Rethinking The Center

This collection of essays questions the adequacy of explaining today's internal armed conflicts purely in terms of economic factors and re-establishes the importance of identity and grievances in creating and sustaining such wars. Countries studied include Lebanon, Angola, Colombia and Afghanistan.

The essays in Rethinking Media Change center on a variety of media forms at moments of disruption and cultural transformation. The editors' introduction sketches an aesthetics of media transition—patterns of development and social dispersion that operate across eras, media forms, and cultures. The book includes case studies of such earlier media as the book, the phonograph, early cinema, and television. It also examines contemporary digital forms, exploring their promise and strangeness. A final section probes aspects of visual culture in such environments as the evolving museum, movie spectaculars, and "the virtual window." The contributors reject apocalyptic scenarios of media revolution, demonstrating instead that media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation, an accretive process in which emerging and established systems interact, shift, and collude with one another.

As human society continues to develop, we have increased the risk of large-scale disasters. From health care to infrastructure to national security, systems designed to keep us safe have also heightened the potential for catastrophe. The constant pressure of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and our tendency to ignore what is hard to grasp exacerbates potential dangers. How can we prepare for and prevent the twenty-first-century disasters on the horizon? Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters. The book highlights the potential for building resilient, adaptable, and sustainable systems so that we can be better prepared to respond to and recover from future crises. Thoroughly grounded in scientific and policy expertise, Rethinking Readiness is an essential guide to this century’s biggest challenges in disaster management.

A book which admits that Latin American cities are out of control - socially, economically, politically, administratively and culturally - and seeks to adjust scholarly discourse to the realities of contemporary urban phenomena. Experts presents their responses to this situation.

The world currently faces a number of challenges that no single country can solve. Whether it is managing a crisis-prone global economy, maintaining peace and stability, or trying to do something about climate change, there are some problems that necessitate collective action on the part of states and other actors. Global governance would seem functionally necessary and normatively desirable, but it is proving increasingly difficult to provide. This accessible introduction to, and analysis of, contemporary global governance explains what it is and the obstacles to its realization. Paying particular attention to the possible decline of American influence and the rise of China and a number of other actors, Mark Beeson explains why cooperation is proving difficult, despite its obvious need and desirability. This is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying global governance or international organizations, and is also important reading for those working on political economy, international development and globalization.

An original argument about the causes and consequences of political violence and the range of strategies employed.

"Rethinking Online Education" analyzes online educational materials on the recent Iraq war aimed to be used by U.S. educators in elementary and secondary schools. It is suggested that far from being ideologically neutral, these educational materials weave together resources which provide a coherent view of the Iraq war theme, and can thus been seen as constituting a kind of an informal curriculum. Mitsikopoulou argues that the teacher resources adhere to different pedagogical discourses and constitute materializations of two broad approaches to education. A number of pedagogical issues are also raised in the discussion: What is the difference between critical thinking and critical pedagogy? How is the genre of lesson plan realized in different teaching philosophies and how do curricular texts change when they are delivered online? This important book highlights the need to explore the new forms of textuality which emerge from online curricular materials and to develop an understanding of the processes of text composition, distribution and consumption.

In this volume, world-class scholars from religious studies, the humanities, and the social sciences explore what it means to be human through a multiplicity of lives in time and place. These essays develop theories of aging and acceptance, ethics in caregiving, and the role of ritual in healing the divide between the human and the ideal.