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"What is 'social capital'? The enormous positivity surrounding it conceals the instrumental economic rationality underpinning the notion as corporations silently sell consumer data for profit. Status chasing is just one aspect of a process of transforming qualitative aspects of social interactions into quantifiable metrics for easier processing, prediction, and behavioural shaping. A work of critical media studies, Social Capital Online examines the idea within the new 'network spectacle' of digital capitalism via the ideas of Marx, Veblen, Debord, Baudrillard and Deleuze. Explaining how such phenomena as online narcissism and aggression arise, Faucher offers a new theoretical understanding of how the spectacularisation of online activity perfectly aligns with the value system of neoliberalism and its data worship. Even so, at the centre of all, lie familiar ideas – alienation and accumulation – new conceptions of which he argues are vital for understanding today's digital society."

This paper analyses the prospects of civil and social engagement in Albanian higher education by contemplating the impacts of recent historical developments, namely the period 2010-2020. The main goal of the study was to identify the (potential) role of higher education in civil and social engagement (CSE). The study draws on two Albanian case studies: activism in the civil society organisation 'Alliance for the protection of the theatre' and the 2018 student protest against state reforms in higher education. The study asked how education can be involved in building a productive civil engagement that contributes to a (more) sustainable democratisation process. Previous experiences of CSE in Albania, reshaped during the democratisation process, were politicised and hampered democracy. Only after 2000 was Albanian society able to rehabilitate CSE engagement. Due to many factors, such as education, technology and opportunities to travel abroad, the role of the young generation (especially students) and well-educated citizens was of great significance. ; peer-reviewed

This book develops John Rawls's theory of justice by adding reality-based analyses. This is accomplished by answering the question of who makes rules and how, and by providing new answers to three of today's most practical and critical issues. The question of who and how makes rules is discussed first; and group orientation instead of individualism, and a balance of negotiating power instead of a veil of ignorance are presented as new answers to this question. Based on this new understanding of rulemaking, three important practical rules are subsequently discussed: the rule of distribution of land and other natural resources, including the question of natural talent or who should bear the costs of children's education; the rule of distribution of products; and what motives support our acts of kindness. These rules are all dealt with from a shared perspective, viewing society as a single integrated construct. Equal distribution of land, not private but public payment of education fees, strengthening employees' bargaining power, and moving toward nobility-based kindness are put forward as central answers. By addressing critical questions on social rules and proposing answers, this book provides reliable principles to fall back on in our daily lives, and in our rapidly changing, globalized world.

The article discusses major threats that the Western society has hadto deal with after the end of the Cold War. This issue seems to be of particularconcern due to the fact that nowadays certain new trends in the world of geopolitics can be observed. Due to the change in the global balance of power afterthe year 1991, the role of the main geostrategic actors has also changed whilenew actors have begun to appear. Among the new challenges for the geostrategic position of the West there are the military ambitions of the Russian Federation and the economic hegemonic aspirations of China. Other threats includeterrorism, mass migration, transnational organized crime, infectious diseases,and environmental degradation.

Current thinking : an introduction / Simone Abram, Brit Winthereik & Tom Yarrow -- Electricity is not a noun / Gretchen Bakke -- Widened reason and deepened optimism : electricity and morality in Durkheim's anthropology and our own / Leo Coleman -- No current : electricity and disconnection in rural India / Jamie Cross -- What the e-bike tells us about the anthropology of energy / Nathalie Ortar -- At the edge of the network of power in Japan, c.1910s-1960s / Hiroki Shin -- Can the Mekong speak? : on hydropower, models and thing-power / Casper Bruun Jensen -- Electrification and the everyday spaces of state power in postcolonial Mozambique / Joshua Kirshner & Marcus Power -- Big grid : the computing beast that preceded big data / Canay Özden-Schilling -- Touring the nuclear sublime : power plant tours as tools of government / Tristan Loloum.

This study raises awareness to the emergence of a new genre in world literatureóhybridized literature. It rejects the assumption according to which literatures written in less commonly taught languages should be subsumed into one universally accessible global idiom. Instead, Vakunta challenges literary scholars and readers of literature to regard untranslatability as the key to cross-cultural engagement. The bookís multiple approaches and innumerable sources generate complex interdisciplinary connections and provide an excellent introduction to a complex literary phenomenon alien to literati r