Social Science Probings

This book inquires into the use of prediction at the intersection of politics and academia, and reflects upon the implications of future-oriented policy-making across different fields. The volume focuses on the key intricacies and fallacies of prevision in a time of complexity, uncertainty, and unpredictability. The first part of the book discusses different academic perspectives and contributions to future-oriented policy-making. The second part discusses the role of future knowledge in decision-making across different empirical issues such as climate, health, finance, bio- and nuclear weapons, civil war, and crime. It analyses how prediction is integrated into public policy and governance, and how in return governance structures influence the making of knowledge about the future. Contributors integrate two analytical dimensions in their chapters: the epistemology of prevision and the political and ethical implications of prevision. In this way, the volume contributes to a better understanding of the complex interaction and feedback loops between the processes of creating knowledge about the future and the application of this future knowledge in public policy and governance. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, political science, sociology, technology studies, and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/The-Politics-and-Science-of-Prevision-Governing-and-Probing/Wenger-Jasper-Cavelty/p/book/9780367900748, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The book analyses the transition from the ancient to the medieval period in polity, economy, the caste system and culture. It examines the form of peasant protest and the reasons for their failure and infrequency. The author also examines the development of tantrism and the mentality that feudalism created.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores representations of skin in literature, art, art history, visual media, and medicine and its history. The essays collected here probe the symbolic potential of skin as a shifting sign in various historical and cultural contexts, and also examine the material and organic properties of the body’s largest organ. They deal with skin as a sensual organ, as an interface or contact zone, as the visual marker of identity, and as a lieu de memoire in different periods and media. In its material characteristics, skin is regarded as a medium, a canvas, a surface, and an object of both artistic and medical investigations. The contributions investigate representations of skin in sculpture, painting, film, and fictional, as well as non-fictional, texts from the 16th century to the present. The topics addressed here include the problematic representation of racial identity via skin colour in various media; the sensual qualities of the skin, such as smell or taste; the form and function of tattoos as markers of personal, as well as collective, identity; and scars as signifiers of personal pain and collective suffering.

Contributed seminar papers.

Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies is a Seventeen-Chapter anthology on biblical studies. It has been crafted as an extended and respectful thank you note to one of the most insightful scholars of biblical studies, David J. A. Clines of Sheffield University in England. He is credited with providing guidance to, and shaping the thought of, two generations of scholars who focus on essential approaches to understanding the Bible, with particular attention given to the Old Testament and allied literature. The anthology is directed toward those readers with pastoral, analytical, ancient intercultural, as well as contemporary cultural perspectives. These studies address a wide range of topics: the so-called Documentary Hypothesis; prophecy, divination, and magic; the wisdom themes in the Book of Job; the Egyptian influence on New Testament; the issue of non-sexual love between two men during combat conditions; character development in a biblical novella; rhetorical questions and their role in the Psalter; and the ways of God in the world. By combining these various topics, Probing the Frontier of Biblical Studies has addressed many of the outstanding issues in Old Testament study and ancillary disciplines. "David Clines has spent his scholarly career on the frontiers of biblical studies, with a commitment to relate his discoveries and insights to the complexities of our contemporary world. This collection of essays in his honor, written by distinguished colleagues, is a fitting tribute to his work and a serious engagement with it. They probe further along the frontier where Clines has led the way. These essays offer both a model of pioneering Biblical scholarship and a pointer to fresh and exciting new explorations of this frontier."---Peter Rodgers, Fuller Theological Seminary "An encomium to the TaNaK or Old Testament with articles gathered from four perspectives: pastoral, academic, intercultural, and cultural. The premise set out by the editors is that the Old Testament is `paradigmatic for the entire Western World.' Twelve scholars elucidate in the `language of the people' the diverse values of the TaNaK by examining selected stories, personalities, and poems. This `frontiers' volume shows how the Old Testament can stimulate a conversation between text and thought, action and reflection. The volume is not only an encomium to the TaNaK but also an encomium to the one to whom it is dedicated, David J. A. Clines."---Kent Harold Richards, Emory University

Western constructs giving precedence to ideas over experience have, for long, dominated theorization in Indian social sciences. Problematizing their tenuous relationship, this book presents a passionate plea to create new frameworks for describing contemporary Indian social experiences. Using a dialogic form and placing the reality of untouchability and Dalit life at the centre of analyses, Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai examine the ontological and epistemological nature of experience, thereby exhibiting the politics of experience. By illustrating ways of using alternative frameworks for theorizing, The Cracked Mirror argues for a more careful understanding of the ethics of representation.