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This case study illustrates how a documentary method of analyzing qualitative data can help overcome a methodological issue often encountered when researching the relationship between ethnic identities and social outcomes. This issue is how to reconcile the use of top-down definitions of ethnic identity (e.g., in census and survey categories) often deployed in research designs with contemporary theorizations of ethnicity as an identity that is constructed relationally and situationally from the bottom up. We describe how the documentary method of data analysis helped us address this issue with reference to the focus groups we conducted with aging Black Minority Ethnics (BMEs) in London in 2011. Unable to abandon the institutionalized Black Minority Ethnic categorization in our sampling and recruitment strategy, we found that the documentary method allowed us to discern the degree to which participants thus labeled adopted the pre-defined parameters of BME identity in their interactions with each other. We argue that this analytical approach, which can be applied to a range of qualitative data, can help researchers to work with the often homogenizing institutionalized categorizations that facilitate data collection and make results comparable without negating subjects' lived experiences of that categorization.

This case study explores the methods used in a study of how older people who live at home alone interact with, and attach meaning to, food. In this project, we designed, piloted, and distributed 5-day food diaries to 10 older people living on their own. We conducted pre- and post-diary interviews alongside the diary entries to gather additional qualitative data. The following account provides real-life examples of the highlights and practical challenges faced in this study involving diaries to elicit data on food practices. It outlines the potential of diaries to capture the social and symbolic dimensions of food consumption, which is often sidelined to nutrition. It further draws attention to the flexible nature of diaries and how they can be adapted to specific groups--in this case, older people. However, the case study also demonstrates the various ways in which participants engage with food diaries and describes how this study coped with outcomes such as diary non-completion and respondent innovation. In doing so, it appraises the advantages and shortcomings of "open" versus "structured" diary designs and discusses how even "structured" diary designs are sensitive to unexpected interpretations.

The following case study describes a longitudinal, mixed-methods research project focused on news media's presentation of femicide (the killing of a woman by a current/former intimate partner) in North Carolina from 2002 to 2007. Specifically, we describe the impetus for our research idea, our process of data collection, including our multiple data sources, and provide some suggestions for collaboration to access hard to get data. We also reflect on our a priori decision-making regarding the different research questions that could be addressed using our qualitative dataset and make a case for such forethought in qualitative research. Finally, we describe the utility of using qualitative software and provide some final thoughts on both the labor intensity and potential fruitfulness of mixed-methods research.

On a Collision Course? Feminist Ideals and the Mothering Professional in Middle Age -- Falling Back, Springing Forward: An Older First-Time Mother's Experience of Time -- Balancing Motherhood, Work, and Mental Health in Midlife: One Mother's Personal Struggles -- Beyond Grasping for Straws in the Dark: Hospice as a Model for a Team-Oriented Approach to Mothering in Midlife -- Into and Out of the Fire: A Retrospective Journal -- Institutional Mothering: Middling between University, Home, and Jail -- Parenting through the Fog -- Lilia's World -- Grief -- Mothering Myself: A Journey with/to the Inner Child -- The Benefits and Injuries of Midlife Mothering through an Autoethnographic Lens: Or, Don't Call Me Grandma -- Midlife Burnout: Mothering, Multiple Roles, and Multiple Losses -- Failure Is Not an Option: Learning to Succeed at Parenting in Midlife -- Rock-a-Bye Baby: Mothering in Midlife -- Mother Unmoored: Letting Myself Be Lost, I Got Found -- My Mother's Mother -- Caricaturing Single, Midlife Motherhood in Vanity's Brief Encounters -- Taking Custody -- Home Economicus: Some Disjunctures in Midlife Mothering -- When Story Time Is Over: Mothering Adult Children by Practising Productive Silence.

"For forty-seven days in 1999, Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray lived by choice on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's fifteenth-largest city. They went to the streets to practice presence: to offer nonjudgmental attention and compassion to everyone they met, especially the chronically homeless, who are so often ignored, scorned, abused, or shunned. 'The Emptiness of Our Hands,' now in its third edition, is a meditative chronicle of their experiences, including nearly thirty black and white photographs, most shot by James using crude pinhole cameras he constructed from trash. This book will thrust you out the door of your comfortable home, straight into the unknown. Who might you be when you come back?" -- page [4] of cover

This fascinating book brings together philosophical and historical essays on the European experience of empire. Its main thesis is that at the heart of political experience stands a metaphysical one, with a rich trail of evidence in the historical record. The book sets out to explore this in the case of a succession of European empires between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries. Power changed everything. It took away the old conceptions of morality and exposed the nature of the world in a way that forced these empires to make a choice on who they were and what they wanted. The study of this choice, translated into a million other choices and acts, forms the core of the text. It proceeds in two steps. The first examines the philosophical concepts of power; the second investigates the real experience of these concepts in the turbulent history of Europe from the Reformation to the Second World War and its aftermath. The result is a passionate and elegant work that offers a groundbreaking look into the psychology and psychosis of imperial power and achieves the rarest of feats: a philosophical work on politics that actually matters.

In September 2013, the body of 12-year-old Asunta Basterra (born in China and adopted while still a baby) was found abandoned at the side of a woodland path near Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Some days later, her parents were arrested as the prime suspects of the murder, and, after a long and complicated trial, which left various matters unsolved, were each sentenced to 18 years in prison.This is the first book in English about the murder and trial, and the only book to include the whole story as told in the author's interviews with Asunta's mother in prison (the only authorized visit in her four years in prison), the lawyers of both parties, the policemen and women who were directly involved in the arrest and the investigation, Asunta's ballet teacher and journalists who covered the story from beginning to end.

This book draws an updated Euro-American conceptual map, starting from a limited number of strategic terms whose meanings today are judged univocal and permanent, while in fact daily use has turned them into "common sense", depriving them of their ambiguity - an original feature of language, particularly relevant when it comes to literary use. By re-examining the proper noun for each of the selected notions, the contributors' common intent is to shed light on their polysemous nature and linguistic fluidity, in spite of the common tendency towards simplification and homogeneity imposed by hegemonic cultural paradigms. Along this line, the book explores the great divides between identity and otherness (or common or alien) in order to recover a sense of cultural identity which is at once polymorphous and polyphonic.

The book is composed of several articles that explore complexity in its most varied aspects. The solution of contemporary problems, whatever they may be, requires a multifaceted vision, far beyond the reductionist perspective. The study of complex systems, however, does not have the capacity to offer ready answers to the challenges of humanity. On the contrary, it points to the increase in uncertainty, the need to control variables, and uncertainty. This does not mean, therefore, that we should simply ignore the social, economic, and political phenomena that are all around us. What this book demonstrates is the importance of knowledge being disseminated, and it is imperative that different sciences exchange ideas, theories, and breakthroughs.

This volume studies the contemporary dynamics of conflict and cooperation within Eurasia with reference to interdependencies, partnerships and contestations on regional security, energy, democratic transition, and trade. Its key concern, in a broader sense, is, therefore, to understand the various outcomes of post-Soviet regional transformation and the intra- and inter-regional integrative or dismantling interaction making the regional countries hopeful or pessimistic about the future of their immediate and extended neighbourhood within contemporary Eurasia.The contributions here unfold the contemporary strategies of individual states with regards to cooperation, on the one hand, and the unavoidable conflicts in both bilateral relations and on a regional level, on the other. The chapters examine, with reference to central Eurasia, the root causes and the transitive character of conflict and cooperation, regional security dynamics and competing security complexes, and rising powers' increasing involvement in the equation favouring cooperation via trade. As such, this book provides a better understanding of both the issues and the challenges the wider Eurasian region is currently experiencing.

We are currently witnessing a renewal of broad public interest in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton - justly famed as an American founder. This volume examines the possible present-day significance of the man, noting that this is not the first revival of interest in the statesman. Hamilton was a major background figure in the GOP politics of the Gilded Age, with the powerful US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. drawing on Hamilton to inspire a new, assertive American role in the world. Hamilton was first prominent as a soldier and aide to General Washington, and believed in centralization of power in the federal government and an energetic presidency. He founded the American financial system as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and was a great moving force of America's first nationalist-conservative party - the Federalists. As shown here, close scholarly attention to Lodge's biography brings out the darker sides of the celebrated hero. Hamilton's deeper conviction was the need of an elitist "aristocratic republic," and he was an advocate of military-commercial empire. The Gilded Age Hamilton revival helped inspire the Spanish-American war of 1898 and an American overseas empire. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies.