Books published by Palgrave USA

This is the first extended text-based analysis of the social and political implications of the Harry Potter phenomenon. The second part examines the presentation of certain themes, including gender, race and desire, in the Harry Potter books, with a view to understanding how these may impinge on social and political concerns of our world.

Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe 1990-2002 stresses the ways in which the development of political parties affected the quality of democracy, the nature of political representation, and political accountability in the early stages of post-communist politics.

Primitive Pictures explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with 'primitive' cultures. From the earliest research footage to popularized adventure footage, the film theory, the 'primitive' holds out the promise of a critical space that affirms modern, technological vision.

This book explores how British and German business associations formed their political attitudes towards Economic and Monetary Union between 1988 and 1998. With provocative argument and unique insight, it demonstrates how business associations are political entities in their own right, acting strategically to promote members' specific interests.

This book examines new policies for accelerating India's economic growth. This book discusses a set of dynamic strategies for growth, emphasizing the dynamic role of information technology and the New Economy. These show how new growth and the historical experiences of fast-growing Asian countries can be utilised for a new growth paradigm in India.

Successive chapters show what went wrong in UK economic policy making in the 1960s and 1970s, what goes better now, and what still goes wrong. The editors explain how recent developments in economic theory have improved economic policy making.

Leadership in Democracy develops and applies an innovative leadership theory of democracy and political evolution, based upon Schumpeter's famous theories of democracy and economic entrepreneurship.

This book gives a comprehensive account of the drafting of the EU Charter in the first Convention and shows the important contribution of this process to the constitutional development of the European Union.

This book examines the transformation of the economies of China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region through the process of globalization, and covers various issues, including those of industrial restructuring, financial markets, technology, agriculture, exchange rates, trade and FDI, environment, distribution and corporate governance.

This book presents a brief history of economic thought from the 17th century to the present day. Each chapter examines the key contributions of a major economist or group of economists and includes suggestions for further reading. Economists covered include Keynes, Marshall, Petty and Jevons, and less familiar theorists such as Galiani and Turgot.

The end of the Cold War, the Revolution in Military Affairs, 9/11 and the War on Terror have radically altered the nature of conflict and security in the Twenty-first Century. This book considers how developments in technology effect the prosecution of war and what the changing nature of warfare means for human rights and civil society.

This book takes an in-depth look at the relationships exotic dancers have with their regular customers, and explores the limits of using feminist theory to discuss sex work. This is an accessible, revealing, and new look at a perennially intriguing and divisive subject - ideal teaching material for undergraduate courses in a variety of fields.

This is the first book to examine the same-sex weddings and same-sex couple suicides reported in India over the last two decades.

This collection explores transnational peace and social-justice movements, their implications for international relations, and their potential for democratizing global governance. Contributors examine case studies on issue areas including human rights, security, environments and social/economic justice.

Whilst a good deal of these new jobs have been created in high-tech and/or knowledge-intensive sectors providing workers with decent pay, job security, training and career development prospects, a significant share of jobs, particularly in labour-intensive service sector industries fail to do so.

In this book leading scholars debate current issues and shed light on future prospects in the field of Knowledge Management. It presents new perspectives on knowledge and learning, including modes of knowing in practice, transactive knowledge systems, organizational narrations, and challenges conventional wisdom.

Japanese management is currently considered to be in crisis. It brings together up-to-date research on this important topic by a number of the best known American, Asian and European scholars of Japanese management.

Fourteen leading Irish and international historians and political scientists trace the politicization of Irish workers during a period of considerable social and political turmoil. This volume is a milestone in Irish labour and political historiography and an important contribution to the international literature on politics and the working class.

Japanese is well known for its array of argument encoding types - but how is speakers' choice of encoding types to be described? This book investigates the encoding of subject and direct object in conversational Japanese and attempts to explain Japanese argument encoding as a unified system.

There is a major contradiction in contemporary politics: there has been a wave of democratization that has swept across much of the world, while at the same time globalization appears to have reduced the social forces that have built democracy historically.

This book evaluates the strength of the rule of law in the South Caucasus, a volatile and strategically important region of the former Soviet Union. Contributors - all of whom who have lived and worked in Armenia, Azerbaijan or Georgia - tackle this question from the perspectives of both law and politics.

Alleyne analyzes the key role of the UN's public information department in the organization's pursuit of its objectives. The prominence of concepts such as human rights and national self-determination in the international arena is due to the activity of this UN department.

This book aims to develop a framework for a fully explanatory theory of speech production and speech perception. It emphasises the difference between static models (primarily descriptive) and dynamic models that attempt to show how the basic linguistics and phonetics are related in an actual human speaker/listener.

This book evaluates the conditions for the international transfer of Japanese-style management and production techniques to Europe. Using an investigation of Japanese manufacturing companies with operations in Europe, the authors shed light on 'hybrid factories', which combine elements of Japanese and European management and production techniques.

An analysis of the television phenomenon of the early 21st century - Reality TV, exploring its cultural and political meanings, explaining the genesis of the form and its relationship to television production, and considering how it connects with, and breaks away from, factual and fictional conventions in television.

The conquest of Lebensraum - living space - in Eastern Europe was the whole point of the Third Reich. This study investigates a key participant in the criminal project - Hans Frank - and how he tried to establish his corner of Hitler's racial empire.

Strategic Logic lays the foundations for a clear understanding of corporate profitability and provides the reader with innovative insights on how to develop original yet realistic strategies.

The fifth edition of this leading reference book on insurance medicine, provides a comprehensive guide to life expectancy for underwriters and clinicians involved in the life insurance industry. Extensively revised and expanded, the new edition reflects developments in life and healthcare insurance as well as medicine.

The Economics of Alfred Marshall brings together a number of leading international scholars for a timely reappraisal of Marshall's contribution to the development of economics.

Although numerous general studies of medieval women and a number of biographies of medieval queens have appeared in recent years, there have been comparatively few studies that combine biographical and prosopographical methodologies in order to develop portraits of specific women as case studies of the different life experiences of medieval women.