This book develops an ontological approach to understanding existential intelligence and its connections to democracy and education.

Sevket Benhuer Oral examines the concept of existential intelligence-hereafter ExistI-on an ontological level. ExistI is not conceived as a psychological aptitude that one can be good at or not like spatial or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Rather, it refers to a unitary experience that is riddled with ambiguity. All human beings are potentially open to such experience since we all have the capacity to experience the extraordinary, or better put, the extraordinariness of the ordinary. Although Howard Gardner later identified existential intelligence among other intelligences, his theory of multiple intelligences, while still widely accepted by educators, did not adequately explore this concept, especially in its political, moral, and philosophical dimensions. It is essential that we do since ExistI is ultimately about our capacity for more peaceful ways of co-existing with others, the extraordinariness of living collectively with human and nonhuman beings.

This book explores the multifaceted impact of sports mega-events, from the World Cup to the Olympics, Formula One, and America's Cup. Often celebrated for uniting nations, showcasing culture, and driving economic growth, these events also face increasing scrutiny for their ecological and social consequences. Global Sports Go Green-Or Do They? critically examines claims of environmental responsibility, addressing their effects on ecosystems, communities, and athletes, and interrogates the gap between greenwashing rhetoric, material realities, and grassroots resistance.

The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the sociology of sport, mega-events, sociology of culture and sustainability.

Charles Winstone's letter book offers a rich first-hand account of Caribbean history during the American Revolution, the French invasion, and the occupation of Dominica.

The American Revolution and French presence disrupted the island's economic life. As Dominica's former solicitor and attorney general, Winstone became a central figure to absentee planters and British firms protecting estates and investments. His letters reveal efforts to forge new trading networks through the Dutch West Indies as he worked for British absentees based elsewhere in the Caribbean and Europe. The correspondence also reflects his struggle to establish a West Indian fortune on the backs of enslaved people cultivating coffee and sugar. His letters provide a rare look at the world of a plantation attorney and manager as he oversaw several estates near the colonial capital of Roseau during the most tumultuous years in Dominica's history and reflects on the ineffective and unprepared British response upon the outbreak of the American conflict, particularly noting French military preparations on the nearby islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

This volume honors the scholarly contributions of Kevin Middlebrook, presenting essays that explore Mexican labor history, comparative politics, and U.S.-Latin American relations, with a focus on NAFTA/USMCA.

The first section engages with Middlebrook's work on Mexican labor, featuring dialogues on historical and policy analyses and reflections on Mexico's democratization. The second section examines his impact on comparative politics, including studies of Peru's military regimes and democratic transitions in Latin America. The final section addresses U.S.-Latin American relations, highlighting labor provisions under NAFTA/USMCA and their effects on Mexico's trade unions and economic development.

By bringing together leading experts, the volume demonstrates the enduring relevance of Middlebrook's scholarship for understanding labor, political dynamics, and international trade in Latin America, making it an essential resource for students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the region.

The Fundamental Tendency of Our Times (Tendenza) is the Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino's crucial reflection on modern technology and science, in which he articulates his major contribution to the analysis of Western modernity: the claim that, beginning with Greek civilization, a nihilistic spirit of domination informs our conceptual and social systems.

In this book Severino applies his framework to the geopolitical situation before the fall of the Berlin Wall; yet his insights have continuing relevance in light of the current threat of ecological collapse accelerated by an orientation to the world as an object of exploitation.

Significant for its parallels with, and differences from, Heidegger's discussion of technology, this book's explicit discussion of politics gives essential clarification to Severino's notoriously complex philosophical discourse. With a foreword contextualizing the historical moment of its publication, this first English translation will be invaluable for those interested in understanding the thought of one of the most remarkable Italian theorists of the 20th century.

Published with the kind support of SEPS (Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche).

An inspiring call to action that links today's climate crisis to Earth's evolution throughout history.

Our Time is a true story. Alasdair Skelton takes readers through time, from the formation of the Earth to the present day, reflecting on the finely tuned climate system and its elegant workings that have made it possible for living things to thrive on Earth for three-and-a-half billion years. Skelton explores what happened when Earth's climate spiraled out of control and how it repaired itself time and time again, and as we plunge into our own chapter of time, he highlights our separation from nature as a root cause of the crisis in which we now find ourselves.

Skelton tells this story as a geologist who was awoken to climate activism by the voices of his own students. He shares a perspective on the climate crisis as a blink of an eye amidst the enormity of time. Concluding with what will happen if we fail to act, and what will happen if we do act, Skelton compares alternative futures and explains how we can still choose a good one. Throughout, and without ever betraying scientific truth, Our Time navigates the narrow path from the inaction of denial and despair to the action of hope. This is a beautiful history of planet Earth and the role humans can play in its evolving climate story.

This accessible, sweeping survey of Mexican history, from pre-Columbian times to the present, introduces critical political and economic processes that have defined the country.

With ample maps and illustrations, along with historiographical inserts, this book is a guide from the earliest beginnings of a great nation down to the present day. This 2nd edition includes the following changes:

- 2 additional chapters, covering contemporary Mexico in the 21st century
- Fresh and substantial content about the cartels, criminal organizations, and the drug war
- The latest updates on pre-Columbian archaeological discoveries
- 20 new illustrations
- 10 inserts addressing historiography and referencing over 100 scholarly books
- An expanded and updated Suggestions for Further Reading section

To understand this complex and diverse land is to study the splendor of its pre-Columbian cultures, learn the legacies of a violent conquest, and appreciate the fluorescence of 3 centuries of viceregal Spanish rule. The struggle for independence, war with the United States, French Intervention, Benito Juarez, dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz, revolutionary upheaval under "Pancho" Villa - all are laid out in crystal clear narrative. Nor does this book shirk from addressing the darker side of history. Examining the corruption of 20th-century presidents, security apparatuses, and the PRI party, it explores the roots of present-day cartels and rising patterns of social violence.

A detailed foray into the material and spatial realities of cloud computing

Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the "cloud" as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud peers through this hazy facade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Ali Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.

Demonstrating how technology's spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism - from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses, Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the growing economies of data extraction.

Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today's most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.

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This open access book offers a unique and timely investigation of the multifaceted relationship between migration and European cities. Its chapters critically examine the historical, economic, socio-spatial, cultural and policy-political dimensions of the migration-city nexus, bringing together different thematic and disciplinary perspectives that are usually considered separately.

The book engages with the growing theoretical and empirical interest in the urban scale within migration studies, while also drawing on the rich and longstanding body of research on migration and cities across other disciplines. It draws attention to the significant variations both between and within European cities, taking stock not only of the extensive scholarship on north-western Europe - the theoretical heartland of European migration and urban studies - but also of the important contributions made by scholars working in the southern and eastern peripheries of the continent.

In doing so, the book develops a nuanced understanding of the interconnections between migration and cities, while offering readers a guide to navigating the diverse literature that addresses these themes. Written in an accessible style, it is a valuable resource for students, researchers, academics, policymakers, practitioners, and readers who are new to this key area of migration studies.

This book demonstrates how monarchy adjusted to the contours of modernity in remarkably diverse kinds of ways and contexts, preserving a central role in the configuration of the post-revolutionary world. It focuses on three geographically and politically connected frameworks: Spain, Portugal, and the new Latin American countries that emerged from the Iberian colonial territories. It analyses the intense and often conflicting processes and negotiations that characterized the monarchy's adaptation to post-revolutionary modernity and its insertion into a liberal parliamentary and constitutional system. Combining monarchical and post-revolutionary principles was one of the most notable challenges that political regimes faced after 1800. In the Portuguese and Spanish cases, as in others, it was necessary to seek a new place for the crown in constitutional parliamentarism. Liberals managed to do this by uniting king and parliament as elements of national identity and sovereign power respectively. In Latin America, monarchy was seen as a solution to the potential instability of the nascent independent states. In these cases, in addition to crown's adaptation to a constitutional regime, there was also the need to find monarchs and to legitimize them. The cases of Mexico and Brazil were indicative of these challenges and of the difficulties they brought.

Illuminating the impact of archaeology on the culture and politics of Latin America

Since the mid-nineteenth century, archaeology has played a critical role in historicizing space and shaping cultural imaginaries. It has brought modern scientific practices into structured contact with ancient objects and landscapes, on the one hand, and modern Indigenous cultures in their material and historical complexity, on the other. Archaeology has thus served a variety of disciplines and practices, from history and anthropology to literary and social criticism and critical theory, and has actively animated practices quite distinct from itself, such as public policy, tourism, urban planning, art, literature, and nation-building.

This volume provides a unique analysis of a disciplinary formation crucial to the study of cultural history and theory in Latin America. The contributors represent archaeologists and scholars from a variety of disciplines within the humanities, each of whom approaches archaeology as theory and praxis. Collectively, they map the differences and similarities between archaeological interventions and the ways in which the materiality, practice, and discourse of archaeology have been taken up as analytic, metaphor, and discursive strategy.

This open access book reckons with the US-Baltic security alliance. It traces the uncertain beginnings of this partnership, illuminating how the United States, rather than Europe, became the key underwriter of Baltic security. The manuscript captures the many contradictions, setbacks and disappointments that had to be overcome on both sides of the Atlantic for these ties to mature into a formal treaty alliance. Drawing upon sizable archival material and interviews with key participants, the book's chapters illuminate America's stance and role on the questions of Baltic independence, Russian troop removal in the early 1990s, and the Baltic road to NATO. Turning to current affairs, the material scrutinizes the United States' force posture on NATO's eastern flank alongside the enduring question of alliance abandonment.

In this open access book, contributors explore current challenges and opportunities to improve drinking water regulation, governance, management, environmental justice, and more. In 2024, the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the Safe Water Drinking Act, its principal law regulating drinking water. Rather than looking back, this book looks forward to the decades ahead: each chapter is rooted in rigorous research and ends with concrete recommendations for the future of American drinking water. The book's authors include leading policy scholars and water sector professionals. The book culminates in the Madison Declaration, a vision statement and bold call to action for the next fifty years.

Examines the formation of a surveillance state through a close examination of Thomas Jefferson's plantation management techniques and political actions.

With the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the horizon, Melissa Adler leads readers to reexamine the principles and foundations upon which the United States is based. By analyzing Thomas Jefferson's surveillance technologies and practices, including his Farm Book, algorithmic formulas, and land management policies, this book provides a new understanding of the limits to aspirations toward good government, liberty, security, and equality in the United States. In addition to being the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which famously states that "all men are created equal," many of Jefferson's writings feature the rationalization of the enslavement, displacement, and killing of Black and Indigenous peoples. Adler argues that information architectures are mechanisms by which cultural and political divisions endure, and that close examination of Jefferson's surveillance techniques reveals some of the processes by which problems associated with settler colonialism, racism, and heteropatriarchy have become systemic.

This book provides a critical survey of Ukraine's 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution - the 'Revolution of Dignity'. Ukraine's Euromaidan explores both sides of a revolution that shaped not just Ukraine, but the world, as told by the participants themselves, including the author.

Drawing on interviews and thousands of archived videos, articles, personal memoirs, and social media postsfrom both sides of the barricades, Risch shows how events in Kyiv and Ukraine's regions were intimately entangled. Protest and counter-protest participation shifted and evolved. Escalating revolutionary violence weakened the state and pitted citizens against one another. Risch also reflects on the 'Russian Spring' that swept through Ukraine's south and east, revealing the counter-protesters' agency and revolutionary aspirations, as well as Russia's role in radicalizing them. With both sides dehumanizing each other and clashes between 'pro-Russian' and 'pro-Ukrainian' protesters becoming lethal, Risch compellingly contends that the Euromaidan Revolution ultimately exposed the limits of revolutionary change in today's world of contentious politics.

"This landmark book is the first to fully explain how memes have become a critical part of UK politics. Through rich and convincing empirical analysis, Southern reveals how digital humour is transforming citizen participation, elite communication, and the very nature of political discourse. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the evolution of digital political culture and its profound impact on democracy."

- James Dennis, Researcher at Lusofona University, Portugal

"From 'shitposts' to 'Karen memes', political communication is changing and Rosalynd Southern is a lively guide to the pithy world of memes. A cutting-edge study that deserves to be read.

- Stephen Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds, UK

In 2015, a story emerged alleging that then Prime Minister David Cameron had placed 'a private part of his anatomy' into the mouth of a dead pig's head during an initiation ceremony at the University of Oxford. Upon this allegation breaking, social media erupted with a plethora of memes and jokes about the incident, which became known as 'piggate'. Although there had been move towards jovial talk of politics on social media prior to this, the episode seemed to distil the practice and precipitate a new era of near-constant humorous online reaction to political events. Considering this context, this book will assess how memetic practices have shaped political communication and culture in the past decade-plus and the consequences thereof. It will do so from four perspectives, ranging from a focus on ordinary citizens, a group of online activists, a specific case study of a key satirist and, finally, focusing on how elites have deployed these practices.

In LiveJournal and Russian Disinformation, J.J. Sylvia IV analyzes the role of blogging platform LiveJournal in Russia's information warfare strategy, examining its evolution and co-optation as a case study.
Through rigorous analysis, Sylvia demonstrates how epistemic sabotage became central to the Kremlin's efforts to manipulate truth, and more broadly, how the ever-increasing reach of the internet and social media platforms can be weaponized by authoritarian regimes to disrupt knowledge systems and destabilize democracies.
While the growing ubiquity of the internet and its networks have ushered in countless opportunities and benefits on individual, organizational, and international levels, Sylvia emphasizes the double-edged sword of the new risks that must be considered in turn. As fascism is on the rise worldwide and anti-democratic governments wield social media as a tool to stoke division and spread disinformation among citizens worldwide-democratic countries being no exception-he contends that understanding this tactical shift is critically relevant not only to the Russian context, but also to the challenges of navigating truth and democracy on a global scale in the 21st century.
LiveJournal and Russian Disinformation coherently identifies, documents, and interprets the logics and implications of this evolution in warfare, leaving readers with a more nuanced understanding of the platform as an early battle in a new digital arena-one which is not likely to be the last.

This book confronts one of the most pressing moral challenges of our technological age: should autonomous, intelligent, human-like machines be recognized as bearers of moral and socio-political rights? Anticipating a future in which artificial humanoids may develop traits such as autonomy, self-awareness, intelligence, and sentience, John-Stewart Gordon offers a rigorous and balanced case for proactive engagement with robot rights. Drawing on moral philosophy, AI ethics, and political theory, the book advances a groundbreaking hybrid theory that integrates properties-based and social-relational approaches to moral status. It proposes a novel framework of artificial citizenship and introduces a detailed "Robot Bill of Rights," offering concrete policy recommendations for ethical coexistence. Rich in interdisciplinary insight and real-world relevance, this book challenges readers to rethink the boundaries of moral community and prepare for a shared human-machine future with foresight and fairness.

Emotions are intrinsically linked to our forms of life-the unique, shared ways of being and acting that shape our identity.

This book redefines emotions as embodied actions, rather than mere internal states. By taking an ontological approach, Daniel Rueda Garrido explores how fundamental emotions like joy, fear, love, and anger are woven into the fabric of our communities, influencing who we are and how we interact with one another. Moving beyond traditional psychology and naturalism, this approach reveals that these emotions are not just internal experiences, but essential expressions of our collective, self-imposed ways of living within a community. Rueda's exploration offers a deeper understanding of self-consciousness and challenges traditional ways of thinking about emotional existence. It reveals the profound connection between feeling, action, and belonging.

The use, political and economic implications of the Internet and new technologies have always shaped diplomatic means and methods leading to new phenomena such as the emergence of tech diplomacy. As a subcategory of Internet governance, tech diplomacy refers to the new modes of states' interactions with private intermediaries in innovation hubs. The novelty of the phenomenon shows in the lack of scientific data and academic research on the topic. This research project aims to fill this gap addressing the following questions: Why do states introduce tech diplomacy? And how is it currently structured and implemented? Stefania Pia Grottola proposes a case study analysis of Denmark and Switzerland addressing the questions through exploratory reasoning combining inductive and deductive elements and qualitative research methods based on case study analysis, interview methods and participatory observation. She looks at the factors that led Denmark and Switzerland to establish their tech ambassadors and the practice of tech diplomacy. The author examines tech diplomacy approaches through the lens of the Global Experimentalist Governance. As the first scientific analysis of tech diplomacy, this project advances our theoretical and empirical understanding of diplomacy in the technological age and makes a concrete contribution to governments and institutions investing in this domain.

What happens when you are alone in nature and why does it matter? By looking at exceptional experiences of solitude in nature, Eugene Hughes offers a clear articulation of the phenomenon that greatly enhances our comprehension of the human-nature relationship.

Through interviews with people around the world, including land artists living in caves, wilderness rites of passage guides in the Sahara Desert, and ancestral healers in Amazonian rain forests, Hughes discovers that alone with nature, under certain conditions, people experience an embodied state of connection to their environment that has an extraordinary effect on their sense of self.

Hughes names this state environmental attunement, identifies its defining characteristics, the conditions it occurs under, and what effect it has on people's sense of self provides. Including extracts from interviews and drawing on recent breakthroughs in cognitive sciences, aesthetics and psychology, he demonstrates how this unique state of consciousness stands out from other states.

This is a powerful framework for interdisciplinary discourse, inspiring fresh ways for our relationship with nature to be used in treating mental health, improving contact with nature in cities, and reevaluating the quality of everyday modern life.

Reproducing Resistance: Chechen Demography in Times of War explores the indomitable determination of the Nokhchi, widely known as Chechens, to persevere and survive. Centered on the most recent Russo-Chechen wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2009, it poses an intriguing question: What motivates people to create families in times of war? Marat Iliyasov, a Chechen, delves into a broader historical context, analyzing pivotal events such as the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the 19th century and the forced deportation of the entire Nokhchi nation in 1944. These events, along with the recent wars, have played a crucial role in shaping the Nokhchi collective identity.
Iliyasov contends that this collective identity is a key factor influencing decisions about family size. Reproducing Resistance suggests that the high fertility rates among groups who perceive their survival to be under threat can serve as an indicator of a community preparing for potential future conflict. This demographic dynamic is reinforced by numerous interviews that the author conducted with Nokhchi natives, offering invaluable insight into the lived experiences and perspectives of the people.

This book offers a comprehensive account of the Italian party Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy), covering the period from its foundation in December 2012 to the summer of 2025, marking almost three years of the Meloni government. It examines the factors that have contributed to the rise of Brothers of Italy and its leader, Giorgia Meloni, establishing the party as the cornerstone of Italy's right-wing coalition and of the current government. The authors, Valerio Alfonso Bruno and Mara Morini, place the key dimensions of Meloni's party at the centre of their analysis, including its ideology, leadership, policy agenda, and electoral base. They also explore the party's relations with the other members of the right-wing coalition-Salvini's Lega and Berlusconi's Forza Italia-as well as with far-right movements in Italy and abroad.

The first part of the book analyses the party's first decade (2012-2022), tracing its trajectory from the breakaway from Berlusconi's Popolo della Liberta, amid the sovereign debt crisis and the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, to its victory in the 2022 general election. The second part focuses on the organization, structure, ideology, and leadership of the party, concluding with an in-depth examination of its policies. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of political science in general, and electoral studies in particular, seeking a deeper understanding of the Brothers of Italy party and contemporary Italian electoral politics.

This open access book offers the first in-depth appraisal of the photographic archive of Frank Scholten (1881-1942), a queer Dutch photographer and Catholic convert whose work in Palestine between 1921 and 1923 provides a remarkable lens on the intersecting dynamics of modernity, religion, colonialism, and visual culture. Drawing on over 26,000 photographs, it situates Scholten's work within transnational religious, colonial, and nationalist networks.
Employing a relational methodology, Photographing Biblical Modernity treats photography not merely as visual documentation but as a site of layered cultural encounters shaped by the movements of people, ideas, and ideologies. It interrogates biblical visuality, the performance of indigeneity, intercommunal relations, and the gendered politics of labour and nationalism.
Through interdisciplinary engagement with visual culture, Middle East studies, and gender theory, this book considers how Scholten's positionality offers insights into both the granular details of Palestinian society and broader macro-historical shifts during a period of profound transition.
Rather than framing Palestine as a biblical relic, Scholten's photographs reveal a socially and politically complex society under early British Mandate rule. Ultimately, this book positions Scholten's archive as a vital historical source for understanding the layered and contested narratives that have defined Palestine's modern history.

The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.