Islam is not homogeneous. Its complexity, however, is bewildering for non-Muslims, most of whom know little or nothing of Islam, and generally – like Pope Francis – see it as a peace-loving religion. Others find this claim difficult to accept in the light of the violence and cruelty perpetrated in the name of Allah by Muslim fighters against innocent fellow citizens who are not Muslims, and also against many fellow Muslims. Paul Stenhouse’s deep scholarly interest in Samaritan history and traditions has taken him on intellectual and literary paths ‘continually crisscrossed by Islam and its Qur’ān, Islamic Law and Islamic history’. Here, he seeks to offer some light on the background to tragic events unfolding throughout the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, and Central and Southeast Asia, as well as in the USA, Europe, the UK and Oceania.

Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou is a new bilingual volume based on a series of oral interviews with Gwich'in elders living in rural northeast Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Richly illustrated, the book covers a wide range of topics based on traditional harvesting and use of caribou from ancient to contemporary times. It also reveals traditional beliefs and taboos about caribou and includes a detailed naming system for caribou anatomy.

"It used to be," soon-to-be secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright said in 1996, "that the only way a woman could truly make her foreign policy views felt was by marrying a diplomat and then pouring tea on an offending ambassador's lap."This world of US diplomacy excluded women for a variety of misguided reasons: they would let their emotions interfere with the task of diplomacy, they were not up to the deadly risks that could arise overseas, and they would be unable to cultivate the social contacts vital to success in the field. The men of the State Department objected but had to admit women, including the first female ambassadors: Ruth Bryan Owen, Florence "Daisy" Harriman, Perle Mesta, Eugenie Anderson, Clare Boothe Luce, and Frances Willis. These were among the most influential women in US foreign relations in their era.Using newly available archival sources, Philip Nash examines the history of the "Big Six" and how they carved out their rightful place in history. After a chapter capturing the male world of American diplomacy in the early twentieth century, the book devotes one chapter to each of the female ambassadors and delves into a number of topics, including their backgrounds and appointments, the issues they faced while on the job, how they were received by host countries, the complications of protocol, and the press coverage they received, which was paradoxically favorable yet deeply sexist. In an epilogue that also provides an overview of the role of women in modern US diplomacy, Nash reveals how these trailblazers helped pave the way for more gender parity in US foreign relations.

Following historical and theoretical overview of African immigration, the heart of this book is based on oral history interviews with forty-seven of the more than twenty-two thousand Africa-born immigrants in Kentucky. From a former ambassador from Gambia, a pharmacist from South Africa, a restaurant owner from Guinea, to a certified nursing assistant from the Democratic Republic of Congo -- every immigrant has a unique and complex story of their life experiences and the decisions that led them to emigrate to the United States. The compelling narratives reveal why and how the immigrants came to the Bluegrass state -- whether it was coming voluntarily as a student or forced because of war -- and how they connect with and contribute to their home countries as well as to the US. The immigrants describe their challenges -- language, loneliness, cultural differences, credentials for employment, ignorance towards Africa, and racism -- and positive experiences such as education, job opportunities, and helpful people. One chapter focuses on family -- including interviews with the second generations -- and how the immigrants identify themselves.

This volume of folk tales collected by Heinrich Rink, by native Greenlanders, is the translation of the first book printed in Greenland. Rink began his career as an administrator based at the Moravian mission at Godthaab, on the southwest coast of Greenland. He used the press to produce both official notices and literary works. Rink was determined to collect legends and folk tales of Greenland natives and publish them, an ambition achieved in these volumes, published over a five year span. Rink collected oral tales from throughout Greenland, although mainly in the southern area he administered. The remarkable oral tradition of the Inuit, unaffected by few outside influences, is traced through their history on the land. Many of the stories describe the clashes between the Norse and the Inuit. Rink recognized that some of the tales existed in the realm of pure myth, but that others represented recollections, passed from one generation to the next, of events of many centuries earlier. Translated from Danish, this is the first English translation of these stories. Illustrations are by Aron of Kangeq, a sealer and walrus hunter who lived at the Moravian mission at the small trading station of Kangeq. His illustrations of the oral storytelling tradition have gained status as a symbol of the new artistic tradition developed in Greenland in the mid-19th century.

“It’s really a horror to live in a war”, Antoine Makdis told me in Aleppo. And over the next ten days we were witnesses to that horror. “The war has aged me not just psychologically but in my way of thinking. It aged me in my body. I have pain when I walk. I have pain when I’m sleeping. I’m not wiser but I’m older.” Featuring stories of human rights violations and struggles in a world of human- and earth-destroying globalised capitalism, the RTÉ What in the World? television series has filmed in over fifty countries across Africa, Asia and The Americas. This is the second book published by The Liffey Press based on the award-winning series. With a focus on war and its consequences, this book tells profoundly moving stories of how conflict has convulsed the lives of people caught up its insidious grip, plunged people into the depths of despair and crushed the hopes and dreams of whole generations. None of this is accidental. Wars don’t just happen. They are the inevitable result of the military industrial complex, the colonial legacy, the economic dividends of war. War, Suffering and the Struggle for Human Rights describes the suffering of ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Uruguay, Western Sahara, Palestine/Israel, Brazil, South Korea, Somalia and Timor Leste. Above all, the reader will be left with an understanding of how wars live on in the lives and bodies of the injured and the traumatized long after they are deemed officially over.

Often along vast expanses, ancient societies traded certain commodities that were considered valuable either for functional or symbolic reasons – or, rather, a mixture of both factors. A Taste for Green addresses latest research into the acquisition of jade, turquoise or variscite, all of which share a characteristic greenish colour and an engaging appearance once they are polished in the shape of axes or assorted adornments. Papers explore how, in addition to constituting economic transactions, the transfess of these materials were also statements of social liaisons, personal capacities, and relation to places or to unseen forces. The volume centres on two study areas, Western Europe and México/Southwest US, which are far apart not just in geographical terms but also with regard to their chronology and socioeconomic features. While some North and Mesoamerican groups range from relatively complex farming societies up to state-like organisations during the 1st and 2nd millennia AD, the European counterparts are comparatively simpler polities spanning the 5th–3rd millennia BC. By contrasting the archaeological evidence from diverse areas we may gain insights into the role that production/movement of these green stones played in their respective political and ritual economies. Also, we think it useful to compare the scientific approaches applied to this question in different parts of the globe, specially Asia.

In 1817 a group of East Yorkshire gentry opened barrows in a large Iron Age cemetery on the Yorkshire Wolds at Arras, near Market Weighton, including a remarkable burial accompanied by a chariot with two horses, which became known as the King’s Barrow. This was the third season of excavation undertaken there, producing spectacular finds including a further chariot burial and the so-called Queen’s barrow, which contained a gold ring, many glass beads and other items. These and later discoveries would lead to the naming of the Arras Culture, and the suggestion of connections with the near European continent. Since then further remarkable finds have been made in the East Yorkshire region, including 23 chariot burials, most recently at Pocklington in 2017 and 2018, where both graves contained horses, and were featured on BBC 4’s Digging for Britain series. This volume bring together papers presented by leading experts at the Royal Archaeological Institute Annual Conference, held at the Yorkshire Museum, York, in November 2017, to celebrate the bicentenary of the Arras discoveries. The remarkable Iron Age archaeology of eastern Yorkshire is set into wider context by views from Scotland, the south of England and Iron Age Western Europe. The book covers a wide variety of topics including migration, settlement and landscape, burials, experimental chariot building, finds of various kinds and reports on the major sites such as Wetwang/Garton Slack and Pocklington.

Alan Doss offers a rare window into the real world of UN peacekeeping missions in Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Doss's story is one of presidents and prelates, warlords and warriors, heroes and villains, achievements and disappointments—and innocent people caught in the midst of deadly violence. As he shares his front-line experiences, he reflects on the reasons for successes and failures and on the qualities that leaders need to successfully guide efforts to rebuild peace and prosperity in devastated societies. Not least, he also considers the UN's future role in conflict prevention and peacekeeping in a climate of increasing resistance to intervention in "other people's wars."

Megalith building constitutes not only a past, but also a recent phenomenon, which is still practised today. The documentation and interpretation of recent megalith building traditions is offering potential aid in the interpretation of prehistoric monuments. Fieldwork in Sumba and Nagaland set up a frame to answer questions such as: Who is buried in the megalithic tombs and what kind of commemoration is connected to megalithic monuments? How are socioeconomic characteristics of the associated households and societies reflected in the megaliths?Megalithic monuments and social structures includes various archaeological and ethnoarchaeological case studies on social implications of megalith building activities from a comparative perspective. The case studies presented include recent megalith building traditions in Sumba, Indonesia, Nagaland, North-East India, as well as Neolithic Funnel Beaker communities in today’s Northern Germany and Southern Sweden.This book presents a rich body of new data. By taking into account recent examples of megalithic construction, knowledge on important and influential ways of acting within societal contexts was expanded, whereby above all decentralised and communally-designed mechanisms are important. The case studies presented here clearly demonstrate the importance of cooperative and competitive structures and their effect on feasting activities and megalith building. Additionally, megalithic monuments represent a way of expressing and materialising economic inequality and social prestige. These mechanism and aspects also represent interpretations regarding Funnel Baker societies, which can supplement the existing ideas of megalithic construction in Neolithic Northern Europe.

The previous edition of Understanding the Contemporary Middle East was published soon after the Arab uprisings, and the authors—writing across disciplines—captured those moments of possibility. Now, more than six years later, the Middle East is substantially changed, with three protracted civil wars, several retrenched authoritarian regimes, possibly one emerging democracy, and social and economic conditions that have been profoundly affected by the new political environment.This thoroughly revised and updated edition explores both the impact of recent events in shaping the region and the continuities with established patterns of political, economic, and social relations.

Vladimir Fedorovich Dzhunkovsky was a witness to Russia’s unfolding tragedy - from Tsar Alexander II’s Great Reforms, through world war, revolution, the rise of a new regime, and finally, his country’s descent into terror under Stalin. But Dzhunkovsky was not just a passive observer - he was an active participant in his troubled and turbulent times, often struggling against the tide. In the centennial of the Russian revolution, his story takes on special significance.

This study analyses the social and symbolic value of the material culture, in particular the pottery production and the architecture, and the social structure of the local communities of a broad area encompassing Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and North-western Iran during the last phase of the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. This broad area is known from the Assyrian texts as ‘Nairi lands’. The second part of the study, furnishes a reassessment of pottery production characteristics and theories, as well as of the socio-economic structure and issues, tied to the sedentary and mobile local communities of the Nairi lands. The study brings into focus the characteristics, the extension and the distribution of Grooved pottery, along with other pottery typologies, by providing an accompanying online catalogue with detailed descriptions and high-resolution images of the pots and sherds obtained from public and private institutions in Turkey and Armenia. Moreover, the socio-political organisation and subsistence economy issues are addressed in order to advance a possible reconstruction of the social structure of the Nairi lands communities. Particular attention is devoted to the pastoral nomad component and the role played within the Nairi phenomenon. The study includes a very large corpus of text images and high-resolution color images of the pottery of the area under examination, gathered by the author in order to offer a reliable tool and compendium.

This volume is the outcome of the Ninth International Indology Graduate Research Symposium held at Ghent University in September 2017, the fifth publication of proceedings from this series of symposiums. Like previous volumes, the current edition presents the results of recent research by early-career scholars into the texts, languages, as well as literary, philosophical and religious traditions of South Asia. The articles here collected offer a broad range of disciplinary perspectives on a wide array of subject. In addition, in the lines of the well-established tradition of research in Jainism at Ghent University, this edition has a more specific “Jains and the others” main theme. The purpose of such a theme is to contribute to determine the input of Jainism in the broader framework of South Asian traditions, as well as to invite the reader to think beyond boundaries of religious or cultural identity. In this dynamic, two papers deal with Jain adaptations of famous Puranic narratives and two others with the relation between textual tradition and soteriological practices in Jainism. In concert, other innovative papers elaborate on Puranic and kāvya literature, include technical discussions on linguistics and engage in philosophical studies. Finally, set in the historical context of the hosting institution, this volume opens with a history of Indology in Belgium.

This book aims to investigate the phenomenon of volunteering as a workfare event, as a synchronous rewriting of territorial policy and advocacy, according to the principles of risk and border. The two terms, as a solid sociological category, shed light on the material and semantic shift of European welfare. Beyond its contents, this book represents an important research experience of a complex European-wide survey network on the phenomenon of volunteering and a best practice of collaboration and cultural exchange between university researchers and men and women that work in the fi eld of social policies concretely and every day.

"Comprehensive and nuanced..