In addition to war, terrorism, and unchecked military violence, modernity is also subject to less visible but no less venomous conflicts. Global in nature, these "culture wars" exacerbate the tensions between tradition and innovation, virtue and freedom. Internationally acclaimed scholar Fred Dallmayr charts a course beyond these persistent but curable dichotomies in Integral Pluralism: Beyond Culture Wars. Consulting diverse fields such as philosophy, literature, political science, and religious studies, Dallmayr equates modern history with a process of steady pluralization. This process, which Dallmayr calls "integral pluralism," requires new connections and creates ethical responsibilities.Dallmayr critically compares integral pluralism against the theories of Carl Schmitt, the Religious Right, international "realism," and so-called political Islam. Drawing on the works of James, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty, Integral Pluralism offers sophisticated and carefully researched solutions for the conflicts of the modern world.

The prevailing Western paradigm is modernity: a model focused on individual liberty, secularism, and the scientific control of nature. This worldview emerged from the break with the medieval and classical past and advanced a philosophy in which the solitary mind opposes the rest of the world. Although there is a simple appeal in this binary structure, history has shown that it is neither socially nor politically innocuous. In Freedom and Solidarity, noted political theorist and humanist Fred Dallmayr seeks to bridge the gap between the self and the outside world. Drawing on new scholarship and his work with the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations, a global, nongovernmental organization of distinguished thinkers, he challenges dominant worldviews and heralds new possibilities for political thought and practice. Dallmayr argues that while we need not reject all the values of modernity, it is imperative that we resist the simplifications inherent in dualism and fundamentally reassess the notions of freedom and solidarity.Engaging a breathtaking array of influential thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, Albert Camus, John Dewey, and Dimitry Likhachev, Dallmayr explores the possibility of a transition from the modern paradigm -- a mode of life presently in decay -- toward a new beginning in which freedom and solidarity can be reconciled, making it possible for humanity to flourish on a global scale.

What have a deaf nun, the mother of the first baby born to Europeans in North America, and a condemned heretic to do with one another? They are among the virtuous virgins, marvellous maidens, and fierce feminists of the Middle Ages who trail-blazed paths for women today. Without those first courageous souls who worked in fields dominated by men, women might not have the presence they currently do in professions such as education, the law, and literature. Focusing on women from Western Europe between c. 300 and 1500 CE in the medieval period and richly carpeted with detail, A Medieval Woman’s Companion offers a wealth of information about real medieval women who are now considered vital for understanding the Middle Ages in a full and nuanced way. Short biographies of 20 medieval women illustrate how they have anticipated and shaped current concerns, including access to education; creative emotional outlets such as art, theatre, romantic fiction, and music; marriage and marital rights; fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, contraception and gynecology; sex trafficing and sexual violence; the balance of work and family; faith; and disability. Their legacy abides until today in attitudes to contemporary women that have their roots in the medieval period. The final chapter suggests how 20th and 21st century feminist and gender theories can be applied to and complicated by medieval women's lives and writings. Doubly marginalised due to gender and the remoteness of the time period, medieval women’s accomplishments are acknowledged and presented in a way that readers can appreciate and find inspiring. Ideal for high school and college classroom use in courses ranging from history and literature to women's and gender studies, an accompanying website with educational links, images, downloadable curriculum guide, and interactive blog will be made available at the time of publication.

Scandinavian countries are generally associated with extensive public services and low levels of poverty. However, reality has changed dramatically over the last three decades, and Scandinavia's cities now share many of the problems and challenges familiar from other Western cities. How do the welfare states handle these global societal transformations? In Social Transformations in Scandinavian Cities, researchers highlight the changing face of social sustainability and social disintegration in Scandinavian cities. They offer theoretical and empirical analyses of how migration, inequality, and residential segregation intersect with shifting national and local policies, charting their impact on urban landscapes in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The authors challenge the standard view of Scandinavia as a haven of equality and peace. Unemployment, criminality, and poor school performance in ethnically and socio-economically segregated residential areas have finally been recognized and tackled through urban policies since the 1990s. In this book we learn why and in which ways progress is being made.

Emerging from two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad, the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift in the early 1950s. Although conservative luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, William F. Buckley Jr., Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin all published important works at this time, none of their writings would match the influence of Russell Kirk's 1953 masterpiece The Conservative Mind. This seminal book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans' attitudes toward traditionalism.In Russell Kirk, Bradley J. Birzer investigates the life and work of the man known as the founder of postwar conservatism in America. Drawing on papers and diaries that have only recently become available to the public, Birzer presents a thorough exploration of Kirk's intellectual roots and development. The first to examine the theorist's prolific writings on literature and culture, this magisterial study illuminates Kirk's lasting influence on figures such as T.

James Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson grew up understanding that opportunities came differently for blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor. In turn, they devoted their lives to the fight for equality, serving as career activists throughout the black freedom movement. Having grown up in Virginia during the depths of the Great Depression, the Jacksons also saw a path to racial equality through the Communist Party. This choice in political affiliation would come to shape and define not only their participation in the black freedom movement but also the course of their own marriage as the Cold War years unfolded.In this dual biography, Sara Rzeszutek examines the couple's political involvement as well as the evolution of their personal and public lives in the face of ever-shifting contexts. She documents the Jacksons' significant contributions to the early civil rights movement, discussing their time leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which laid the groundwork for youth activists in the 1960s; their numerous published writings in periodicals such as Political Affairs; and their editorial involvement in The Worker and the civil rights magazine Freedomways.Drawing upon a rich collection of correspondence, organizational literature, and interviews with the Jacksons themselves, Haviland follows the couple through the years as they bore witness to economic inequality, war, political oppression, and victory in the face of injustice. Her study reveals a portrait of a remarkable pair who lived during a transformative period of American history and whose story offers a vital narrative of persistence, love, and activism across the long arc of the black freedom movement.

Can psychoanalytical hypotheses have a universal value? Can they describe the same – or a similar – psychic dynamic for any human, regardless of the historical, social and cultural context? Can psychoanalysis help with mental suffering in different realities? In our times, the questions psychoanalysis has to face are very complex. The modern world is dominated by technology that subverts the perception of the body, by new families and group organization, and by a global violence that enforces a changed geometry of the mind. The answers to these new situations differ from country to country, regardless of the uniformity brought about by globalization. Consequently, the role of psychoanalysis changes across different nations. Presenting their different experiences and problem areas, the authors of the essays contained herein have laid out a map which is different from the geographical and geopolitical ones that we all know.

John Casey explores the expanding global reach of nonprofit organizations, examining the increasingly influential role not only of prominent NGOs that work on hot-button global issues, but also of the thousands of smaller, little-known organizations that have an impact on people's daily lives. What do these nonprofits actually do? How and why have they grown exponentially? How are they managed and funded? What organizational, political, and economic challenges do they face? Casey answers these questions and also, liberally using case studies, situates the evolution of the sector in the broader contexts of differing national environments and global public affairs. With its broad perspective, The Nonprofit World affords readers a thorough understanding of both the place of nonprofits in the global arena and the implications of their growing importance.

A weary-looking man stands at an intersection, backpack at his feet. Curled up nearby is a mixed-breed dog, unfazed by the passing traffic. The man holds a sign that reads, "Two old dogs need help. God bless." What's happening here? Leslie Irvine breaks new ground in the study of homelessness by investigating the frequently noticed, yet underexplored, role that animals play in the lives of homeless people. Irvine conducted interviews on street corners, in shelters, even at highway underpasses, to provide insights into the benefits and liabilities that animals have for the homeless. She also weighs the perspectives of social service workers, veterinarians, and local communities. Her work provides a new way of looking at both the meaning of animal companionship and the concept of home itself.

After grappling for two decades with the realities of the post–Cold War era, the UN Security Council must now meet the challenges of a resurgence of great power rivalry. Reflecting this new environment, The UN Security Council in the 21st Century provides a comprehensive view of the council's internal dynamics, its role and relevance in world politics, and its performance in addressing today's major security challenges.

The current European Union is too often presented as the perfect realisation of a Europe of the people and freedom. The present essay overturns the common way to understand this reality. A triumph of capitalism, which has now become absolute, the creation of the European Union has in fact proceeded to destabilise the hegemony of the political. It has paved the road to an irresistible cycle of privatisations and cuts to public spending, to forced precarisation of labour and to an ever-more sharp reduction of social rights, inflicting economic violence upon the subaltern and the most economically deprived. For this reason, the only way to re-imagine the future, to vindicate the people and work, and to continue the struggle that was Marx’s and Gramsci’s, is to move from a radical critique of finance and the Euro.

Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture, Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, Explaining Traditions provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.

This volume maps the multilayered narratives created in cinema on and around Silvio Berlusconi as a means of exploring the age of Berlusconismo. The analysis crosses chronological and generic boundaries, stretching back to the comedy Italian style, which foreshadows the symbolic meanings incarnated by Berlusconi before he actually entered the public stage. The book delineates a comprehensive cinematic corpus and focuses on a selection of narrative and documentary films, from the proto-Berlusconi everyman of La più bella serata della mia vita (The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life, 1972) by Ettore Scola, to the Berlusconi pretext for political self-reflection of Arance e martello (Oranges and Hammer, 2014) by Diego Bianchi. The author argues that the Berlusconi in these films represents not only the historical persona, but also a pervasive semiotic category in which the recent history of thecountry is inscribed and Italian society mirrors itself.

How do children construct, negotiate and organize space? The study of social space in any human group is fraught with limitations, and to these we must add the further limits involved in the study of childhood. Here specialists from archaeology, history, literature, architecture, didactics, museology and anthropology build a body of theoretical and methodological approaches about how space is articulated and organised around children and how this disposition affects the creation and maintenance of social identities. Children are considered as the main actors in historic dynamics of social change, from prehistory to the present day. Notions on space, childhood and the construction of both the individual and the group identity of children are considered as a prelude to papers that focus on analysing and identifying the spaces which contribute to the construction of children’s identity during their lives: the places they live, learn, socialize and play. A final section deals with these same aspects, but focuses on funerary contexts, in which children may lose their capacity to influence events, as it is adults who establish burial strategies and practices. In each case authors ask questions such as: how do adults construct spaces for children? How do children manage their own spaces? How do people (adults and children) build (invisible and/or physical) boundaries and spaces?

Chinese leaders have long been fascinated by the United States, but have often chosen to demonize America for perceived cultural and military imperialism. Especially under Communist rule, Chinese leaders have crafted and re-crafted portrayals of the United States according to the needs of their own agenda and the regime's self-image -- often seeing America as an antagonist and foil, but sometimes playing it up as a model.In China Looks at the West, Christopher A. Ford investigates what these depictions reveal about internal Chinese politics and Beijing's ambitions in the world today. In particular, Ford emphasizes the importance of China's "return" to global preeminence in state images, which has become an essential concept in the regime's self-image and legitimacy. He also examines the history of Chinese intellectual engagement with America, surveying the ways in which Chinese elites have manipulated attitudes toward the United States, and revealing how leaders from Qing dynasty officials to Mao Zedong and from to Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping have altered and reconstructed this narrative to support their own political agendas.Ford concludes the volume with a series of scenario-based alternatives for how China's approaches to understanding itself and other nations may evolve in the future. Based on extensive research, including interviews with Chinese scholars and researchers, this groundbreaking study is essential reading for policymakers and readers seeking to understand current and future Sino-American relations.

Covering decisionmaking processes, peace and security affairs, and economic, social, and humanitarian issues, The Politics of Global Governance helps students of international organizations to understand the major themes, theories, and approaches central to the subject. The fifteen new selections in this fully revised edition reflect an increased emphasis on transnational governance and emerging global norms. The editors' section introductions underscore the importance of the essays, which have been selected not only for their relevance, but also their accessibility.