Books published by Lexington Books

Legitimization of Mormon Feminist Rhetors studies how marginalized groups use rhetorical strategies to craft legitimacy for themselves. Kinney uses archival research to parse the rhetorical devices employed by Mormon feminist women. The author assumes a pan-historical methodology by examining four unique examples of notable Mormon feminist rhetors that stretch across the 191-year history of this religion: Emmeline B. Wells (18281921), Fawn Brodie (19151981), Sonia Johnson (1936present), and Kate Kelly (1980present). Backed by intensive analysis, the author finds that Mormon feminist women take up the ancient rhetorical canons as a heuristic to cultivate a position of authority for themselves: Wells employs arrangement patterns, Brodie engages with memory, Johnson draws upon invention practices, and Kelly applies delivery strategies. Scholars and students of communication, rhetoric, religion, and women's studies will find this book particularly interesting.

What is the role that norms play in the U.S. Congress? At a time of unprecedented partisanship and high-profile breaches of legislative norms in the modern Congress, the relationship between norms and the functioning of the institution is a growing and pressing concern. Despite the importance of the topic, recent scholarship has not focused on congressional norms. Meanwhile, previous research leaves open many relevant questions about the role of norms in the Congress of the twenty-first century. A Social Theory of Congress brings norms back in to the study of Congress by defining what are legislative norms, identifying which norms currently exist in the U.S. Congress, and examining the effects that congressional norms have. This book provides a new research approach to study congressional norms through a comprehensive review of previous scholarship and a combination of interviews, survey research, and analysis of member behavior. What's more, an innovative theoretical framework a social theory of Congress provides new perspectives in the study of legislatures and political behavior. The findings are striking. Norms of cooperation are surprisingly alive and well in an otherwise partisan Congress. But norms of conflict are on the rise. In addition, norms of a changing culture are affecting how members understand their role as lawmakers and in their interactions among one another. Together, these findings suggest that norms play an important role in the functioning of the legislature and as norms evolve so too does the performance of Congress in American democracy.

Reading Ricoeur through Law, edited by Marc de Leeuw, George H. Taylor, and Eileen Brennan, is the first collection of essays solely focused on Ricoeur's thinking about law, bringing together both established and emerging scholars to offer a systematic and critical examination of Ricoeur's legal thinking. The chapters not only explore the specific contribution Ricoeur makes to the field of jurisprudence but also examine how Ricoeur's work on law fits, complements, or changes his overall anthropology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The book provides a complex insight into how law, ethics, and politics intertwine both from within law as normative rule setting, as well as through the wider social-political and historical context in which law and legal institutions affect our inter-subjective and communal life as lived ';with and for others in just institutions.' The collection also makes available in English ';The Just between the Legal and the Good,' a key text in Ricoeur's reflections about law and justice. The core topics of this collection are rights, justice, responsibility, judging, interpretation, argumentation, punishment, and authority, but contributors also offer original insights in how Ricoeur's philosophical reconceptualization of symbolism, action, ideology, narrative, selfhood, testimony, history, trauma, reconciliation, justice, and forgiveness can be made productive for our understanding of law and legal institutions.

Fighting Sports, Gender and the Commodification of Violence: Heavy Bag Heroines offers a glimpse into the cultural terrain of womens boxing as it manifests in everyday gyms for novice boxers. Taking an ethnographic approach, Victoria Collins examines broad understandings of gender, violence, self-defense, commodification, and health and fitness from the point of view of women who engage in the sport. Collins unpacks dominant assumptions about gender and the sport through the eyes of the womens understandings of gender norms, social assumptions about physicality, sexuality, as well as challenges to masculine and feminine performativity. Central to this study is the appropriation and marketing of the boxers work out in cardio-boxing gym spaces (i.e. fitness boxing), where the sport has increasingly been packaged, commodified, and sold to predominantly middle class, white female consumers as a means to not only improve their health and fitness, but also as a means to defend themselves against a would-be attacker. The body project for women in the sport of boxing, therefore, should not only be framed as a form of resistance, but one of physical feminism.

T. F. Torrance's proposal for natural theology constitutes one of the most creative and provocative elements in his work. By re-envisioning natural theology as the cognitive structure of theology determined by God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ (and not as the task of philosophically reflecting on the nature or existence of God aside from religious presuppositions), Torrance moves through and beyond Barth's resistance to natural theology. This book establishes Torrance's unique reconstruction of natural theology within its proper intellectual context, providing a fresh analysis of this important methodological innovation as it emerges from Torrance's realist epistemology. As Irving demonstrates, in Torrance's distinctive conception of science, he operated with an approach to cognition that functions via a realist synthesis of experience and understanding, and in Torrance's theological science, this synthesis of experience and understanding is the synthesis of revealed theology and natural theology. The author argues that this reconstruction of natural theology expresses a dramatic vision for human agency within theological cognition, adding the necessity of the human knowing subject to the priority of the divine revealer. Finally, this book marries Torrance's accomplishments in reconstructing natural theology to his Christocentric theological method, in which God is both revealed and known in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human.

This book will deal with arguments that analyze the Vatican policies of Francis, during the first seven years of his pontificate, in relation to some of the most urgent questions concerning humanity: migrants and refugees, the economy, and ecology. The logical choice of the time period for this work is given by Jorge Bergoglios ascent to the chair of St. Peter until the end of 2019. That is why there is an interrelationship between history and the present, since it is writtenin partas his apostolic journeys, interventions, diplomatic actions, and discourses are carried out. To this is added an important quantity of writings of his authorship, as well as of some of his predecessors, in order to frame the question in a historically correct way and to understand his approach to issues of politics and international diplomacy, given his investiture as a religious andat the same timepolitical leader

This book deals with six trials, conducted by the Romanian state against Jewish key officials employed in state-owned import-export companies between 1950 and 1960. It begins with a presentation of the political realities of Romania following the Communist Partys rise to power, in particular those regarding its relationship with Romanias Jews and Gheorghiu-Dej's policy of National Communism. Rozenberg describes the criminal procedure used in the staged economic trials follows and then examines this procedure based on the legal system of the period, as exemplified by the six analyzed trials. The Romnoexport Jewish officials trial is analyzed in depth, as the case study of the whole book. This book concludes by bringing to light two phenomena that dissipate some mystique surrounding the events: first, the states practice of using its legal system as a means of oppressing the population; and second, the stereotypical image of The Jew which the regime in Romania developed. Despite its supposed anti-religiosity, it held on to centuries-old prejudices against Jews as pariahs, with supposed allegiance to foreign elements preferred over their surrounding society, even to the point of betraying and exploiting their own country.

This book looks at mass tort litigation in a variety of formats including lawsuits against manufacturers and Big Pharma. The authors argue that without the personal injury bar, outrageous examples of rampant corporate greed would continue to this day. The author references many class actions such as the exploding Pinto, Agent Orange, the Opioid epidemic, and concussions in the NFL. Tort reform zealots argue that these lawsuits are bogus and detrimental to the American way of life. This is, of course, ridiculous. The authors argue that attorneys are the only means to alleviate the excesses of corporate greed by showing multiple cases of mistakes that were purposefully ignored because of the quest for corporate gain. Big corporations live by a cost/benefit analysis that allow and even foster the inevitable lawsuit which results from their greed.

Election Day, as it was once known, is no more. In 2020, with COVID-19 raging, over 60 percent of American voters cast early ballots. Even before the pandemic, more than one-third of voters routinely did so. Early voting represents a radical change in American elections. It means new options for voters, new procedures for election clerks, and new challenges for political candidates. In Tuesday's Gone, Elliott Fullmer explores the effects of this new reality. Applying new data and innovative methods, he reports that early voting is bringing new citizens to the polls. Examining four recent elections, he finds that both early in-person and absentee options increase turnout by several points when aggressively implemented by state and local officials. But early voting does come with some side effects. Fullmer cautions that early voting increases down-ballot roll-off, widens racial disparities in voting access, and alters the competitive environment in presidential nomination contests.

In Philadelphia's Germans: From Colonial Settlers to Enemy Aliens, Richard N. Juliani examines the social, cultural, and political life, along with the ethnic consciousness, of Philadelphia's Germans, from their participation in the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania to the entry of the United States into World War I. This book focuses on their paradoxical transformation from loyal citizens, who made great contributions as they became increasingly Americanized, to a people viewed as a foreign threat to the safety and security of the city and nation. It also considers the policies and treatment of government and views of the local press in reporting and interpreting the dilemma of German Americans during the transition.

Stoneover: The Observed Lessons and Unanswered Questions of Cannabis Legalization examines the political and social entrepreneurs that champion marijuana decriminalization efforts, their constituents' attitudes toward legalization, the specific successful reform measures at the state level, and the consequent market dynamics in cannabis commerce. Each chapter presents a unique dataset with specific contributions in understanding local and national trends and outcomes of more than two decades of cannabis legalization efforts. Using detailed analyses of user data, the contributors tackle such social issues as legalization activism in the context of calls to defund the police, the impact of reforms on immigrant communities, the demographic and economic characteristics of legal dispensary customers, medical administrative structures, youth usage, and mortality related to marijuana and other drug use. Stoneover offers policy makers information for future policy designs with a goal to decrease negative externalities and social inequity.

Democracy in Picturebooks from Sweden and the United States, 2000-2020 explores democracy-themed picturebooks written for children between the ages of three and ten. With multiple analyses of picturebooks throughout the twenty-first century, the authors illustrate how picturebooks can play a vital role in the development of children's perceptions about the different principles of democracy. From a holistic perspective, these books can be seen as the starting point for socializing children who will come to lead and participate in democratic societies themselves. The multi-pronged approach in this research introduces: (a) concepts underlying the role of picturebooks in familiarizing children with concepts about democracy, (b) research methods for picturebook analyses, (c) exploration of specific exemplar picturebooks that address democratic principles, (d) how picturebooks link democracy with human qualities, (e) utilizing democracy-themed picturebooks in the home and the school. This project holds the promise of promoting meaningful instruction of democracy through the use of picturebooks.

Cardinal Humberto Medeiros served the Church as priest and bishop in Texas and Massachusetts. An immigrant from the Azores he utilized his superior intelligence, administrative ability, and language skills to move up rapidly in Church ranks. His work with the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, both nationally and internationally, especially with migrant workers, was notable. Medeiros faced a perfect storm of social, political and religious issues in Boston. The author argues that despite the challenges he faced in Boston, Medeiros was true to the Church and his personal moral code, seeking always to serve others rather than be served by them in imitation of Christ.

Writers and Nations:The Case of American and Saudi Literatures examines how the concept of the nation in nineteenth century American literature and twentieth century and contemporary Saudi Arabian literature is represented in an array of relevant works. Reading their works gives us a sense of their conceptions of nation as a political and/or a social community. Writers examined in this book often see the nation as a threat to marginalized groups, due to its cultural, religious and political constraints. Writers tend to represent the tension between individuals and communities as a significant key to understanding a particular nation. This tension carries in it a sense of the boundaries of the nation. It is a question of who is part of the nation and who is not. The constraints of a certain nation, be they political or social, include the dominant by excluding the repressed or the marginalized. In other words, by exposing the tension between disenfranchised and dominant groups, writers define, redefine and reform for us the national political and social scenes of a particular nation.

The Hussite movement is essential for understanding medieval Europe and the development of Western civilization. Matthew Spinka and Howard Kaminsky stand at the forefront of scholarship introducing this subject to the Anglophone world. Thomas A. Fudge argues their role in the religious historiography of late medieval Europe is a precursor to global medievalism. Combining commitment to the Christian faith with firm opposition to the Soviet-mandated Marxist-Communist ideology that dominated twentieth-century Czechoslovakia, Spinka strove to present Jan Hus as a medieval figure driven by religious devotion. Motivated by Jewish atheism and a modified form of Marxist analysis, Kaminsky rescued the medieval Hussites from oblivion and political agendas. Fudge explores biography, history, and historiography as an essential intellectual segue between medieval Hussites and modern scholarship. Matthew Spinka, Howard Kaminsky, and the Medieval Hussites considers biography, evaluates the work of both historians, elaborates their methods, assesses their interpretations, and analyzes their historiographical significance for the study of Hussite history.

By offering perspectives from Indonesian female workers, this book discusses the contemporary progress of working-class feminism from the Global South. It presents a critical reading of the socio-political conditions that allow female workers to narrate their lives and work as precariat labor toiling under the forces of globalization. Its analysis centers on their writings which appear in the form of legal documents, personal accounts, essays, and short stories. Thus, the book shows how these women change their situation by challenging the political order and demanding gender justice with their fearless speech.

Fringe Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theories and the Paranormal identifies the rhetorical similarities of conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts by delving into rhetorical, psychosocial, and political science research. Identifying something as ';fringe' indicates its proximal placement within accepted norms of contemporary society. Both conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts dwell on these fringes and use surprisingly similar persuasive techniques. Using elements of the Aristotelian canon as well as Steve Oswald's strengthening and weakening strategies, this book establishes a pattern for the analysis of fringe rhetorics. It also applies this pattern through rhetorical analyses of several documentaries and provides suggestions for countering fringe arguments.

Civil Wars in Africa, edited by Kelechi A. Kalu and George Klay Kieh, Jr., examines civil conflicts throughout various African countries. They argue that civil wars in Africa are by-products of the contradictions and crises engendered by the post-colonial state-building and nation-building projects in Africa. With few exceptions, the post-colonial states in Africa have failed to build societies that invest in the material well-being of their citizens; protect their political, civil, and other rights; promote accountability, transparency, the rule of law, judicial independence, and the holding of free and fair elections; and promote ethnic pluralism, tolerance, mutual respect, and peaceful co-existence, among others. In addition, the contributors show that the post-colonial states in Africa have been ruled by corrupt and autocratic leaders, who are obsessed with the maintenance of state power as the pathway to ensuring the private accumulation of wealth through sundry illegal means, including bribery, extortion, and theft of public funds. In sum, this volume addresses how the failure of the post-colonial African state to shepherd the process of building democratic societies based on the centrality of human security has led to the erosion of the legitimacy of the state and its custodians. Thus, once the contradictions and crises reached their crescendo, these post-colonial societies than implode into civil wars, even at the micro-level.

After graduation from Georgetown University in 1896, William Franklin Sands joined the US diplomatic corps as second secretary in Tokyo. His year there sparked his interest in East Asia, so when a position in Korea opened, he took it, with the help of his influential father, an admiral in the US navy. For two years he served under US Minister Horace Allen until a more powerful position opened as chief qdviser to the Korean government in 1900. As the most influential foreign adviser, Sands attempted to convince Emperor Kojong to undertake reforms and to promote Korean neutrality to keep the country independent. The author argues, however, that Sands was hampered by corrucpt officials who had the ear of the emperor, by the Japanese and the Russians who competed for influence and who tried to replace Sands with their own advisers, and, ironically, by Horace Allen. When he lost the confidence of Kojong and when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, Sands was forced out, having failed to maintain Koreas independence as Japan moved to take over. Although his subsequent activities included other diplomatic postings, teaching, and writing, he maintained an interest in Korea and offered his services as World War Two raged.

In Feminist Theories and Feminist Economics: A Multi-Paradigmatic Approach, Kavous Ardalan examines four paradigms of feminist theory and economics and their social impact. Analyzing the insights of these paradigmsfunctionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralistArdalan offers a comprehensive view of feminist thought, advocating for a multi-paradigmatic approach to understanding feminist research and its economic relevance for society.

Configuring Memory in Czech Family Sagas: The Art of Forgetting in Generic Tradition explores how literature may configure family memory. Family sagas can be viewed as a structure helping us to share our memories. Special attention will be paid to crucial generic motifs within family sagas, as well as to elements of the narrative structure, which hold powerful memory-forming potential. The book proves that this potential can be fulfilled in two ways. The genre under analysis tends to strengthen the ';bad family memory' and consider it as a burden, and to encourage one to forget their family past. Despite the prevalence of the saga as a cultural form right across mass media, the literary genre of the family saga has not attracted intensive critical acclaim. Readers of this book will not only learn more about the genre of family saga but also be encouraged to reflect on their own family memories.

Richard Rojcewicz's Heidegger, Plato, Philosophy, Death: An Atmosphere of Mortality offers an original perspective on the bond between philosophy and death in the thought of Martin Heidegger and Plato. For Heidegger, authentic being-toward-death is not preoccupation with death as such, nor resoluteness in the face of ones demise, but preoccupation with the meaning of the beingsourselveswho comport themselves understandingly toward death and who breathe an atmosphere of mortality. Authentic dying is then nothing other than the practice of philosophy. For Plato, philosophy is the practice of dying, the separating of the soul to its own autonomous existence. This separation, however, is not that of the soul from the body. Instead, it is separation from common understanding, hearsay, everydayness, and mediocrity. Accordingly, both Heidegger and Plato see an intimate connection between philosophy and death. Rather than a morbid focus on negativity and dissolution, however, this connection leads to a call to being authentic, thinking for oneself, and repudiating the superficiality of the crowd. For both Heidegger and Plato, philosophizing and dying are, most concretely, a matter of heeding the Delphic oracle: Know thyself. Rojcewicz pursues this theme of philosophy and death through the topics of signs, anxiety, conscience, music, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Can rock music help us understand literature? Rock Music in American Fiction Writing, 1966-2011 argues that a close analysis of the rock music incorporated into a literary textan investigation of the lyrics, a musicological exploration of the sounds and rhythms, a cultural-historical inquiry into the production and reception of a songmay yield exciting new insight into and expand our understanding of American literary production from the mid-20th century onwards. Reading major works by Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Don DeLillo, Jeffrey Eugenides, Sherman Alexie and Jennifer Egan from such a rock-musicological vantage point, Rock Music in American Fiction Writing adds a new dimension to recent work in American literary criticism by seeking to establish rock music as an analytical tool for literary investigation. The book concentrates on the way these literary artists have struggled to come to terms with the dichotomies inherent in rock musicits liberating and revolutionary impulses as well as its adherence to the bleakest laws of consumer capitalismin their work. By combining a musicological with a literary analysis, Rock Music in American Fiction Writing highlights the crucial and complex role rock music has played in shaping the artistic outlook and cultural sensibilities of literary artists since the 1960s in America and beyond.

Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur: Between Fragility and Hope creates a dialogue between Ricur's hermeneutic philosophy and the interpretation of human ritual practices, especially as such practices are manifested within the context of Christian liturgy. In the first part of the book, Christina M. Gschwandtner shows that Ricur's account of religion would be deepened if it were to take into account not only the biblical texts but also forms of liturgical expression and ritual actions. She challenges Ricur's early reading of the symbol and second navete, broadens his interpretation of biblical texts and faith to consider religious actions more fully, and suggests that ritual can enhance human capacities. The second part of the book employs Ricur's hermeneutics in order to shed light on the analysis of liturgy, demonstrating that his accounts of truth, of the world of the text, of religious language, of the imagination, and of the formation of identity are all eminently applicable to liturgical experience. Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur shows that one of the most significant themes in Ricur's workthe tension between fragility and hopeis especially helpful for understanding what liturgy does and how it functions. Seeing how liturgy and ritual configure fragility and hope also enriches Ricur's account of the role and function of religion in human experience.

In Abusive Supervision in Government Agencies, Caillier uses both quantitative and qualitative survey data, a mixed-method approach, to argue that certain organizational norms and subordinate factors either increase or decrease the presence of abusive supervision in agencies and that when employees experience abusive supervision, their well-being and work attitudes are adversely affected. In addition, a mixed-method approach is used to contend that problems concerning the abusive supervision process are pervasive in agencies. More specifically, many targets of abuse supervision fail to report the incident, and for those who do, agencies seldom do anything to stop abusive supervisors and the overwhelming majority of targets experience some form of retaliation for reporting the abuse. The author also uses qualitative data to argue that many agencies still do not have a robust workplace aggression policy. The author concludes by identifying future directions for research concerning abusive supervision.

Arts and Politics of the Situationist International contextualizes the SI within a comprehensive aesthetic and theoretical framework that integrates its concepts and practical activities with previous critical thinkers, political activists, artists, and poets. The SI belongs to a history of radical gestures and cultural practices concerned with re-imagining everyday life and overcoming alienation. This book regards the SI as a critical interdisciplinary endeavor in the history of consciousness, particularly as a moment in an ongoing western-European trajectory of aesthetic negation dating back to the early nineteenth century. The chapters search for origins of the SI in French Symbolist poetry, Dada and Surrealism, Hegelian-Marxism, and Lefebvrian social theory in an effort to provide a clearly-defined ';something' out of which the SI developed as an increasingly radical collective of artists, writers, and theorists.

Agency in Constrained Academic Contexts: Explorations of Space in Educational Anthropology examines how social agents construct autonomous spaces in the context of neoliberal education. The contributors to this edited collection consider the ways that educators, students, and families assert agency, claim space, and thereby reshape the constraints imposed by the durability of the academic institutions of which they are a part.

Kaiowcide: Living through the Guarani-Kaiowa Genocide is an analysis of the genocidal violence perpetrated against indigenous peoples in Brazil and towards the Guarani-Kaiowa. The ongoing indigenous genocide is defined as ';Kaiowcide,' in place since the 1970s, when the Guarani-Kaiowa mobilized a reaction to land grabbing and oppression in the final years of the military dictatorship. The book is based on years of research on the agribusiness frontiers, on the indigenous geography of the Guarani-Kaiowa, and on sustained engagement with indigenous communities. Instead of merely describing the genocidal tragedy, the focus is on the life through genocide and trying to collectively go beyond it. One of the main contributions is to provide a robust interpretative analysis of the causes and the ramifications of the genocidal experience lived by the Guarani-Kaiowa. Rather than focusing on formalist notions of ';direct intent' by settlers and governments, as a prerequisite for the tagging as genocide, this book emphasizes the destructive potential of the actors actively involved in agrarian capitalist transformations promoted by the national state in socio-economic frontiers.

Pakistan and Human Rights consists of a series of innovative and carefully chosen chapters by leading experts and specialists in the field of human rights law. With contributions from young emerging scholars, many of whom live and work in Pakistan, this volume takes a critical look at the legal ordering of human rights issues in Pakistan today.

Diversity and Cultural Competence in the Health Sector: Ebola-Affected Countries in West Africa examines the 20142016 Ebola crisis in three West African countries. The authors argue that this public health disaster was exacerbated by the lack of cultural competency in emergency response efforts. Considering the role of culture in the social, economic, health-related, and political dynamics that made these countries particularly vulnerable to the disease and how culturally competent approaches could have been employed sooner to reduce risk and prevent death and disability, this book serves as a guide for government officials, nongovernmental relief agencies, healthcare professionals, and public health personnel on how to effectively center cultural competence in emergency response to infectious disease outbreaks.