Great writers engage with the changing times and by using their imaginations transform their ideas and environments into fiction. More than any other writer of the 20th century, George Orwell responded to a period of historical change by imagining his dystopian future of Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps the most influential political novel ever written. At the same time 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was very much a product of post-war England with its rations and shortages. Orwell, in fact, remained a socialist until his death in January 1950, but the far more intriguing question is what Nineteen Eighty-Four would be like if it were written today, in an age of Islamist terror, fake news and post-truth politics.

When examining history, one must be careful not to blame rapid political change solely on famine, war, economic inequality, or structural disfunctions alone. These conditions may linger for decades without social upheaval. Successful revolution requires two triggering elements: a crisis or conjuncture and revolutionary actors who are organized in a dedicated revolutionary party, armed with a radical ideology, and poised to act. While previous revolutions were ignited by small collectives, many in the twentieth century relied on strategic relationships between two exceptional leaders: Marx and Engels (Communism), Lenin and Trotsky (Russia), Ghandi and Nehru (India), Mao and Zhou (China), and Castro and Guevara (Cuba). These partnerships changed the world.In Revolutionary Pairs: Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Gandhi and Nehru, Mao and Zhou, Castro and Guevara, Larry Ceplair tells the stories of five revolutionary struggles through the lens of famous duos. While each relationship was unique -- Castro and Guevara bonded like brothers, Mao and Zhou like enemies -- in every case, these leaders seized the opportunity for revolution and recognized they could not succeed without the other. The first cross-cultural exploration of revolutionary pairs, this book reveals the undeniable role of personality in modern political change.

"A wonderful starting point for anyone seeking to understand the politics and society of China today."—Chen Shen, American Journal of Chinese StudiesPraise for the previous edition:"An ideal introductory textbook..

“An extremely valuable and usable introductory textbook.” —Simon Lewis, African Studies ReviewThe sixth edition of Understanding Contemporary Africa, and the first under the editorship of Peter Schraeder, combines the strengths of the previous editions with coverage of new topics suggested over the years by the many instructors who regularly assign the text in their classes.Entirely new chapters on the politics of public health, the changing roles of women, LGBTIQ rights, environmental challenges, and population and urbanization, along with new treatments of such classic topics as geography, history, politics, economics, international relations, and more, make for an unparalleled introduction to the complexities of Africa today.

Township Economy provides unique insight into the nature of informal businesses and entrepreneurship in the townships of gpostapartheid South Africa and Namibia. The authors draw on evidence collected across nearly a decade, beginning in 2010, to focus on microenterprises, the business strategies of township entrepreneurs, and the impact of autonomous informal economic activities on urban life. Notably, they examine the influence of power as a tool to dominate and control—and thus to constrain inclusive opportunities.

When the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared to Congress that the objective was not merely to bring "a new balance of power," but rather to bring a "just and secure peace" to the world by the end of the conflict. In this famous speech, known as "The Fourteen Points," Wilson offered the world a road map toward a more equitable international system in the midst of unprecedented global conflict, including ideas on the interconnectedness of democracy, trade, and the concept of a forum for peaceably resolving international disputes. Even decades after the end of the First World War, Wilson's ideas remained important and influenced many of his successors. But now, in the twenty-first century, there are forces at work in the world that Wilson could never have imagined, and those forces call for a new plan toward peace.In Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century: A Renewed Appeal for Cooperative Internationalism, Richard H. Immerman and Jeffrey A. Engel bring together a diverse group of thinkers who take up Wilson's call for a new world order by exploring fourteen new directions for the twenty-first century. The contributors -- scholars, policymakers, entrepreneurs, poets, doctors, and scientists -- propose solutions to contemporary challenges such as migration, global warming, health care, food security, and privacy in the digital age. Taken together, these points challenge American leaders and policymakers to champion an international effort, not to make America great again, but to work cooperatively with other nations on the basis of mutual respect.

Freedom of the printed word is a defining feature of the modern world. Yet censorship and the suppression of literature never cease, and remain topical issues even in the most liberal of democracies. Today, just as in the past, advances in media technology are followed by new regulatory mechanisms. Similarly, any attempt to control cultural expression inevitably spurs fresh discussions about freedom of speech. In Forbidden Literature scholars from a variety of disciplines address censorships past and present, whether in liberal democracies or totalitarian regimes. Through in-depth case studies they trace a historical continuum in which literature reveals its two-sided nature: it demands both regulation and protection. The contributors investigate the logic of literary repression, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and analyse why it is thought essential to control literature. Moreover, the authors determine how literary practices are shaped and transformed by regulation and censorship.

Rising Subjects explores the change of the public sphere in Russian Poland during the 1905 Revolution. The 1905 Revolution was one of the few bottom-up political transformations and general democratizations in Polish history. It was a popular rebellion fostering political participation of the working class. The infringement of previously carefully guarded limits of the public sphere triggered a powerful conservative reaction among the commercial and landed elites, and frightened the intelligentsia. Polish nationalists promised to eliminate the revolutionary “anarchy” and gave meaning to the sense of disappointment after the revolution.

“An invaluable piece of literature for students of intelligence studies and cognate disciplines.” —Aidan Parkes, Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs"A highly recommended reference text for understanding the characteristics of intelligence in about two dozen Asian countries. The editor succeeded in compiling many different pieces in English about countries that are largely absent from intelligence studies research. " —Ryan Shaffer, Intelligence and National SecurityHow are intelligence systems structured in countries across Asia and the Middle East—from Russia to India, from Turkey to China and Japan, from Kazakhstan to Saudi Arabia? In what ways did decolonization and the Cold War influence their organization? What is their mission, and to what extent do they come under public scrutiny?The authors of this comprehensive reference delve into these questions, and more, to provide a unique, systematic survey of intelligence practices and cultures in 22 countries.

Not quite the Cotton Kingdom or the free labor North, the nineteenth-century border South was a land in between. Here, the era's clashing values -- slavery and freedom, city and country, industry and agriculture -- met and melded. In factories and plantations along the Ohio River, a unique regional identity emerged: one rooted in kinship, tolerance, and compromise. Border families articulated these hybrid values in both the legislative hall and the home. While many defended patriarchal households as an essential part of slaveholding culture, communities on the border pressed for increased mutuality between husbands and wives.Drawing on court records, personal correspondence, and prescriptive literature, Marriage on the Border: Love, Mutuality, and Divorce in the Upper South during the Civil War follows border southerners into their homes through blissful betrothal and turbulent divorce. Allison Dorothy Fredette examines how changing divorce laws in the border regions of Kentucky and West Virginia reveal surprisingly progressive marriages throughout the antebellum and postwar Upper South. Although many states feared that loosening marriage's gender hierarchy threatened slavery's racial hierarchy, border couples redefined traditionally permanent marriages as consensual contracts -- complete with rules and escape clauses. Men and women on the border built marriages on mutual affection, and when that affection faded, filed for divorce at unprecedented rates. Highlighting the tenuous relationship between racial and gendered rhetoric throughout the nineteenth century, Marriage on the Border offers a fresh perspective on the institution of marriage and its impact on the social fabric of the United States.

Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood is a collection of colorful historical vignettes of an ethnically diverse neighborhood just west of the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford. Its 1850s row houses have been home to a wide variety of immigrants. During the Revolutionary War, Frog Hollow was a progressive hub, and later, in the mid-late 19th century, it was a hotbed of industry. Reporter Susan Campbell tells the true stories of Frog Hollow with a primary focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the inventors, entrepreneurs and workers, as well as the impact of African American migration to Hartford, the impact of the Civil Rights movement and the continuing fight for housing.

“Provides both a comprehensive survey of scholarship on violence against civilians and a plausible theory to help explain why armed actors target civilians with violence.” —Carrie Manning, The Journal of Social EncountersConventional wisdom tells us that targeting civilians in civil wars makes little sense as a combat strategy. Yet, the indiscriminate violence continues. Why?To tackle this vexing question, Jürgen Brandsch looks closely at the on-the-ground impact of indiscriminate violence—and what he finds shows that there often is, in fact, a method to the madness. Making the provocative argument that slaughtering innocent civilians may be rational behavior on the part of the perpetrators, Brandsch provides an important piece in the puzzle of how to understand, and ultimately prevent, such atrocities.

The island of Sicily was a highly contested area throughout much of its history. Among the first to exert strong influence on its political, cultural, infrastructural, and demographic developments were the two major decentralized civilizations of the first millennium BCE: the Phoenicians and the Greeks. While trade and cultural exchange preceded their permanent presence, it was the colonizing movement that brought territorial competition and political power struggles on the island to a new level. The history of six centuries of colonization is replete with accounts of conflict and warfare that include cross-cultural confrontations, as well as interstate hostilities, domestic conflicts, and government violence. This book is not concerned with realities from the battlefield or questions of military strategy and tactics, but rather offers a broad collection of archaeological case studies and historical essays that analyze how political competition, strategic considerations, and violent encounters substantially affected rural and urban environments, the island’s heterogeneous communities, and their social practices. These contributions, originating from a workshop in 2018, combine expertise from the fields of archaeology, ancient history, and philology. The focus on a specific time period and the limited geographic area of Greek Sicily allows for the thorough investigation and discussion of various forms of organized societal violence and their consequences on the developments in society and landscape.

In 1952 an Australian journalist cabled from Johannesburg: ‘Apartheid is the trigger that has fired racial explosions in South Africa and sent echoes rumbling around the world’. In the outposts of Europe’s unstable empires, entrenched racism came under unprecedented assault. ’White Australia’, in particular, was challenged as opposition to racial oppression under a white minority regime in South Africa hardened. In both countries the politics of anti-racism were unleashed, in different ways and with very different consequences.In South Africa entrenched systems of white supremacy were brutally enforced under apartheid. In Australia, ideologies of race and white privilege were disrupted and, slowly, walls of discrimination cracked. Race politics in post-war Australia was deeply affected by the fractious international struggle over apartheid. The movement against apartheid obliged white Australia to grapple with moral and political issues embedded in its own racialised history and sense of nationhood. Contests provoked by apartheid were played out on the world stage and, as Indigenous activists emphasised, in Australia’s own backyard. This pioneering book explores these struggles as white Australia negotiated its place in a post-colonial world.

After a long absence from national political debate, the housing issue has forcefully returned following the protracted economic crisis of the past decade. In general, the significant impoverishment of housing policies in the wake of welfare restructuring decisions has deeply impacted the geography of social inequality. The present study analyses the housing issue in Milan in order to account both for the ways in which national austerity policies and the specific welfare model have influenced possible answers to such a crisis and for the specific local initiatives that have been or are being experimented (e. g. social housing, cohousing, urban regeneration). The inquiry confirms the hypothesis of the third sector’s leading role in the management of new social risks in this southern European metropolis, along with all of the questions that such a role entails in terms of a possible emphasis on the local territorial imbalances that could stem from it.

In its entire range of media and product worlds, Design is decisively involved in the cultural production and distribution of related images and interpretations of gender. This anthology examines why this is the case and what happens when it is changed from different perspectives and knowledge disciplines relevant to design. The contributions collected in this book enter into an interdisciplinary dialogue on the design of gender and provide theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the social, cultural and political functions of design.