions to associate and engage in collective action. Under these circumstances, few coalitions emerge to battle for protection in the policy arena, and when they do, geographic distance from decision-makers in the capital city can be a significant barrier to realizing their interests. As a result, even where a majority of the population living in regions that have not benefitted from trade elect a leftist president, trade reform reversal will not occur unless protectionist interests are close to the capital city. The contrast between Peru, on one side, and Argentina and Bolivia, on the other, highlights the powerful influence geography can have on reversing trade policy or preserving the status quo.

In this book, Justin Pack proposes a genealogy of the traditional suspicion of money and merchants. This genealogy is framed both by how money itself has changed and how different traditions responded to money. Money and merchants became heavily debated concerns in the Axial Age, which coincided with the spread of coinage. A deep suspicion of money and merchants was particularly notable in the Greek, Confucian and Christian traditions, and continued into the Middle Ages. These traditions wrestled with a new dialectic of purity that also appears with the widespread use of money. How were these concerns dealt with politically, socially and philosophically? How did they change over time? How did medieval Europe deal with money and how did this inform modern governmentality? To answer these questions, Pack turns to Hanna Arendt¿s work. Arendt argues that one of the outstanding characteristics of our time is thoughtlessness. This thoughtlessness is related to how modern life, especially under neoliberalism, is increasingly structured by abstract systems, abstract calculative rationality, abstract relations, and the profit motive. Money both drives and embodies this machinery. The hyper-complex abstract systems of modernity discourage, to use Arendtian terms, ¿thinking¿ (wonder, questioning everything) in favor of ¿cognition¿ (problem solving). Too often the result is thoughtless cognition¿the ability to make things more productive and efficient paired with the incapacity to question and challenge the implications and morality of these systems.

This book relates the unique experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ+) people in Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian churches. Grounded in the theoretical contributions of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Lewis Coser, and others, the book exposes the discursive ¿battleground¿ over the ¿truth¿ of sex which underlies the participants¿ stories. These rich and complex narratives reveal the stakes of this conflict, manifested in ¿the line¿ ¿ a barrier restricting out LGBTQ+ people from full participation in ministry and service. Although some participants related stories of supportive¿if typically conservative¿congregations where they felt able to live out an authentic, integrated faith, others found they could only leave their formerly close and supportive communities behind, ¿counter-rejecting¿ the churches and often the faith that they felt had rejected them.

This proceedings book addresses the main issues of contemporary political geography and international relations, providing a platform for discussion and collaboration of experts in the fields of Political Geography, Geopolitics, International Relations, etc. Participants from all over the world consider the controversies and challenges posed by globalization, focusing, in particular, on the ideologies of globalization and regionalism, migration crises, prevention of ethnic conflicts, and measures to promote sustainable development. The content of the book may be interesting to expert community, academics and popular audience.

This book presents a unique, feminist approach to ¿sex¿ dolls and ¿sex¿ robots, taking a critical look at the academic and business narratives that serve to rationalise them. As new forms of pornography (porn robots), this edited volume provides an urgent women¿s centred critique.The emergence of ¿sex¿ robots is situated within the wider context of the attack on women¿s rights and the relentless rise of techno-pornography. As an outgrowth of the industries of prostitution, pornography and child sex abuse, these objects offer new ways to dehumanise women and girls. While support for ¿sex¿ robots is positioned as progressive and emancipatory, the contributors in this volume argue they reduce women to consumable parts. They explore how law, the arts, ethics, economy, politics and culture are interconnected with harmful technological developments.