Society and culture: general Books

The twentieth century generated tens of thousands of hours of American newsfilm but not the scholarly apparatus necessary to analyze and contextualize them. Assembling new approaches to the study of U.S. newsfilm in cinema and television, this book makes...

The first book to present the history, ideas, life and works of Chinese midwives and birth attendants, this volume seeks to encapsulate and explain the changing ideas about the practice of midwifery in China. Using participant observations and...

In 1945 Japan had to adjust very rapidly to sudden defeat, to the arrival of the American Occupation and to the encounter with the English language, together with a different outlook on many aspects of society and government. This scholarly book is based...

The movement of people from small towns and villages of India to places outside the country raises a number of questions- about the networks that enable their mobility, the aspirations that motivate them, what they give back to their home regions, and...

This book traces the development of China's banking system through the first 25 years of China's socialist market economy up to the present. It examines how China's leaders have chosen their own path for reforming and regulating the banking sector and...

This book investigates the portrayal of nationalities and sexualities in British post-Second World War crime film and melodrama. By focussing on these genres, and looking at the concept of melodrama as an analytical tool apt for the analysis of both...

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the changing ideas about children and childhood in the United States. Each chapter connects relevant events, attitudes, or anxieties in American culture to an analysis of children or...

The effects of the partition of India in 1947 have been more far-reaching and complex than the existing partition narratives of violence and separation reveal. The immediacy of the movement of refugees between India and the newly-formed state of Pakistan...

This edited volume brings together work in the field of empirical comics research. Drawing on computer and cognitive science, psychology and art history, linguistics and literary studies, each chapter presents innovative methods and establishes the...

The turn of the 1960s-70s, characterized by the rapid acceleration of globalization, prompted a radical transformation in the perception of urban and natural environments. The urban revolution and related prospect of the total urbanisation of the planet,...

This book explores how print journalism was a powerful and persistent influence on public attitudes to, and memories of, the First World War in a range of participant nations, including Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the United States and Australia...

The successful Brexit referendum campaign; Donald Trump's election; and the rise of right-wing nationalist-populist political parties and movements - all of these events have incited renewed interest in public communication and the internetised media,...

Contemporary discussions of Africa's recent growth have largely interpreted such growth in terms of structural transformation, based mainly on national- and sectoral-level data. However, the micro-level processes driving this transformation are...

This is the first book to explore how religion, belief and spirituality are negotiated in hospice care. Specifically, it considers the significant place that spiritual care has in hospice care and claims that the changing role of religion and belief in...

This book explores the contemporary relevance of Charles H. Cooley's thought, bringing together scholars from the US, Europe and Australia to reflect on Cooley's theory and legacy. Offering an up-to-date analysis of Cooley's reception in the history of...

Arguing that the politics of democracy is inseparable from a notion of dialogue that emerges from conflicting and often traumatic memories, Democracy, Dialogue, Memory examines the importance of dialogue for the achievement of understanding in civil...

Ranging from blockbuster movies to experimental shorts or documentaries to scientific research, computer animation shapes a great part of media communication processes today. Be it the portrayal of emotional characters in moving films or the creation of...

Recent years have seen digital advertising grow to the point where it will soon overtake television as the no. 1 advertising medium. In the online environment, consumers interact and share their thoughts on brands and their experiences using them. These...

Setting up cultural encounters is a widespread intervention strategy employed to diffuse conflicts and manage difficulties related to diversity. These organised cultural encounters bring together people of different backgrounds in order to promote...

Recent revelations about government surveillance of citizens have led to questions about whether there should be better defined boundaries around privacy. Should government officials have the right to specifically target certain groups for extended...

This book provides an overview of the Japanese sex industry in the years of Japan's postwar economic boom. It argues that the origins of gender inequality in contemporary Japan resulted from the policies put in place during this period, when there was...

Decolonisation after Democracy addresses the provocative idea that we need to rid higher education of lingering forms of colonial knowledge. This matters because in the colonial era much knowledge was put to the service of subjugating indigenous peoples,...

The Indian Subcontinent has been at the centre of folklore inquiry since the 19th century, yet, while much attention was paid to India by early scholars, folkloristic interest in the region waned over time until it virtually disappeared from the research...

This book takes the interface - or rather to interface, a process rather than a discrete object or location - as a concept emblematic of our contemporary embodied relationship with technological artefacts. The fundamental question addressed by this book...

This book demonstrates that mobility in Europe is not a synonym for European mobility, showing how certain mobile individuals are more likely to develop an explicitly European identity than others. Through a series of mobile ethnographic accounts with...

Whilst China's growing economy is widely regarded as being responsible for severe environmental degradation and a high reliance on energy from fossil fuels, China is emerging as a potential leader in new green energy technologies. Outlining the...

Evolutionary Psychology and Digital Games: Digital Hunter-Gatherers is the first edited volume that systematically applies evolutionary psychology to the study of the use and effects of digital games. The book is divided into four parts:Theories and...

Germaine Greer is one of the most enduring and influential figures of the second wave of the women's movement. The Female Eunuch (1970) is one of second-wave feminism's most widely recognised publications and its author has come to embody and indeed...

In an era when the metaphor of the archive is invoked to cover almost any kind of memory, collection or accumulation, it is important to re-examine what is entailed-politically and methodologically-in the practice of feminist archival research. This...

Much is being written about China's new 'One Belt, One Road' initiative, but much of the writing focuses on China itself, on the destinations of the road - Europe and the Middle East - or on the countries through which the road passes, such as...

More than a hundred years have passed since the adoption of the first prohibitionist laws on drugs. Increasingly, the edifice of international drug control and laws is vacillating under pressures of reform. Scholarship on drugs history and policy has had...

When China's economic reforms were beginning, there was an expectation in the west that China's financial markets would be opened to western banks and that China's banks would be reformed along western lines. Joint ventures between Chinese banks and...

This book examines how 'Therapeutic Recreation' transforms the social health of children enduring or recovering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and leukaemia. With studies drawn from 'Serious Fun' projects in the USA, the UK, France,...

The last few years have witnessed a remarkable resurgence of populist nationalism as indicated by Brexit, the Trump presidency and the rise of radical parties of the far right. Nationalist Responses to the Crises in Europe examines the drivers, methods...

This book explores how the often well-meaning routines and assumptions of a generous welfare state can reflect and even contribute to the stigmatisation of refugees and Muslims in Europe today. While the main cases are from Sweden, examples are included...

What are the key challenges facing our increasingly digitized democracy, and how might we as citizens contribute to resolving them? This book explores these questions, adopting a multi-disciplinary approach that combines work from media studies,...

This book is about the use of economic and state capture levers for achieving political clout. It details how Moscow has been able to exploit governance deficits and influence decision-making in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe through a range...

Over the past few years, 'dystopia' has become a word with increasing cultural currency. This volume argues that we live in dystopian times, and more specifically that a genre of fiction called "dystopia" has, above others, achieved symbolic cultural...

Over the past few years, ever since the advent of HIV and AIDS, there has been increasing discussion of the concept of sexual health. This upsurge is especially noticeable not only in the field of health education and promotion but also in academic...

Since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented in China, consultations have been increasingly carried out during the policy-making process. This often involves experts, many of whom are based in think-tanks or similar institutions. The degree of...

From the　tsunami to Hurricane Sandy, the Nepal earthquake to Syrian refugees-defining images and accounts of humanitarian crises are now often created, not by journalists but by ordinary citizens using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat...

This book considers a wide range of illicit industries in China, exploring what drives such activities, why consumers tolerate them to differing degrees, how attempts to regulate them are implemented and how such regulation is resisted. Industries...

This book provides an analysis of the highly politicized field of Roma inclusion and addresses the controversies surrounding the effectiveness of funding initiatives derived from European Cohesion Policy. It confronts the widely held notion that European...

Presenting the voices of a unique group within contemporary Japanese society-Zainichi women-this book provides a fresh insight into their experiences of oppression and marginalization that over time have led to liberation and empowerment. Often viewed as...

This book provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of Putin's third term as Russia's president. It covers political, international relations, economic and social issues, and provides a balanced assessment of Putin's successes and failures. These...

The publication of Fredrik Barth's Ethnic Groups and Boundaries marked a milestone in the conceptualization of ethnicity and ethnic groups and opened a new field of enquiry in the social scientific study of ethnicity.Ethnic Groups and Boundaries Today: A...

Geographically and demographically Asia is a huge region with a large number of societies and cultures, each affected by their own unique problems including over-population, major natural disasters, poverty and changing social and economic factors...

The enormous financial cost of criminal justice has motivated increased scrutiny and recognition of the need for constructive change, but what of the ethical costs of current practices and policies? Moreover, if we seriously value the principles of...