The Critical Nexus

The Critical Nexus is the first book to trace the development of the notational matrix of Western music from Antiquity to the fourteenth century. It shows how principles of ancient Greek theory were grafted onto medieval practice, leading to a theory of both tone-system and mode, and a concomitant system of musical notation, that is uniquely Western.

Charles Atkinson confronts an important and vexing enigma of early writings on music: why chant, which was understood to be divinely inspired, needed to be altered in order to work within the modal system of the times.

This is the pilot in a series of reports on strategic planning conducted within the U.S. Department of Defense. It focuses on the strategic planning responsibilities of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because planning at that level provides the critical nexus between the strategic direction provided by the National Command Authorities and its implementation by the unified combatant commands and military departments. The authors' thorough understanding of the statutory requirements for strategic planning and the interactions between the Chairman's complex strategic planning process and other key DOD planning systems enables them to explicate today's strategic planning challenges and offer insightful recommendations. Strategic planning in the post-Cold War era has proven to be exceptionally problematic. The plethora of national and international tensions that the east-west confrontation of the Cold War in large measure subdued combine now to create a world replete with diverse challenges to U.S. interests. Equally disturbing is the fact that these challenges are not as clearly defined and easily articulated as was the monolithic Soviet threat. The authors point out that the Cold War provided inherent stability in U.S. strategic planning and that the basic elements of a strategic military plan evolved over time. They go on to argue that the elimination of the National Military Strategy Document and the abandonment of the Base Case Global Family of Operation Plans amounted to recision of the Chairman's strategic plan, and that nothing has been developed to take its place.

This book discusses the balance of priorities within the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus and its impact on policy development and implementation, highlighting innovative perspectives in adopting a holistic approach to identify, analyse and manage the nexus component interdependencies. Due to increasing demands for natural resources, the WEF nexus has emerged as a response to the numerous global challenges. Addressing WEF challenges often involves balancing multiple and competing priorities and identifying and managing interrelations, synergies and trade-offs between the three components of the nexus. In this volume the authors focus on the dynamics between multiple stakeholders, such as governments, businesses, NGOs and local communities, when addressing WEF challenges by adopting a nexus approach. The book argues that effective engagement of multiple stakeholders can address difficulties arising from the introduction of an integrated approach to WEF policy design and implementation, increasing the potential benefits. The book also looks at the effect of international relations and regional power struggles on resolving cross-border WEF nexus issues. Case studies are drawn from Kenya, Central Asia, USA and Peru, highlighting key themes, such as how collaborative governance, enabled and facilitated by relational equity management, can be viewed as an innovative way to reconcile competing priorities. The combination of theoretical and case study chapters makes the book of interest to a wide audience, including scholars and advanced students of sustainable development, agriculture and food studies, water and energy policy design and governance, as well as to practitioners working in the fields of water, energy and food security.

In the spirit of Ivan Illich’s 1968 speech ‘To hell with good intentions’, the book takes aim at a ubiquitous form of contemporary ideology, namely the concept of global citizenship. Its characteristic discourse can be found inhabiting a nexus of four complexes of ‘ruling’ institutions, namely universities with their international service learning, the United Nations and allied international institutions bent on global citizenship education, international non-governmental organizations and foundations promoting social entrepreneurship, and global corporations and their mouthpieces pitching corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. The question is: in the context of Northern or Western imperialism and US-led, neoliberal, global, corporate capitalism, and the planetary Armageddon they are wringing, what is the concept of global citizenship doing for these institutions? The studies in the book put this question to each of these four institutional complexes from broadly political-economic and post-colonial premises, focusing on the concept’s discursive use, against the background of the mounting production of the global non-citizen as the global citizen’s ‘other’. Addressed to all users of the concept of global citizen(ship) from university students and faculty in global studies to social entrepreneurs and United Nations bureaucrats, the book’s studies ultimately ask whether the idea helps or hinders the global quest for social and economic justice.

The explosion in intellectual capital coincides with a growing understanding of the importance of human capital to the firm. This book examines the pressing legal issues that arise at the intersections of intellectual property law, employment law, and