Books published by Springer International Publishing AG

This book explains Japan¿s unique Prosecution Review Commission (PRC) which is composed of eleven lay people selected randomly from voter registration lists. Each of the country¿s 165 PRCs reviews non-charge decisions made by professional prosecutors and determines which cases should be reinvestigated or charged. PRCs also provide prosecutors with general proposals and recommendations for improving their policies and practices. The book analyzes the history and operations of the PRC and uses statistics and case studies to examine its various impacts, from legitimation and shadow effects to kickbacks and mandatory prosecution.More broadly, this book explores a problem that is common in many criminal justice systems: how to hold prosecutors accountable for their non-charge decisions. It discusses the potential these panels have for improving the quality of criminal justice in Japan and other countries, and it will appeal to scholars and students studying prosecution and democracy, criminal justice, criminology, lay participation, justice reform, and Japanese studies.

This book focuses on expressions of the tragic in Spanish cinema. Its main premise is that elements from the classical and modern tragic tradition persist and permeate many of the cultural works created in Spain, especially the films on which the book centers this study. The inscrutability and indolence of the gods, the mutability of fortune, the recurrent narratives of fall and redemption, the unavoidable clash between ethical forces, the tension between free will and fate, the violent resolution of both internal and external conflicts, and the overwhelming feelings of guilt that haunt the tragic heroine/hero are consistent aspects that traverse Spanish cinema as a response to universal queries about human suffering and death.

This book explores the development and implementation of Child First as an innovative guiding principle for improving youth justice systems. Applying contemporary research understandings of what leads to positive child outcomes and safer communities, Child First challenges traditional risk-led and stigmatising approaches to working with children in trouble. It has now been adopted as the four-point guiding principle for all policy and practice across the youth justice system in England and Wales, it is becoming a key reform principle for youth justice in Northern Ireland, and it is increasingly influential across several western jurisdictions. With contributions from academics, policymakers and practitioners, this book critically charts the progress and challenges in establishing a progressive evidence-led youth justice system. Its dynamic and accessible integration of theory, research, policy and practice, alongside discussion of critical themes, makes it a key read for students on youth crime/justice modules and for a wider market.Stephen Case is Professor of Youth Justice in the Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy division at Loughborough University, UK. Neal Hazel is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Health and Society at the University of Salford, UK.

This open access book is the first monograph that brings together insights from comparative politics, political sociology, and migration studies to introduce the current state of knowledge on external voting and transnational politics. Drawing on new data gathered within the DIASPOlitic project, which created a comparative dataset of external voting results for 6 countries of origin and 17 countries of residence as well as an extensive qualitative dataset of 80 in-depth interviews with four groups of migrants, this book not only illustrates theoretical problems with empirical material, but also provides answers to previously unaddressed questions.The empirical material focuses on the European context. The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (2004-2007) triggered a westward wave of migration from Central and Eastern European countries which faced the expansion of existing émigré communities and the emergence of new ones. As this process coincided with the expansion ofmigrant voting rights, the result is a large set of populous diaspora communities which can potentially have a significant impact on country electoral politics, making the study of external voting highly relevant.This book¿s introduction takes stock of current research on transnational politics and external voting, presenting core puzzles. The following chapter introduces the context of intra-European migration and the political situation in Central-Eastern European sending countries. The next two sections address the empirical puzzles, drawing on new quantitative and qualitative. The conclusion takes stock of the evidence gathered, discusses the normative problem of non-resident voters enfranchisement, connects external voting to the broader debate on political remittances and finally, maps the terrain ahead for future research.This concise, empirically grounded introduction to external voting is critical reading in structuring the debate around migration and shapingresearch agendas for the future.

This book explores cases of decapitation found in sources on the reign of Alexander the Great. Despite the enormous literature on the career of Alexander the Great, this is the first study on the characterisation of violent deaths during his hectic reign. This historiographical omission has involved the tacit and blind acceptance of the details found in the ancient sources. Therefore, this book seeks to illustrate how cultural expectations, literary models, and ideological taboos shaped these accounts and argues for a close and critical reading of the sources. Given the different cultural considerations surrounding decapitation in Greek and Roman cultures, this book illustrates how those biases could have differently shaped certain episodes depending on the ultimate writer.This book, therefore, can be especially interesting for scholars focused on the career of Alexander the Great, but also valuable for other Classicists, philologists, and even for anthropologists because itrepresents a good case of study of cultural symbolism of violent death, semantics of power, imperial domination and the confrontation between opposite cultural appreciations of a practice.

What images come to mind when you read the word ¿intoxication¿? What behaviour do you associate with the word ¿drunk¿? When you hear the word ¿drug¿, what images do you recall? This textbook provides an essential and thorough grounding in debates about the role of intoxication in contemporary society, from social and cultural perspectives. It examines intoxication in the broadest sense as including both legal and illegal substances and both culturally accepted and socially stigmatised practices. Given the pace of recent changes in policy and practice ¿ from the increasingly common legalisation of cannabis, to the recent trend of sobriety amongst adolescents and young adults ¿ this book stands out by offering both a through historical and theoretical overview and a topical and forward looking exploration of current debates. It adopts a multi-scale approach to examine wider patterns of change so it considers the subjective experiences of the role intoxication plays in the lives of individuals and groups, in the construction of diverse identities and how this differs by age, gender and ethnicity. The authors play particular attention to the way in which the state justifies interventions based on moral, health and criminal justice discourses and also consider the role played by other individuals and institutions, not least the mass media and the alcohol industry, in propagating and challenging common sense explanations of intoxication. It speaks to undergraduates, master's students and above, with a range of pedagogic features, and offers insights into policy and practice.

T¿his book critically explores how and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) can infringe human rights and/or lead to socially harmful consequences and how to avoid these. The European Union has outlined how it will use big data, machine learning, and AI to tackle a number of inherently social problems, including poverty, climate change, social inequality and criminality. The contributors of this book argue that the developments in AI must take place in an appropriate legal and ethical framework and they make recommendations to ensure that harm and human rights violations are avoided. The book is split into two parts: the first addresses human rights violations and harms that may occur in relation to AI in different domains (e.g. border control, surveillance, facial recognition) and the second part offers recommendations to address these issues. It draws on interdisciplinary research and speaks to policy-makers and criminologists, sociologists, scholars in STS studies, security studies scholars and legal scholars.

This book uses critical metaphor analysis to show from a cognitive perspective how climate change is conceptualized in the USA. The author enriches his linguistic analysis with cognitive aspects such as source-target domain mapping and metaphor opposition to explain how metaphor works in terms of framing this issue, drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis-informed framework to demonstrate how politicians represent the climate crisis in their attempts to trigger social change. Using a data set of speeches given by US-based politicians, governors and mayors speaking in the context of the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, the book categorizes metaphors on different conceptions such as war, construction, unfairness, journey, and cleanliness to bridge the gap between ecolinguistics and critical metaphor analysis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in fields including applied linguistics, political communication, ecolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics and psychology.

This book offers a novel, grounded-theory approach to the study of online comments about Donald Trump and the USA in countries with a turbulent relation with America: China, Mexico and Russia.Slavtcheva-Petkova advocates for a departure from Jürgen Habermas¿s public sphere and democratic deliberative framework, introducing instead the concept of post-deliberative public spheres. The book provides a qualitative thematic analysis via the constant comparison method, coupled with quantitate content analysis of more than 2200 social media comments posted from Trump¿s election in 2016 until July 2020. Three empirical chapters are devoted to the countries under study, showing how it is possible to map the comments onto a spectrum of authoritarianism/censored media to democracy/free media. Slavtcheva-Petkova argues that existence and strength of an underpinning ideology and the scope that ideology leaves for constructive political discussions online is of key importance, exploring themes such as identity, patriotism and populism; democracy; power and responsibility.Timely and innovative, ¿Trump¿s America Online¿ astutely displays how post-deliberative public spheres are valuable spaces for political talk despite the challenges they face across the globe.

This book explores how young Cuban filmmakers have expanded the range of sexual subjectivities on screen. It analyzes cine joven (films made by young directors) from the late 1980s to the early 2020s, film reviews, articles, and materials from the Cinematheque of Cuba's archive to illustrate the confluence of sexuality, cinema, and discourses of youth. While sexual and cinematic cultures have their own unique relation to the public sphere, state institutions, and transnational flows, this book explores tensions, debates, and expressions that unite them. In an investigation of how young filmmakers employ queer strategies of self-making to bring sexual diversity to the screen, Margaret G. Frohlich shows us how cine joven takes part in the socialization of power in Cuba.

This book explores the issues and challenges of gender and development in Africa. The current needs of women in Africa are connected with the possible future emancipation of women from institutions and processes that perpetuate poverty to overcome gendered development processes and patriarchal economic policies at work. The role of legal, political, cultural, religious, and economic institutions in development are examined to highlight marginalisation within uneven development processes embedded with capitalism. Broader development issues, such as property rights, food security, accessibility of resources, and environmental change, are also discussed.This book aims to reimagine African development from an issue-based perspective that moves beyond gender stereotypes and narrow silo of patriarchal development. The volume is relevant to students and researchers interested in the political economy, development and feminist economics.

This book consists of an account of the creation of the Palestine Film Unit (PFU) and its founding members, from the photography department in the early years of the Palestinian revolution (1967-1968), to its evolution in the mid-1970¿s into the Palestinian Cinema Institution. Khadijeh Habashneh weaves her own memories into excerpts from letters and other communications of survivors, friends and PFU family members, with writings by scholars who analyzed the work and the contributions of this remarkable film movement (from the late 1960¿s to early 1980¿s). As such it offers a unique perspective on this aspect of Palestine film history that ended in the loss of its archive in the mid 1980¿s, providing details that have not been previously published in English.

Visual Rhetorics of Communist Romania: Life under the Totalitarian Gaze offers personal accounts and theoretical insight into the Cold War era when little information about life beyond the Iron Curtain could transpire to the West. Adriana Cordali develops a unique visual rhetorical theory for analyzing communist totalitarian propaganda and the resistance to it, and reveals the deliberate, strategic in/visibilities the rhetoric of power engaged in. Building upon the local history, ideology, and politics of the regime imposed after WWII, she identifies propagandäs rhetorical features, visual tropes, and symbols and examines striking photographs and print materials from Ceau¿escu¿s regime (1966-1989) and the time of regime change (1989-1990), as well as an award-winning Romanian film that depicts women¿s life at the time. Converging visual rhetoric and culture with history and politics, Visual Rhetorics of Communist Romania is a first book of this kind and will interest readers of rhetoric and communication, visual rhetoric, and political discourse in the region.

This book compares the Victorian British poet Robert Browning and the twentieth-century Ghanaian poet and novelist Kojo Laing¿two writers whose texts frequently foreground multi-scalar transregional cartographies, points of connection and translation, and imaginative kinships between different linguistic and cultural communities. Starting from the numerous and surprising points of connection and resemblance between both authors¿ texts, this book puts pressure on critical practices that would keep writers like Laing and Browning separate, positing instead the importance of paying attention to the transnational, cross-cultural, and cross-temporal imaginative relationships texts themselves generate. By comparing two writers whose texts represent different points of view on a number of shared and congruent contexts, this book seeks an original way of understanding the relationship between texts and (post-) colonial contexts, texts and other texts. Browning¿s and Laing¿s shared tendencyto foreground trans- and post-national cartographies of relation and difference, and their similarly translational aesthetics, both demand a probing of the disciplinary separation between ¿English Literature¿ and ¿Comparative Literature¿, as well as ¿literature¿ and ¿comparison¿, and a fresh awareness of the ways in which literature itself makes comparisons and affiliations. It also involves a version of ¿world literature¿ intent on accentuating the relational worlds (linguistic, imaginative, ethical) that texts themselves generate; a criticism sensitive to the ways in which writers from different times and places can still be seen to overlap.

This book provides a nuanced account of cultural competence, knowledge and skills illustrated in distinctive taste in the middle and upper classes in Dublin, Ireland (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986). It highlights how the development of cultural taste at a young age is linked to cultural participation in later life. Inspired by work that captures the textured social cartography of distinctive cultural taste (Bennett, Emmison & Frow, 1999; Bennett, Savage, Silva, Warde, Gayo-Cal & Wright, 2009), this research charts the changing nature of cultural participation in Dublin, Ireland and shows how cultural consumption has broadened from the narrow range of traditional high art forms towards one which grazes across the general register of culture. As elsewhere, this omnivorous, broad and pluralistic cultural palette has not altered patterns of distinction in cultural participation, rather it belies an emerging cultural capital profile - one where art form boundaries have collapsed but social boundaries and cultural distinction remains intact. Through interviews with two age cohorts (18-24yrs) and (45-54yrs) in Dublin in 2019, this research shows how the dominant class, through histories of cultural exposure have developed cultural taste and competence that is remarkably enduring. Reviewing available data on arts attendance and cultural participation in Ireland today, this text highlights how years of cultural familiarity allow individuals to exert a cultural dominance that facilitates class to be performed obliquely. It also demonstrates how existing surveys reinforce traditional ways of seeing with 'art' considered highbrow, formal and valued while culture is domestic, informal and less valued in the eyes of polity. This view informs Irish arts strategy and policy, ultimately reinforcing that 'ways of seeing' and policy perspectives, do matter (Berger, 1972).

This book examines the links between public policy and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological developments in Africa. It broadly assesses three key areas ¿ policy entrepreneurship, policy tools and citizen participation ¿ in order to better understand the interfaces between public policy and technological transformations in African countries. The book presents incisive case studies on topics including AI policies, mobile money, e-budgeting, digital economy, digital agriculture and digital ethical dilemmas in order to illuminate technological proliferation in African policy systems. Its analysis considers the broader contexts of African state politics and governance. It will appeal to students, instructors, researchers and practitioners interested in governance and digital transformations in developing countries.

This book examines how educational equity is affected during crises ¿ specifically the COVID-19 pandemic. Three key concerns emerge for children¿s and young people¿s education: material needs, emotional wellbeing, and access to learning. The evidence highlights how pre-existing educational inequalities were exacerbated as well as altered during the global pandemic. Critical reviews of educational vulnerability and of significant crises over the past century provide the book¿s foundation. Then, drawing on empirical research from Australia and extensive analysis of international documentation, the book demonstrates significant detriments that pandemic responses caused to formal learning and the broader support role of schools and also addresses promising educational innovations. The book is important not only for scholars in education, but also for practitioners and governments to inform how to better support learning as well as material and emotional wellbeing during and after crises, especially for children and young people experiencing disadvantage.

This volume explores the importance of inter-generational oral culture and stories that transcend time, space, and boundaries transmitted historically from one generation to the next through proverbs, idioms, and folklore tales in different geographical and spatial contexts. These important stories and their embedded life lessons are introduced, explained, and supplemented with pre and post educational activities and lesson plans to be used as learning resources. The centering of orality as a tool and medium for educating the future generation is a reclamation and reaffirmation of Indigeneity, Indigenous knowledges. and non-hegemonic approaches to support students in a socio-culturally sustaining manner. Through this understanding, this book explores the interconnectedness between culture, traditions, language, and way of life through oral storytelling, sharing, and listening.

This book sheds light on how the public engage with, make sense of, and discursively evaluate news media constructions of people from asylum seeking backgrounds. As a case study, the author discusses her recent research combining Critical Discourse Analysis with a cultural studies Audience Reception framework to examine the perspectives of 24 Western Australians who took part in semi-structured interviews. During their interviews, participants were asked open-ended questions about: their general views on people seeking asylum, including Australiäs policy responses, their media engagement habits and preferences, and their views concerning how the Australian media represents people seeking asylum. The author compares and contrasts this research with broader interdisciplinary discussion, and the book will therefore appeal to students and scholars of migration, political communication, sociology, audience reception, critical media studies and sociolinguistics.

This book examines the social entrepreneurship strategies of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), with a focus on the Caribbean social sector. In addressing the conceptual ambiguities from an academic and experiential perspective, it aims to provide a much-needed reflection on social entrepreneurship (SE), including in developing contexts. Through a comparative analysis of the experiences of NPOs from the Caribbean, the authors demonstrate the applicability of SE for NPO sustainability and as an opportunity for social sector performance improvement. Blending both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this work is a useful base for researchers wanting to advance the mission of theory and methodological development toward maturing the field of social entrepreneurship.

This book draws upon diverse approaches and understandings of sustainability transformations, social transitions and environmental accountabilities. It presents case studies that highlight real-world consequences of changing ideas about how best to achieve effective and durable sustainability transformations and examines how environmental accountabilities and social transitions influence sustainability transformations. Each chapter provides insights regarding how new knowledge and perspectives matter for whether, when, and how people, governments, corporations and international organisations seek and pursue solutions to social-ecological challenges and sustainability dilemmas. It pays sustained attention to whether and how understandings and applications of accountability can improve international sustainability transformations. The chapters presented in this book consider some pressing questions concerning social transitions and environmental accountabilities: how can they contribute to sustainability transformations, how do they influence the scalability of sustainability transformations, and, how can such sustainability transformations become durable?

This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.

This edited volume focuses on challenges facing science education across three areas: curriculum, teacher education, and pedagogy. Integrating a diverse range of perspectives from both emerging and established scholars in the field, chapters consider the need for measured responses to issues in society that have become pronounced in recent years, including lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, the environment, and persisting challenges in STEM teaching and learning. In doing so, the editors and their authors chart a potential course for existing and future possibilities and probabilities for science education.

This collective book offers a panorama of the history of tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax havens from the nineteenth century to the present day, based on the latest research in contemporary history. It aims to show that this phenomenon is at the heart of global capitalism, partly as a response of the ruling classes to the rise of progressive taxation, but for other reasons too: notably the development of a powerful tax evasion and avoidance industry in different countries. The book argues that tax competition between states has stimulated the development of tax havens. It discusses the notion of the ¿tax haven¿ and proposes a more rigorous concept - that of the ¿tax predator¿. Finally, the book sheds light on the socio-political conflicts that have developed around tax evasion and the way in which states have fought against or tolerated the phenomenon.

This book explores Takamure Itsue¿s (1894¿1964) intellectual odyssey as Japan¿s most notable pioneer in the study of women¿s history. When she embarked on a series of scholarly projects that investigated marriage patterns and kinship systems in ancient Japan, it was a response to crisis-ridden modernity. Relentless in her quest to dismantle patriarchy, this ¿woman from the Land of Fire¿ (a nickname for her birthplace, Kumamoto Prefecture) locked herself away in 1931 and spent the rest of her life conducting research on female-friendly societies with matrilocal arrangements under kinship-based communal systems. While dissecting the patriarchal norms undergirding the capitalist nation-state, she embraced matricultural paradigms that embodied life-sustaining and life-enhancing values through communal childrearing and matrilineal inheritance. Takamure, a visionary thinker, asked big-picture questions and addressed multifarious issues of contemporary relevance, including beautystandards, human trafficking, gross disparities in wealth, war and imperialism, science and religion, and humanity¿s relationship with nature.

This book seeks offers accounts of the ways in which Chinese engagement with Latin America will shape the regional and global order with impacts for development, peace, and equity. It also pays close attention to the traditional role played by the USA in the region, how China differs, and the increasingly triangular relationship between the USA, China, and Latin American countries. The contributors analyze various economic dimensions, including trade, infrastructure, and finance, and the historical, sectoral, regional, and national stories seek to change the narrative on China-Latin American relations. In particular, the book argues that there are opportunities for international cooperation to secure gains in the region, but only if the US and China alter their behavior and Latin American countries work collectively and in more coordinated fashion. Together, the chapters offer coherent social science analysis, policy frameworks, and empirical detail to understand and navigate increasedChinese engagement with Latin America.

The Brian Friel Papers at the National Library of Ireland are a record of a life¿s work in progress. They represent a way of working and of making art over a period spanning more than fifty years. This book is the first of its kind in its attempt to interrogate the role of the Brian Friel Papers in Friel¿s legacy as a working artist with a richly developed creative practice. By means of an unprecedented focus on Friel¿s artistic process, Kuczy¿ska asks not only how and by whom Friel was being influenced and inspired, but also how and for whom Friel¿s praxis might come to be an inspiration. Combining forensic archival scholarship with original, collaborative practice-based research, this study remains focused on the ¿how¿ of influence, showcasing an approach to literary archives that foregrounds live practices of access in the spirit of creative encounter. Whether uncovering forgotten source materials for Friel¿s plays or working with current practitioners in the arts, Kuczy¿ska reveals how an approach to literary archives grounded in artistic practice might provide the tools for setting a major creative legacy not in stone but rather in motion.

The Lotus S¿tra is one of the most important s¿tras in Mah¿y¿na Buddhism. Translated by Kum¿raj¿va in the 5th century, its teachings have inspired many Buddhist scholars such as Chih-i and Saich¿ from the Tiantai (Tendai) tradition, D¿gen from the Zen tradition and Nichiren the 13th century Kamakura founder and reformer. There is a relative lack of scholarly works that are devoted to an examination of how its philosophical ideas were received and developed throughout history. This book remedies that lack by tracing the origin and development of Lotus S¿tra thought, and interprets the text from the perspective of the doctrine of Buddha-nature in Mah¿y¿na Buddhism.

This book examines synchronous and asynchronous teaching in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a few weeks, millions of teachers found themselves forced to teach online, often with little systematic preparation and in their own homes. While this mode of teaching was earlier seen to be supplementary to brick-and-mortar classes, online teaching has become pivotal to the classroom experience. The chapter authors write of shared experiences that encapsulate the challenges faced by faculty, students and also higher education institutions. The book covers what worked, what did not work and what had to be changed during the rapid shift to online synchronous and asynchronous teaching during the lockdowns. Comprising both theoretical and practical perspectives, this book provides one of the first authoritative analyses of the field, while gathering lessons to be learned from the pandemic.