Suchergebnisse

Through a variety of studies in the emerging field of attentional studies, this book examines and seeks alternatives to the current attention economy. Bringing together the work of leading scholars of critical attention studies' to reflect on issues such as techno-politics, socio-politics, and the politics of distraction, it offers a new and multi-disciplinary conceptualization of attention that emphasizes the connections between attention and curiosity, distraction, decoloniality and care. Above all, The Politics of Curiosity asks us to consider the nature and ambivalence of the curious forms of politics that might be taking shape in the shadow of our current attention economy. The attention economy has become a household name: we all know our attention is being harvested, commodified and packaged to be sold to advertisers by capitalist platforms. We all complain about it; some of us dream of disconnection; others call to fight back. By focusing on attentional deficits, and by reducing attention to being focused, however, the common view may miss wider stakes, and more promising opportunities. This collective volume provides a new frame of analysis based on three displacements. First, it relocates attentional issues within a triangulation that explores a continuum between attention, distraction and curiosity. Second, it invites us to investigate into the mental infrastructures that socially condition our perceptions and understandings of the world. Third, it points towards emancipatory politics of curiosity to provide alternatives to the attention economy. Contributions range from pedagogy to media theory, via digital studies, epistemology, sociology, political philosophy, literary history, aesthetics, film and dance studies. They gather some of the leading scholars who shaped the study of attention, questioned the values of distraction and explored the potentials of curiosity over the recent years. They extend across nine countries, four continents and seven languages, to provide a multicultural approach to these debates. Together, they help us understand how our current mental infrastructures have taken shape, under specific regimes of power and authority, in a world dominated by capital, colonialism and patriarchy. But they also sketch what can be done to redeploy them around imperatives of respect and care - from a better awareness of our mental biases, online behaviors and bodily movements, to our collective capacity to restructure classroom interactions, to launch alternative digital platforms, to build democratic movements. The first platform for discussion of the politics of attention and curiosity - and an essential point of reference for future debate - this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and psychology.

"Abortion and Reproductive Rights in Slovenia: A Case of Resistance provides a detailed and in-depth analysis of the situation of sexual and reproductive rights in Slovenia. This important intervention comes at a time when sexual and reproductive rights in Slovenia and around the world are assailed by populist and neoconservative discourses. The authors provide a detailed account of the history of the struggle for reproductive rights, particularly the struggles for access to safe abortion, insights based on interviews with fellow activists, and an analysis of Slovenian public opinion on abortion in a temporal and comparative perspective. The scholar-activist authors put the issue of sexual and reproductive rights at the forefront of the social, political, and scientific agenda in the name of collectivity and solidarity, reinforcing the potential apparent within civil society and social movements. This work will be of interest to researchers and activists with an interest in gender and reproductive rights in contemporary Europe"--

"This book provides an analysis of how penal discourses are used to legitimate post-Cold-War military interventions through three main case studies: Kosovo, Iraq and Libya. These cases reveal the operation of diverse modalities of punishment in extending the ambit of international liberal governance. The argument starts from an analysis of these discourses to trace the historical arc in which military interventions have increasingly been launched through reference to both the human rights discourse and humanitarian sentiments, and a desire to punish the perpetrators. The book continues with the analysis of practices involved in the post-intervention phase, looking at the ways in which states have been established as modes of governance (Kosovo), how punitive atmospheres have animated soldiers' violence in the conduct of war (Iraq), and finally how interventions can expand moral control and a system of devolved surveillance in conjunction with both border control and the engagement of the International Criminal Court (Libya). In all these case, tensions and ambiguities emerge. These practices underscore how punitive intents were also present in the expansion of liberal governance, demonstrating how the rhetoric of punishment was useful in legitimating Western state powers and recomposing the borders of the liberal world at the periphery. War as Protection and Punishment ends with a number of critical comments on the diffusion of the punitive discourse in the international arena, considering how issues of crime and justice have also animated, at least in part, the current engagement with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, politics and those interested in how penal discourses are used to legitimise military conventions"--

The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures introduced to purportedly contain its spread have wrought an unprecedented global social transformation. Authoritarian measures such as lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the enforced wearing of facemasks, have led to a biopolitical disenfranchisement of human rights and the encroachment of state and corporate directives onto private lives. By supporting these measures, the left has lost sight of its traditional critique of capital, the state, and class society and has instead reinforced existing power structures in the name of saving lives'. In doing so, the left has contributed to widespread suffering, especially among the vulnerable' groups in society the measures claimed to protect, particularly children, the elderly, and the poor. COVID-19 and the Left explores why the left has departed from its self-understanding as a critical force against state power, unfettered capital accumulation, the digital transformation, biopolitics, and a politics of social discrimination, and instead has largely assumed a stance in line with the neoliberal consensus. In particular, the essays in this collection explore the role of fear, panic, and psychological blackmailing as a tool of domination in late capitalist society and consider whether the left has been a victim, or an active perpetrator, of a tyranny of fear'. Drawing upon approaches from various disciplines and interrogating shibboleths on the left and right, the essays in this volume consider the ideological, sociocultural, and economic implications of the historical rupture that the COVID-19 pandemic presents and instead argue for a counter-narrative to fear and its harmful consequences. This provocative collection will be of considerable interest to those with an interest in the contemporary left and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This book explores the philosophical and political roots of the United Bengal movement of 1947 that emerged as a final bid to keep the province united against Partition. Through Abul Hashim, one of its architects, it explores the idea of an independent Bengali nation in the years preceding Independence and examines the underlying tensions of the concept of a Muslim-led independent Bangalistaan and its repercussions on a sizeable Hindu minority. Focusing on Hashim's writings and political contributions, the monograph highlights his vision of an aesthetic identity rooted within religious principles as well as civic ideals in a new united Bengal, where common law underwritten through religious ideals did not need to be necessarily opposed to western discourses of a modern state. A major, new intervention, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, especially the Partition, politics and South Asian studies"--

Soviet Local Politics and Government (1983) examines the local government system of the Soviet Union, an important part of the great bureaucracy that ran the country. The leading experts contributing to this book look at the wide range of duties that the local soviets managed, including supervision of the economic plan in their area, control over construction and agriculture, healthcare, housing, transport and infrastructure, and the attempts to adapt the local government system to new circumstances and requirements.

"This newly revised and updated ninth edition of Southeast Asia in the New International Era provides readers with contemporary coverage of a vibrant region home to more than 675 million people. Sensitive to historical legacies and paying special attention to developments since the end of the Cold War, this book highlights the events, players, and institutions that shape the region politically and economically. The scope of analysis provides context-specific treatment of the region's eleven countries: Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. Three thematic chapters consider broader regional issues: Southeast Asia Political Economy, ASEAN, and South China Sea. Fully updated, the book's revised content includes new discussion of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Myanmar's 2021 military coup, the return of the Marcos clan in the Philippines, political dynasty in Cambodia, youth demonstrations calling for monarchy reform in Thailand, Malaysia's 2022 elections, and the relocation of Indonesia's capital from sinking Jakarta to Borneo. New to this edition is a dedicated chapter explaining the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. An excellent resource for students and professionals seeking to understand Southeast Asia, this book helps makes sense of the region's political complexity while building a solid foundation for further study"--

"This book focuses on the 'algorithmic turn' in state surveillance and the development of new platforms that allow the Chinese Communist Party to shape human behaviour in all areas of life through its widespread social credit system. Perhaps no country has gone further than China in setting up overt systematic tracking, surveillance and constant computational evaluation of its citizens. Everyday life is saturated with a pervasive digitization that affects social mobility, economic opportunities and personal freedoms. Global organizations operating in China have to take account of the ramifications of these systems for data protection within the CCP's explicit project of forming a digital civilization. The volume covers the new technological practices that have transformed how states acquire and analyze personal data, the 'TikTok-ification' of society as social credit platforms built on the familiarity with this popular app's interaction paradigm, and the fast expansion of the digital economy that followed the new legal status of data as a production component in 2019. Scholars and students from many backgrounds, as well as policy makers, journalists and the general reading public will find a multidisciplinary approach to questions posed by research into China's digital civilization project from Media, Journalism, Communication and Global Studies"--

"This book uncovers the influence of racial and prejudicial stereotyping during police investigation of suspects from stigmatised communities. The book examines the under-researched aspect of whether and how negative stereotypes appear to influence the police interviews, investigative decision-making, and outcomes of criminal investigations when officers investigate individuals from stigmatised communities as suspects of crime. In the UK, the US, and Europe, the war on terror has been argued to impact adversely on existing race relations policies. In the aftermath of terrorist activity in both the US and Europe. Recent research has suggested that changes in legislation and counter-terrorism measures have contributed to the construction and reinforcement of the Muslim community as a suspect, which, in turn, may result in police bias and prejudice towards members of the Muslim communities. Based on novel and groundbreaking research studies, the author examines whether such police bias could influence the police investigation and interviewing processes concerning individuals from the suspect community as well as the outcome of a criminal investigation. The author introduces the Minhas Investigative Interviewing Prejudicial Stereotyping Scale (MIIPSS), an instrument developed and used to assess the level of police interviewers' racial and prejudicial stereotyping towards suspects from stigmatised groups, and maintains that its use would serve to minimise the influence of racial and prejudicial stereotypes on investigation. It is further suggested that training of police officers on the implications of such prejudicial (racial/religious) stereotyping is essential to improving interviewing performance, case outcomes, and community cohesion. This book will benefit academics, researchers, police officers, lawyers, social policy officers, and probation officers across the globe"--

Originally published in 1953, this was the first post-War study in either English or French of the institutions and law relating to French local government and on the practice of French local administration. It is a study in political science and therefore, although the basic laws governing local institutions are dealt with in some detail, the aim is to give a picture of those institutions at work in the middle of the 20th Century. The book assumes no prior knowledge of the subject and will be of interest to students of French government and comparative political institutions.

This book seeks to provide a comparative assessment of the significance of human factors' in effective counter-terrorism. The phrase human factors' is used to describe personal relationships, individual capabilities, effective leadership, technical interface, organisational culture and the community engagement necessary to effectively minimise, counter and control the threat of terrorism. Unlike many works in the field, this book is constructed around the input of experienced knowledge' from over 170 semi-structured interviews of specialist military, policing, intelligence and security practitioners - those actors actually involved in countering terrorism. These practitioners come from seven countries - the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Israel, Turkey and the United States - all of which have suffered over the years from different types of terrorist threat and responded with a mixture of counter-terrorist measures. Where military practitioners also discussed overseas counter-insurgency measures, that material has been included, since terrorism forms a key aspect of such wider insurgencies. The resulting interview data was analysed through a variant of Grounded Theory' to identify key emerging themes and issues, both positive and negative, relevant to human factors' in the individual countries and more generically. This book incorporates the informed operational experiences and insights of the interviewees while seeking to provide examples of successful counter-terrorist measures at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. This book will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism, defence studies and security studies in general.

"Colebatch, Castles and a collection of policy practitioners and scholars investigate the process of policy making through a range of current policy issues in Australia. With case studies including childcare, educational policies, mental health, and environmental policies, the expertise and experience of policy practitioners and academic observers offer an empirical understanding of what makes for policy work in practice. From problematising to participating, structuring to judging, the authors reflect on the significance of the practices of governing in relation to current policy issues in Australia. They also present a robust conceptual framework for making sense of how we are governed to draw meaningful inferences about policy as a practice. A practical guide for students and practitioners of policymaking, which goes beyond the policy cycle model to look at how real policies are really made and how they really work"--

Bringing together studies from across the Nordic region, this book examines the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on vaccine hesitancy. Shedding light on the political tensions that emerged as a result of the pandemic and the debates that ensued both within and between the Nordic nations, it investigates the vociferous discussions surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines and their presumed negative side effects through the lens of trust; trust in and between the neighbouring countries, in healthcare systems, fellow citizens, and experts; in public authorities, politicians, researchers, journalists, and pharmaceutical companies. The first volume to explore vaccine hesitancy in the Scandinavian context, this ground-breaking volume offers fresh perspectives on vaccine scepticism not as a form of ignorance or lack of knowledge, but as a manifestation of a more fundamental lack of faith in modern government and science. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, anthropology, media studies, communication and cultural studies with interests in public health, popular and political discourse and questions of public trust. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

"This book provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukraine War, using the concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides during the first year of the full-scale invasion. The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and continued for 8 years, before the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022. It is not a new war, but the intensity of the warfighting revived many discussions about the conduct of inter-state warfare, which has not been seen in Europe for decades. This book does not aim to offer an exhaustive operational analysis of the war, but rather provides a preliminary systematic analysis across various domains of warfare, using the concept of fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides. First, the book discusses the conceptual component and the post-Cold War adaptations of the Soviet strategic tradition by both the Ukrainian and the Russian Armed Forces. Following that, it gives an evaluation of the various aspects of warfighting in the land, air, maritime and cyber domains. Then, the book examines the role of international allied assistance, sanctions and weapons delivery in strengthening the resilience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces The book concludes with some comments on the role of inter-state warfare in the current strategic environment and future warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, foreign policy, Russian studies and International Relations"--

"Inclusion and Exclusion of the Urban Poor in Dhaka explores how the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods in Dhaka, Bangladesh, gain inclusion in the city at the face of exclusion. The book considers how the people of poor neighborhoods encounter the exclusionary behavior of city development, and how their inclusionary attempts have influenced the urban design. The book is presented in two parts: first, it explains how people in poor neighborhoods face exclusion because of the imbalance of power and politics. Second, it demonstrates how the existing exclusion of urban poor is affecting their strategies to gain access to urban services through people's power and politics. Focusing on the transdisciplinary field of urban anthropology, the chapters uncover the urban forces, policies and actions that facilitate urban politics. It also investigates the people who live in poor neighborhoods, who in the face of exclusion, have included themselves in urban development planning and design by employing diverse strategies against those forces in the urban politics, e.g., accepting dominance, bargaining, or having control over their lives. This book will recontextualize an ethnographic inquiry into the exclusion and inclusion of the people within city development design, plans and innovations in applications of anthropological theory and methodology. This book will encourage the reader to understand the politics of state's development projects and plans, and furthermore instigate the city government, planners and policymakers to focus on the people's political power and agency that enables them to achieve inclusion. It will therefore be of interest to researchers and students of urban planning and development, urban geography, and urban anthropology, as well as planning professionals and policymakers"--