This book explores the profound legacy of Chitta Ranjan Das (1923-2011), a pioneering Indian thinker, educator, and writer who left an indelible mark on philosophy, literature, and education. As the founder of Jeevana Vidyalaya (School of Life) in 1950s Odisha and a devoted nurturer of integral education movement in Odisha, Das redefined education through integral learning, deeply influenced by the visionary ideals of Tagore, Gandhi, Kristen Kold, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

This volume brings together a diverse group of international scholars to engage with Das's ideas, placing his work within the broader context of global intellectual discourse. His contributions-ranging from philosophy and culture to literature-continue to inspire fresh perspectives on education and social transformation. Das's translation efforts introduced Odia readers to world literature, including works by Tolstoy, Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, and Boris Pasternak, bridging cultures and ideas across linguistic boundaries.

In an era of increasing interest in diverse global philosophies, this book offers a timely and essential exploration of Das's work, linking his thoughts to the contemporary movement of planetary thinking. With its transdisciplinary approach-interweaving literature, philosophy, and history-this volume is a must-read for scholars, educators, and anyone interested in the evolution of thought beyond conventional borders.

This transdisciplinary book examines social movements in contemporary North Africa, namely Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It focuses on nationalist, democratic, women's, Islamist, Berber (Amazigh), and youth movements since 1912 through the post-Arab Spring era. While adopting an integrative approach, it emphasizes the human and social dimensions as central scopes of social movements. In doing so, the book takes current debates on the topic to a more inclusive level, involving linkages among policy, cultural identity, democratic culture, and social justice. It analyzes the role of social movements in driving social change, democratization, development, and social cohesion. The book engages with these themes, which integrate the social, economic, cultural, and political aspects of social movements, and critically interrogates the theories, methods, and practices relevant to them, highlighting the roles of the state and civil society in enhancing civil rights and democracy in the region.

This book explores federalism as a pathway for unity, stability, and inclusivity in Myanmar, a nation marked by ethnic diversity and historical struggles for autonomy. Bringing together leading scholars, practitioners, and civil society actors, it offers practical contributions to Myanmar's evolving federal constitutional design and draws lessons applicable to other conflict-affected and divided societies. Through comparative analysis and ground case studies, the book explores competing visions of federalism, emerging bottom-up governance models, and the political contestations shaping Myanmar's future. It provides fresh insights into legitimacy, representation, institutional design, ethnic autonomy, and the prospects for sustainable peace in a fractured state.

This book examines the affective domain of the city to visibilise the invisible order that informs the complex urban reality in today's world. Exploring both the lived and imaginary properties of Dhaka, it uncovers alternative spatial logics and signifying relations among other local dynamics shaping urban knowledge. Moving beyond traditional research frameworks, it focuses on ordinary residents' subjective engagement with the city and conceptualizes the imaginary city as a social intermediary. Taking Dhaka as a case study, the author highlights the complexities in the relationship between the "hard city" (physical infrastructure) and "soft city" (lived, embedded realities), arguing the latter is not merely an emotional response to the concrete urban space. Using an interdisciplinary lens from literature, the book expands the scope of urban studies, promotes inter-Asia references, and enriches empirical analysis of Asia's cultural changes. It also examines inclusive, competing urban knowledge production sites by analyzing non-official popular cultural products-such as transport art -which circulate and sustain the city's popular imaginaries. As a valuable addition to psycho-social and cultural urban scholarship, it positions the "imagined city" as a key analytical tool, prompting readers to rethink the boundary between the physical and imaginary urban spaces globally.

This book examines the transformative potential of arts on Afghan society, specifically focusing on how artistic praxes have shaped and influenced social dynamics and identity. Theorising sociocultural responses to military interventions, political instability and upheaval, this book delves into the concept of artistic praxis as a sociological tool. Including interviews with male and female Afghan artists, it explores their experiences and creations to contribute to a deeper understanding and constructions of society within the artistic ecologies in Afghanistan. This book explicates the nuances of gender conceptualisation in artistic expression. Challenging traditional and reductive depictions of masculinity, this book foregrounds feminisms and masculinity rooted in the contexts of the Global South. Filling a crucial gap in the limited literature on Afghan arts and artists, a section is devoted to the period since the Taliban take-over in August 2021. This book will be of importance to students and scholars interested in the intersections of sociology, arts, decolonial studies, gender and feminist studies, diaspora studies, as well as peace and conflict studies.

This book examines African migration through the lens of media, memory, and contested belonging, offering fresh insights into displacement, identity, misinformation, and digital storytelling. It provides a clear, research-based account of hidden migration stories, challenging dominant media portrayals while updating our understanding of longing, belonging, hybridity, and place in African mobility.

Across its four carefully structured parts, the book moves from migration beyond headlines to the emotional geographies of lost homes, fractured families, and the inner struggles of diasporic identity. It explores gendered journeys, silenced histories, and the unspoken realities of intra-African and intercontinental movement, revealing how secrets, rituals, objects, and memory shape migrant lives. The text then turns to politics and power, examining colonial legacies, fragile migration governance, nationalism, and the politics of knowledge that influence how African migration is understood and controlled.

The final section of the book focuses on digital belonging, surveillance, and social media, showing how African migrants use online spaces to disrupt dominant narratives, resist misinformation and disinformation, and reclaim voice and visibility. By combining media studies, migration research, and storytelling, the work offers a vital resource for students, researchers, journalists, policymakers, and general readers searching for authoritative, accessible, and transformative perspectives on African migration, media narratives, identity, and place in a globalised world.

The Post-Global City seeks to open a new field of analytical inquiry that examines knowledge production and technological developments in urban Africa rooted in local, historical realities, while also partaking in transnational, global processes. This work explores the ways in which urban residents have utilized technologies and networks to operate around, under, and beyond the state and the international "order," and challenges the stereotypical images of Africa as a continent either devoid of technology or filled with either broken technologies or technologies from the Global North or Asia. This book focuses on accounts and critiques of new "Rising Africa" ideologies, examining megaprojects such as geothermal and hydroelectric plants with new networked startups that circumvent state and patriarchal hierarchies, women vendors selling online, youths designing and constructing oil refining technologies and tech startups working across diasporas.

Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork carried out in urban spaces in Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Gabon, Cameroon, and Tanzania, The Post-Global City brings together voices from Africa, Europe, and the United States to inquire into the dialectics between technology and the urban on the African continent.

This book brings together past and present empirical materials to examine the connections between past politics of land and conservation and contemporary land and natural resource conservation struggles in the Mapungubwe region, contending that addressing South Africa's vexed present requires fuller reckoning with its past. Specifically, the study highlights how land and conservation are politicised and looks at power dynamics in nature conservation initiatives. It argues that the establishment of nature conservation projects is not only determined by scientific knowledge and passion about conservation and resource management, but by social and political processes at local, regional and national level.

This book will be an invaluable reference for conservationists, resource scientists, government officials, scholars or academics, students, policy makers, and stakeholders interested in conservation and natural resource management. It argues that passion and good intention alone are not sufficient inducements to the protection of nature, but involving local communities and those who are affected by protected areas can play a significant role in the success of conservation projects.

Joko Widodo-popularly called Jokowi-ruled Indonesia for a decade, from 2014 to 2024. The world's fourth-largest nation and third-largest democracy, Indonesia had embarked on a messy democratic transition in the late 1990s, with the country's ethnic and religious heterogeneity posing significant challenges to governance. Initially seen as a reformer who might challenge oligarchic structures, Jokowi was slowly but steadily seen as himself being a threat to democracy. By the time Jokowi wrapped up his presidency, he had achieved the highest approval ratings among Indonesia's post-authoritarian presidents-and became the president with the tightest grip over Indonesia's political elite.

Based on exclusive interviews with Jokowi and many of Indonesia's top leaders, Ruling Indonesia shows Jokowi as a president obsessively preoccupied with his economic development agenda, subordinating all other aspects of governance to this goal. His focused approach delivered economic successes and unprecedented popularity, but also seriously undermined the health of Indonesia's democratic institutions. Offering a holistic appraisal of his decade in office, Marcus Mietzner analyzes Jokowi's domestic record in the context of his attempts to position Indonesia more favorably in the international competition for power and resources. Crucially, his obsession to push Indonesia closer to industrialized status while neglecting democratic development represented the ambitions and trials of many Global South leaders who are trying to juggle economic development, growing Sino-American tensions around the world, and concerns for democratic rights. As such, this book provides valuable insights into how the great power rivalry of the 21st century and the global recession of democracy are playing out in central arenas of the Global South.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of youth's environmental activism in urban Indonesia. Led by a cohort of middle class, educated youth, the environmental movement Baksil emerged to protect the city forest Babakan Siliwangi in the capital of Indonesia's West Java province, Bandung. Spanning the period between childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, this book offers a new look at the development of ecological habits and environmental consciousness throughout the life course of Indonesian youth. Employing Pierre Bourdieu's habitus as a theoretical framework, the author traces the youths' emerging eco-consciousness, their love for nature and commitment to ethical consumption, their training as activists and eventual participation in the Babakan Siliwangi urban movement. The author's life-history method to uncover the trajectory stages of becoming an environmental activist in urban Indonesia is a valuable addition to the extant literature of environmental sociology and social movements. As an interdisciplinary work on a timely and important topic, this book will also appeal to scholars and students of area studies (particularly Indonesia and Southeast Asia) and youth studies.

This book offers a concise yet comprehensive overview of how religion, secularization, and media intersect within Tuerkiye's unique sociocultural context. Moving beyond the classical secularization thesis, the volume adopts a more nuanced understanding that emphasizes transformation, negotiation, and hybridization.

Bringing together thirteen interdisciplinary chapters, the book examines a wide range of topics from the secularization of law and Islamist intellectual debates to Turkish cinema, television dramas, digital atheist activism, humor, artificial intelligence, and online mourning rituals. Each contribution highlights how media operate not only as a tool but as a value-laden cultural ground that shapes everyday beliefs, moral tensions, and identity negotiations.

By situating these discussions within Tuerkiye's distinctive path of modernization, the volume fills a significant gap in global secularization and media studies. It offers fresh conceptual insights and rich empirical analyses for scholars and readers interested in understanding the interaction between religion and modernity in contemporary societies.

Aid effectiveness remains a global concern, especially given most developing countries' reliance on foreign aid for their development efforts. The aid effectiveness agenda, shaped by a series of international conferences, declarations, and high-level forums, notably the Paris Declaration, sought to transform global aid practices. This book offers a detailed examination of the global aid effectiveness agenda in the context of Bangladesh, one of the world's leading aid recipients. Drawing on significant in-depth interviews and a wide range of robust document analysis, it presents empirical evidence on how the global aid effectiveness agenda fails when implemented at the country level, particularly in developing economies such as Bangladesh. The findings of this volume contribute to the understanding of development cooperation in aid-dependent contexts and provide scholarly insights into devising actionable strategies to improve coordination and enhance aid effectiveness in recipient countries. It is intended for scholars and postgraduate students in economics, development studies, political science, public administration, social welfare, sociology, international relations, and area studies. It will also be intriguing to policymakers, practitioners, donor agency officials, and other stakeholders involved in aid administration and management.

This monograph critically examines the intersection of gender, religion, and mental health in the context of COVID-19, centering African women's experiences. Drawing from the assertion that "pandemics wear the face of a woman", it explores how social, cultural, and religious frameworks shaped women's struggles and resilience during this unprecedented time. With a particular focus on sustainable religious interventions, the book offers insights into how faith communities can support mental well-being in ways that challenge oppression and foster healing. Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship and empirical research, this book is an essential read for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand and address the long-term gendered consequences of global health crises.

This book provides a compelling and timely exploration of passive design strategies in the coastal city of Bushehr, revealing how centuries-old architectural wisdom can inform today's urgent sustainability agenda. Set against the backdrop of escalating global warming and the high energy demand of HVAC systems, it demonstrates how vernacular solutions can significantly enhance building performance in hot-humid climates. Drawing from Bushehr's rich architectural heritage, the book showcases climate-responsive orientation, spatial organization, natural ventilation methods, and innovative shading systems that ensured thermal comfort long before mechanical cooling existed. Combining field observations, environmental measurements, and insights from traditional building owners, it illustrates how these proven techniques can be refined through modern engineering analysis and seamlessly integrated into contemporary construction. Written for architects, engineers, students, and urban planners, this book serves as both a vital documentation of cultural heritage and a practical roadmap for designing energy-efficient, climate-adaptive, and culturally grounded buildings in coastal and hot and humid regions worldwide.

How Cuba's contemporary mediascape is challenging official histories, recovering memories, and redefining identities

This volume shows how Cuban filmmakers, journalists, and activists use film and other digital media to create competing notions of memory and history that challenge official narratives about Cuban society. In the wake of the economic and ideological crises of Cuba's Special Period, suppressed political differences and personal experiences have resurfaced in the contemporary mediascape, which has become a principal political arena for Cubans both inside and outside the island.

In this volume, contributors examine topics including how filmmakers use audio to subvert official histories, media representations of sanatoriums and other settings at the margins of the Revolution, and a COVID-era digital archive that preserves personal memories outside government oversight. By tracing the interplay of film, digital technologies, and the internet, contributors reveal how alternative archives and online platforms resist state-sanctioned stories, circulate new materials, and broaden ideas of citizenship, time, and identity. Together, these essays offer fresh perspectives on the complexities of Cuba's late-socialist context.

Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This volume delves into intersections of identities in complex societies, which reproduce and cross symbolic boundaries and form as well as challenge power relations. The volume offers both descriptive and analytical contributions with evidence-based suggestions of the ways forward in the messy reality of human superdiversity. It comprises studies from across four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, South America), and ensures a global scope. The common theme across chapters is their concentration on broadly understood intercultural encounters, their features and implications for the engaged parties. Thus, the recurring themes discussed in the chapters are relations between minority and majority groups, including the issues of migration and indigenous cultures, the dynamics of integration processes, and their impact on the cultural identity of the participants of intercultural encounters. Several of the chapters present a linguistic perspective of intercultural communication, referring to post-conflict and postcolonial contexts, and focus on language policy and the related tensions between the development of linguistic diversity and social cohesion. The chapter authors provide qualitative methodological approaches against theoretical frameworks, looking at particular case studies, and refer to sociological and psychological aspects of interculturalism, sociolinguistics, and concepts relating to cultural identity.

This interdisciplinary volume is of interest to a wide readership, including those coming from cultural studies, cultural psychology, discourse studies, identity research, and sociolinguistics.

Chapters examine methodological conventions, theoretical contributions and practical implications of coaching sport in different contexts. Across four sections focussing on perspectives from psychology, pedagogy and sociology and future research avenues, international scholars explore a range of key themes and underpinnings of the field. Authors assess topics such as coaching young and adult athletes, using technological innovations and self-development and burnout in coaches. They also draw from a range of perspectives including critical disability studies, poststructuralism and Indigenous knowledge.

The Handbook of Sport Coaching Research is an essential resource for students and academics in sports management, education, psychology, sociology, business and management and economics. It is also a valuable reference for sports practitioners, managers and educators looking to understand past and future sports coaching research.

Higher Education and SDG12 focuses on how higher education institutions worldwide are furthering Sustainable Development Goal 12 'Responsible Consumption and Production' through the integration of knowledge and practice toward sustainability in their campuses, curriculum, collaborations, and cultures.

Offering an international view, the chapters present research findings, recommendations, and practical insights from countries in the Global South and North addressing challenges relating to campus operations, changes in the curriculum, collaborations with industry and communities, and cultural change. Real world examples of innovative approaches globally are offered in teaching and learning, community involvement, partnerships with industry, activism and the empowerment of students, with academics and communities leading change on the SDG12 agenda. A dedicated resource for fostering sustainable development in higher education, the book offers a structured approach to identifying and developing sustainability practices. Showcasing a wide array of responsible consumption and production solutions, this insightful text equips educators, administrators, and policymakers with the necessary resources to drive meaningful change.

Higher Education and the Sustainable Development Goals is a series of 17 books that address each of the SDGs through the lens of higher education. Adopting a solutions-based approach, each book focuses on how higher education is advancing delivery of Agenda 2030. The series is edited by Wendy Purcell, Professor with Rutgers University and Academic Research Scholar with Harvard University; Emeritus Professor and University President Emerita.

This book explores the resilience and longevity of President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, tracing the evolution of the National Resistance Army (NRA) from a victorious insurgency into one of Africa's most enduring regimes. It challenges the assumption that the NRA's 1986 victory in Uganda marked a complete institutional rupture. Instead, the book argues that the NRA -later institutionalized as the National Resistance Movement (NRM)-governed within a residual social landscape shaped by entrenched traditional monarchies, religious institutions, landed elites, and historic political parties that survived Uganda's civil wars. Confronted with these deeply rooted social forces, the NRM regime was compelled to fuse coercion with co-optation, selective patronage, and strategic concessions. This hybrid approach produced a civil-authoritarian order in which political control is sustained not only through repression, but also through co-optation, negotiation, and accommodation of powerful societal interests. By foregrounding the interplay between state power and enduring social structures, the book contributes to comparative debates on authoritarianism, state-building, and post-conflict governance in Africa and beyond.

This book explains the context of disease, wellbeing and medical practices in Africa, and importantly, how these are influenced by religion (including African ways of belief), spirituality, and faith-based institutions, in relation to healthcare practices. By doing so the handbook explores both positive and negative roles of religion, spirituality, and faith-based institutions in individual and communal health. The book investigates how religion as a non-state agency drives the agenda for wellbeing, in the light of Africa having a disease burden of malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV, and sporadic pandemics such as Ebola and more recently, COVID-19. The book also takes a look at how African Indigenous Religions, Christianity, Islam, and other religions in Africa, continue to shape attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly among adolescents, youth and women. It examines poverty as a major determinant of poor health in the continent, and how religion and religious institutions therefore play a crucial role in provision complementary and supplementary healthcare services. And ultimately shows how religion/faith-based institutions and health intersect, as well as how this intersection contributes to Africa's and global development agenda.