Books published by Oxford University Press, USA

Certain combinations of sounds or signs on paper are meaningful. What makes it the case that, unlike most combinations of sounds or signs, they have meaning? What is this meaning that they have? And what is it to understand this meaning? The traditional answers to these questions are based on the idea that words stand for something, but it is difficult to say what words such as good, if, or probable stand for. This book advances novel answers based on the idea that words get their meaning from the way they are used to express states of mind and what follows from them. It articulates a precise version of this idea, at a time when the shortcomings of the traditional answers are hotly discussed.

Redesigning the US Mental Health Care System brings together an array of experts working to spark lasting change in mental health care systems across the United States. Chapters explore how facility redesigns, accessibility of funding, technological advances, and other strategies can work in tandem to optimize the process of delivering services to people in need. By spotlighting these efforts to implement necessary changes--as well as providing real-life experiences from users and practitioners within these systems--Redesigning the US Mental Health Care System creates a vision of a unified continuum of care designed to serve people at the right time and in the right place.

In the early days of moving pictures, filmmakers learned that the montage could be an effective tool to show changes in time or locale. Between Images takes a revolutionary look at this ubiquitous device and explores a new theory of montage. This study delves deeply into the concept of montage and focuses on the space between images as a powerful source of ideas, feelings, and forms. By bringing together a diverse group of experimental filmmakers, including Harun Farocki, Hito Steyerl, Steve McQueen, and Cauleen Smith, Daïchi Saito, and Ja'Tovia Gary, the book creates an interdisciplinary conversation about the power of cinema to effect change.

Oncology and Palliative Social Work: Psychosocial Care for People Coping with Cancer is a clinician desk reference that illustrates the need for integrating early palliative care for patients with cancer and the important role social workers have in providing psychosocial support services across the cancer trajectory. There is a convergence of oncology and palliative social work specialties in the delivery of comprehensive, culturally-congruent, whole person cancer care. The volume reflects the collective knowledge, skills, clinical experience and perspectives of a diverse group of interprofessional contributors, including best practices, emerging trends and priorities in psychosocial oncology, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this evolving landscape.

This volume presents a collection of essays on the enduring legacy and relevance of Max Weber, German sociologist, scholar of world religions, economic historian, social philosopher, and theoretician of modern political life. Published a century after his death, this volume brings together original essays by distinguished historians, philosophers, and social theorists to take stock of his significance in the early decades of the twenty-first century. It offers illuminating perspectives for both the novice and the expert, addressing the broader, more theoretical dimensions of his legacy that remain of central relevance to a wide range of disciplines.

The Oxford Handbook of Space Security focuses on the interaction between space technology and international and national security processes. Saadia M. Pekkanen and P.J. Blount have gathered a group of key scholars who bring a range of analytical and theoretical perspectives to take an analytically-eclectic approach to assessing space security from an international relations (IR) theory perspective. Bringing together scholarship from a group of leading experts, this volume explains how these contemporary changes will affect future security in, from, and through space.

Circuit Breaking presents a comprehensive guide for clinicians to help people eliminate their substance abuse problems. Readers will learn that substance abuse is not caused by a disease, but is the consequence of their brains being chronically exposed to psychoactive substances that over time create brain circuits that drive compulsive substance abuse.

Patients often are asked to fill out questionnaires before or after going to the doctor's office or hospital. What is the point of these questionnaires? Why do the questions often seem irrelevant? Does it matter if patients fill them out or ignore them? This book addresses these questions while also providing historical context about how these questionnaires became so popular. These questionnaires, which philosopher Leah M. McClimans calls 'Patient-Centered Measures' have a fascinating history that combines the contemporary emphasis in medical ethics on patient-centered care with the contemporary preoccupation with evidence-based medicine (the idea that medical decisions should be based on empirical evidence). Patient-centered measures sit between these two concerns and thus serve as an excellent example of a medical technology for the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Handbook of Digital Religion will provide a comprehensive overview of religion as seen and performed through various media, platforms, and cultural spaces created by digital technology. The text will cover religious engagement with a wide range of digital media forms (including social media, websites, gaming environments, mobile phones, virtual and augmented realities, etc.) and highlight examples of technological engagement and negotiation within the major world religions (i.e. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism), as well as significant subgroups. Given the richness and breadth of the coverage, this volume will serve as a key resource for scholars of communication, media, religion, theology, and internet studies.

In this Handbook, experts across multiple disciplines, including psychology, criminology, education, law, and policy, focus on the interface between developmental science and law across crucial but also very different periods of development. Coverage includes topics such as prenatal and infant abuse; questioning of minor and elderly victims, witnesses, and suspects; treatment of at-risk individuals across multiple settings (e.g., criminal courts, immigration, custody, and adoption hearings); experiences in prison; reentry transitions after incarceration; and reproductive and end-of-life legal rights. Insightful and forward looking, the Handbook provides crucial foundational knowledge of the field and offers concrete suggestions for next steps and conclusions for practitioners and scientists who are working to push the field forward and use the knowledge for more informed decision-making.

This volume on international studies pedagogy helps us think purposefully about the worlds we teach to our students and it shows us why engaging in reflective practice about how and what we teach matters. The Handbook also provides strategies to engage students in a variety of ways to reflect on and engage with the complexities of the world in which we live.

Freedom Soldiers examines the lives of formerly enslaved men who deserted the US Army during the Civil War and their experiences in army camps, courts, and prisons. It explores their reasons for leaving, often through their own voices from courts-martial testimony.

The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music Studies is the most comprehensive and expansive critical handbook of Jewish music published to date. The chapters form a first truly global look at Jewish music, including studies from Central and East Asia, Europe, Australia, the Americas, and the Arab world. The Handbook provides a resource that researchers, scholars, and educators will use as the most important and authoritative overview of work within music and Jewish studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History features contributions from scholars involved in the field's development across a range of countries and linguistic regions. Each of the handbook's thirty-one chapters focuses on an important theme within commodity history: essential approaches, global histories, modes of production, people and land, environmental impact, consumption, and new methodologies.

This volume develops a novel interpretation of Kant's conception of reason and its philosophical significance. Karl Schafer argues that theoretical and practical reason are manifestations of a single capacity for theoretical and practical understanding, illuminating Kant's conception of the role of reason in philosophical inquiry.

Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, featuring essays that touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor.

The Caribbean is a microcosm of the world. In this very small geographic space one encounters global religions as well as religious practices that are indigenous to the region. This volume provides an overview of Caribbean religions, one that respects the diversity of the religious traditions and the national particularity of the region. It addresses the prominent religious traditions in the Caribbean, with a focus on multiple geographic settings, and examines a cross-section of themes that impact the region broadly and the academic study of Caribbean religion.

With contributions from thirty archaeologists, epigraphists, historians, and philologists, this book covers Palmyra's archaeological remains and history from its earliest phases in the pre-Roman era to the destruction of many of its monuments during the Syrian Civil War and subsequent looting. The authors give comprehensive overviews of already published evidence, as well as significant new findings and analyses from fieldwork, and cover a broad range of themes, which not only relate to the archaeology and history of the site, but also to its relationship with the rest of the ancient world as a major trade hub during the Roman period.

Based on a twelve-year longitudinal study that followed 185 emerging adults from age 23 to age 35, six assessments, and two in-depth interviews, A New Lens on Emerging Adulthood proposes a constructive understanding of the journey that young people take throughout their twenties and early thirties. Conceptualized within the Developmental Systems Theory, this book argues that emerging adulthood instabilities and missteps actually reflect progress toward developmental reorganization. Furthermore, fluidity and instabilities experienced by emerging adults during this period are evidence of the efforts to navigate toward a successful transition to adulthood.