Books published by Lexington Books

William Friedkin's film Sorcerer (1977) has been subject to a major re-evaluation in the last decade. A dark re-imagining of the French Director H.G. Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953) (based on George Arnaud's novel); the film was a major critical and commercial failure on its initial release. Friedkin's work was castigated as an example of directorial hubris as it was a notoriously difficult production which went wildly over-budget. It was viewed at the time as th end of New Hollywood. However, within recent years, the film has emerged in the popular and scholarly consciousness from enjoying a minor, cult status to becoming subject to a full-blown critical reconsideration in which it has been praised a major work by a key American filmmaker.

Humanity is struggling with the environmental destruction and social change caused by modern technologies like nuclear reactors. Politicians, scientists, and business leaders all too often revert to a tried and tested set of solutions that fails to grasp the wicked nature of the problem. Eschewing the problem-solving approach that dominates the nuclear energy debate, Anna Volkmar suggests that the only intelligent way to account for the inherent complexity of nuclear technology is not by trying to resolve it but to muddle through it. Through in-depth analyses of contemporary visual art, Volkmar demonstrates how art can suggest ways to muddle through these issues intelligently and ethically. This book is recommended for students and scholars of art history, anthropology, social science, ecocriticism, and philosophy.

Under Siege: Counter-Terrorism and Civil Society in Hungary critically examines the effects of Hungary's counterterrorism and security policies on civil society organizations since the Fidesz party's sweeping victory in 2010. It explores the historical and political depths of the government's security apparatus, including the formation and implementation of its counter-terrorism laws, polices, and institutions, as well as the terrorism landscape. The author draws upon survey research conducted across four categories of civil society organizations, including peacebuilding, development, human rights advocacy, and humanitarianism, and extensive data collected through semi-structured interviews with members of the civil society community, security actors, legal experts, politicians, and scholars. This book argues that the Hungarian government's counterterrorism and security regime has significantly altered the autonomous space in which civil society organizations operate and severely strained state-society relations.

In Paul Ricoeurs Renewal of Philosophical Anthropology: Vulnerability, Capability, Justice, Marc de Leeuw argues that Ricoeur's philosophical project integrates the anthropological tradition while renewing its importance as a hermeneutic anthropology of human capability. Ricoeur posits that our cogito is neither its own absolute master, nor fully transparent to itself, inflicting a ';wound' (brise) and fracturing the center of Cartesian self-certainty. But the Nietzschean disillusionment that ensues does not simply amount to a victorious anti-cogito; it opens another path towards self-understanding. In place of the direct route of intuition is found a more complex way forward, one guided by interpretation. The task of philosophical anthropology is to understand the human through its interpretative, critical, and imaginative ability as well as its capacity to act towards, with, and for others; the interpretation of the world in front of us, the interpretation of ';who we are,' and the interpretation of what it means to be among others (as other selves) coalesces in an anthropology that binds the question of the self to a moral, ethical, and political project, one aiming to reflect our existence-in-common. For Ricoeur, the basic question of our subjective and normative ';standing' demands a fundamental responsea response toward our own otherness and to responsibilities triggered by the appeal of Others. In both cases, our vulnerability is inescapable: we can never have an absolute self-knowledge nor an absolute knowledge of Others. Ricoeur turns this fundamental aporia into an affirmative philosophical anthropology of human action, attestation, and justice.

How do post-communist citizens engage in the new democracies of Eastern Europe after decades of repressive control exerted by the communist regimes? Are people's involvement in post-communist politics influenced by generic socioeconomic and attitudinal traits, or is it primarily driven by selective mobilization opportunities provided by social networks and organizations? This book presents a broad framework for conceptualizing and measuring citizen participation and applies it to Romania as a typical post-communist democracy illustrating the low rates of political activism in the region. Separate chapters examine post-communist citizens' participation in elections, attempts to influence authorities beyond voting, cognitive engagement in politics, and direct involvement in local decision-making. Using large-N statistical analyses, the author argues that individuals' socioeconomic and attitudinal characteristics have relatively weak influences on citizen participation in the post-communist context. Instead, various organizations and social networks act as politically recruiting and mobilizing agents, driving citizen participation into political actions that can challenge or strengthen democracy. In the absence of a well-developed participatory political culture that would enable citizens to act autonomously in the political sphere, the persistence of post-communist democracies largely depends on the goals and methods pursued by these mobilizing agents.

Sherlock Holmes, Byomkesh Bakshi, and Feluda: Negotiating the Center and the Periphery presents a postcolonial reading of Conan Doyle's canonical detective textsSherlock Holmes adventures, and some lesser known detective texts written by two Bengali (Indian) writersSharadindu Bandyopadhyay (1899-1970), and Satyajit Ray (1921-1992). The book proposes that in a postcolonial reading situation, the representation of Holmes problematizes the act of reading and also the act and discourse of inquiry. The fact that the Holmes adventures contribute to the hegemonic culture of ';Anglo/Eurocentrism' is seen as a reinforcement of racial superiority among the ';colonized.' This book studies how literary texts function as a signifier of a particular national identity, and can indicate the cultural construct of a state. It contends that only those texts which cater to the standards of global hierarchy are considered canonical, and indigenous texts, however significant, remain as Other literature. The book highlights colonial and postcolonial discourse in the Bengali detective texts and examines, how far Holmes has been able to reinforce racial dominance over the Indian detectives Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda.

This book investigates the problem of patriarchy in modern social contract theories by analyzing the concept of "sexual contract" from Thomas Hobbes to Immanuel Kant. It sheds light on both the genesis and the logic of patriarchal relations in modern culture.

In Women and Tourist Work in Jamaica: Seven Miles of Sandy Beach, A. Lynne Bolles examines Jamaican women tourist workers and their workplaces in Negril, Jamaica.

Polyphonic Revolution focuses on the Chilean cultural scene during the Popular Unity government (1970-73), situating the discourses and artistic productions linked to the Chilean New Song movement.

Urbanormativity examines the reality, representation, and consequences of living amid a cultural ideology that privileges urban over rural people and communities. The book analyzes and challenges the complex processes that work to devalue the rural and advocates for a rural justice ethic that reverses the present course.

The book examines the trajectory of joint philosophical-pedagogical concepts within the framework of the dialogue between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, put in the context of questions concerning the nature of modernity.

This study is an unique approach to social and cultural history of Japan through the scope of food and food ways. In this book-length study of food markets in the early modern Japanese capital of Edo, Akira Shimizu draws a fascinating picture of early modern Japanese society where specialty foodsseasonal, regional, and hard-to-find delicacies that satisfied the palate of nation's highest political authority, the shogunserved as a powerful nexus that connected different social groups. In the course of their daily lives, peasants, fisherfolks, and merchants, who made specialty food available at the market, were in constant negotiation with powerful wholesalers and government authorities in charge of procuring specialty foods of the highest qualities for the shogun's Edo Castle. Utilizing a number of previously unused archival materials that reveals the lives of those at the bottom of the society, the book traces the production, supply, and handling of specialty foods and shows how ordinary people were empowered to assume control over the distribution of specialty food, eventually affecting their procurement for the shogunal kitchen. In doing so, they disrupted the existing market order on the shogunal requisition, and led to the reconfiguration of market relations.

Chaplain G.A. Studdert Kennedy has been described as the most popular British chaplain of the First World War. Widely known as Woodbine Willie for the cigarettes he distributed to the troops, his wartime poetry and prose communicated the challenges, hardships and hopes of the soldiers he served. As a chaplain, he was subject to the same hardships as his soldiers. This book analyses his experiences through the contemporary understanding of psychological, moral and spiritual impact of war on its survivors and suggests that the chaplain suffered from Combat Stress, Moral Injury, and Spiritual Injury. Through the analysis of his wartime and postwar publications, the author illustrates the continuing impact of war on the life of a veteran of the Great War.

The tremendous loss of groundwater has been a longstanding concern in Kansas, where areas of the High Plains aquifer have plummeted. Groundwater Citizenship: Well Owners, Environmentalism, and the Depletion of the High Plains Aquifer investigates water conservation efforts, environmental priorities, and water supply awareness among private water well owners, a key social group whose water usage is pivotal to safeguarding aquifers. This book discusses how reliance on private and public water supplies influences watering practices by asking if owning a well changes the propensity to conserve water. To explore how water supplies shape environmental actions and beliefs, sociologist Brock Ternes constructed a one-of-a-kind dataset by surveying over 850 well owners and non-well owners throughout Kansas. His analyses reveal that well ownership influences several dimensions of water consumption, and he identifies how Kansans' notions of environmentalism are recalibrated by their systems of water provision. This book frames well owners as unique conservationists whose water use is shaped by larger structuresaquifers, water laws, and food systems. Groundwater Citizenship takes a sociological look at water systems to facilitate adaptive approaches to sustainable resource management.

Rhetorics of Nepantla, Memory, and the Gloria Evangelina Anzalda Papers: Archival Impulses explores the intersection of Chicana/o/x studies, Latina/o/x studies, archival studies, and public memory by examining the archival homes of cultural critic Gloria Anzalda. This book illustrates how her archive mirrors her philosophy of theories of the flesh and contains objects that, when placed together by the rhetor, perform the embodied ways of knowing of which she writes. Anzalda's archive is a generative space that requires a rhetorical perspective that is expansive, intersectional, and flexible enough to handle interactions between the objects found within and across archives. This book provides an account of how to discuss these interactions in theoretically and experientially meaningful ways. From the analysis of Anzalda's public speeches, the parallels between her birth certificate and creative writing, the planning documents of the 1995 Entre Americas: El Taller Nepantla artist retreat, and more, the author contributes to the fields of archival methods, gender studies, Anzaldan scholarship, public memory, and rhetorical studies by illustrating why engaging the archives of women of color matters.

This book offers an interdisciplinary effort to address global health issues grounded on a human rights framework seen from the perspective of those who are more vulnerable to be sick and die prematurely: the poor.

Should we research, develop, and deploy climate engineering technology? Drawing upon contemporary moral and political theory, this book offers a normative perspective on such questions, ultimately making the case in favor of research and regulation guided by norms of legitimacy, distributive justice, and procedural justice.

In this treatise by veteran Japanese immigration specialist, Hidenori Sakanaka-the former director of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau-proposes sweeping changes to Japan's immigration policy to address the interrelated problems of a rapidly declining population and a decrease in working-age adults.

The Belt and Road Initiative and the Future of Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific interrogates to what extent the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) represents an achievable vision of a China-centric order in Asia, exploring its major security implications for the region.

The Art of Ancient Music discusses music's role in the long story of human creativity. While emphasizing broad human themes, the text has a special focus on the early traditions of Western music.

Through social network analysis, this study was able to locate teacher influencers in schools and then describe the transformational qualities that made them influential. The Model of Transformational Teacher Influence suggests the shifts that teachers can consider in their collaborative relationships to enhance their potential for influence.

Masculinity Under Construction analyzes Black male identity through the works of various authors from Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The book discusses the works of canonical Black authors from the pan-African diaspora in order to identify similarities in the construction of male identity in global Black communities.

This book is a call to action for justice for a marginalized community: transgender educators. The author argues that despite the increased visibility and pockets of acceptance of transgender people in general, transgender educators face job loss, loss of family members, poverty, and isolation by their school communities.

This book is a critique of Christian nationalism and an analysis of Christian theological ethics and practice in the US. Utilizing Pierre Bourdieu's sociology and Rene Girard's mimetic theories, Haden identifies the problematic dynamics of US Christians embodying idolatrous ideological beliefs and calls for Christian conversion from such practices.

Before Belief explores our first spiritual awareness, before language and cognitive understanding. This unconscious spiritual learning, beginning in infancy, is foundational for a relationship with God. The theoretical approach advanced in this volume is both constructive and pastorally sensitive.

This book describes and analyzes Muhasibi's and Nursi's accounts of what it means to live an authentically Muslim ethical life. It documents and examines the discursive practice, reflectivity, dynamism and complexity involved in living properly as a Muslim individual and social being.

Congressional Giants examines the lives and achievements of 14 influential leaders of Congress from the nineteenth century to the present day. These "giants" shaped American history in myriad ways that continue to reverberate well into the twenty-first century.

This book traces the emergence of modern Korean literature and its trajectory towards the turn of the twentieth century. In examining the entanglements of literary style, form, and contemporaneous institutions, Young Min Kim illuminates an oft-overlooked period in modern Korean literary history.

This book studies refugee migration through the experiences of Bosnian women displaced by the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia and analyzes themes of gender, performance, political economy, and citizenship in women's diverse postwar lives.

Kierkegaard and the New Nationalism argues for the relevance of Kierkegaard's "attack upon Christendom" within our current situation of resurgent nationalism. Kierkegaard's ascetic voice calls his readers not simply to critique nationalism, but to renounce it, thereby striking at nationalism's self-assertive core.