Books published by Lexington Books

Bertrand Russell (18721970) was a logician, a philosopher, and one of the twentieth century's most visible public intellectuals. Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell: A Cultural Sociology brings those three aspects together to trace Russell's changing views on the role of science and technology in society throughout his long intellectual career. Drawing from cultural sociology, history of science, and philosophy, Javier Perez-Jara and Lino Camprub provide a fresh multidimensional analysis of the general themes of science, technology, utopia, and apocalypse. The book critically examines Russell's influential interpretations of the turn-of-the-century mathematical logic, World War I, the metaphysics and epistemology of mind and matter, World War II, nuclear holocaust, and the Vietnam War. In Russell's compelling narratives, humanity was a powder keg and the match was represented by different and successive meta-adversaries, such as religion, communism, and American imperialism. And the only way to avoid a coming global Holocaust was to follow his own salvific recipes.In working around Russell's role in the cultural perception of the final destiny of humanity, Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell invites the reader to think about the place of the techno-scientific sphere in human progress and decadence in both our current epoch and the distant future.

W. V. Quine's occasional references to his ';pragmatism' have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine's philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine's epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis's conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis's influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine's philosophical development. This not only highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine's mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, but Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine's later naturalized conception of epistemology.

Everyday People Save the Planet and So Can You: A Qualitative Examination of Green Lifestyles in Lowcountry South Carolina examines three interview studies, conducted over the last two decades, with green parents, choice utility bike commuters, and necessity utility bike commuters. This book draws on qualitative analyses of the data and literature (social practice, social innovation, embodiment, and attention economy research/theory) to ask and answer the question of how advocates and policy makers can enable pro-environmental behavior in people's everyday lives. Deborah McCarthy Auriffeille begins by focusing on the particularities of living green in Lowcountry South Carolina, a region that is both highly conservative and conservationist. She then examines the pathways to, challenges of, and meanings/motivations that practitioners told about green living. Finally, she draws on analyses of respondents' narratives and interdisciplinary theory to make policy recommendations and suggestions for future social science research directions.

In Indigenous Knowledge: An Alternative for Food Security and Wellness in Africa, Emmanuel O. Oritsejafor argues that Indigenous Knowledge (IK) needs to play a central role in addressing food insecurity because IK methods result in sustainable agricultural practices which improve wellness. The application of IK in global communities demonstrates why it is an invaluable development alternative. For instance, Native Indians in the America's have survived over several generations using IK for agriculture and wellness purposes. Oristejafor establishes the severity and breadth of food insecurity on the continent of Africa and critiques the western-led development model which has proven to be inadequate in solving Africas food security needs. In this regard, Oritsejafor suggests that indigenous knowledge(IK) should serve as one of the central models for addressing food security because it takes into account consideration for the specificities of local conditions and relies on the knowledge and the environment of African communities. Contrarily, he posits that the reliance on modern technologies have not been able to halve hunger and poverty in Africa.

It is commonplace to regard many great works of literaturepoems, dramas, works of fictionas in some sense philosophical. Yet ever since Plato, there has been a tension between the kind of abstract theorizing that goes on in philosophy and the focus on concrete particulars that occurs in poetry and fiction. Beyond Words: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Unsayable elaborates on and addresses this Platonic tension, asking in what sense, if any, literature in the form of poetry, drama, short stories, and novels can contribute significantly to our philosophical understanding. Timothy Cleveland suggests there is something in certain poems, novels, and stories that makes them especially suited to expanding our awareness and understanding into the nature of things otherwise unsayable and unconceived. Such literary works show us something that a theoreticalscientific or philosophicaldiscourse cannot literally say.

Consumers and policy makers have unprecedented choices to make in the years to come about how and what we eat. If we continue down our current path of food production, we risk ever-increasing levels of animal exploitation, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, and challenges to human health. In vitro meat production, or the process of growing meat in a lab, has the potential to reduce the severity of these problems. This proposal would change our food systems dramatically. Edibility and In Vitro Meat: Ethical Considerations explores the ethical questions that it's important to ask every stage of this process. Rachel Robison-Greene considers arguments for and against the production of in vitro meat, as well as challenges for implementation. She argues that in vitro meat should be implemented and that we should re-think how we use the term ';edible.'

Crime, Punishment, and Video Games presents a comprehensive overview of some of the most pressing issues related to video games and their relationship with crime and justice. It provides a solid introduction for those interested in these topics as well as critical examinations for researchers, industry members, and policy makers.

Black Womens Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power presents Black women as alternative and transformative leaders in the highest political positions and at grassroots community levels. Beginning with a critique of the assumption of an equivalence between masculinity and political leadership, Carole Boyce Davies moves through the various conceptual definitions, intents, and meanings of leadership and the differences in the presentation of practices of leadership by women and feminist scholars. She studies the actualizing of political leadership in the Presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the historical role of Shirley Chisholm as the first woman to run for presidency of the United States on a leading party ticket, the promise of the Black left feminist leadership of Brazilian Marielle Franco, and the current model of Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados in advancing new leadership models from the Caribbean. This book proclaims the 21st century as the century for Black womens leadership.

Media, Ethnicity, and Electoral Conflicts in Kenya critically examines the interplay between the media, ethnicity, and electoral conflicts in Kenya. Jacinta Mwende Maweu analyzes the place of ethnicity in Kenyan politics and the key drivers of electoral conflicts, as well as how ethnicity influences media framing of these conflicts in the Kenyan context. Maweu argues that, although there are many factors that can affect an electoral process and result in conflict and violence, the role that the mainstream media and new media play is central. As Maweu illustrates through various arguments, politicians in Kenya and other deeply divided societies in Africa have continued to use mainstream and digital media to weaponize ethnicity as they invoke issues of belonging, inclusion, and exclusion. By examining the role of both traditional and digital media in electoral conflicts, Media, Ethnicity, and Electoral Conflicts in Kenya makes a significant contribution to the ongoing academic debate on the role of media in elections and electoral conflicts in Kenya and Africa.

As part of ';China's south,' Southeast Asia has historically assumed a peripheral position when juxtaposed against the power of the Chinese state. In the existing scholarly literature, the power asymmetry is reflected in the ostensible bias where most studies are about China's presence in or engagement with Southeast Asia rather than the reverse; studies on the presence or influence of Southeast Asia in China have been a marginal enterprise. The present volume aims to fill this void by exploring the historical entanglements and contemporary engagements of Southeast Asia(ns) in China through a Southeast Asian perspective. As China seeks to understand Southeast Asia's presence in the country on its own terms, it is also engaged in a process of self-discovery and defining where and how it should stand in relation to the region. Departing from the discourse of China as the a priori center dominating the scholarship on ChinaSoutheast Asia relations, the present volume hopes to subvert such power relations in order to bring fresh perspectives on the historical and contemporary contributions of Southeast Asia(ns) in China.

In Women's Performative Writing and Identity Construction in the Japanese Empire, the author examines how writers captured various experiences of living under imperialism in their fiction and nonfiction works. Through an examination of texts by writers producing in different parts of the empire (including the Japanese metropole and the colonies and territories of Taiwan, Korea, and Manchukuo), the book explores how women negotiated the social and personal changes brought about by modernization of the social institutions of education, marriage, family, and labor. Looking at works by writers including young students in Manchukuo, Japanese writer Hani Motoko, Korean writer Chang Tok-cho, and Taiwanese writer Yang Ch'ien-Ho, the book sheds light upon how the act and product of writing became a site for women to articulate their hopes and desires while also processing sociopolitical expectations. The author argues that women used their practice of writing to construct their sense of self. The book ultimately shows us how the words we write make us who we are.

The Kwoma, the subject of this book, are one of a number of peoples in the Sepik River region of northern Papua New Guinea who have created some of the most distinctive visual art in the Pacific. Through case studies of their painting, sculpture, architecture and ritual this book examines in detail how people in this society understand their art as a cultural phenomenon. This includes how they understand its origins in the spirit world, how they judge quality in art and how they understand artistic creativity. The book contrasts Kwoma beliefs with the radically different approach to art found in the modern West. The modern Western concept of art first emerged not in the eighteenth century in the Enlightenment, or even later, as anthropologists and art historians often assume, but several centuries earlier in the Renaissance. The book gives an account of radical changes that took place culturally in Europe between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries in the way human intellectual creativity was understood, and how this gave rise to a new concept of art, one that remains unchanged in the modern West today.

Government Responsiveness in Race-Related Crisis Events argues that decision-making in crisis events related to race and ethnicity (RRCEs) is distinctive based upon the historical treatment of people of color and current narratives surrounding race in the United States. The author presents racially sensitive crisis events, not as independent problems, but as symptoms of an underlying condition which began upon the countrys founding. She contends public officials will need to recognize and draw upon the interrelated nature of these crises for effective solutions and introduces a decision-making model for race-related crisis events. The author uses grounded theory and a critical race lens to explore the decision-making of public officials in Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi concerning the removal of the Confederate Flag from state grounds in the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston Church Shooting.

In Words and Meaning in Metasemantics, Juan Jose Colomina-Almiana puts forward a new way of understanding the linguistic and philosophical foundations of the study of language: the Interactive Theory. This theory states that the meaning of our sentences is much more than the truth values their components clauses carry. Since language is a human artifact, Words and Meaning in Metasemantics also explains the role that our reasons, dispositions, inferences, acts, and awareness have in the content-fixing of the sentences speakers employ to refer to the world in which they belong.

This book is the first comprehensive survey of Ukrainian historical writing in North America during the Cold War. The author describes the development of Ukrainian historical studies in Canada and the United States as an open, sometimes difficult dialogue between the Ukrainian ethnic and academic communities on the one hand and between Ukrainian scholars and Western academic mainstream on the other. He focuses on the institutional and the intellectual issues including various interpretations of major topics related to the Ukrainian national grand narrative, considering them in the evolving academic and political contexts of Slavic, East European, and Soviet studies.

In this book, Lowery A. Woodall III explores the ways that diverse populations are portrayed, stereotyped, and sometimes villainized in the WWE's colorful and dramatic programming. Each chapter examines the surprisingly complex and multilayered representation of marginalized populations throughout the modern history of the WWE under the leadership of Vincent K. McMahon. Through weekly shows like Raw and SmackDown, pay-per-view spectaculars like WrestleMania, and a vast library of wrestling-related material on their streaming platform, Woodall argues that the WWE and McMahon have created calculated and carefully curated representations of diversity that are viewed by millions of fans worldwide. What effects do those representations have on the men, women, and children who consume WWE content? How are wrestlers and performers impacted by their on-screen portrayals? This book explores these questions and demonstrates that when representations are inaccurate or problematic, more than just kayfabe is in danger of being broken. Scholars of professional wrestling studies, media studies, and communication studies will find this book of particular interest.

This book situates the Chinese acceptance of Japanese popular culture, specifically the intriguing and sometimes awkward relationship between the ';idol' groups AKB48 and SNH48, within the broad context of nationalist ideology and international relations in East Asia. It aims to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the reader about contemporary East Asian cultural exchanges and nationalist expressions in concrete forms. Additionally, this book attempts to discover heretofore overlooked aspects of nationalism's metamorphosis in both China and Japan and challenge the existing scholarly and popular understandings of nationalism. By interrogating the nationalism factor in popular culture in Chinese and Japanese contexts, this books concludes that popular culture fandom can both be a culprit in promoting hegemonic political ideologies and serve as a potential antidote.

Jewish-American Identity and Critical Intercultural Communication: Never Forget, Tikkun Olam, and Kindness to Strangers explores what it means to be Jewish on a personal, sociocultural, and global-political level. This book employs 50+ interviews with diverse Jewish voices to provide a history of Jewish migration to the US and to privilege voices that are not necessarily White and Eastern European/Ashkenazic. Sobre argues for a more inclusive form of intercultural theorizing that favors intersectionality and allyship over oppression Olympics (stereotypes between members of different nondominant groups) and colorism (within nondominant group discrimination). Such siloing of differences, and further competing about whose differences are the most egregious, minimizes critical intercultural coalition opportunities allowing for such groups as those who gave power to Trump and Netanyahu to connect while inclusive progressives engage in in-fighting and separatism. The author calls for transversal dialogic politics, racially and historically accurate school curriculum, intersectionality and more inclusive intercultural communication scholarship and practice as various means of working together against white nationalism and white supremacy in the US and the world. Scholars of religious studies, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication will find this book of particular interest.

Child Survivors of Genocide: Trauma, Resilience, and Identity in Guatemala presents mixed-method, comparative ethnographic research conducted with orphaned child survivors who are now adults. These survivors were orphaned during Guatemala's thirty-six-year internal armed conflict and particularly during the heightened period of genocide from 1978 to 1983, referred to as la violencia. Raised for the majority of their childhoods in a family-style permanent residential home in the highlands region, the author examines the long-term consequences that these individuals have faced not only from grieving the loss of their parents and family members but also because of their orphan status. While they suffer from lasting trauma, these child survivors have become resilient, well-adapted adults with a strong internalized sense of ethnic identity. They also engage in creative and transformative practices regarding ethnic identity and belonging that have contributed to their abilities to adapt to their life circumstances in positive, constructive ways, and have expanded what it means to be Maya Indigenous Guatemalans today. Child survivors' experiences offer inspiration, justify expanded research with child survivors as their own distinct survivor group, and warrant reconsideration of in-country residential care when other forms of loving, nurturing in-country care are unavailable.

Applying Jewish Ethics: Beyond the Rabbinic Tradition introduces the reader to applied ethics and examines various social issues from contemporary and largely underrepresented Jewish ethical perspectives. The chapters explain and apply Jewish ethical ideas to contemporary issues connected to racial justice, immigration, gender justice, queer identity, and economic and environmental justice in ways that illustrate their relevance for Jews and non-Jews alike.

White Belongings: Race, Land, and Property in Post-Apartheid South Africa deepens ongoing critical deconstruction of the role of whiteness in maintaining racial order. Scott Burnett , argues that the protection of white entitlement and cultural connection to the land are intimately interwoven, using detailed discourse analysis of campaigns aimed at preventing rhino poaching, stopping fracking in the Karoo, and advocating for the existence of a poverty ';crisis,' which reveal how whites hold on to their ';belongings' in everyday talk. White Belongings goes beyond the preoccupation with identity in whiteness studies to elaborate how specific subject roles and institutions are motivated and rationalized in hegemonic discursive regimes.

The first century of airpower has ended, yet few critics have addressed the literature that chronicles its human toll. Airpower in Literature: Interrogating the Clean War, 1915-2015 offers fresh insight into this airpower century by placing literature of five major wars in conversation with the clean war discourse. Kimberly Dougherty examines the paradoxical representation of aerial warfare that has allowed extensive airstrikes on cities and civilians while promising a ';cleaner' method of waging war. First suggested by early military theorists, the notion of a clean air warone that would save lives through its speed and precision proved seductive in the twentieth century and continues to shape the rhetoric of airpower today. The air war is perceived as clean, the author argues, when we see neither the aviator nor the targeted populations in the bombing dynamic. Through analysis of fiction, poetry, drama, and journalism, from the ruins of World War I to the technologies of post-modern war, the author identifies counternarratives that make visible both aviators and bombed societies, and present aerial warfare that is not clean, but messy, prolonged, and imprecise. This exploration encourages readers, and writers, to approach the next century of airpower with greater wisdom and empathy.

This book introduces the ethical, philosophical, and social legacy of the work of Bernard Bolzano (17811848), highlighting the theological element of Bolzano's thought. Bolzano influenced several key thinkers (primarily Catholic priests) such as Vincenc Zahradnk, Josef Michael Fesl, Anton Krombholz, Frantiek Schneider, and their pupils and successors. Zahradnk co-founded an important professional Czech periodical and created much of modern Czech theological terminology. Anton Krombholz became an important representative of Austrian education after 1848, working at the Vienna Ministry of Education. Based on her previous comprehensive Czech monograph, the author now highlights other new manuscripts from Krombholz's literary legacy. She underscores connections between Bolzanos legacy and the reform movement of the Czech Catholic clergy, emphasizing that Bolzanos ideas resonated in Czech Catholic modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Notwithstanding the tumultuous national development of Czechs and Germans in nineteenth-century Bohemia, Bolzanos conception of a peaceful coexistence between the two nationalities in Bohemia very favorably contributed to the preservation of the unity of the Catholic Church during such ethnically complex times. The author's theological conception draws upon the works of Jan Milc Lochman (19222004), who, in addition to writing on contemporary ecumenical themes, also dealt with the spiritual legacy of the Czech National Revival.

Smi Nature-Centered Christianity in the European Arctic unpacks the theological significance of North Smi indigenous Christianity, demonstrating how the tension between Smi nature-centered Christianity and official Norwegian Lutheranism has broad theological relevance. Focusing on Christian cosmological orientation, the author argues that this is not fully given within the Christian faith itself. It is partly shaped by the religio-philosophical frameworks that various historical receptions of Christianity were filtered through. The author substantiates that two different types of Christian cosmological orientation are negotiated in the North Smi Christian experience: one reflecting a Smi historical reception of Christianity primarily filtered through the egalitarian world intuition of the Smi indigenous tradition; another reflecting official Norwegian Lutheranism, primarily filtered through a Greek hierarchical world construct passed down among European intellectual elites. The argument is developed through thick description of local everyday Christianity among reindeer herding, river, and sea Smi communities in Finnmark, Norway; through critical engagement with historical and contemporary Lutheranism; and through constructive dialogue with African and Native American theologies. The author suggests that the egalitarian, multi-relational logic of Smi nature-centered Christianity points beyond the hierarchical binaries delimiting much of the theological imagination of dominant Christian theologies.

While China's role and place in Africa has garnered a lot of scholarly attentionbe it praise or condemnationnot much has been written about Taiwan's role and place on the continent even though Taiwan was a major player and partner in Africa's quest for growth and development. From the 1960s to 1971, more African countries had diplomatic relations with Taiwan as opposed to China. But less than five decades after the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 was passed, there has been a reversal of fortune in terms of supremacy and diplomatic recognition with only one country, Eswatini, recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. Taiwan in Africa: Seven Decades of Certainty and Uncertainties, edited by Sabella Ogbobode Abidde, addresses gaps in academic literature regarding Taiwan's engagement with states and societies on the continent. This book examines international political economy, international security, the history of modern Africa, and geopolitical pressures and conflict. It addresses Taiwan's early engagement with the continent and the geopolitical and economic considerations that influenced African governments in their decision-making vis--vis their relationship with Taipei.

Where is the hope? What does it look like? Is the Christian church providing a hope that materializes in the grounding of people's thriving? These questions posed the catalysts of this work where the author sets up a journey that parses the definition of hope within Christian theology as an ontological category of the human experience. Through ethnographic research and ecclesial study of diverse congregations in Puerto Rico the work moves from an articulation of context, hope, practice, and future to reveal its aim of liberation through a hope that can be sustainable in time and space. She analyzes the operations of political systems that suppress hope in the island. Weaving the theme of a theology of hope, with the fields of ecclesiology, memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, liberation theology, and the study of social movements she builds a model that puts hope at the center of socio-economic practices and moves toward a recipe for a hope that is sustainable in practice.

Tradition and Transformation in Mohiniyattam Dance: An Ethnographic History demonstrates how Mohiniyattam, a form previously stigmatized, was reinvented as a sign of traditional Keralite womanhood. The book traces how the emergence of Mohiniyattam as a traditional form of dance based on a feminine aesthetic was synchronistic with the outlawing of polyandrous marriage practices and devadasi practices, as well as changes in matrilineal inheritance and the outlawing of and reforms in women's dress customs in Kerala, India. These layers of history and cultural meaning permitted Mohiniyattam's renaissance as a sign of female grace and tradition. Throughout, Lemos argues that practicing and learning movement is a gateway to understanding a system of semiosis. Danced movement itself can be a locust, a bellwether, and even an agent of social change.

Imagination in Inquiry: A Philosophical Model and Its Applications investigates the nature, kinds, component elements, functions, scope, and uses of the imagination involved in inquiry. It further discusses how these kinds and functions vary and interact depending on the context of inquiries carried out in philosophy and its branchesfrom the philosophy of science and the philosophy of technology to ethics, sociopolitical philosophy, and aestheticsand institutions like science, technology, art, and education. Using a homeostatic model, A. Pablo Iannone advances a conception of the imagination as a disposition to search for answers to various types of problems, abstract or concrete, theoretical or practical faced in inquiry. The book treats this as a working characterization, though it develops progressively clearer, more precise, and less ambiguous meanings. All along, the primary concern of the authoras well as of contributors Alejandra Iannone and Rocci Luppiciniis with the moral, aesthetic, logical, communicative, scientific, technological, artistic, literary, and philosophical uses and roles of the imagination. The book's primary focus is not just on such things as the capacity to generate mental images, but especially on the ability to discover and create, anticipate and envision, entertain and manage.

This book examines the global history of the Cold War in the 1970s through the perspective of Yugoslavias activism in the Global South and its relations with the superpowers. The author shows that Yugoslavia's anxiety over a ';new Yalta' required a disruptive role toward detente, which it saw as the superpowers' attempt to divide the spheres of influence. Yugoslavia's global activism in the 1970s reflected not only its desire to undermine alleged superpowers' agreements but also its desire to promote the Yugoslav revolutionary model as a distinctive form of political, social, and economic organization. The author traces the complex interactions between Yugoslavia and the world but also investigates the limitations of Yugoslavias global activism. Drawing on a novel and wide source base from the archives in the former Yugoslavia, the United States, and Great Britain, the book shows the web of opportunities, problems, and challenges that detente and the Cold War in the 1970s offered to and imposed on a small state in the Balkans.

In a sustained study of the Sophist and Statesman, this book explores the use of paradigm, logos, and myth. Plato introduces in these dialogues the term ';paradigm' to signify an image or model that can be used to yield insight into higher, ethical realities that are themselves beyond direct visual portrayal. He employs the term to signify an inductive example that can be defined. Finally, Plato shows how to rework existing narrative and myth to an ethically appropriate end. Since this exercise in the Statesman is described as training in dialectic, in Paradigm, Logos, and Myth in Platos Sophist and Statesman Conor Barry demonstrates how these later works expand the compass of dialectic beyond narrow conceptions that restrict the scope of dialectic to the use of logical techniques. Rather, dialectic is the practice of dialogue as portrayed in the Platonic dialogues, which can involve appeal to analogies and figurative expressions in the search for an understanding of the ethical good. Plato's dialogues, as works of literary art, aim to lead people to seek such understanding. Nevertheless, insofar as the dialogues are themselves artistic productions, they must also be objects of critical scrutiny and questioning.