The smart city concept, together with the growing importance of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, has a significant impact on city management and governance. This book examines real cases of smart city management across Asia and Europe.

It covers regions such as Iceland, Estonia, Poland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam to systemize the knowledge in the field. It evaluates smart cities' efficiency and analyzes and assesses the standards, norms and best practices involved in the management of smart cities. The book answers questions such as what it is that makes smart cities stand out, why some countries in Europe and Asia have more smart cities than others, whether smart cities support the economy and GDP growth of the country, and what the main determinants of forming smart cities in Asia and Europe are. It also evaluates whether smart cities secure higher standards of living for their citizens as compared to regular cities. Many theoretical concepts and theories are developed and then verified from the perspective of Western economies. Central Eastern European and Asian countries are frequently overlooked, thus, examining the smart city idea from the viewpoint of non-Western economies offers a fresh insight into the concept and its adaptation and evolution.

The range of issues analyzed in the book are multilayered and approached from a wide array of perspectives, from macroeconomics to management, finance and technology, and public policy. Thus, the book is addressed to researchers, students, and academics who specialize in sustainable and regional development, economic geography, and management. It will also be of interest to urban planners, environmental scientists, and policymakers.

Assessing key questions such as who the foreigners and outsiders in ancient Maya societies were and how was the foreign a generative component of identity, Foreigners Among Us reassess the arrival of foreigners as part of archaeological understandings of Pre-Columbian Maya and questions not only who these foreigners might have been but who were making such designations of difference in the first place.

Drawing from identity studies, standpoint theory, and ideas on alterity, Foreigners Among Us highlights the diverse ways being foreign was constituted, imitated, and marked - from quotidian practices of making corn tortillas to ceremonial acts between king and captive and their memorialization in scenes on sculpted stone monuments. Rather than treat the foreign as axiomatically determined by geographical distance or fixed at birth, the book considers the foreign as much performed as inherited. It examines practices of captivity, cuisine, body ornamentation and dress, diasporic objects, relationships with deities, migration, and pilgrimage. The book focuses, in particular, on diverse peoples in the Maya area during the Classic and Postclassic periods, but also necessarily peers into contacts, engagements and relations throughout Mesoamerica, the Americas more broadly, and with Europeans during the Colonial period - all the while insisting that outsider status must be approached as multi-scalar, relational, and intersectional rather than as neutral, intrinsic, and static.

Contributing broadly to intellectual investigations on foreign identities from an anthropological perspective, this book enriches the understanding of Maya society for students and researchers of Mesoamerican archaeology and art history.

A household name throughout India, B. R. Ambedkar is one of the country's most important figures, second only to Mahatma Gandhi. He played a major role in drafting the constitution for a newly independent India and led the fight against caste-based discrimination.

Ambedkar was born into a Dalit caste (the so-called 'untouchables'), but his academic brilliance saw him study at Columbia University and London School of Economics. As a politician, he fought to overturn centuries of discrimination and promoted liberal constitutionalism in a traditionally illiberal society. He did more than anyone to articulate a cogent and enduring case for the principles of democracy in a country emerging from imperial rule.

This book is also a reminder of how far the practice of politics has strayed from the high standards Ambedkar set - of intellectual distinction, policy positions animated by serious scholarship, the infusion of moral values and the upholding of democracy for the many, not just the privileged few.

Sixty years ago, an upsurge of social movements protested the ecological harms of industrial capitalism. In subsequent decades, environmentalism consolidated into forms of management and business strategy that aimed to tackle ecological degradation while enabling new forms of green economic growth. However, the focus on spaces and species to be protected saw questions of human work and histories of colonialism pushed out of view.

This book traces a counter-history of modern environmentalism from the 1960s to the present day. It focuses on claims concerning land, labour and social reproduction arising at important moments in the history of environmentalism made by feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, workers' and agrarian movements. Many of these movements did not consider themselves 'environmental,' and yet they offer vital ways forward in the face of escalating ecological damage and social injustice.

This book is about building and maintaining involved, sustainable, and inclusive communities from the ground up during a period of unprecedented growth and global change. It explains the concepts and principles of community and sustainability and provides students with a framework of sustainable community planning to put into practice. It is also designed to help communities everywhere identify and reconnect the true essence of their ecological setting with the objective of raising their quality of life by increasing social, environmental, and economic sustainability.

Features:

• Provides up-to-date frameworks for sustainable community planning processes and case studies on community planning
• Explains tools for sustainable planning in accessible (non-specialist) language
• Illustrates a roadmap to an inclusive, collaborative future
• Explains aspects of sustainable community planning to maximize ecological ecosystem services and climate co-benefits simultaneously
• Includes discussion questions and suggestions following each chapter

Intended for undergraduate and graduate students taking leadership and community courses with an emphasis on sustainable practices and ethics, as well as for citizens and professionals involved in community projects related to sustainability, the authors provide a forward-thinking approach, showing readers that they are capable of making a positive impact on the future of community development through sustainable approaches and ethical leadership practices.

More extensive methodology is required to study the complexities of everyday life in the rapidly expanding urban areas around the globe, as well as to gain a better understanding of life in established urban areas. Presented over two volumes, Visual and Multimodal Urban Sociology A and B explore the use and potential of visual materials and methodologies that expand the level of analysis and ways of seeing in urban sociology.

Both volumes comprise examinations of sources, tools, and methods to capture, analyze, and communicate the visual dimension of urban environments, using existing visual sources as well as visual media as tools to both produce data and communicate insights and views on the contemporary urban condition and experience. Visual and Multimodal Urban Sociology Part B explores the urban every day in globalizing cities, considering utilizing perception in motion, the visual component of neighbourhoods, smoking in the city, resignifying urban traces of colonialism, visual/sensory ethnography and co-living with death, and isolated buildings as indicators of social change.

Yielding empirical data and insights regarding the visually observable impact of urban planners, designers, advertisers, commercial forces, cultural institutions, local authorities, artists, protesters as social agents in the (re)production of urban cultural processes, both volumes are a novel and wide-ranging contribution that advances the contours and potential of a more 'visual' urban sociology.

The book focuses on the main security threats, defence industry, arms trade, defence policies and military capabilities related issues in the Asia-Pacific region.

There are only a very few regions in the world which have advanced so fast both economically and technologically as the Asia-Pacific in the past few decades. Probably this is one of the reasons why several countries in the region have gained confidence, sharpened their diplomatic tone, increased their defence expenditure, invested into military capabilities, and questioned both the local and global status-quo. The region contains emerging powers, far-reaching ambitions, threatening rhetoric, rising political tensions, and concerns about military conflicts. Factors that show that critical issues are at stake, the reopening of long-forgotten debates, are more relevant than ever and masses of uncertainties are yet to be resolved.

This book will be of much interest to all students and scholars of Asia-Pacific Security, Asian politics and International Relations in general. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Defense & Security Analysis.

This book focuses on recent and emerging techniques for the enhancement of smart healthcare, smart communication, and smart transportation systems. It covers topics ranging from Machine Learning techniques, the Internet of Things (IoT), security aspects of medical documents, the performance of various protocols used in the communication and transportation environment, simulation of systems for real-time applications, and overall analysis of the previously mentioned. Applications such as transportation systems, stock market prediction, Smart Cities, and vehicular communication are dealt with.

Features:

• Covers three important aspects of smart cities i.e., healthcare, smart communication and information, and smart transportation technologies.
• Discusses various security aspects of medical documents and the data preserving mechanisms.
• Provides better solutions using IoT techniques for healthcare, transportation, and communication systems.
• Includes the implementation example, various datasets, experimental results, and simulation procedures.
• Offers solutions for various disease prediction systems with intelligent techniques.

This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in computer science, electrical engineering, and data analytics.

Through a curated collection of key Jain paintings, this volume offers a glimpse into the way people lived in western India during the medieval times: What they wore, how they ornamented themselves, what they amused themselves with, what furniture they sat on, which modes of transport they used. It includes Jain paintings from various collections in India and abroad to underscore the value of pictorial evidence in piecing together the past.

The book takes the reader on a breath-taking visual journey through the varied costumes, exquisite textiles, handcrafted ornaments, curiously shaped vessels and containers, musical instruments, arms and armour, conveyances, and many such articles of everyday use. These articles of everyday use are corroborated with the descriptions left by foreign travellers passing through western India at that time. It explores contemporary lexicons and vernacular literature from this period, for possible names in vogue for the articles of Material Culture. The work is richly illustrated with line drawings by the author to highlight the objects being referred to. What comes across clearly through this book is that art is the mirror of the times, and as such, paintings reflect the society in which they are created.

A magnificent read, this book will be essential for scholars and researchers of Indian painting, art history, Indian art, arts and aesthetics, Jainism, visual arts, South Asian history, Indian history, heritage studies and cultural history. It will also be a must-have for history and visual arts enthusiasts all over the world.

This book historicises and analyses the increasing incidence of xenophobia and nativism in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

It examines how xenophobia and nativism impact the political cohesion and social fabric of states and societies in the regions and offers solutions to aid policy formation and implementation. Rather than utilising an overarching framework, individual theory is applied to chapters to analyse the diverse connections between xenophobia and nativism in the regions. The book explores the economic, nationalistic, political, social, cultural, and psychological triggers for xenophobia and nativism and their impact on an increasingly interconnected and interrelated world. In addition to the individual and comparative examination of these triggers, the book outlines how they can be decreased or altered and argues that Pan-Africanism and the unity of purpose among diverse groups in the western hemisphere is still an ideal to which Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean can aspire.

This book will be of interest to academics in the field of African history, African Studies, Caribbean and Latin American studies, cultural anthropology and comparative sociology.

While the world was swept up in the complications and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaysia's government changed leadership twice without going to ballot. Employing the Malaysian case as a starting point for examining a wider trend in Southeast Asia, Pandemic, Politics, and a Fairer Society in Southeast Asia delves into how politicians and policymakers navigate political uncertainty and the impact of their decisions on creating and maintaining a fairer society.

Presenting perspectives from political scientists from across Malaysia and the SEA region, chapters base themselves in the circumstances of political upheaval that Malaysia faced during the pandemic, making a unique and critical contribution to literature on the Southeast Asian experience of COVID-19. Covering trends in Southeast Asia, public perception, elections, and governance, contributors chronicle the rise of regional governments that sought to increase populism and authoritarianism at the height of the pandemic, in addition to monitoring the ongoing fluctuation of public trust and its relation to the political landscapes of the region.

With a special focus on creating a fair and just society for a sustainable future, Pandemic, Politics, and a Fairer Society in Southeast Asia offers an in-depth analysis of regional political dynamics from multiple disciplines, including international relations, philosophy, and gender studies.

The 2017 persecution of the Rohingyas resulted in around a million Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, India and Malaysia.

This book investigates the complex challenges of managing the large-scale refugee exodus in Bangladesh and how best to resolve these challenges in the future. Using a mixed-method approach that includes a survey, key informant interviews and numerous short case studies of persecution, the authors also examine the problematic influence of the media, as local depictions of Rohingya refugees often caused further tension and division in the midst of the refugee crisis. The book's analysis offers a deeper understanding of the causes and drivers of identity-based politics among Myanmar's Rohingya.

A small record consisting of six to seven lines that has been published by eminent epigraphists several times, would require a fresh interpretation was almost beyond imagination. It was by chance that the Indian Museum displayed the Mahasthan stone plaque, and after seeing this record, several questions arose which demanded a fresh interpretation, and this enquiry finally culminated into this slim monograph.

The book attempts a re-reading of this inscription and also provides a fresh interpretation. It tries to situate this record in a broader canvas by interrogating the record along with several other evidences. This finally leads us to look at the Mauryan Empire from a regional perspective.

This book introduces the concept of 'knowledge alchemy' to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation.

The book examines how governments around the world have embraced global models of world-class university, human capital and talent competition as essential in ensuring national competitiveness. Through its analysis, the book shows how this strongly future-oriented and anticipatory knowledge governance is steered by a surge of global classifications, rankings and indicators, resulting in numerous comparisons of various domains that today form more constraining global policy scripts.

This edited book takes a critical look at the geopolitics of the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It scrutinizes some of the perennial issues shaping the regional security agenda, as well as the emerging geopolitical trends in the wake of a decade of turmoil triggered by the demands for political and economic reforms. The contributors explore the geopolitical implications of the structural transformation process in the MENA region and beyond, which has unleashed destabilizing forces and multifaceted conflicts, with the involvement of many local, regional and global actors. They also look at how some of the regional actors have reacted to the risks and security challenges produced by the wave of instability and conflicts, and conducted their foreign policy in this volatile period of fluid alliances. Other contributors explore the roles and perspectives of major extra-regional actors, delving deeper into how they have adjusted their policies towards the emergence of a new order and reshuffling of alignments. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of politics, international relations, and political geography. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

In November 1942 Anglo-American forces landed in French North Africa, which soon afterwards broke with Marshal Petain's Vichy regime in France and re-entered the war on the Allies' side. On Christmas Eve the high commissioner Admiral Francois Darlan was assassinated in Algiers. Why? Like the press and public opinion in Britain and America, General Charles de Gaulle's Free French movement and the resistance in France were appalled that the Allies had allowed Darlan to retain office, even though as prime minister under Petain he had previously advocated military collaboration with Nazi Germany. Few mourned Darlan's death, many were relieved, some were jubilant.

His killer was Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle. Who was this twenty year old and what drove him to murder? Benedicte Vergez-Chaignon paints a sympathetic portrait of the young idealist manipulated by local resistance leaders. As she tells Bonnier's story, the author illuminates the imbroglio of North Africa's competing political forces. She traces Bonnier's short life, the assassination, his court-martial and execution within 48 hours, the subsequent judicial investigations which became bogged down in the complex rivalry between the Allies, the remnants of the Vichy regime, the Resistance and other factions. The story ends with Bonnier's posthumous rehabilitation and recognition as a member of the French Resistance.

Bonnier's biography reads like an absorbing novel, with its twists and turns, reconstructed dialogue and author's acute observations. As well as being a tragic human story, It is an illuminating study of the convoluted political context of the affair, which will be unfamiliar to some Anglophone readers. It is an academically rigorous piece of original research, based in part on previously inaccessible family archives.

The book has been translated into English by Richard Carswell.

Benedicte Vergez-Chaignon's story of Darlan's assassination was received in France as

* 'a shocking book and a historian's great work' (Le Patriote Resistant)

* 'a detailed enquiry ... bordering on a detective novel which brings out the conspiratorial atmosphere reigning in Algiers in the wake of the Allied landing of 8 November 1942' (Le Monde des Livres)

* it 'shows the extent to which the 1940s were years of complete ambiguity' (Le Figaro Litteraire)

* 'Benedicte Vergez-Chaignon, a meticulous historian, paints the portrait of a young idealist dying to wash away the stain of defeat' (Midi Libre).

In Sciencepreneurship, author Piero Formica explores the symbiotic relationship between science, entrepreneurship, and sustainable economic growth. He argues that like artists, writers and educators, scientists and entrepreneurs foster social progress and provide opportunities to advance sustainable and environmentally friendly economic development.

Innovative and future thinking entrepreneurs play a special role in the advancement of science and technology. They help guide scientific discoveries into our daily lives and reveal new opportunities for social innovation as they exploit the discoveries that scientists make of the natural world. Sciencepreneurship argues that forward-thinking scientific entrepreneurs are well placed to take advantage of recent breakthroughs ranging from genetic sequencing to smartphone applications-innovations that have entered our lives at breakneck speed.

Taking a transdisciplinary approach, which is one that integrates the natural, social and health sciences in a humanities context, Formica teaches readers, from academic researchers to engaged entrepreneurs, how to valorise science and entrepreneurship by designing a context of close, long-term interaction between the two.