Books published by Lexington Books

Throughout the centuries philosophers and poets alike have defended an essential differencerather than a porous transitionbetween the human and animal. Attempts to assign essential properties to humans (e.g., language, reason, or morality) often reflected ulterior aims to defend a privileged position for humans..This book shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the questions ';What is human?' and ';What is animal?' What makes this collection unique is that it fills a lacuna in critical animal studies and the growing field of ecocriticism. It is the first collection that establishes a productive encounter between philosophical perspectives on the humananimal boundary and those that draw on fictional literature. The objective is to establish a dialogue between those disciplines with the goal of expanding the imaginative scope of human-animal relationships. The contributions thus do not only trace and deconstruct the boundaries dividing humans and nonhuman animals, they also present the reader with alternative perspectives on the porous continuum and surprising reversal of what appears as human and what as nonhuman.

Secularism and the Crisis of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature examines how writers from religious and ethnic minority communities (Anglo-Indians, Burghers, Dalits, Muslims, and Parsis) in India and Sri Lanka engage secularism through novels, short stories, and autobiographies. Given the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, it would seem obvious that minorities would rally around secularism (the separation of church and state). However, this book argues that the relationship between minorities and secularism is extremely ambivalent. On the one hand, it shows how writers belonging to oppressed communities can deploy secularism as a mode of critique (secular criticism) to challenge the ideologies of dominant groupsthe nation, upper-castes, and religious hierarchies. On the other hand, it examines how these writers reveal that other aspects of secularism (secularization and secular time) are responsible for creating essentialized identities that have not only exacerbated relationships between majorities and minorities and between minority groups, but have also created tension within minority groups themselves. Turing to aesthetics and religious faith, these writers attempt to undermine secular social and cultural structures that are responsible for this crisis of minority identity.

The constitutional presidency is the crown jewel of the separation of powers in the American system. Designed in 1787, the office was structured to weather a wide variety of political circumstances, accommodate broad ranges of personalities in its incumbents and educate officeholders to become better presidents. Nowhere are these three effects clearer than during the brief, unelected tenure of President Gerald Ford, because he occupied the presidency amid tremendous strains on the country and the separation of powers. After the dual traumas of Watergate and Vietnam, the public was profoundly skeptical of government in general and the presidency in particular. As a result, the post-Watergate Congress claimed the mantle of public support and proposed reforms that could have crippled the presidency's constitutional powers. Weakened by the Nixon pardon, Ford stood alone in this environment without many of the informal political strengths associated with the modern presidency. As a result he had to rely, in large measure, on the formal powers of his constitutional office. Based on archival research, this book shows that Ford's presidency placed the Constitution at the center of his time in office. The constitutional presidency allowed him to preserve his own political life, his presidential office, and the separation of powers amid a turbulent chapter in American history.

Political Corruption and Democratic Governance explores the effects of political corruption on important aspects of democratic governing. Jongseok Woo and Eunjung Choi use a cross-national lens to analyze how political corruption influences different areas of politics and economics, including electoral outcomes, citizens' evaluations of democratic norms and values, economic development, distributional justice, and social and political trust in both developed and developing nations. While most works on political corruption focus on the causes of corruption, this book delves into various consequences of it. The discussion in each chapter engages both theoretical and empirical components of political corruption, introducing competing theoretical arguments on a given topic and puts them under rigorous empirical scrutiny. Each chapter involves large-N statistical analysis to make it truly global in scope and to overcome the limits of single (or small-N) case studies on political corruption. This book concludes with critical evaluations about anti-corruption efforts by various IGOs and NGOs and specific policy recommendations to deter corruption.

World War I, Mass Death, and the Birth of the Modern US Soldier: A Rhetorical History examines the United States government's postwar ideological and rhetorical project in establishing permanent national military cemeteries abroad. Constructed throughout Europe where citizen-soldiers had fought and perished, and sacralized as American sites, these burial grounds simultaneously linked the nation's war dead back to American soil and the national purpose rooted there, expressed the nation's emerging prominent role on the world's stage, and advanced the burgeoning icon of the ';sacrificial, universal' US soldier. It draws upon untapped archival and historical materials from the WWI and interwar periods, as well as original on-site research, to show how the cemeteries came to display and advance the vision of the modern US soldier as ';a global force for good.' Ultimately, within the visual display of overseas cemeteries we can detect the birth of ';the modern US soldier'a potent icon in which divergent emotions, memories, beliefs, and arguments of Americans and non-Americans have been expressed for a century.

Re-thinking Rights: Historical Development and Philosophical Justification takes a new look at the history of individual rights, focussing on the way that philosophers have written that history. The scholastics and early modern writers used the notion of natural rights to debate the big moral and political questions of the day, such as the treatment of Indigenous Americans under Spanish rule. John Locke put natural rights at the centre of liberal political thought. But as the idea grew in strength and influence, empiricist and positivist philosophers punctured it with attacks of logical incompetence and illegitimate appeals to theology and metaphysics. Philosophers then turned to law and jurisprudence for the philosophical analysis of rights, where it has largely stayed ever since. Eleanor Curran argues that the dominance of the Hohfeldian analysis of (legal) rights has restricted our understanding of moral and political rights and led to distorted readings of historical writers on rights. It has also led to the separation of right from the important related notion of libertyfreedoms are now seen as inferior to claims. Curran looks at recent philosophy of human rights and suggests a way forward for justifying universal moral and political rights and separating them from legal rights.

The term ';Anthropocene', the era of mankind, is increasingly being used as a scientific designation for the current geological epoch. This is because the human species now dominates ecosystems worldwide, and affects nature in a way that rivals natural forces in magnitude and scale. Thinking about Animals in the Age of the Anthropocene presents a dozen chapters that address the role and place of animals in this epoch characterized by anthropogenic (human-made) environmental change. While some chapters describe our impact on the living conditions of animals, others question conventional ideas about human exceptionalism, and stress the complex cognitive and other abilities of animals. The Anthropocene idea forces us to rethink our relation to nature and to animals, and to critically reflect on our own role and place in the world, as a species. Nature is not what it was. Nor are the lives of animals as they used to be before mankinds rise to global ecological prominence. Can we eventually learn to live with animals, rather than causing extinction and ecological mayhem?

The essays in this collection make up the first study of ';dropping out' of late state socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. From Leningrad intellectuals and Berlin squatters to Bosnian Muslim madrassa students and Romanian yogis, groups and individuals across the Eastern Bloc rejected mainstream socialist culture. In the process, multiple drop-out cultures were created, with their own spaces, music, values, style, slang, ideology and networks. Under socialism, this phenomenon was little-known outside the socialist sphere. Only very recently has it been possible to reconstruct it through archival work, oral histories and memoirs. Such a diverse set of subcultures demands a multi-disciplinary approach: the essays in this volume are written by historians, anthropologists and scholars of literature, cultural and gender studies. The history of these movements not only shows us a side of state socialist life that was barely known in the west. It also sheds new light on the demise and eventual collapse of late socialism, and raises important questions about the similarities and differences between Eastern and Western subcultures.

The family remains the most contested institution in American society. How Families Matter:Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work explores the ways adults make sense of their family lives in the midst of the complicated debates generated by politicians and social scientists. Given the rhetoric about the family, this book is a well overdue account of family life from the perspective of families themselves. The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a whole view of different types of families. The chapters focus on contemporary issues such as who do we consider to be a part of our family, can anyone achieve family-life balance, and how do families celebrate when they get together? Relying on stories shared by a racially/ethnically diverse group of forty-six families, this book finds that parents and siblings cultivate a family identity that both defines who they are and influences who they become. It is a welcomed installment to conversations about the family, as families are finally viewed within a single study from a multicultural lens.

To say that children matter in Steven Spielbergs films is an understatement. Think of the possessed Stevie in Something Evil (TV), Baby Langston in The Sugarland Express, the alien-abducted Barry in Close Encounters, Elliott and his unearthly alter-ego in E.T, the war-damaged Jim in Empire of the Sun, the little girl in the red coat in Schindler's List, the mecha child in A.I., the kidnapped boy in Minority Report, and the eponymous boy hero of The Adventures of Tintin. (There are many other instances across his oeuvre). Contradicting his reputation as a purveyor of ';popcorn' entertainment, Spielberg's vision of children/childhood is complex. Discerning critics have begun to note its darker underpinnings, increasingly fraught with tensions, conflicts and anxieties. But, while childhood is Spielberg's principal source of inspiration, the topic has never been the focus of a dedicated collection of essays. The essays in Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg therefore seek to address childhood in the full spectrum of Spielberg's cinema. Fittingly, the scholars represented here draw on a range of theoretical frameworks and disciplinescinema studies, literary studies, audience reception, critical race theory, psychoanalysis, sociology, and more. This is an important book for not only scholars but teachers and students of Spielbergs work, and for any serious fan of the director and his career.

The collective work deals with the problems of if, how, and why the histories of German Nazism and Soviet Communism should and could be situated within one coherent narrative. As historical phenomena, can Communism and Nazism fruitfully be compared to each other? Do they belong to the same historical contexts? Have they influenced, reacted to or learned from each other? Are they interpreted, represented and used together by posterity? The background of the book is twofold. One is external. There is an ongoing debate about the historical entanglements of Communism and Nazism, especially about Auschwitz and Gulag, respectively. Our present fascination with the evil history of genocide has situated the Holocaust as the borderline event in Western historical thinking. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Communist regime do not have the same position but are considered more urgent in the East and Central European states that were subdued by both Nazi and Communist regimes. The other, internal background is to develop an analytical perspective in which the ';comnaz' nexus can be understood. Using a complex approach, the authors investigate Communist and Nazi histories as entangled phenomena, guided by three basic perspectives. Focusing on roots and developments, a genetic perspective highlights historical, process-oriented connections. A structural perspective indicates an attempt to narrow down ';operational' parallels of the two political systems in the way they handled ideology to construct social utopia, used techniques of terror, etc. A third perspective is genealogical, emphasizing the processing and use of Communist and Nazi history by posterity in terms of meaning and memory: What past is worth remembering, celebrating, debatingbut also distorting and forgetting? The chapters of the book address phenomena such as ideology, terror, secular religion, museum exhibits, and denial.

Alien Life and Human Purpose: A Rhetorical Examination through History provides a rhetorical examination of the way major historical figures connect their arguments for the absence of alien life, or ';unity,' to their philosophical, religious, and ethical agendas. Although the unity myth has often existed in the background of society, shaping institutions and values, during periods where relativism gained prominence, its opponents actively wielded the unity myth as a response; Plato used the unity myth against the sophists, Anglican theologian and philosopher William Whewell against the utilitarians, co-discoverer of evolution Alfred Russell Wallace against the social Darwinists, university professors Frank J. Tipler and John D. Barrow against the postmodernists, etc. These individuals presented scientific defenses of unity and then used the ';fact' of unity to claim the universe is teleological, knowable, and ordered, rather than chaotic and relativistic. This book argues that unity and its complimentary mythic function have played an important role in shaping values throughout history and more importantly continue to do so today.

The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that these relations are marked by various patterns of amicability and antipathy which emerge at dynamic intersections between Hindu self-understandings and social shifts on contested landscapes.

The vast majority of existing ecocritical studies, even those which espouse the ';postcolonial ecocritical' perspective, operate within a first-world sensibility, speaking on behalf of subalternized human communities and degraded landscapes without actually eliciting the voices of the impacted communities. Ecocriticism of the Global South seeks to allow scholars from (or intimately familiar with) underrepresented regions to ';write back' to the world's centers of political and military and economic power, expressing views of the intersections of nature and culture from the perspective of developing countries. This approach highlights what activist and writer Vandana Shiva has described as the relationship between ';ecology and the politics of survival,' showing both commonalities and local idiosyncrasies by juxtaposing such countries as China and Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Cameroon. Much like Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development, this new book is devoted to representing diverse and innovative ecocritical voices from throughout the world, particularly from developing nations. The two volumes complement each other by pointing out the need for further cultivation of the environmental humanities in regions of the world that are, essentially, the front line of the human struggle to invent sustainable and just civilizations on an imperiled planet.

It is well known that the Soviet Union strongly influenced China in the early 1950s, since China committed itself both to the Sino-Soviet alliance and to the Soviet model of building socialism. What is less well known is that Chinese proved receptive not only to the Soviet economic model but also to the emulation of the Soviet Union in realms such as those of ideology, education, science, and culture. In this book an international group of scholars examines China's acceptance and ultimate rejection of Soviet models and practices in economic, cultural, social, and other realms. The chapters vividly illustrate the wide-ranging and multi-dimensional nature of Soviet influence, which to this day continues to manifest itself in one critical aspect, namely in China's rejection of liberal political reform.

This book focuses on how mass hysteria has emerged among people across the globe due to reactions to news media reports and policies instituted by governments to address the challenges emanating from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book traces the genesis and development of haiku in Japan and its history as one of the most popular East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchanges in modern and postmodern times.

This book argues that our technological era is the most radical form of anarchism we have ever experienced. People are not only removing the role of the expert as a mediator, but also replacing the role of a transcendent god with an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent technological entity that is totally immanent.

In Remodeling Democracy, Zhongyuan Wang argues that the Chinese Communist Party uses formal democratic institutions to sustain its rule. These institutions combined with the Party's leadership and the rule of law form a "socialist democracy" that serves as an alternative to liberal democracy.

This book examines the impact of World War I on the upper-class British youth who lived through and fought in the war.

This book analyzes the trajectory of the major theatre institutions and companies under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. Seyben studies several institutions, companies, and artists that have managed to survive despite an increasingly authoritarian system marked by censorship, exile, closures, and oppression.

This book challenges the view that cheap purchases of Jewish firms were the result of the Nazi Party's activity in 1938 by emphasizing the role of private businessmen being supported by banks and the judiciary in 1933-1935.

This book uses the ontological notions of singularity and threshold to deconstruct the myth of the independent individual and address the question of what comes after sovereignty and the subject.

In this book, Jaehyeon Jeong examines the historical development of Korean food TV and its articulation of Koreanness in the era of globalization.

This book challenges traditional Marxist readings in literary criticism by employing a free-market lens to analyze important American texts and authors.

This book examines a nonconscious and profoundly harmful desire that is almost universally denied: the desire to be a god. Afflicting believers and nonbelievers alike, the desire is manifested in religious myths and throughout the history of philosophy.

This book offers an innovative pathway into Shakespeare's plays-the letters, although small, impact narrative development, reveal character, and enhance the play's tone. The author posits that the letters constitute texts that warrant interpretation, as they delineate the intersection of oral and literate cultures.

Robert Craig analyzes the Confessions as an allegory showing Augustine's state of mind or disposition through space/time. His use of different personas, schools of thought, and metaphysical constructs shows the inadequacy of Plato's consciousness model of the cave to truly describe human ratiocination within consciousness in its totality.