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"Fake news" und "alternative Fakten" verdrängen zunehmend belastbare Daten. Sie bringen die journalistische Recherche und Massenmedien ins Zwielicht. Und die Gesellschaft spalten sie in Gläubige politischer Ideologen einerseits und Wahrheitssuchende sowie wahrhaftig Redende andererseits. In einer Zeit, in der "alternative Fakten" die Komponente der Information im Raum politischer Kommunikation zu verdrängen scheinen, geht Otto Hansmann Spuren einer Genealogie von Lügen und der Verlogenheit in der Gesellschaft nach. Ausgehend vom Terminus Lüge werden begriffliche Unterscheidungen und funktionale Beschreibungen kritisch dargestellt.

Denk ich an die Pflege in Deutschland in der Nacht, bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht. Die Adaption dieses bekannten Satzes trifft den Inhalt des Buches sehr genau. Die familiale Pflege in Deutschland ist ohne externe Dienstleister zunehmend nicht mehr leistbar. Um die Pflege der Angehörigen zu realisieren sind seit gut drei Jahrzehnten zunehmend Migrant*innen aus mittel- und südosteuropäischen Ländern im Privathaushalt unter prekären und illegalen Bedingungen tätig. Die Politik findet keine Antwort auf die drängenden gesellschaftlichen Fragen und Versorgungslücken, sodass pflegende Angehörige einen Spagat zwischen der eigenen beruflichen Tätigkeit und der Betreuung der pflegebedürftigen Personen vollziehen. Mit Hilfe transnationaler Sorgearrangements wird das häusliche Pflegesetting aufrechterhalten. In diesem Buch werden die Perspektiven von Angehörigen, Migrant*innen, examinierten Pflegefachkräften und Vermittlungsagenturen im Bezug auf den Einsatz der Migrant*innen im Haushalt analysiert. Es wird eine machtkritische, intersektionale Perspektive verfolgt, die die pflegebedürftige Person im Zentrum des Geschehens konstatiert und gleichzeitig intergenerationale und transnationale Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse offenlegt. Dieses Buch scheut nicht den Blick hinter die Kulissen, sondern analysiert die Risiken und Gefahren des 24 Stunden-Arrangements.

Zur Regulierung von politischen und sozialen Konflikten werden Menschenrechte oft als normative Leitidee ins Spiel gebracht. Insbesondere in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten hat sich gezeigt, wie heterogen die Aufgaben sind, zu deren Bewältigung Menschenrechte herangezogen werden: Sie reichen von der Bedrohung des internationalen Terrorismus über die kulturelle Identitätsbehauptung als Bestandteil sozialer Spannungen bis zu neuen Formen der Meinungsäußerung durch soziale Medien. Hinzu kommt, dass es auch die Menschenrechte selbst sind, die Konflikte auslösen oder vertiefen. Der Band versammelt Beiträge, die die Anwendungsrelevanz der Menschenrechte in Situationen des inner- und zwischenstaatlichen Widerstreits aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive diskutieren: Wie lösen Menschenrechte Kulturkämpfe aus und wie können diese mit ihnen beendet werden? Gibt es eine Pflicht zur humanitären Intervention? Unter welchen Bedingungen darf das Menschenrecht auf Meinungsäußerungsfreiheit eingeschränkt werden? Welche Prinzipien sind die normativen Grundlagen des internationalen Menschenrechtsregimes? Mit Blick auf solche Fragen zeigen die Autorinnen und Autoren die Relevanz von Menschenrechten im Konflikt auf und verdeutlichen, weswegen jene selbst Gegenstand des Konflikts sind.

Zwischen 1870 und 1930 waren Anstandsbücher in Deutschland, England und Frankreich nicht nur heiß begehrte Ratgeber für das sichere Auftreten und Reüssieren in der Gesellschaft, sondern zugleich auch ausgeprägt politische Medien. In ihrer weit überwiegenden Mehrzahl boten sie verschiedensten katholischen und evangelischen, konservativen und liberalen, generationenmäßig oder berufsständisch abgegrenzten, dabei nach außen hin defensiv-separierten oder selbstbewusst-offenen sozialen Milieus und Teilkulturen Hilfestellung bei der Orientierung in Zeiten rascher Entwicklungen und Umbrüche in Staat und Gesellschaft. Je nach Land geschah dies in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß und mit spezifischen Schwerpunktsetzungen. Ungeachtet jedoch der Besonderheiten des jeweiligen nationalen Buchmarktes wurden politische Etikettebücher über Jahrzehnte hinweg offenbar zielgerichtet angeboten und gekauft. Verleger und Autoren beeinflussten dabei in wechselnden Anteilen die Inhalte einzelner Werke und die Entwicklung des Genres im Ganzen, in der Regel aber standen die Wünsche und Bedürfnisse des Lesepublikums im Vordergrund. Alles in allem kann das Massenmedium Anstandsliteratur als Ergänzung zu genuiner Weltanschauungslektüre für diverse soziale Formationen in allen drei untersuchten Ländern eingestuft werden. Die Geschichte der politischen Medien und ihrer soziopolitischen Funktion um 1900 wird so aus internationaler Perspektive um einen wesentlichen, bislang unbekannten Aspekt bereichert.

The twentieth century has been called a century of war. Wars and colonization leave deep chasms between countries. In the case of Japan, these frictions have manifested themselves as historical issues. The history since World War II has also been a history of tyring to overcome the hostility surrounding these issues. Since the end of the war there have been various attempts at reconciliation, and indeed, periods in which Japan has enjoyed good relations with China and also with South Korea. Despite that, historical issues have overheated in the twenty-first century, and their effects may extend beyond Japan's relations with China and South Korea to impact its relations with the United States, Southeast Asia, and Europe.This title examines the first, in the introduction, the period from the Tokyo Military Tribunal to the normalization of relations between Japan and South Korea and between Japan and China. In chapter one, it explores an issue that arose regarding Japanese history textbooks and a statement released by Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Miyazawa Kiichi, South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan’s visit to Japan, and “mutual trust” between Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. Chapter two reveals the view of the Chinese side and behind-the-scenes negotiations that evolved around Prime Minister Nakasone's official visit to Yasukuni Shrine. Chapter three delves into the wartime "comfort women" issue, including Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi’s visit to South Korea and statements made by Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Kōichi and Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei. Chapter four takes up the statement released by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and discusses how the statement has become a kind of common language within Japanese politics. Chapter five considers issues that have arisen in the twenty-first and the epilogue provides observations about the prospects for these areas in the future.

Preferable Futures delves into the question of possible, probable, and desirable futures amidst the pressures of climate change and digitalization. Through a diverse range of perspectives, the book explores ways to negotiate and create desirable futures using the concept of transformation design in theory and practice, economic business simulations, and recent humanistic theories. This thought-provoking read challenges us to imagine and (re)shape a future we cannot predict and find ways to make a difference right now.

For the last twenty years, the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has not just been a military prison and security facility, but also a site of media production. Films, photographs, and documents have continued to emerge from the camp and become the focus of fierce legal and political battles, as well as intense moral anguish. This book looks at how the US Department of Defense has struggled, and often failed, to control the public perception of these media objects through complex, layered framing devices. It traces how small ruptures in the Department’s framings have provided openings for critical interventions from various fields – ranging from journalism and human rights law to the arts. Guantánamo Frames thus lays the groundwork for a critical reappraisal of the entanglement of media, violence, and the security state in a broader sense.

Die realpolitische Affirmation der Universalität des Digitalen geht mit einer regelrechten Abwehr der kritischen Reflexion seiner scheinbaren Axiome einher. Umso dringlicher ist es zu fragen: Was sind die Bedingungen und Möglichkeiten von Kritik am Digitalen und seiner Kulturen? Wie lässt sich die drängende Notwendigkeit politischer Haltung und kritischer Praxis mit einem wissenschaftlichen Einsatz verbinden, der die Eigengesetzlichkeiten des Digitalen ernst nimmt? Die Beiträge in Kritik postdigital begegnen diesen Herausforderungen aus sozial-, medienwissenschaftlicher und philosophischer Perspektive.

What makes information feel true or compelling in our contemporary digital societies? This book brings together different disciplinary understandings of “authenticity” in order to find alternative ways to approach mis- and disinformation that go beyond contemporary fact-checking and its search for the “authentic” truth. Patterned under the algorithmic flows of digital capitalism, authenticity itself is subject to variation, iteration, and outside influence. Linking cross-disciplinary research on the history and practices of algorithmic authenticity points to new research questions to understand the impact of algorithmic authenticity on social life and its role in contemporary information disorder.

This is an open access book. With the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, European security has been put on high alert. The implications of the Russian military invasion are many and difficult to grasp in full. However, the need for greater European strategic autonomy appears increasingly evident. The book argues that strategic autonomy may be reached—also in the short run—if differentiated integration is seen as an asset rather than a challenge. While the EU (together with NATO) remains the core in such a system, there is a multitude sub-regional integration processes that need to be taken into account to get the full idea of how European strategic autonomy can be achieved.

This Open access book provides a survey of the economic, health, and somatic progress of Baltic countries during the period 1918–2018, framed by the outline of the historical-sociological theory of modern social restorations, as originally conceived by the Austrian-American comparative historian Robert A. Kann. The author reworks Kann's theory to analyse post-communist transformations in the Baltic region. The book argues that the purpose of modern social restorations is to make restoration societies safe against a recurrence of revolution. There were two waves of modern social restorations: post-Napoleonic and post-communist. Most post-Napoleonic restorations were brief, because they failed to economically and socially outperform the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary systems. It considers Baltic restorations as laboratory cases of second-wave modern social restorations, because they encompass a triple restoration of the nation-state, capitalism, and democracy. The book assesses the performance success of Baltic restorations by comparing economic and social progress of Baltic countries during the periods of original independence (1918–1940), foreign-imposed state socialism (1940–1990), and restored independence (since 1990). It then elaborates the criteria to assess the ultimate performance success of these restorations by 2040, when restored Baltic states may endure longer than their ancestors in 1918–1940 and the complete foreign occupations era (1940–1990). The author, an expert in historical sociology, uses extensive historical-statistical data in cross-time comparisons to develop his analysis and create future projections. This book is of wide interest to sociologists, social demographers, political scientists, and economists studying the Baltic region. This is an open access book.

Wir sind das Volk. Die Anderen nicht. Der Historiker Michael Wildt über die Ambivalenzen und Abgründe des politischen Konzepts des Volkes. Wer ist das Volk? Die wahlberechtigten Staatsbürgerinnen und Staatsbürger? Die Demonstranten gegen die Diktatur in Leipzig im Oktober 1989? Die orangefarbenen Massen auf dem Maidan in Kiew 2013/14 ? In der langen Geschichte des Volkes wurde stets darum gestritten, wer zu ihm gehörte und wer nicht. Frauen zum Beispiel erhielten in den meisten Staaten erst im 20. Jahrhundert das Wahlrecht. Und was geschieht, wenn das Volk die Demokratie nicht mehr will? Michael Wildt hinterfragt die populistischen Äußerungen der AfD, die sich lauthals auf das Volk beruft. Auch hier geht es um verschiedene Volkskonzepte. Die kulturell definierte Ausgrenzung von Minderheiten bei der AfD birgt die Gefahr radikaler Exklusion aus dem »Volk«. Doch auch das Beharren darauf, dass Volk demos und nicht ethnos sei, gelangt über die tückische Imagination eines einheitlichen Volkes nicht hinaus.

This book is about how distinctions are drawn between civilians and combatants in modern warfare and how the legal principle of distinction depends on the technical means through which combatants make themselves visibly distinguishable from civilians. The author demonstrates that technologies of visualisation have always been part of the operation of the principle of distinction, arguing that the military uniform sustained the legal categories of civilian and combatant and actively set the boundaries of permissible and prohibited targeting, and so legal and illegal killing. Drawing upon insights from the theory of legal materiality, visual studies, critical fashion studies, and a dozen of military manuals he shows that far from being passive objects of regulation, these technologies help to draw the boundaries of the legitimate target. With its attention to the co-productive relationship between law, technologies of visualisation and legitimation of violence, this book will be relevant to a large community of researchers in international law, international relations, critical military studies, contemporary counterinsurgency operations and the sociology of law.

The authors of this monograph were driven to delve into the challenges facing cross-border cooperation amidst crises and disruptions spurred by the adverse impacts witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included challenges to the implementation of cross-border projects, the activities of Euroregions, and the development of partnerships based on INTERREG programs, as well as other issues related to territorial cooperation.The confluence of the pandemic crisis and broader international geopolitical issues, such as illegal migration to the EU and geopolitical tensions like Russian aggression against Ukraine, underscores the imperative to explore new research avenues focused on bolstering the resilience of cross-border cooperation within the EU.With a focus on identifying key factors shaping the management of cross-border projects co-financed by INTERREG programs, as well as factors influencing partner cooperation, this study aims to fortify cross-border cooperation in the face of future crises and disruptions.The monograph offers valuable insights for institutions and organizations operating in border regions, catering specifically to theoreticians and practitioners engaged in cross-border cooperation. By distilling lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic period, it provides a roadmap for integrating resilience into future cross-border activities and endeavours.

Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture is the first volume to analyze the myriad conceptualizations of South Asian women’s body issues in film, literature, advertising, and other media. Showing how body image and self-identity are constructed in contemporary neoliberal India, the editors and contributors theorize issues of body image vis-à-vis Indian womanhood while touching upon political, socio-economic, and cultural parameters.Influences from the colonial period through the age of the internet and globalization have reinforced Eurocentric ideals about femininity and womanhood. This long overdue volume addresses the pressures of beautification that Indian women face as they struggle with body acceptance and are often denied pride in their natural bodies.Contributors: Annika Taneja, Anurima Chanda, Aratrika Bose, Kavita Daiya, Ketaki Chowkhani, Nishat Haider, Samrita Sinha, Shailendra Kumar Singh, Shubhra Ray, Sucharita Sarkar, Sukshma Vedere, Swatie, Tanupriya, Turni Chakrabarti, and the editors

A highly original thinker' - New York Times David Graeber (1961–2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist, who left us with new ways to understand humankind. This collection of new writing brings together his insights into one book, showing how deeply his work continues to influence us today. Graeber’s writing resonates with both scholars and activists looking to shake things up. The impact of his work is broad in scope, from birth to banking, and he picks open social hierarchy and political power to expose what really makes human society tick. In today’s neoliberal world, we can turn to his legacy to provide a way for us to understand what went wrong, and how to fix it. This collection of writings is both an introduction to his life and works, a guide to his key ideas, and an inspiring example of of how anthropologists are continuing to use his work today.

This open access book explores the new complexities and ambiguities that epitomize EU-Turkey relations. With a strong focus on the developments in the last decade, the book provides full access to a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted relationship through three entry points: (1) Theories and Concepts, (2) Institutions, and (3) Policies. Part I brings together complementary and competing analytical approaches to study the evolution of EU-Turkey relations, ranging from traditional integration theories to novel concepts. Part II investigates the institutional machinery of EU-Turkey relations by analyzing the roles and perspectives of the European Council, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. Part III offers analyses of the policies most relevant for the relationship: enlargement policy, trade and macroeconomic policies, foreign and security policy, migration and asylum policies, and energy policy. In Part IV, the volume closes with a systematic survey of the conditions under which cooperative trends in EU-Turkey relations could be (re)invigorated. The systematic setup and the balanced combination of distinguished experts from EU- and Turkey-based institutions make this book a fundamental reading for students, researchers, lecturers, and practitioners of EU-Turkey relations, European integration and Turkish foreign policy.

​Dieses Open Access Buch thematisiert den Beitrag der Städte zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Die Autor*innen stellen die Agenda 2030 und die 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) vor, auf die sich die Mitgliedstaaten der Vereinten Nationen im Jahr 2015 einigten. Sie zeigen auf, wie die Ziele kommunal umgesetzt werden und welche Herausforderungen sich dabei ergeben. Ansätze nachhaltiger Stadtentwicklung werden vorgestellt und nationale sowie internationale Beispiele verdeutlichen die Lokalisierung der SDGs. Dies wird ergänzt durch Forschungsansätze zur Unterstützung von Nachhaltigkeitstransformationen in gemeinsamer Arbeit von Wissenschaft und Praxis.

Weltweit ist eine Konjunktur der Refeudalisierung zu verzeichnen: Milliardäre werden Staatspräsidenten, der Luxuskonsum steigt ebenso dramatisch an wie soziale Ungleichheiten und es entsteht eine Kultur politischer und sozio-ökonomischer Abschottung. In Lateinamerika ist diese Tendenz zudem mit einem markanten Rechtsruck in der politischen Sphäre verbunden, der - symbolisiert im Aufstieg weißer, reicher Männer - Indigene, Arme und Feministen zunehmend diffamiert. Mit seiner Refeudalisierungs-Hypothese liefert Olaf Kaltmeier einen kohärenten Interpretationsrahmen, um die Phänomene des Gesellschaftswandels verständlich zu machen, die wir im frühen 21. Jahrhundert global durchleben und die in Lateinamerika ganz spezifische regionale Ausdrucksformen annehmen.

So far, platform work has been an important laboratory for capital. Management techniques, like the use of algorithms, are being tested with a view to exporting across the global economy and it is argued that automation is undermining workers’ agency. Although the contractual trick of self-employment has allowed platforms to grow quickly and keep their costs down, yet it has also been the case also that workers have also found they can strike without following the existing regulations. This book develops a critique of platforms and platform capitalism from the perspective of workers and contributes to the ongoing debates about the future of work and worker organising. It presents an alternative portrait returning to a focus on workers’ experience, focusing on solidarity, drawing out a global picture of new forms of agency. In particular, the book focuses on three dynamics that are driving struggles in the platform economy: the increasing connections between workers who are no longer isolated; the lack of communication and negotiation from platforms, leading to escalating worker action around shared issues; and the internationalisation of platforms, which has laid the basis for new transnational solidarity. Focusing on transport and courier workers, online workers and freelancers author Jamie Woodcock concludes by considering how workers build power in different situations. Rather than undermining worker agency, platforms have instead provided the technical basis for the emergence of new global struggles against capitalism.

This book explores how gender equality, a central part of the Nordic imaginary, is used in the political communication of Nordic states. The analyses presented move beyond conventional images and discourses of Nordic gender- and women-friendliness by critically investigating how and to what extent gender equality serves nation-branding in the Nordic region. Nation-branding is an unescapable part of globalisation, which is a market-oriented process dominated by the West and predicated on the creation of winners and losers. Hence, efforts to strengthen the national brand or reputation of specific Nordic countries with the aid of gender equality as a political and symbolic value inevitably help to reinforce already established global hierarchies where the Nordics play the role of moral superpower. This book comprises scholars from various fields of specialisation, and provides evidence and understanding for the growing interaction between gender-equality policies and nation-branding in all five Nordic countries. It does so by exploring a variety of policy fields and issues including women’s rights, foreign policy, rape and legislation, female quotas and business policies, in addition to the index industry. The rise of the global indexes has reproduced forceful images of the Nordic countries as frontrunners of gender equality, which indeed help the Nordic countries to further position themselves as ‘best at being good’. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Nordic gender equality in political science, sociology, law, criminology, political psychology and history, as well as those interested in nation branding, Nordic studies and exceptionalism. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003017134, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

By re-examining the political thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen, this book offers a reflection on the nature of modern democracy and the question of its legitimacy. Pedro T. Magalhães shows that present-day elitist, populist and pluralist accounts of democracy owe, in diverse and often complicated ways, an intellectual debt to the interwar era, German-speaking, scholarly and political controversies on the problem(s) of modern democracy. A discussion of Weber’s ambivalent diagnosis of modernity and his elitist views on democracy, as they were elaborated especially in the 1910s, sets the groundwork for the study. Against that backdrop, Schmitt’s interwar political thought is interpreted as a form of neo-authoritarian populism, whereas Kelsen evinces robust, though not entirely unproblematic, pluralist consequences. In the conclusion, the author draws on Claude Lefort’s concept of indeterminacy to sketch a potentially more fruitful way than can be gleaned from the interwar German discussions of conceiving the nexus between the elitist, populist and pluralist faces of modern democracy. The Legitimacy of Modern Democracy will be of interest to political theorists, political philosophers, intellectual historians, theoretically oriented political scientists, and legal scholars working in the subfields of constitutional law and legal theory.

This book investigates the ways in which soft power is used by African countries to help drive global influence. Selecting four of the countries most associated with soft power across the continent, this book delves into the currencies of soft power across the region: from South Africa’s progressive constitution and expanding multinational corporations, to Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry and Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme, Kenya’s sport diplomacy, fashion and tourism industries, and finally Egypt’s Pan-Arabism and its reputation as the cradle of civilisation. The book asks how soft power is wielded by these countries and what constraints and contradictions they encounter. Understandings of soft power have typically been driven by Western scholars, but throughout this book, Oluwaseun Tella aims to Africanise our understanding of soft power, drawing on prominent African philosophies, including Nigeria’s Omolúwàbí, South Africa’s Ubuntu, Kenya’s Harambee, and Egypt’s Pharaonism. This book will be of interest to researchers from across political science, international relations, cultural studies, foreign policy and African Studies.

This book examines organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), providing incisive analyses in three critically important policy areas - healthcare, higher education and energy. The four countries surveyed – Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – afford rich diversity offering broad empirical material available for cross-country and cross-policy comparative analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, the book draws together recent developments in the evolution of post-communist advocacy organizations, their population ecology dynamics, interest intermediation, the influence of organized interests and their (bottom-up and top-down) Europeanization. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, interest groups and lobbying, post-communism, transition and consolidation studies, and more broadly to European studies/politics.

«Analyzing the earliest debates over the memory of Nazi camps, the author makes an important contribution to the study of their origin, reducing the existing asymmetry in our knowledge on the relevant phenomena in Western and Eastern Europe. This is all the more important as the Poles and Polish Jews, whose involvement in the disputes over memory she describes, were the most important group of survivors and eyewitnesses of the camps and so the genuine group of memory.» Prof. Dariusz Stola (Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science) «The vast number and variety of sources used in this work create a fascinating picture of a multifaceted, rich, vivid, and at times heated debate conducted in Poland in the late 1940s. A great merit of Wóycicka is to preserve this discourse from oblivion and to bring it back into the public sphere.» Barbara Engelking (Polish Center for Holocaust Research)

This open access textbook offers a critical introduction to human and economic development prospects in Africa revolving around three questions: where is Africa today, what explains the current state, and, given historical trends and what we know about the world, where do we think the continent will be in 2040? And, a final question: what can we do to create a better tomorrow? It models ambitious progress in health, demographics, agriculture, education, industrialization, technological leapfrogging, increased trade, greater stability, better governance and external support. The book reviews the future of work/jobs, poverty and the impact of climate change. A combined Closing the Gap scenario presents a forecast of what could be possible by 2040. Each chapter suggests which policies might accelerate prospects for each sector. Written in an accessible style, and supported by a range of pedagogical features, this textbook introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the contemporary human and economic development prospects in Africa.

This open access book states that the societal fault lines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security, fairness and sustainability of our societies. The author, Prof. Dr. Patrick Huntjens, argues that overcoming these existential challenges will require a fundamental shift from our current anthropocentric and economic growth-oriented approach to a more ecocentric and regenerative approach. He advocates for a Natural Social Contract that emphasizes long-term sustainability and the general welfare of both humankind and planet Earth. Achieving this crucial balance calls for an end to unlimited economic growth, overconsumption and over-individualisation for the benefit of ourselves, our planet, and future generations. To this end, sustainability, health, and justice in all social-ecological systems will require systemic innovation and prioritizing a collective effort. The Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI) framework presented in this book serves that cause. It helps to diagnose and advance innovation and spur change across sectors, disciplines, and at different levels of governance. Altogether, TSEI identifies intervention points and formulates jointly developed and shared solutions to inform policymakers, administrators, concerned citizens, and professionals dedicated towards a more sustainable, healthy and just society. A wide readership of students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in social innovation, transition studies, development studies, social policy, social justice, climate change, environmental studies, political science and economics will find this cutting-edge book particularly useful. “As a sustainability transition researcher, I am truly excited about this book. Two unique aspects of the book are that it considers bigger transformation issues (such as societies’ relationship with nature, purpose and justice) than those studied in transition studies and offers analytical frameworks and methods for taking up the challenge of achieving change on the ground.” - Prof. Dr. René Kemp, United Nations University and Maastricht Sustainability Institute

This open access book explores common critiques in the literature of hybrid peacebuilding, especially the lack of connection between hybridity in theory and practice. Through using a complexity-informed framework, the foundation for introducing the mid-space actor typology is established. Mid-space actors as insider-partial mediators are perceived to be vital agents for peace processes in conflict-affected areas and thus can be important power brokers and focal points for outside actors. In this book, two insider views are examined through analysing mid-space actors in the peacebuilding process in Cambodia and in Mindanao, the Philippines. First, it explores the process of identity-building of Cambodian monks and how such a process enables or hinders the monks to bridge existing cleavages. Then, in the case study of Mindanao, the roles of civil society actors are considered. The next step is to introduce the outsider’s perspective on hybrid peacebuilding and how Asian peacebuilding actors such as China and Japan are engaging with mid-space actors who provide key bridges in peacebuilding.

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today.