This book addresses social and complex network analysis challenges, exploring social network structures, dynamic networks, and hierarchical communities. Emphasizing network structure heterogeneity, including directionality and dynamics, it covers community structure concepts like distinctness, overlap, and hierarchy. The book aims to present challenges and innovative solutions in community structure detection, incorporating diversity into problem-solving. Furthermore, it explores the applications of identified community structures within network analysis, offering insights into social network dynamics.

• Investigates the practical applications and uses of community structures identified from network analysis across various domains of real-world networks
• Highlights the challenges encountered in analyzing community structures and presents state-of-the-art approaches designed to address these challenges
• Spans into various domains like business intelligence, marketing, and epidemics, examining influential node detection and crime within social networks
• Explores methodologies for evaluating the quality and accuracy of community detection models
• Examines a diverse range of challenges and offers innovative solutions in the field of detecting community structures from social networks

The book is a ready reference for researchers and scholars of Computer Science and Computational Social Systems working in the area of Community Structure Analysis from Social Network Data.

This book analyzes the mindset with which China enters into negotiations, and applies these insights into contemporary arenas of Chinese activity around the world.

The volume presents and analyses the historical and cultural foundations of Chinese thinking as used in the practice of present-day negotiation. It begins by addressing the essence of Chinese negotiations and the Chinese mindset, turning to a section that presents the cultural foundations of that mindset and strategy. The concepts of Confucianism, Taoism, Yin-Yang, and Chinese military strategy are highlighted. The cases of the Belt-and-Road Initiative and the South and East China Seas are examined to show the application of these concepts, with one addressing business and economic negotiations and the other examining cases of negotiation in geopolitics. Finally, a synthesis of what has been learned is presented, which will contribute to negotiation theory and ultimately will help Western practitioners contemplating negotiation with Chinese diplomats and businesses, as well as being a basis for policy analysts' understanding of Chinese practices in international relations.

This book will be of much interest to students of international negotiation, foreign policy, business studies, and international relations, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

This is the first in-depth analysis of the place of the Ming palace eunuchs in the social history of Chinese art, examining the intricate intersections of art, politics, and palace eunuchs in the Ming dynasty.

In addition to articulating the elite eunuchs' roles as important power brokers in the political arena, this monograph offers a balanced view of Ming eunuchs, with evidence of their accomplishments as book authors, editors, and compilers, poets, calligraphers, and art collectors, the Confucian scholars' typical literati pursuits. By exploring both the positive and negative roles that palace eunuchs played in the Ming's visual culture, this book reveals that Ming palace eunuchs, as supervisors of both the imperial art collection and the imperial art academy, and as powerful art collectors themselves, made various significant impacts on the contemporary art criticism, art market, and art-collecting patterns.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Sinology, and Chinese studies.

The second volume of the two-volume set on Song Dynasty cities focuses on municipal development policies and population management strategies in urban areas.

It examines the government's responses to the challenges posed by rapid urban expansion during the Song Dynasty, such as encroachment on public space, inadequate sanitation, and neglect of urban facilities. It shows how these challenges acted as catalysts for urban innovation, while highlighting the fundamental tension between cities' aspirations for autonomous growth and the need to maintain imperial order. The volume explores the contributions of charitable organizations and religious groups to urban governance. It also discusses viable methods for estimating urban populations from historical and literary sources in the absence of accurate demographic data.

This volume will be essential reading for scholars and students of Chinese history and urban studies, as well as urban planners, historians, and policy-makers interested in understanding historical approaches to urban development and management.

Since the late 1990s, South Korean cultural products such as pop music, TV drama, and film have shaped the country's image around the world. This book explores these three internationally best-known media of the Korean Wave global phenomenon, along with a less commonly featured aspect, K-literature.

Iconic images of South Korea today include stylish music groups like BTS and Blackpink, appealing dramas, and a range of films and digital comics (manhwa). Alongside associations with glitz and glamor are darker impressions: continuing political division, malaise over a war that never really ended. Korean Culture in the Global Age focuses on these and other facets of South Korea's constantly changing international image to show how it has come to command worldwide attention. In recent years, readers in a growing number of languages have discovered the talent of South Korean authors through the efforts of countless translators. Showing developments in and occasional connections between themes in K-pop, K-drama, K-film, and K-literature, the book provides a more comprehensive view of contemporary South Korean culture.

This volume will interest researchers and students of Korean Studies, Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, popular music, film studies, migration and diaspora studies, and world literature.

With more than half of the world's population living in cities, informal settlements, or slums, continue to expand. This book explores the informality-urban design nexus, and asks why formal urban designers and planners have remained largely reluctant to address these challenges facing our cities.

What distinguishes the formal vs. informal urban design paradigm? While urban designers are able to identify and address specific problems like walkability, gentrification, or sense of place, informal settlement problems prove inexorably complex, and harder to fathom to begin with.

Therefore, seeking to demystify these epistemological ambiguities - while difficult - makes sense. The use of abductive reasoning, regulations, aesthetics, and design epitomise the formal, while informal urban planning and design is characterized by information, assets and adaptation. In support of these thematic differentiations, this book uses case studies to better contextualize and unpack the metaphorical distinctions of the two theoretical entities.

Conceptualizing these two schools of thought this way, the book engages urban designers with these debates, and explores how informal settlement residents see themselves, act collectively, care about their settlements, and leverage opportunities.

Why has Tunisia, widely considered an Arab Spring 'success story', seen such an explosion in violent Islamism among its women?

This book probes the phenomenon of Tunisian women recruited for jihad, post-Arab Spring. In the aftermath of the Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia-which is often deemed to have been the most successful country in its democratic transition, and which has a long history of relative gender equality-has nevertheless played host to the mass enlistment of hundreds of women as jihadists. What explains this paradox?

While much has been written about the notable presence of Tunisian female fighters in conflict zones such as Syria, we know very little about these women's backgrounds or what drove them to join up. Through the biographies of thirty jihadist militants, Leila Ben Mcharek shines a light on the back-stories of such Tunisian women, and analyses their motivations, recruitment patterns and roles within jihadist organisations, both within and outside Tunisia.

Given the country's transition after the Arab Spring, and the various challenges this has posed, Ben Mcharek also provides an overview of the broader political and social context of these mobilisations. Her study is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the processes by which women, and especially Tunisian women, may become members of violent and radical Islamist groups.

This book explores India-US relations and addresses the questions: Did India-US relations strengthen under Trump 1.0? Was there greater political, diplomatic, strategic, and defense cooperation between the two largest democracies in the world under the Trump administration? Was there increasing convergence or divergence at the bilateral and multilateral level, in relations with third countries, and in the realm of regional security and geopolitics?

The contributors to this edited volume offer nuanced insights, highlighting that the answers are not straightforward. They highlight that bilateral ties flourished during the Modi-Trump era, fuelled by the camaraderie between the two leaders, and shared concerns over China's rise. However, differences remained on issues such as democracy, trade, multilateralism, climate change, and regional security, especially within the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The Trump administration, particularly President Trump, played a key role in shaping these dynamics.

This book is relevant reading for students, scholars, and researchers of international relations, political science, and South Asian studies, particularly those interested in US-India relations, geopolitics, global governance and international especially Asian security. Additionally, this volume will be of interest to practitioners and policymakers involved in South Asia, US foreign policy, the Indo-Pacific and international diplomacy.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of India Review.

From the Gulf War to Gaza, a compelling critique of how and why Washington ensnared itself so destructively in the Middle East.

After Hamas' shocking 2023 attack on Israel, the United States stood firmly behind Israel's near-genocidal war on Gaza, despite widespread moral outrage and significant damage to Washington's global agenda. But Gaza is only the latest paradox in thirty-five years of Middle East policy. How did this pattern develop, why can't policymakers learn from repeated Middle Eastern calamities, and what does Gaza's destruction mean for America's place in the world?

Marc Lynch charts the United States' disastrously failed approach to the post-Cold War Middle East, where aspirations for US leadership and a calm region have only produced war, instability and humanitarian catastrophe. Lynch exposes the failure of each president's efforts to transform the Middle East in America's image, or pivot away from the region; Washington's refusal to take seriously the views of Middle Easterners; and its fantasy of forging a regional order 'without' the Palestinian issue.

Moving between American politics and Middle Eastern realities, this incisive account explains why US policy has not changed despite its horrifying human costs, from Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to Iran, Yemen and Libya.

From climate change to far-right politics, a captivating look at the Netherlands' modern challenges-and a homage to the timeless ingenuity of the Dutch.

From deeply unpromising marshy beginnings, the Netherlands grew into a naval, imperial, artistic, cultural, economic, scientific, agricultural and footballing superpower. How did it get there?

Journalist Nicholas Walton paints a vivid portrait of one of the world's most remarkable places. Drawing on interviews and his own years living in the Netherlands, as well as Dutch history and popular culture, he tells a story of floods and riots, engineering brilliance and wartime treachery. Through ten walks around their towns and cities, fields and beaches, he reveals how the Dutch built a system that organised politics and tamed the water. But now, the country faces an unpredictable future: sea levels are rising, and extreme weather is swelling the rivers that cut across this flat land. At the same time, farmers are protesting with their tractors on the streets and voters are voicing their discontent over everything from immigration and inequality to a dysfunctional housing market.

Amid the existential challenges of the twenty-first century, Orange Sky, Rising Water asks whether the extraordinary Dutch success story can continue-or will the country, its people and its way of life be swept away?

How can anti-colonial research methodologies be transformative and achieve knowledge justice? This book brings together leading scholars from around the world to share methodological knowledge grounded in First Nations and majority-world expertise and wisdom. The authors challenge western-centric and colonial approaches to knowledge production, redefining the possibilities of what we can achieve through social research.

The First Nations and majority-world perspectives highlighted here share a common aim of disrupting established beliefs about research methodologies and unquestioned norms in the academy. Authors in this edited collection describe how they draw on Indigenous knowledge systems, feminist frameworks and creative methodologies as forms of anti-colonial research praxis. Spanning development studies, geography, education, sexual and reproductive health, humanitarian studies and social work, the authors reflexively discuss the specific factors shaping how they engage in research ethically. The book reimagines social research through an anti-colonial lens, concluding with a set of provocations for anti-colonial research praxis that situate this important work in the context of ongoing colonial violence and institutional constraints.

This book is an essential guide for researchers and scholars within and beyond the academy on how anti-colonial research praxis can produce meaningful outcomes, especially in violent and troubled times.
Cover art courtesy of Tawny Chatmon

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the complex drivers of violent extremism, along with recommendations for strengthening social and institutional resilience through peacebuilding and development efforts.

By presenting a theoretical and empirical argument that places the emphasis on social cohesion, resilience, and adaptive peacebuilding, this book challenges the conventional security-led approach to countering violent extremism. Through a range of case studies from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, including Syria, Iraq, Mozambique, Niger, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, it explores the complex dynamics of violent extremism and the ways in which it can be prevented and countered. Drawing on complexity theory and adaptive peacebuilding, the volume provides insights into how complex social systems adapt and respond to stress, and how peacebuilders can support societies in uncertain, volatile, and unpredictable contexts by improving their resilience and their adaptive capacity to sustain peace.

This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, security studies and countering violent extremism, and professional practitioners.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Argues for a reconceptualisation of global--particularly East Asian--security, to recognise its new forms and dimensions as global power is itself being redefined.

The world is at an inflection point. In an era marked by intense geopolitical competition and rapid technological advancements, understanding and navigating the complex interplay of business, politics, security and technology has never been more essential.

Global in scope and evidence-based, Tech-Gemony illuminates how national security has been redefined in the digital age. Unique in approach, the authors combine deep policy expertise with extensive business experience to introduce a transformative concept: the 'new national security economy'. Within this framework, the economic battlefield is the central arena of competition, in which mastery of emerging technologies will shape the future of world diplomacy and power dynamics--and, ultimately, our collective future.

Companies are unprepared for this new world, despite being increasingly vital participants in geopolitics. There is a need to recognise and adapt to new risks; to develop expertise, and rethink traditional approaches to risk management. This book provides practical, actionable strategies for leaders and organisations struggling with this emerging reality.

The new national security economy is a defining feature of our evolving world. Tech-Gemony provides essential guidance for individuals, businesses and governments to help them navigate this perilous moment.

A unflinching audit of the damage done by fourteen years of Conservative government.

What went wrong with Britain? presents a comprehensive account of the devastating legacy left by the Conservative government. Shining a light into every dark corner, the book exposes the full extent of the damage inflicted on the country's economy, social fabric and political integrity.

When the Conservatives were voted out of government in July 2024, they left behind a miserable record of rising poverty, inequality and division. This book reveals the forces that have driven the country to the point of crisis, from austerity and economic mismanagement to sheer political dysfunction. Each chapter offers new insights into the far-reaching consequences of government policies that prioritised ideology, personal ambition and party politics over the public good.

Examining the rise of populism, the politics of Brexit, the UK's response to the pandemic and the steady erosion of public trust, this shocking account of the legacy of Conservative government from 2010 to 2024 is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand exactly what went wrong with Britain.