Books published by Palgrave Macmillan UK

This book explores the answers to fundamental questions about the human mind and human behaviour with the help of two ancient texts. The first is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus Tyrannus) by Sophocles, written in the 5th century BCE. The second is human DNA, with its origins around 4 billion years ago, and continuously revised by chance and evolution. With Sophocles as a guide, the authors take a journey into the Genomic era, an age marked by ever-expanding insights into the human genome. Over the course of this journey, the book explores themes of free will, fate, and chance; prediction, misinterpretation, and the burden that comes with knowledge of the future; self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies; the forces that contribute to similarities and differences among people; roots and lineage; and the judgement of oneself and others.Using Oedipus Rex as its lens, this novel work provides an engaging overview of behavioural genetics that demonstrates its relevance across the humanities and the social and life sciences. It will appeal in particular to students and scholars of genetics, education, psychology, sociology, and law.

This new edition provides a new preface to this highly popular book. The theme of the book is China's relations with the non-Chinese world, not only political and economic, but cultural, social and technological as well. It seeks to show that China's history is part of everyone's history. In particular it traces China's relationship since the thirteenth century to the emergent world order and the various world institutions of which that order is comprised. Each chapter discusses China's comparative place in the world, the avenues of contact between China and other civilizations, and who and what passed along these channels.

This book investigates the reasons why the traditional psychological understanding of bullying fails those affected, and deconstructs how bullying is shaped by prominent discourse. By drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory Victoria Rawlings highlights the social and cultural inequalities too often forgotten in analysis of aggressive behaviour in schools, and places particular emphasis on gender and sexuality as facilitating and constraining forces within school environments and bullying discourses. This book provides a necessary assessment as to why current anti-bullying approaches are failing, and offers an alternative explanation as to how and why bullying occurs. This is a timely and authoritative study which is based on qualitative research, including interviews and group sessions which are used to emphasize the real-life experiences of young people in schools today. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book has a broad appeal and will be of special interest to scholars in the fields of gender and sexuality studies, sociology, and education.

This book highlights the catalytic role of workers' education in mobilizing political activism and women's involvement in labour struggles and politics. Through a comprehensive study of the gendered aspects of workers' education it explores the intellectual lives of women workers. Drawing on the letters and papers of Fannia Mary Cohn, a prominent figure in the US garment industry's trade union movement, it discusses and further theorizes the importance of gender as an analytical category in the forceful interaction of labour, education and migration histories. The significance of the visual turn in feminist narrative analytics is considered and the book puts forward a compelling case for the contribution of writing working women in the intellectual and cultural life of the twentieth century.

Drawing on the expertise of historical, literary and philosophical scholarship, practicing physicians, and the medical humanities this is a true interdisciplinary collaboration, styled as a history. It explores pain at the intersection of the living, suffering body, and the discursive cultural webs that entangle it in its specific moment.

This book explores the relationship between diplomatic discourse and the Olympic Movement, charting its continuity and change from an historical perspective. Using the recent body of literature on diplomacy it explores the evolution of diplomatic discourse around a number of themes, in particular the increasing range of stakeholders engaged in the Olympic bid, disability advocacy and the mainstreaming of the Paralympic Games and the evolution of the Olympic boycott. The work addresses the increasing engagement of a number of non-state actors, in particular the IOC and the IPC, as indicative of the diffusion of contemporary diplomacy. At the same time it identifies the state as continuing in the role of primary actor, setting the terms of reference for diplomatic activity beyond the pursuit of its own policy interests. Its historical investigation, based around a UK case study, provides insights into the characteristics of diplomatic discourse relating to the Games, and creates the basis for mapping the future trajectory of diplomacy as it relates to the Olympic Movement.

Based on original Stasi and Communist Party archival sources, this book uncovers why East Germany was for two decades running one of the most successful nations in the Summer and Winter Olympics, exploring how the central elite sports system was beset by internal tensions and disputes.

This book explores the significance of sport in the understanding of past and current societal dynamics in the Arab world. It examines sport in relation to cultural, political and economic changes in the Arab World, including nation-state building, the formation of national identity and international relations in post-colonial context.

Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu traces the history of this breakthrough and its implications for understanding and controlling influenza ever since. Examining how influenza came to be defined as a viral disease in the first half of the twentieth century, it argues that influenzäs viral identity did not suddenly appear with the discovery of the first human influenza virus in 1933. Instead, it was rooted in the development of medical virus research and virological ways of knowing that grew out of a half-century of changes and innovations in medical science that were shaped through two influenza pandemics, two world wars, and by state-sponsored programs to scientifically modernise British medicine. A series of transformations, in which virological ideas and practices were aligned with and incorporated into medicine and public health, underpinned the viralisation of influenza in the 1930s and 1940s. Collaboration, conflict and exchange between researchers, medical professionals and governmental bodies lay at the heart of this process. This book is a history of how virus researchers, clinicians, and epidemiologists, medical scientific and public health bodies, and institutions, and philanthropies in Britain, the USA and beyond, forged a new medical consensus on the identity and nature of influenza. Shedding new light on the modern history of influenza, this book is a timely account of how ways of knowing and controlling this intractable epidemic disease became viral.

Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and viölence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking ¿European Astroculture trilogy, ¿Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare¿s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.

The Space Value of Money introduces a fresh and innovative perspective on sustainability and finance. It expands our financial value framework, heretofore built around risk and time, by factoring in space, as an analytical dimension and our physical context. The proposed principle and metrics entrench our responsibility for space impact into our value equations, making finance inherently sustainable and acting as a theoretical bridge between core finance theory and the growing field of sustainable finance or ESG integration. The book offers a novel approach to value design, measurement, and creation, discussing the theoretical, mathematical, institutional, technological and data elements of the transformation.The Space Value of Money principle and metrics offer us the opportunity to adjust our financial value framework and transform human productivity in line with our sustainability targets. They also enable the design and engineering of the financial instruments that can help us address our evolutionary challenges/investment, like the transition to Net Zero."Every once in a while, a book comes along that makes a fundamental contribution that is both profound and practical. A book that every member of the National Space Council, including the NASA Administrator and the Space Force chief of space operations should read. The Space Value of Money will be of interest to ESG and impact investors, government regulators, financial theorists, and outer space enthusiasts." -Lt Col Peter Garretson, Senior Fellow in Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council"No doubt, the pressing environmental challenges we face make the concept of the space impact of investments even more compelling." -Dr. Pascal Blanqué, Chairman of Amundi Institute, Former Group CIO of Amundi Asset Management"The Space Value of Money brings much needed conceptual rigour, whilst further advocating the case for a new paradigm shift in financial valuation. This work gives us the lasting frameworks that aggregate impact across all spatial dimensions. Dr. Papazian culminates over ten years of research in this rich book, providing the springboard for further innovation and system implementation in this area." -Domenico Del Re, Director, Sustainability and Climate Change, PwC"Enthralling and captivating. Papazian offers a clear, thorough, and comprehensive discussion. The Space Value of Money gives us an opportunity to reframe our thinking and to explore what is possible. A great read!" -Daud Vicary, Founding Trustee of the Responsible Finance and Investment Foundation"Armen has developed a novel way to create financial models that are better suited to dealing with the many parameters required if we are to properly consider environmental factors and sustainability in economics and finance. I have found this engaging and look forward to seeing its future use." -Dr. Keith Carne, First Bursar, King's College, Cambridge University

This book explores the complex domain of social reality, asking what this reality is, how it is composed and what its dynamics are in both theoretical and practical terms. Through the examination of some of the most important contemporary theories of social ontology, the book discusses the fundamentals of the discipline and lays the foundations for its development in the political sphere. By analyzing the notion of State and the redesign of ontology, the author argues in favor of a realist conception of the State and shows the reasons why this promotes a better understanding of the dynamics of power and the actualization of a greater justice between generations. This book captures the relationship between different generations within the same political context, and presents it as a necessary condition for the re-definition of the concepts of State and meta-State.

Tanasescu examines the rights of nature in terms of its constituent parts. Besides offering a thorough theoretical grounding, the book gives a first detailed overview of the actual cases of rights for nature so far. This is the first comprehensive treatment of the rights of nature to date, both analytically and in terms of actual cases.

This book offers a detailed exploration of the plot genotype, the functional structure behind the plots of classical fairy tales. By understanding how plot genotypes are used, the reader or creative writer will obtain a much better understanding of many other types of fiction, including short stories, dramatic texts and Hollywood screenplays.

Virginia Woolf's Influential Forebears reveals under-acknowledged nineteenth-century legacies which shaped Woolf as a writing woman. Marion Dell identifies significant lines of descent from the lives and works of Woolf's great-aunt Julia Margaret Cameron, the writer she called aunt, Anny Thackeray Ritchie, and her mother, Julia Prinsep Stephen.

Sudduth provides a critical exploration of classical empirical arguments for survival arguments that purport to show that data collected from ostensibly paranormal phenomena constitute good evidence for the survival of the self after death. Utilizing the conceptual tools of formal epistemology, he argues that classical arguments are unsuccessful.

Michael Hanchett Hanson weaves together the history of the development of the psychological concepts of creativity with social constructivist views of power dynamics and pragmatic insights. He provides an engaging, thought-provoking analysis to interest anyone involved with creativity, from psychologists and educators to artists and philosophers.

This book argues that understanding truces is crucial for our ability to wind down wars. We have paid too much attention to the idea of permanent peace, yet few conflicts end in this way. The book describes how truce makers think, which truces can be morally justified and provides a philosophical history of truce making in the Western tradition.

Novelists Against Social Change studies the writing of John Buchan, Dornford Yates and Angela Thirkell to show how these conservative authors put their fears and anxieties into their best-selling fiction. Resisting the threats of change in social class, politics, the freedom of women, and professionalization produced their strongest works.