Nuclear safety and security—the protection of nuclear facilities, weapons, technologies, and materials against accidents or attacks—is an under-studied area of international security studies.1 Periodically, the subject has received high levels of attention. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, for example, scholars and policymakers worried intense…
Security Sector Reform (SSR) is at a crossroads. SSR concepts and practices are embedded in international efforts to promote peace, security and development. They are widely considered an essential element of many multilateral and bilateral stabilization efforts and are a standard feature of the post-conflict toolkit.1 SSR is routinely commended for the way it can integrate siloe…
Although the vital importance of drinking water provision, and with this the core task of drinking water organisations, has essentially been stable for the past few decades, the challenges water companies meet, the way they operate, and certainly also thecitizens they serve, have undergone significant changes (Geldof et al. 2000; Tonkens 2008). For instance, over the past few decades the water …
In 2002, the world was astonished by the appearance of the new opera star Anna Netrebko at the Salzburg Opera Festival. She was young, incredibly talented and smashingly glamorous, almost akin to the legendary Maria Callas. She quickly became the face of the world new opera and also the face of the new Russia and of the post-Soviet space. Like a speeding ro…
On January 1, 2016, the Baltimore Sun marked the end of the city's "deadli-est year." In 2015, Baltimore counted 344 homicides-nearly 90 percent of them caused by gun violence.1 The historically high number of deaths drew condemnation nationwide. Decrying that "too many continue to die on our streets," the mayor fired the chief of police. Maryland's governor called the murde…
Historically, polytechnic schools rose to prominence in many national settings dur-ing the second half of the nineteenth century (Fox and Guagnini 2004). Over time, new areas of technology have been developed and incorporated into their repertoire, and waves of academisation have swept over the former polytechnics, transforming some of them into technical universities (Christensen and E…
Since the last decades of the twentieth century, most coun-tries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have beenseeking to transform their economies from depending onprimary natural resources to a knowledge-based one, pro-viding a permanent source for economic growth, and thusachieving sustainable development, and helping in diversi-fying the national economic framework, and multiplyingincome…
It is now widely accepted that for a country to thrive in the knowledge economy, it must develop high-level skills and competencies (human capital), as well as its scientific research, innovation and technological development capacity. Higher education, and universities in particular, are regarded as key to delivering these knowledge capabilities for development, based on the…
What happens when the idea of religious progress propels the shaping of modernity? In The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress. Missionizing Europe 1900 – 1965 Gerdien Jonker offers an account of the mission the Ahmadiyya reform movement undertook in interwar Europe. Nowadays persecuted in the Muslim world, Ahmadis appear here as the vanguard of a modern, rational Islam that met with a cons…
In their centuries-old history, the Roma (formerly known as Gypsies) experienced many difficult moments and cruel trials from their arrival in Europe until now. The history of the Roma in the USSR is no exception in this respect. Along with affirmative state policy towards them (at least until the end of the 1930s), they also fell victim to the massive political repressions of that time. In thi…
Over the past two decades, Canadian international history has slipped its traditional North Atlantic moorings. Studies of Canada’s postwar relation-ships with a waning United Kingdom or an ascendant United States have faded in popularity, replaced with a stream of publications on relations with the decolonized states of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, countries whose citizens increasingly co…
he first statement above is extracted from an interview with China’s incumbent ambassador to the United States (US), former Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, at the 24th Post Pacific Islands Forum Dialogue in Auckland in August 2012 (Liu & Huang, 2012). The second statement is taken from the outcome list of the eighth China–US Strategic and Econo…
The Nordic countries are among the highest spenders in Europe on legal aid, which provides people with legal services when they cannot other-wise afford legal assistance. Figures from 2012 provided by the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice CEPEJ (2014) show that, of 47 European countries, Norway spends the most on legal aid per inhabitant, Sweden comes sixth, Denmark eighth, Finl…
Internet voting has been an active topic of public discussions for many years. Itsproponents highlight the advantages of voting online, such as increased conve-nience and accessibility for voters who might have difficulty reaching a physicalpolling station.However, critics of Internet voting raise concerns about its security risks,including the potential manipulation of election results and vio…
Biocultural diversity refers to the dynamic interrelationship between the Earth’sbiological, cultural and linguistic diversity (Maffi2007). Proponents of the conceptespouse an ‘inextricable’ link between these three forms of diversity, drawing oninsights mostly from anthropology, ethnobiology, ethnoecology and human ecology (Maffi2005,2007; Posey1999). Biocultural diversity draws strength…
This collective volume celebrates that 75 years ago the foundation was laid for the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The contributions to this volume exemplify the evolution of the academic disciplines of anthropology and development studies at Radboud University in the course of its history. Radboud University itself celebrate…
With these cautions in mind—against positing a transcendent idea of academic freedom—I have written the present book. It discloses debates in which mutually exclusive ideas about academic freedom are in play. These debates have not achieved closure; the history of academic freedom is an accumulation of uncertainties. This approach difers from that of most commentators on acade…
I introduce this volume with distinct pleasure, since it marks the final step in a journey that started seven years ago, at the ICLA 2013 at the Sorbonne. The deci-sion to host the ICLA 2016 at the University of Vienna meant that, from 2013 to 2016, I had to face the biggest organizational challenge of my career, since I had the honour to support Achim Hölter, the chair …
A paradox, as the definition above suggests, refers to something that runs contrary to expectations or preconceived ideas. Recurring references to the ‘Bangladesh paradox’ in the development studies literature are shorthand for the unexpectedness of certain aspects of the country’s development experi-ence. Bangladesh has progressed on the social dimensions o…
In Among Women across Worlds, Suzy Kim explores the transnational connections between North Korean women and the global women's movement. Asian women, especially communists, are often depicted as victims of a patriarchal state. Kim challenges this view through extensive archival research, revealing that North Korean women asserted themselves from the late 1940s to 1975, before the Korean War be…
In his most provocative and practical book yet,one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own ri…
It is a curious situation that technologies we now take for granted have, when first introduced, so often stoked public controversy and concern for public welfare. At the root of this tension is the perception that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society, while the risks will be more widely distributed. Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology histor…
I used to think I’d become famous for my music, not for activism. When I was just twenty, I released my fi rst album with the goth rock band BAAL. I played bass guitar and I was pretty good. We had a following. But then it became too hard to ignore what was happening in my country. The next thing I knew I was part of a student-led group that eff ectively took down Slobodan Mil…
Computation, modeling, and simulation practices are commonplace in the STEM workplace, yet formal training embedded in disciplinary practices is not as standard in the undergraduate classroom. Teaching and Learning in STEM With Computation, Modeling, and Simulation Practices: A Guide for Practitioners and Researchers gives instructors a handbook to ensure their curriculum bridges the gap betwee…
Who is involved and why in the linguistic landscapes in educational contexts? How are agency and activism reflected in educationscapes? These questions and more are addressed in the various contributions in this volume, thus expanding the boundaries of educationscapes through enquiries that focus on educational agency and activism. In particular, the collection sheds light on linguistic, semiot…
Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research, The Fourth Invasion examines an Ixil Maya community’s movement against the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. The arrival of the Palo Viejo hydroelectric plant (built by the Italian corporation Enel Green Power) to the municipality of Cotzal highlighted the ongoing violence inflicted on Ixils by outsiders…
At the heart of my findings is a conclusion that, notwithstanding the work undertaken to-date, the current model of weak governance of ICT at a whole-of-government level ... leads to sub-optimal outcomes. (Gershon 2008: iii)1[Earlier reports] identified significant shortcomings in the public sector’s management of such [ICT] projects and included numerous recommen…
This chapter explores the genesis and development of this volume, which lies largely in the relative neglect of planning by legal scholars. Planning is central to the response to many of the significant challenges of our time (from the climate and environmental crises to social and economic inequalities); and planning law raises some of the most fundamental questions face…
Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex p…
The DRC has faced significant instability since its colonisation by the King Leopold II of Belgium in the 1870’s. King Leopold II’s barbarism and occupation were characterised with massive abuses and exploitation of its population and natural resources, two violent civil wars, social and political upheavals, deterioration, and sexual violence …
From small-scale, non-violent disputes to large-scale war between nations, conflictis a central element of social life and has captivated the collective consciousnessfor millennia. In the fifth century B.C., Greek philosopher Heraclitus famouslyargued that “war is the father and king of all” and that conflict and strife betweenopposites maintains the world (Graham,2019). Many…
Renowned scholar Jacques Godechot is, indeed, correct in stating that by the end of the 18th century, the Bastille had emerged as more than just a prison. The infamous site had become a reminder of a feudal system that had grown increasingly obsolete, given its arbitrary power. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, is regarded as dec…
In 1952, John William Miller delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address during Hobart College’s commencement. This lecture, “The Scholar as Man of the World,” offers an excellent statement of his philosophy of education. It covers a lot of ground, and in this chap-ter I focus on one of the stated aims of the lecture: exploring the importance of morale for college students. Toward the mid…
This book aims to investigate the concept of reproduction as it is imag-ined in speculative fiction. The focus is on reproduction in science fiction novels, short stories, films and young adult fiction. We investigate how speculative fiction deals with this topic and how it relates to previous concepts of reproduction. Reproductive methods, motherhood and par-enthood are …
Autism is being diagnosed more often in both children and adults. The big question iswhy?This book aims to answer that question by offering an account of the modern-day (post-1990) rise in the use of autism as a diagnosis. My research in this topic comes from my work as an epidemiologist and social scientist with a strong interest in the activist counter-narrative of…
“Whose heart does not wince in dismay to read about how a son,who had seen his father, his mother and his six brothers and sis-ters drown, spent nineteen hours lying on his stomach on a smallpile of hay, his hands and feet dangling in the water, and drivenabout by turbulent waves, while a married couple, after havinglost a mother and a sister, were subjected to forty-eight …
This is a book about The Disabled Child. It is not a book about any particular child or any particular disability, but a book about a figure I call The Dis-abled Child that emerges from the stories parents tell about their real-life children with disabilities. This is a book about an expectation, an idea, and an ideal that is produced and reproduced in stories parents …
Transnational and transracial adoption has become a phenomenon that is rapidly declining in numbers yet highly visible.1 How adoptive families were and are made has come under intense scrutiny in critical adoption studies over the last two decades, especially with regard to international adoption.2Major debates in recent years have addressed the detention of chil…
In the post-apocalyptic scenario of Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one person escapes the destruction of Earth and struggles to explain to aliens what humanity was like. Other sci-fi civilisations may be more advanced, but they fail to understand us. It may be that they are missing the informal dimension that escapes offi-cial…
Most of the pilots who wrote of their lives in aviation were not concerned with artistry. They were amateur or journeyman authors, less interested in shaping and polishing their phrases than they were in celebrating a topic about which they were passionate. They were impelled by their experiences to argue the case for aviation, awak-ening the American public to the progressive possibilities of …
These three alarming vignettes might appear, on one level, to reflect quite dif-ferent concerns: abortion, surrogacy, and adoption. But a closer look reveals some deeper connections, and it is these deeper, more insidious connections that this collection of essays explores: the asymmetrically distributed privilege and precarity within which reproductive choices are made, the confluence of diffe…
For a long time, teaching and learning were understood as activities tied to a particu-lar sense of place. Although various concepts had emerged, such as distance learning, e-learning, blended learning, and online learning, these mainly occurred in academic debates but were widely absent in pedagogical practices in higher education. The incisive developments during the COVID-19 pandemic …
Educational resource management is a fascinating area of study because there is such a wide variety of practice, not only between developed and developing countries but also between countries that have similar living standards. The importance a country attaches to education is reflected in the proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) it spends on primary and secondary education. In 2017 t…
Recent decades have seen great advances in science and technology that enable us – or, rather, those who have the requisite financial and technological resources – to explore and derive ever more benefits from the marine realm. In some ways, technological developments risk making legal frameworks obso-lete, addressing problems that are no longer pertinent or facilitating …
We regard Economic Theory as a collection of models, each viewed as a storyor a fable rather than as a testable scientific model to be verified or refuted(seeRubinstein(2012)). Models in Economic Theory are “useful” in the samesense that fables are.Perhaps, there is no boy who literally “cried wolf”,but we nevertheless tell the story to teach our children about…
Am 7. und 8. Juli 2017 versammelten sich in den Hamburger Messehallen Vertreter*innen der reichsten Länder der Welt für das Treffen der Gruppe der 20. Verschiedene Bündnisse und Initiativen riefen zu Protesten gegen das Treffen auf. Organisiert wurde ein vielfältiges Repertoire an Protest-aktionen, das von einem Gegengipfel und Protestcamps über Performan-ces, …
In October 1986, Kotu Island in the Lulunga district of the Tongan group of Ha‘apai appeared as a low silhouette on the Western horizon as the small boat we were in weaved its way through a channel in the fringing reef into the large lagoon surrounding the island for the first time. The tide was low, and the boat scraped the bottom and ground to a halt long before r…
Criminal justice systems are barometers of social development. This claim, putforward by German criminal law scholars,1alludes to the fact that inherent in thecriminal justice process are conflicting interests between the need to ensure comprehensive fact-finding on the one hand, and the wish to safeguard individual rights,especially those of defendants, on the other hand. In all criminal justi…
For some time, narratives and projects aimed at improving and diversifying economic activities in Timor-Leste have been the leitmotivs of a number of development programs. Framing such endeavours are several assumptions about Timor-Leste’s economy, namely, that it is unproductive, weak and unfair; that most of it is made up of subsistence agriculture benefitt…
As a part of my transnational ethnography among Uzbek migrant workers in Moscow, Russia, and in their home village in Uzbekistan, on August 6, 2014, I trav-eled to the Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan, to a village I call “Shabboda,” from whence the majority of Uzbek migrants I met in Moscow originated. Shabboda is one of the many remittance-dependent villages in rural …