This book breaks down and elucidates the relationships between the several leaders of an increasingly religious Middle East. Considering Islamic religious figures as well as the political leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, it explains how, in times of crisis, these leaders counter the influences of moderate and extremist Islamists with Islam itself. Each uses an interpretation of the religion to effect equilibrium amongst their people, thus generating relative stability for their rule. As a result, many leaders have enjoyed remarkable longevity of power, and some have...

Both neo-liberal and Third Way politicians and pundits have come to accept globalisation as the key determinant of social and political organization. Consequently, they have confused government s role in the liberal democratic state with that of the globalised corporation. The result has been a discursive closure about what counts as human flourishing, and about the nature of the educational provision which best serves such flourishing which is co-terminous with economic success. This book offers both a challenge to such an equivalence, and an understanding of the dispositions and practices...

This book embarks on an interdisciplinary study of dance theater, one that provides a deeper insight into contemporary performing arts. Ciane Fernandes combines Laban movement analysis and the writings of Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault to investigate repetition in the works and creative process of Pina Bausch (b.1940), who is considered to be one of the most important choreographers of the twentieth century. This book examines repetition in Bausch's pieces as both method and subject, exploring its power in the metamorphosis of meaning. Repetition is used to subvert its own process of...

Black Women s Activism is the first book-length study of African American women s historical romances. This book examines romances written from 1989 to the present, and discusses their black heroines resistance at particular moments in history from the colonization movement to the Texas oil boom. Socio-historical perspectives, a womanist agenda, and an African-centered outlook inform the readings of female characters in the narratives of Francine Craft, Gay G. Gunn, Shirley Hailstock, Beverly Jenkins, and Anita Richmond Bunkley. Broadening the scope of the historical romance genre, and...

Lifelong learning has become a key concern as the focus of educational policy has shifted from mass schooling toward the learning society. The shift started in the mid 1960s and early 1970s under the impetus of a group of writers and adult educators, gravitating around UNESCO, with a humanist philosophy and a leftist agenda. The vocabulary of that movement was appropriated in the 1990s by other interests with a very different performativist agenda emphasizing effectiveness and economic outcomes. This change of interest, described in the book, has signified the death of education. The...

Lordship in France, 500-1500 presents a new interpretation of lordship in medieval France based on recent, ground-breaking research on the Merovingian, Carolingian and Capetian eras of lordship in medieval France. In the standard interpretation, lordship emerged around the year 1000, when landed magnates and armed adventurers usurped public authority from the collapsing Carolingian state. This book argues instead that lordship emerged roughly 500 hundred years earlier with the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Politically and socially, lordship expressed the collegial ruling...

Whereas many of the men of Reagan s 80s seemed stereotypically hypermasculine, a host of 90s images suggest a new phase of more sensitive manhood. In the Clinton era, both academic and popular writers suggested that a -crisis of masculinity- had taken root one that had men questioning traditional male ideas and seeking new identities. This book explores the conflicted ways in which this seemingly new climate of masculinity was negotiated. From Bill Clinton to The Promise Keepers and Titanic to Friends, a host of 90s heroes put this rhetoric of crisis to work to win elections,...

Internet Research Annual offers a selection of the best work presented at the first three conferences of the Association of Internet Researchers, and provides a useful overview of the cutting-edge in Internet studies. Established scholars and new researchers address issues such as communities on/off line, the Internet as a methodological tool and space for research, and the places, politics, and policies of the Internet, creating a volume that comprehensively covers the field of Internet research. Also included are a brief history of the organization, a list of previously...

This book takes a sharply critical view of contemporary society with a searing indictment of our morally and intellectually bankrupt educational system. Uniquely, the book contains both the original version of David Purpel s highly influential Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education, first published in 1989, as well as an updated critique of that work reflections from our current times of growing despair about the directions of education and the nation. Reflections on the Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education focuses on the possibility and necessity of generating hope through...