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People: A Psycho-Culturological Approach (Contributions to International Relations)
by Huipeng ShangThis book explores the relationship between the “human constant” (Jen) of the four large-scale civilizational societies—China, the USA, Japan, and India—and their international behavior, response patterns, and interaction with the international system. The book analyzes the characteristics and limitations of the current international system, as well as the way it is related to the Western type of “human constant”. It also analyzes the challenges facing China in its integration into the international system. This book aims to explore international relations from the combined psychological and cultural perspective. The key concept of this book is “Jen”, which contains a distinct Chinese cultural experience, into the theory of international relations. Unlike other IR books to treat state as the main political actor, the book analyzes both the political aspects of state as an “organizational entity” and its civilizational aspects as a “civilizational entity”; hence, it proposes a new ontology of international relations. By integrating the concept of “Jen” based on the unique Chinese cultural experience into the theory of international relations, the book reveals the interactive nature of relationship between the international system and “human constant”. The book explains the causal relationship between state’s behavior and its “human constant”, analyzes the cultural characteristics of state actors and the international system, and tries to provide a new theoretical framework for understanding culture and modernity.
Truth-telling and the Ancient University: Healing the Wound of Colonisation in Nauiyu, Daly River
by Gavin John Morris Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann Judith Atkinson Emma L. SchubergThis book shares a strength-based truth-telling model, which reveals the trauma associated with the experience of colonisation and the traditional healing practices specific to the Nauiyu Nambiyu community in Australia. It explores the significance of community placed on developing the 'Ancient University', an Aboriginal-based, stand-alone healing centre that incorporates traditional healing practices. This book outlines the truth-telling model, which was developed by the Nauiyu community to address a community need. This unique approach represents a deliberate shift from decolonial scholarship, which merely captures Indigenous voice speaking back to the colonisers. This book explores Indigenous critical pedagogies to investigate theoretical frameworks with implications for planning, learning and teaching which are culturally responsive in a variety of contexts. It is the first of its kind that utilises an Indigenous research methodology on the country and with the people to which it belongs.
Forced Migration and Urban Transformation in South Asia: Displacement, Resettlement, and Poverty
by Rajith W. D. Lakshman S. Irudaya RajanThis book discusses the displacement of urban populations, inequality, and poverty in three cities in South Asia—Colombo, Jaffna in Sri Lanka, and Kochi in India. It focuses on the long-term effect resettlement and relocation has on the lives and livelihoods of urban internal displacement of populations (IDPs) primarily from urban poor classes. It also discusses the concerns faced by the displacement in post-war Sri Lanka. It examines the impacts of conflict on poverty and recovery in peri-urban settings. It emphasizes the role of agency of urban IDPs in strengthening their own well-being. It draws attention to how the agency of urban IDPs is compromised by the displacement processes and the weak local level governance structures in the cities. The book is intended for researchers, graduate students, and teachers of Geography, Social Policy, Refugees and Migration Studies, History, International Development, Urban Studies, and South Asian Studies.
Cultural and Social Influences on Consumer Behavior: Uncertainty Avoidance, Rituals, and External Threats (Management for Professionals)
by Xuehua WangThis book explores how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making with a focus on uncertainty avoidance, rituals, and external threats. Indeed, uncertainty avoidance can exert significant influence on consumer behavior. For example, consumers in a culture with high uncertainty avoidance may show less positive attitudes towards new products than those in a culture with low uncertainty avoidance. Prior cultural research has mainly focused on how individualism/collectivism or power distance belief influences consumer attitudes and behaviors at an individual level, while seldom does research investigate the effect of uncertainty avoidance on consumption. This book examines how uncertainty avoidance affects superstitious consumption as well as its underlying mechanism and boundary condition. Rituals, as a component of culture, can affect consumer behaviors. However, few studies have shedded light on how repeating rituals can affect consumers’ willingness to use the products involved in the ritual. Consumer behavior is complex. Consumers are surrounded with various external threats such as health, economic, and informational threats, while prior research has primarily focused on health threats. Beyond this, inter-client conflicts, as a special type of social threat, can also affect consumption experience. In all, this book aims to examine how uncertainty avoidance, rituals and external threats influence consumer attitudes and behaviors. In this book, new research models would be developed. This book enriches our understanding on how cultural and social influences affect consumer decision making and provides insights for both researchers and practitioners in marketing.
Constructing Regional Smart Education Ecosystems in China (Lecture Notes in Educational Technology)
by Haijun Zeng Zhisheng Li Jiong Guo Zhuo ZhangThis book enriches the understanding of regional smart education in China and promotes sharing of smart education case studies in China and abroad. It presents 46 case studies selected from a total of 644 case studies collected nationwide in China. These selected case studies focus on regional construction, research findings, and solutions. The case studies on regional construction mainly focus on the sustainable development mechanism of regional smart education. The research findings case studies showcase research results produced by research teams and individuals, which involve theories, models, technologies, practical investigations, or international comparisons related to smart education. Lastly, the solution case studies are technical solutions provided by enterprises for the development of smart education, which include application scenarios, methods, and effects in regions or schools around smart educational equipment, platforms, networks, tools, resources, or integrated solutions.
The Aceh Separatism Conflict in Indonesia: The Practice of Governance in Conflict (SpringerBriefs in Political Science)
by Novri SusanThis book is the first to analyse the practice of governance to resolve conflict in the case of Aceh in Indonesia. Combining theoretical discourse on conflict, democracy, and governance, it draws from original field research on the separatist conflict, utilizing a social constructivist approach in collating observations and interviews with political elites from both the Government of Indonesia and the Aceh Independent Movement (GAM). The conflict was an intractable one in which thousand civilians were killed between 1976 and 2006. The author zooms into the 2003 and 2007 period, against the broader context of the political landscape of Indonesia under the Suharto regime. In doing so, the book tackles the challenges presented by intrastate conflicts relating to ethno-religiosity, land use, and separatism. It unpacks the Indonesian political system’s shift from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one, and demarcates the prevalence of state violence in managing conflicts, as exemplified in the Aceh separatism conflict. Relevent to political scientists and scholars in peace, conflict and development studies, this co-published book presents novel sociological insights into Indonesia’s historical, and contemporary, political landscape.
Traumas Resisted and: Inquiring into Lost and Found Narratives in Music Education (Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education #36)
by Shelley M. Griffin Nasim NiknafsThis book focuses on the traumatic experiences within and through music that individuals and collectives face, while considering ways in which they (re)engage with their traumas in educational settings. The chapters delve into the physical, psychological, philosophical, sociological, and political aspects, as they relate to the reciprocal influences of trauma on musical practices and education. Readers are immersed in topics related to societal violence, physical injuries, grief, separation, loss, death, and ways of working through these in educational and artistic situations. In the introductory chapter, the co-editors draw attention to theoretical matters related to trauma through narrative inquiry in music education. The first section of the book, Separation Revisited, brings together notions of separation, focusing on how loss is emotionally and physically manifested when death, grief, and bodily injury are experienced. In the second section, (Re)Engaging with Lost and Found, readers are encouraged to imagine new possibilities considering trauma and loss in educational and musical spaces. These pieces offer deliberate ruminations moving the discourse toward (re)engagement in and through music education and artistic contexts. The co-editors conclude the book by drawing attention to narrative inquiry’s double-edged nature in stories of trauma and how the retelling of lost and found narratives offers a way to imagine lives otherwise—lives not smothered by grief and horror—through the conceivable reliving of unfathomable stories of experience. This book emerges from the 7th International Conference on Narrative Inquiry in Music Education (NIME7), October 2020, co-hosted by Brock University, Faculty of Education and the University of Toronto, Faculty of Music, Ontario, Canada.
Make America Fit Again: CrossFit’s Articulation with Authoritarian Populism
by Shaun E. EdmondsThis book critically examines the CrossFit phenomenon and makes the argument that CrossFit uses the rhetoric and tactics found in modern forms of authoritarian populism to rally adherents around its brand. CrossFit is a private branded fitness organization whose unorthodox methods and adversarial leadership has challenged dominant ideas around health and fitness worldwide. In exploring CrossFit’s articulations with healthism and the obesity epidemic, the risk discourse of the prepper and survivalist movements, and the increasing valorization of the military and military personnel, Shaun E. Edmonds makes legible the ideological underpinnings of the CrossFit practice. After a deeper look at how CrossFit’s variation of authoritarian populism has been used to counter critics and mobilize the community, the book concludes by considering what might be next for CrossFit following former CEO and co-founder Greg Glassman’s controversial departure from the company.
Participatory Sound Art: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics (Palgrave Studies in Sound)
by Vadim KeylinThis book addresses a major gap in sound art scholarship: the role of audience participation. It offers a survey of participatory sound art from its origins in the historical avant-gardes to the non-institutionalized forms of sonic creativity in contemporary digital culture. In doing so, it proposes an innovative theoretical framework for analysing such phenomena, rooted in Pragmatist aesthetics, affordance theory and postcritique. Combining artwork analyses with qualitative studies, it focuses on three principal aspects of participatory sound art: the ways the materialities of the artworks facilitate and structure the participatory processes; the interplay of the creative agencies of the artists and the participants; and the postcritical approach to sound art’s politics, unfolding through the participants’ affective gestures. In considering these multiple dimensions, this book contributes to the growing fields of sound studies and participation studies, as well as to curatorial practice regarding sound art and participatory art.
Disaster Management and Risk Reduction: Proceedings of NERC 2022
by Sudip Mitra Kaustubh Dasgupta Arindam Dey Rajshree BedamattaThis book presents select proceedings of North-East Research Conclave (NERC 2022) that will help pave way toward disaster risk reduction through a holistic and multidisciplinary approach. The book discusses topics, such as rapid pace of climate change, its deleterious effects on nature and natural systems, human interventions in altering the natural geographical and geological systems, widespread urbanization, recurrent unwarranted rainfall and cloud bursts, unprecedented flooding, catastrophic landslides, dam breakages, glacial outbursts, snow avalanches, seismicity and its impacts, liquefaction, and wreaking environmental pollution leading to unimaginable toll on lives, property and economy. The book also discusses approaches to address such issues and frame a refined path towards a sustainable future, such as a three-fold approach like – Awareness, Inferences and Implementations. For this approach, it is ardently necessary to understand the core reasoning behind the disasters, their impact on the socio-economic contexts, and the ways to mitigate them. The book can be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in disaster risk reduction and allied fields.
Videolised Society
by Jian Meng Hui ZhaoThis book traces the development of video (especially short video, duan shipin) in China over the past few years, exploring how these videos engaged with China’s rapidly changing society, how they enriched existed theories of society, media and communication, and new theories to be extracted. The book offers a new, critical model for understanding the relationship between video, video theory, video industry and the State. This book sheds light on the overall description and explanation of the current socio-political, economic and cultural environment concerning the development of video (especially short video). It interprets the emergence of the “Social Videolization” through the subjects of media psychology, communication studies and cultural criticism, media industrial studies, sociology and anthropology.
Education and Social Cohesion in a Post-conflict and Divided Nation: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina
by Taro KomatsuThis book discusses education’s role of developing social cohesion in a post-conflict environment where tensions continue to exist between the three “constituent” ethnic groups. It offers fresh insights into the relationship between education and social cohesion in a specific context of Bosnia & Herzegovina, where the need to rebuild social trust is acutely felt. This book first elaborates the concept of social cohesion and illustrates possible mechanisms through which education can develop, or further erode, social cohesion in already divided societies. Then, it carefully examines such mechanisms, using a case study of a Bosnia & Herzegovina which witnessed violent conflict instigated by ethno-identity politics during 1992-1995, and has been struggling to reconstruct its broken social fabric since then.
Subjective Well-Being in the Indian Context: Concept, Measure and Index
by Tithi BhatnagarThis book offers an understanding of subjective well-being (SWB) in the Indian context across ages and strata. It discusses the conceptualization and measurement of both subjective well-being (SWB) and subjective ill-being (SIB) through a multi-phased research study. The structure of SWB and development, standardization, and indexing of an SWB Measure provide insights on how the SWB Measure can enable nations to find out the national level of SWB/SIB for its citizens. The index may be useful in identifying the level of people’s well-being or ill-being. It explores the possibility of implications and interventions in optimizing SWB both at the individual and collective levels. It is a consolidated account of the work done in SWB research, particularly with a cultural focus from the Indian context. This book has a wide application for students, researchers, psychometricians, practitioners, policymakers, and all individuals interested in concepts like SWB and Happiness.
Yes Logo: Uncovering the Recipes of Branding Success in the World’s Largest Consumer Market
by Jiazhuo George Wang Shuo Qin Allison WangThis book focuses on how to succeed in China, the globe’s largest consumer market, through the branding market strategy. What are the undisclosed recipes that brands can follow to capture the attention and emotion of consumers in China? What’s the magical key to open the locked doors? The answer to these questions would be intriguing for many readers outside China, including but not limited to executives of global brands, owners of medium-and-small-sized businesses aiming for the global market, branding/marketing professionals, financial investors and analysts, business professors and researchers in universities and colleges, graduate and undergraduate students, and readers with an interest on these topics in the general public.In comparison with many case studies that focus on only a single or few cases, or else lean toward being a macro-discussions of China’s consumer market without in-depth analysis of representative cases, this book provides both. Many branding strategies, programs, and activities presented in this book are of the innovative type, which could be very fresh and interesting to readers. Many of the in-depth analyses and specific insights presented in this book are provided by well-recognized business analysts/writers, which may not be available in other publications. Overall, this book provides readers with the opportunity to receive some valuable new knowledge about how to succeed in the globe’s largest consumer market, providing foodstuff for both thought and enjoyment.
Urban Infrastructure and Economic Development in China (Public Economy and Urban Governance in China)
by Chunyang PanThis book provides an overview of the history, basic concepts, and provision models of infrastructure, significant theories on infrastructure economics, practices at home and abroad that reflect the economic development effects of infrastructure, and four infrastructure economic growth models. Great attention is placed on the domestic front. This book describes and discusses in detail the historical background, development trends, achievements, and challenges of China’s infrastructure from 1949 to 2019, under the classic “supply and demand” analysis framework. From the four perspectives of market integration, open development, people’s livelihood, and endogenous growth, this book carries out an empirical study on how to quantify and make causal inferences about the economic development effects of infrastructure. Based on the conclusion that national governance is of important help to infrastructure provision, this book interprets China’s governance system and its impact on infrastructure provision from the angle of decentralization and offers suggestions on policy optimizing.
Indigenous Autoethnography: Illuminating Māori Voices
by Kelli Te Maihāroa Adrian WoodhouseThis book opens new pathways for decolonial autoethnography, presented as a series of reflective stories that showcase how Māori have negotiated and navigated their personal and professional identities within contemporary society. Framed within the academic methodology of Indigenous Autoethnography, authors recount their personal and professional experiences to address their encounters with cultural trauma and personal enlightenment. As a culturally responsive methodology, Indigenous Autoethnography embraces reflective practice and critical awakening to validate Indigenous knowledge, ensuring that it remains meaningful and responsive to the needs of Māori. Utilising metaphorical storytelling as a primary means of sensemaking, this work reinforces the importance of Māori and other Indigenous People to seek wisdom from the past to guide them into the future. With Indigenous knowledge historically ignored and misrepresented in higher education, this seminal text provides invaluable guidance for global Indigenous researchers seeking to produce story work that genuinely encompasses physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions.
Variations of a Building
by Brett MommersteegVariations of a Building tells the story of the making of a building. Based on a multi-sited ethnography of the building project for Aviva Studios (formerly, Factory) in Manchester, U.K., a theatre/cultural space designed by the architectural firm OMA, it explores the challenges of sharing in the act of creation by following the everyday practices of designers. Beyond the world of the architects, this book foregrounds a variety of other practices and realities at stake in the building, and offers a rare account of a building project from the point of view of the broader design and project team. More than the making of a building, it argues that it is also an experiment with, and reshaping of, a common world, showing what design practices and building projects can teach us about sharing in acts of creation and knowing. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, design, urban studies, Actor-Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies.
A Study of Macao Tertiary Students’ Attitudes Towards Language After the Handover (SpringerBriefs in Education)
by Xi YanThis book focuses on the attitudes of Macao tertiary students toward language after the handover. It shares the findings of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, which were conducted among freshmen of the University of Macao to investigate their attitudes toward Cantonese, Putonghua, English, and Portuguese, as well as their attitudes toward Macao's language planning and language policy. Utilizing a multidimensional and multilayered perspective in the study, this book also demonstrates the orientations of Macao tertiary students and the correlation between their social categories (gender and social class) and their attitudes toward language.
Academic Citizenship, Identity, Knowledge, and Vulnerability (Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives #11)
by Nuraan DavidsThis book brings into contestation the idea of academic citizenship as a homogenous and inclusive space. It delves into who academics are and how they come to embody their academic citizenship, if at all. Even when academics hold similar professional standings, their citizenship and implied notions of participation, inclusion, recognition, and belonging are largely pre-determined by their personal identity markers, rather than what they do professionally. As such, it is hard to ignore not only the contested and vulnerable terrain of academic citizenship, but the necessity of unpacking the agonistic space of the university which both sustains and benefits from these contestations and vulnerabilities.The book is influenced by a postcolonial vantage point, interested in unblocking and opening spaces, thoughts, and voices not only of reimagined embodiments and expressions of academic citizenship but of hitherto silenced and discounted forms of knowledge and being. It draws on academics' stories at various universities located in South Africa, USA, UK, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. It steps into the unexplored constructions of how knowledge is used in the deployment of valuing some forms of academic citizenship, while devaluing others. The book argues that different kinds of knowledge are necessary for both the building and questioning of theory: the more expansive our immersion into knowledge, the greater the capacities and opportunities for unlearning and relearning.
PRICAI 2023: 20th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, Jakarta, Indonesia, November 15–19, 2023, Proceedings, Part I (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14325)
by Fenrong Liu Arun Anand Sadanandan Duc Nghia Pham Petrus Mursanto Dickson LukoseThis three-volume set, LNCS 14325-14327 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 20th Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in November 2023.The 95 full papers and 36 short papers presented in these volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 422 submissions. PRICAI covers a wide range of topics in the areas of social and economic importance for countries in the Pacific Rim: artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning and scheduling, computer vision, distributed artificial intelligence, search methodologies, etc.
PRICAI 2023: 20th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, Jakarta, Indonesia, November 15–19, 2023, Proceedings, Part II (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14326)
by Fenrong Liu Arun Anand Sadanandan Duc Nghia Pham Petrus Mursanto Dickson LukoseThis three-volume set, LNCS 14325-14327 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 20th Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in November 2023.The 95 full papers and 36 short papers presented in these volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 422 submissions. PRICAI covers a wide range of topics in the areas of social and economic importance for countries in the Pacific Rim: artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning and scheduling, computer vision, distributed artificial intelligence, search methodologies, etc.
PRICAI 2023: 20th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, Jakarta, Indonesia, November 15–19, 2023, Proceedings, Part III (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14327)
by Fenrong Liu Arun Anand Sadanandan Duc Nghia Pham Petrus Mursanto Dickson LukoseThis three-volume set, LNCS 14325-14327 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 20th Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2023, held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in November 2023.The 95 full papers and 36 short papers presented in these volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 422 submissions. PRICAI covers a wide range of topics in the areas of social and economic importance for countries in the Pacific Rim: artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning and scheduling, computer vision, distributed artificial intelligence, search methodologies, etc.
Information Security Practice and Experience: 18th International Conference, ISPEC 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 24–25, 2023, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14341)
by Weizhi Meng Zheng Yan Vincenzo PiuriThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience, ISPEC 2023, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2023.The 27 full papers and 8 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 80 submissions. The main goal of the conference is to promote research on new information security technologies, including their applications and their integration with IT systems in various vertical sectors.
The History of Chinese Civilization (China Insights)
by Xianqun BuThis book tracks the entire history of Chinese civilization from a broad historical view. Its narrative spans a long period between primitive society and contemporary civilization, which makes it a unique academic works.From an academic point of view, this book is accurate in history and combines historical theories. Although brief, it captures the main thrust of the development of Chinese civilization and achieves a broad outline. Important figures, historical events, and achievements of civilization in all times are involved and discussed.From a theoretical point of view, based on the characteristics of early Chinese civilization, the book discusses the connotation of key concepts such as "civilization" and "Chinese civilization", which have certain theoretical value.From a contemporary and practical perspective, the book helps readers understand the history of Chinese civilization and promotes cultural exchanges between China and the world and leads to a better understanding of today’s China.
Manufacturing Refused Knowledge in the Age of Epistemic Pluralism: Discourses, Imaginaries, and Practices on the Border of Science
by Federico Neresini Maria Carmela Agodi Stefano Crabu Simone TosoniThis open access book explores contemporary practices that challenge science, arguing that this matter cannot be simply disregarded as a new manifestation of “anti-scientism”. It scrutinizes the processes through which knowledge claims, refused by established institutions and the scientific community, seek legitimacy. Assuming an agnostic analytical stance, it explores the actors involved in such processes and their social worlds, their interactions with epistemic institutions, and the ways in which they enact such refused knowledge in their daily lives. Drawing on a three-year mixed-method research project, this collection demonstrates how refused knowledge can be seen as a distinct mode of knowing, employed in response to the uncertainties of everyday life. Thus, it offers a deeper understanding not only of how refused knowledge garners credibility, but also of how knowledge at large – including scientific knowledge – emerges from specific sociotechnical assemblages.