Böcker utgivna av Lexington Books

Like its predecessor, Eternal Putin?: Confronting Navalny, the Pandemic, Sanctions, and War with Ukraine (Lexington, 2023), Vladimir Putin's Version of 'War and Peace': The Battle for the Russian Home Front, 2022-24 is a chronological and descriptive account of almost all facets of Russian life during a very short period of time; i.e. from the onset of Russia's war on Ukraine in February 2022 to its presidential election in March 2024. Its strength lies in its wealth of detail on Russia's home front. To set the stage, the first chapters cover the course of war primarily focused on the consequences of the war for Russians at home. The ripple effects follow in chapters on Russia's politics, its economy, human and civil rights, and the Kremlin's international relationships. Among the subjects featured in sub-sections are the 'foreign agent' frenzy, pressure against the LGBT community, schools as incubators of young 'patriots', healthcare, the environment, the media, Russia's new diaspora in exile, the Russian Orthodox Church's role, war crimes, and international sport. Putin as vozhd (leader) is the subject of one chapter. Russia's forced and chosen pivot to the East for political and economic allies are also examined. Above all, this book highlights the Russian government's attempts to create a loyal citizenry. Nowhere else is the battle for the home front covered so thoroughly.

In this book, Deborah Geis offers a new approach to the evolving genre of culinary films that center on the acts of eating and cooking through close analyses of ten different films. These films range from the classics, like Big Night (1996) and Babette's Feast (1987) to later box-office hits, like Chef (2014) and to films that deserve a second look, like East Side Sushi (2014), Burnt (2015), and Mid-August Lunch (2008). Throughout these analyses, the book focuses on tropes including the "big dinner" as it connects to intercultural and transcultural communities; the self-destructive perfectionism of the obsessive chef; and the craft of cooking in relation to aging and mortality. Geis invites readers and viewers to experience food-driven narrative films with an appetite for appreciating the visual ingredients and the ways in which they construct pleasure through the act of looking as a vicarious approach to consuming the actual food. Drawing on the work of film theorist Christian Metz, Geis ultimately poses a new paradigm for watching and understanding culinary cinema as a significant - and constantly-evolving - genre that comes with its own conventions and contemporary filmmakers who seek to expand and transform those conventions in surprising ways.

Arguing that January 6th was just the tip of the iceberg, this book reveals the full impact of white Christian nationalism on the United States. Flowers explores how white Christian nationalism has infused its agenda in social, cultural, legislative, and political aspects of life in an effort to move the United States toward becoming an authoritarian theocratic white ethnostate. Part of the larger far-right enterprise, white Christian nationalism is unique in the way in which it pulls a variety of far-right ideologies together. These ideologies include anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, antisemitism, authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, ethnonationalism, male supremacy, racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Understanding the way these ideologies complement each other and are perpetuated is the only route to resist them.

Discussions of waste and electronic discard management often view micro-scale ingenious activities around unregulated recycling centers in the Global South only as a source of pollution. Gathering Electronic Waste in Tanzania: Labor, Value, and Toxicity goes further and explores the complexities of electronic waste management. Samwel Moses Ntapanta examines the materialities of electronics and e-discards, toxicity, and the sociocultural and economic fabrics of e-waste management in Tanzania. He traces the lifecycle of electronic goods beyond their discard in the Global South: from the importation of used goods to cycles of repair, and from the collection of 'scrap' to repurposing materials for manufacturing. Through the concept of gathering, Ntapanta provides insight into the effects of unregulated mechanisms to address the e-waste problem. He argues that understanding this connection between informal workers and the economy at large paves a path for better waste regime models, reduced violence, and environmental justice for workers and marginalized communities.

For women, the conundrum of modernity and tradition is an on-going puzzle of what aspects of modernity to appropriate and what aspects of tradition to retain in their everyday lives. Tracing the emergence of this conundrum in the nationalist debates on colonial modernity, Modernity, Tradition, and Indian Women argues that the everyday lives in contemporary times is animated by both the civilizational meta-narratives and the constitutional meta-narratives that keeps alive this conundrum of modernity and tradition. While societal gender scripts socialize women in families based on cultural ideologies, individuals struggle to expand their zones of freedom by rescripting their personal gender scripts in the direction of modernity. Rescripting a life of more freedom depends upon the changes in dispositions that cultural ideologies have for long instilled in men and women. Drawing evidence from marriage norms and partner choice in diverse contexts, religiosity, clothing and consumption, this book explores the ways in which women selectively appropriate aspects of modernity even while retaining traditions in their lives.

The Civically Engaged Woman: The Rhetoric and Activism of the Silenced Voice introduces readers to the lives of lesser-known women living in the US during the period of 1820-1920. The contributors address why their rhetoric, communicative participation, and civic actions were noteworthy and impactful, and offers implications for the relevance of their work today. Through examining these women's "communicative engagement" (McKinney, Kaid, and Bystrom 2005), the authors argue for recognition of their civic contributions and celebration of their lives and legacy; therefore, enlarging our understanding of civic engagement and the heroines and narratives that guide us. Scholars of rhetoric, communication, and women's studies will find this book particularly useful.

In Pilosity, Prejudice, and Passion in The Tale of Old Bearded Achbor by Yaakov ben El'azar of Toledo, Tovi Bibring argues that behind the restless parody and the sour tone of the tale, lies a fierce discourse of hate toward the Other, incarnated as a black woman, as well as an insistent alarm regarding the threat of assimilation. Following an enticing fully annotated translation of an overwhelming medieval Hebrew composition featuring a pathetic sermon, a hedonist feast, a love liaison, violent shaming, and murder, Bibring artfully explores their significances through a variety of chapters. From highlighting how hair symbolism and color symbolism construe dangerous prejudices, to suggesting that Achbor is a symbolic incarnation of a new Balaam, the author, through close-readings of selected excerpts, draws connections to the broader medieval and classical context. By highlighting possible literary correspondences, she sheds insightful light on this mysterious tale. This book stands as a testament to the richness of medieval European Hebrew culture, making it a must-read for scholars and enthusiasts alike.

The Mathematical Mind of F. M. Dostoevsky: Imaginary Numbers, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Infinity reconstructs the curriculum and readings that F. M. Dostoevsky encountered during his studies and connects such sources to the mathematical references and themes in his published works. Prior to becoming a man of letters, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg from 1838 to 1843. After he was arrested, submitted to mock execution by firing squad, and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia for his involvement in the revolutionary Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, most of his books and journals from the period of his education were confiscated, and destroyed by the Third Section of the Russian Secret Police. Although most scholars discount the legacy of his engineering studies, the literary aesthetics of his works communicate an acute awareness of mathematical principles and debates. This book unearths subtexts in works by Dostoevsky, communicating veins of mathematical thought that evolved throughout Classical Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution.

Lost Lutherans: Perspectives on American Religious Decline offers a straightforward look at change in American religion. Chris Suehr presents the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) as an example of religious change in a way that is welcoming to interested readers and fulfilling to social scientists. By amplifying real voices, this book presents the social science, but also explores the stories behind its statistics--the people who have left, their reasons, their beliefs, and their quests. Lost Lutherans is a useful resource on specific areas of American religion--from the history of the Mainline to the voices of modern people who have left it. This book examines the gradual changes in society, culture, and institutions that have led to this religious transformation.

Television's Second Golden Age: Politics and International Relations in the Era of HBO and Streaming TV examines the foremost series in the Second Golden Age of Television (1999-present), in terms of the political themes, theories, and issues expressed in major television genres. By using The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, House of Cards, Battlestar Galactica, and Game of Thrones. Joel R. Campbell explains the nature of the Second Golden Age. He clarifies how the rise of quality television through premium cable television channels and later streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon have made it possible for television properties with deeper drama, long story arcs, and concentration on political and social issues. Each chapter analyzes a specific television series that aired or streamed since 1999, in terms constructivist political theory.

Constitutionalism and Liberty: Essays in Honor of David K. Nichols explores the relationship between liberty and constitutionalism in American politics and political theory, and is organized around the question of how human liberty is preserved and advanced while empowering government to have the necessary authority to effectively govern society. The essays themselves are divided into three areas reflecting the breadth and diversity of David K. Nichols's scholarship. The first assesses how we should understand separation of powers and checks and balances in the American constitutional system. The second area treats different aspects of American legal practice and jurisprudence, including the powers and role of the American judiciary philosophically and institutionally as well as questions of administrative power, civil rights, parental rights, and symbolic speech. The final section examines a range of issues in political philosophy and theory, including two chapters on the intersection of political theory with literature and art. The array of subjects covered by these chapters is a testament to the broad influence of Nichols' teaching and scholarship, and to the widening interest in aspects of American politics, constitutional law, and political theory that cross traditional barriers in political science.

The Words of Robotics addresses how the way we "tell" stories about robots cannot be reduced to a strictly logical discourse, but must involve the rhetorical aspects of "ethos" and "pathos." The author focuses on the aspect of motion in order to analyze the relation between humans and robots, and show the opportunities and pitfalls of the popularization of academic discourses in using a rhetorical approach to talk about robots. This approach allows one to go beyond the reductionisms of either overstating the abilities and power of the robots or reducing the discourse to a specialized, mere technical language.

Racial discrimination in America has deep historical roots that persist to this day, leading to disparities in areas like police shootings, high incarceration rates, and unlawful, tragic deaths Understanding these roots is crucial to addressing the ongoing challenges in achieving racial equality and healing from racial trauma. From Discrimination to Inclusion: A Journey of Transforming and Embracing Diversity by Ruth Chu-Lien Chao examines various forms of racism, including individual, internalized, interpersonal, and institutional racism, to provide a better understanding of the detrimental consequences they have in BIPOC communities. Seeking a way forward, Chao develops strategies to address racism through anti-racism exercises, collaboration among individuals from diverse racial backgrounds, and racial inclusion by promoting empathy, diversity, and equal opportunities. This book also explores the importance of empathy and openness toward racial inclusion and how this can be cultivated through education and policy implementation. By integrating strategies that encourage us to both challenge racism and address the traumatic responses that they evoke, this book advocates for a society where diversity is celebrated, and racism is actively addressed. Promoting racial inclusion is a collective effort that requires ongoing commitment and action at both individual and systemic levels.

In this book, Mark Ward Sr. draws on a combination of ethnographic, autoethnographic, and sociolinguistic research to identify and analyze white evangelicals' distinctive speech code from a perspective rooted deeply in both communication studies and the evangelical community. Ward posits that the Bible, positioned as the one dominant symbol that unifies all meaning, leads to the widespread adoption of the language of literalism driving evangelical identity, patriarchy, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and Christian nationalism. This, he argues, divides the world into a cosmic war between secular humanism and an all-encompassing "biblical worldview." Ward's positionality as both an ethnographer of religious communication who has observed white evangelical culture for two decades and also as a self-identified evangelical for four decades makes him uniquely qualified to casting an insider's critical yet balanced eye on conservative white Christian culture. This book will complement existing scholarship within anthropology and sociology-where evangelicalism has been studied in conjunction with the rise of the Religious Right-and will contribute unique insights from the religious communication subdiscipline.

New Democratic Initiatives in Authoritarian Twenty-First Century Latin America uses a multidisciplinary approach to understand the coincidence of emerging social movements, seeking more meaningful forms of democratic participation, on the one hand, and the rise of new authoritarian politics that in part rely on chaos and disorder as mechanisms of domination, on the other. This edited collection argues that Latin America has entered a new phase of political and economic volatility in which traditional conceptual divisions between democracy and authoritarianism need to be re-thought. How are democratic movements coping with and reacting to the new right-wing politics of Jair Bolsonaro and Javier Milei, which among other things, attempt to incorporate the popular classes? Does the "second pink tide" offer meaningful avenues for popular empowerment? How are counter hegemonic struggles built? What are the challenges and opportunities faced by women, queer and trans people, cultural workers, people with disabilities and indigenous groups in this conjuncture? These are the key questions addressed in this book.

Political Process: New Perspectives on the Virginia and Bloomington Schools explores political process as emphasized by the Virginia and Bloomington schools of political economy. Though the Virginia school of public choice and Bloomington school of institutional analysis have risen to prominence through the works of James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and Elinor Ostrom; their joint emphasis on political process has been neglected. The chapters in this volume explore the idea of political process through a multi-disciplinary perspective and to better situate both schools in this discussion. Approximately half the chapters make theoretical contributions, proposing new frameworks for understanding how people come together to make collective decisions. The other half examine applied case studies through a process-oriented framework.

Through historical and current cultural abjection of the "animal" and the "bad queer," Queer and Animal Provocations: Homonormativity, Animal Exploitation, and Sexual Violence provides insight into the relationship between queer people and animals to show how homonormative aspirations of "good queers" can unwittingly further entrench animal abuse. To uncover this connection, this book travels through notions of queer citizenship, animal justice, colonial constructs of the human, and queer movements for liberation. Jessica Ison explores encounters between the discourse of queer liberation and animal abjection, through the use of advertisements, corporate sponsors, media articles, laws, activist movements, and lobbying efforts, to discover how the struggles for acceptable queer identity are entwined with entrenching animal exploitation. This book disentangles the exploitation of animals from queer liberation, arguing for scholars and activists to take action in future struggles through solidarity and mutual support within the abolition of cages and systems of injustice.

In Educator Perspectives of Self-Efficacy with Special Populations: From Administrators to Pre-Service Teachers, the authors argue for the importance of self-efficacy in all realms of education, starting with pre-service teachers, whose efficacy levels significantly impact their classroom confidence and effectiveness. Teachers who are confident in their ability to positively impact learning tend to implement evidence-based interventions, offer constructive feedback, and cultivate supportive classroom atmospheres. Administrators who foster inclusive practices, offer professional development, and nurture positive school cultures can enhance student success. In addition, when used effectively, technology empowers educators to tailor instruction, personalize learning, and support special populations, albeit with potential challenges. Likewise, skilled classroom management fueled by high self-efficacy, establishes clear expectations, fosters positive student relationships, and effectively addresses behavioral issues. In essence, self-efficacy serves as a cornerstone in educational dynamics, shaping attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes across stakeholders. By nurturing belief in their abilities and fortifying support structures, educators pave the way for inclusive and equitable learning environments.

Institutional Epistemology and Extreme Inequality: Knowledge and Governance in a Non-ideal World provides an account of the fundamental design of an institutional system that can reliably solve problems, learn, and attain knowledge. Reconciling non-ideal system-oriented epistemic democracy and liberalism, Marko-Luka Zub¿i¿ develops a unified theory of institutional epistemology. From Deweyan experimentalism and Hayekian epistemic institutionalism to open democracy and pluralist liberalism of New Diversity Theory, Zub¿i¿ integrates insights from pragmatism, studies of division of cognitive labor and collective search under complexity, governance studies, and critical social epistemology. Institutional Epistemology and Extreme Inequality also provides a new, decisive epistemological argument that protection against extreme economic inequalities is a condition of epistemic reliability of an institutional system. Thus, Zub¿i¿ shows that-along with constitutional liberties, self-governance, open markets, and polycentricity-freedom from poverty and limits on private wealth are the institutional devices we collectively and individually need to reliably solve difficult problems and attain knowledge.

Political Humour and Zimbabwean Identity on Social Media Platforms by Mbongeni Jonny Msimanga studies Zimbabwean digital political communication to investigate how political satire constructs, critiques, contests, mediates, and negotiates national identity. Focusing on Bustop and Magamba TV, two YouTube channels that specialise in satiric political skits, this book demonstrates what it means to be a Zimbabwean, and who or what authorises such belonging. Msimanga traces contestations of Zimbabwe's national identity since independence in 1980, refracted by the Gukurahundi genocide, questioning national sovereignty and national security, the fast-track land reform programme, and human rights abuses perpetrated by the incumbent ZANU-PF government. This book provides a conceptual framework that deploys a context-sensitive understanding of satire relevant to the global south and to Zimbabwe. Msimanga concludes that Magamba and Bustop TV are successful in utilising opportunities inherent in the inflection point and crossroads facing Zimbabwe to open and amplify new spaces for contesting, negotiating, and critiquing what it means to belong to the national project.

Reimagining Democracy: Communication Activism, Social Justice, and Prefiguration in Participatory Budgeting presents findings from a multi-year, community-based, critical ethnography of two participatory budgeting (PB) processes in Denver, Colorado. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with PB participants, Vincent Russell argues that the PB processes served as sites of prefigurative communication activism, where participants reimagined how government should operate, and activists transformed social and power relations through their in-group deliberations. Participants from oppressed populations emphasized forging relationships and feelings of solidarity among each other as they struggled for liberation, dignity, and social justice. Reimagining Democracy teaches important lessons about the state of democratic culture in the United States and offers alternative pathways for public decision making that hold the promise of restructuring practices, processes, and outcomes to be more socially just. Written in an engaging style with a focus on narratives about social change, this book is an important contribution for scholars, practitioners, and community members passionate about social justice activism.

In The Contemporary Fantastic: Reimagining Reality in French Fiction, Amanda Vredenburgh identifies a contemporary shift in the use of fantastic modalities in French fiction, no longer dominated by the desire to escape the disappointments of reality nor the reader's hesitation about the reality of the novel's events, but by its innovative confrontation with the real. What could bizarre, uncanny, or supernatural literary representations have to tell us about very urgent, real issues like the environmental crisis, racism, migration, and the formation of egalitarian communities? Through close readings of a selection of novels by Marie Darrieussecq, Marie NDiaye, and Antoine Volodine, Vredenburgh argues that the ability to blur boundaries gives the fantastic both an emancipatory and reparative function in its engagement with contemporary political issues. These authors complicate categories such as human/nonhuman, French/foreign, inclusion/exclusion, and individual/community and shift the focus to the experiential and affective dimensions of these issues, ultimately allowing us to better think and feel with those that are excluded. Vredenburgh concludes that this use of the fantastic has a specific ethical stance, which encourages a community-based approach founded on compassion and inclusion.

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. These case studies come from Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, and Russia, spanning from the Central Black-Earth region to the Bashkir and Udmurt regions. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era. These are the stories of the resilience and creative agency of religious believers in times when their faith in God was considered a legal offense. These issues are addressed through an in-depth analysis of previously untapped archival sources from the Soviet secret police archives and eyewitness testimonies.

Korean Nuclear Diaspora: Redress Movements of Korean Atomic-bomb Victims in Japan comprehensively explores the history of Korean victims of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the bombings and Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, these Korean atomic-bomb victims dispersed across Japan, South Korea, and North Korea, and have often been left without any relief or redress for decades. Focusing on those Korean victims living in Japan, the author thoroughly examines how they have struggled to achieve recognition and support. Based on intensive fieldwork, archival research, and interviews with key figures from the Korean redress movement, this book analyzes how their movements have been significantly affected and constrained by the Cold War, unresolved colonial relations between Korea and Japan, nationalistic tensions between North Korea, South Korea, and Japan, and the national division both in the Korean Peninsula and within the Korean community in Japan. Despite these difficulties, the redress movements of Korean nuclear victims in Japan were sustained by their unique ideal of national "unification" and joint efforts with Korean and Japanese citizens, the history of which can deconstruct the mainstream narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Toxic nostalgia is not a new phenomenon, and instances of an undying past refusing to perish and plaguing the present, can be found throughout history. However, examined in Toxic Nostalgia on Screen, in the early years of the new millennium, it has acquired further meaning and not just applies to a dangerous longing for the past, but a way of being in the present world. Here in our modern time, undead memory is not just a remembrance of the past that is visited upon the present with negative implications, but the embodiment of monstrous imagined histories and ideologies that dictate the way we live today so that tomorrow is not the future, but a never-ending return to the past.

Defending the view that Karl Jaspers' concept of irrationality (Widervernunft) is better able to account for pathological patterns of individual and collective thinking, Karl Jaspers' Theory of Irrationality: From Delusions to Worldviews argues that irrationality is incorrigibility, a blockage of reason as the will to communication. Highlighting the importance of freedom and creativity at the heart of reason (Vernunft), Daniel Adsett analyzes examples of delusional thought through a Jaspersian lens. He shows that irrationality arises when we hold to certain attitudes with an incorrigible conviction and refuse to genuinely consider the possibility that we might need to revise or change our beliefs. In presenting these arguments, Adsett offers a novel contribution to contemporary debates about the character of reason while rehabilitating an often neglected aspect of Jaspers' thought.

Shifting Production to Southeast Asia: Electronics Transnational Corporations Moving to Vietnam since the 2000s explores how a labor-intensive industry has been expanded from the 'World Factory' - China to developing Southeast Asia under the changing dynamics in the global and regional production networks, including the recent COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tension, by using the case study of the production relocations of the consumer electronics manufacturing industry to Vietnam. David Yuen Tung Chan and Chun Yang explore the changing trade and investment patterns as well as the transformations of the electronics production networks and the changing roles and functions of China, Vietnam and other Asian countries, the relocations of firms and the strategic coupling with Vietnam, as well as the impacts of the post-pandemic dynamics. The shifting electronics production from China to Vietnam, which increased since the mid-2000s, is not a simple expansion led by the conventional lead firms from the 'North' solely to cut costs, but it is a rather complicated and multiscale process that has been simultaneously driven by various tiers of firms and levels of governments from different origins out of various dynamics at different spatial scales.

Edited by Eric M. Bridges, Sheila Smith McKoy, and LaJuan Simpson-Wilkey, The Wisdom of Ifá: An Ancient Paradigm for the 21st Century and Beyond explores Yoruba spirituality and the complex ways in which the acknowledgement of Ifá as a wisdom source can be used to address the needs of humanity in the twenty-first century and beyond. Through rituals and practices that honor nature's rhythms, the contributors explore how Ifá guides us towards sustainable coexistence with our environment, recognizing that our well-being is intricately linked to the health of the planet. The contributors also show how, in the realm of environmental stewardship, Ifá offers a holistic worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life forms. This book offers discussions on environmentalism, gender, and politics that connect across the bounds of time, through the history, mythology, and lived realities of the tradition. As an ancient wisdom tradition that has enriched West African cultures, Ifá offers a roadmap for modern civilization to charter new paths for humanity and the challenges that we face.

In this edited volume, contributors recognize and reflect on communication studies' queer past and examine the current state of queer theorizing within communication studies. Through this reflection, the book fills in gaps in the history of this sub-discipline and demonstrates that even as scholars in the field empowered queer voices in the past, they often failed to recognize the intersectional aspects of queer identity, through which scholars can form new understandings of past scholarship in new queer(er) lights. Ultimately, contributors collectively provide a critique for the lack of broader inclusion of queer theorization in the field and provide new pathways for the continued development of queer communication studies.

African Identity Today in the Writings of John Maxwell Coetzee and Ben Silver Okri is a comparative study of the writings of the South African author John Maxwell Coetzee and the Nigerian author Ben Silver Okri. It charts the thematic and technical presentation of cultural identity in the literary output of both authors, with special reference to their respective trilogies, namely: Coetzee's Scenes from Provincial Life and Okri's The Famished Road. Through examining these texts, the book explores the dilemmas faced by many contemporary authors while discussing issues related to the construction of cultural identity in a postcolonial world. Studying Coetzee's and Okri's texts from a postcolonial perspective reveals how their very different writings share a range of commonalities. Both authors seek to find a middle ground between colonised and colonising cultures as they attempt to deconstruct the stereotypical images of the Other, creating a world purified of racial influences.