This book offers a more comprehensive exploration of Pliny the Elder's contribution to ancient medicine as preserved in his Natural History, reassessing its role within Greek and Roman medical traditions and tracing the transmission of Pliny's medical material across antiquity, late antiquity, the middle ages, and the Renaissance. Bringing together scholars in classics, ancient medicine, pharmacology, philology, and the history of science, the book investigates Pliny's methodological approaches, his engagement with natura, and his use of both Greek and Latin sources, situating his encyclopaedic project within broader medical and scientific cultures.

Divided into three parts, this book examines Pliny's position within the medical world of antiquity, analysing his dialogue with Greek medical thought, his treatment of materia medica, herbal knowledge, toxicology, and medical amulets, and his wider influence on Roman medical theory and practice. It then considers the reception and adaptation of Plinian medicine in later centuries, showing how epitomes, medical compendia, poetic reworkings, humanist scholarship, and Renaissance therapeutic writing reframed his ideas for new intellectual contexts. Together, these studies demonstrate Pliny's enduring significance for the development of medical literature, pharmacology, and early scientific thought, and provide an essential resource for researchers in classics, ancient medicine, and the history of science.

Women, leadership, spiritualty, and religion have been complexly interwoven throughout history and cultures. The Inspirational Women Leaders: The Challenges and Rewards of Religion, Spirituality, Purpose, and Calling in Leadership books explore support and obstacles that women leaders face as shaped by religion and spirituality, the impact of historical and contemporary women leaders influenced by their beliefs, and how women leaders practice spiritual leadership in a variety of contexts. For some women, their leadership connects with finding and exploring a sense of purpose, recognizing and following a calling or vocation, and exploring the impacts of religion and spirituality on leadership and society.

By celebrating women leaders and their leadership styles, these books highlight impactful leadership approaches and heartening stories of endurance. Serving as a model and motivation for women leaders, these books also create a community for women leaders around the world.

Part One, focusing on Contemporary Research and Reflections, delves into the profound and often underexplored connection between a woman's leadership in her life and work with her diverse spiritual, religious, or philosophical foundations. Part Two, focusing on Spiritual Women Leaders across Time and Cultures, features historical figures and contemporary leaders from various faith traditions, revealing how their spiritual journeys have shaped their transformative leadership. Both books illuminate how personal beliefs and a sense of greater meaning can be a source of immense strength and a catalyst for unique challenges in a leader's professional and personal life.

The Transformative Women Leaders Series is published in collaboration between the International Leadership Association (ILA) and Emerald Publishing. Celebrating women leaders and the leadership styles they employ to achieve success, the books in this series highlight successful leadership approaches across contexts, time, and cultures.

This comprehensive graduate-level textbook, now in its second edition, offers an unparalleled exploration of the complex world of facilities and workplace management. As crucial counterparts to real estate management, these disciplines require a multidimensional approach, which this book delivers in spades. Through a combination of cutting-edge research and practical insights from around the globe, readers will gain a deep understanding of corporate real estate, asset management, property management, and facility management, all within the context of digital transformation, sustainability, and process optimization.

With real-world examples and case studies, this second edition of the book is an invaluable resource for students and lecturers in real estate and facility management. The authors cover the latest trends in workplace management, including the use of smart technologies like AI to optimize facility services and change management strategies for implementing new processes and ESG reporting. Whether you're new to the field or a seasoned professional, this textbook offers a rich blend of theory and practice that will enhance your knowledge and skills.

The book is designed to show that the public and professional understanding of science is somewhat biased, and error, failure and mistake play a more substantial role than usually conceived. Trust in science should be grounded in acknowledging that only through repeated experiments, trial and error, research and development scientists can produce reliable knowledge. This book presents cases that are considered dead ends, failures, and not only points out the heuristic value of failure but also emphasizes the nonlinearity of knowledge production in different domains and perspectives. It focuses on the epistemic, philosophical, practical, theoretical, and institutional consequences of error and fosters dialogues between philosophers, historians, and scientists, representing contemporary thinking about science. This book is thus of great interest to philosophers, sociologists, and historians.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the transformative changes necessary to adapt global food systems to the unparalleled challenges posed by climate change. Across 17 chapters, it moves from agroecology with smallholder cooperatives in Angola, to soil carbon sequestration through cover cropping, then to circular economy approaches such as food waste valorization and WASH infrastructure for rural development. A regional synthesis examines climate impacts on productivity, distribution, and consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by chapters on food system governance and gender and youth farmers' coping strategies. Later sections explore food waste reintegration in South Africa and the opportunities and risks of big data and artificial intelligence in agri-tech. The book also draws lessons from Colombia through community-supported agriculture networks and experiential learning.By integrating methodological innovation with real-world insights, the book serves as a vital resource for researchers and decision-makers committed to advancing sustainable and inclusive food system governance.

Disabled sexuality has too often been cast as taboo, as disabled people are routinely de-sexualized, infantilized, or positioned as objects of pity and (over)protection. Nevertheless, despite facing numerous obstacles to sexuality, sexual expression, and parenting, individuals with disabilities have consistently showcased resilience, agency, and creativity.

Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires, volume 17 of the Research in Social Science and Disability series, seeks to highlight and celebrate these qualities with contributions that challenge stereotypes, reimagine expressions of sexuality, illuminate aspects of reproduction and parenting, and explore different forms of intimate relationships. They recognize, affirm, and celebrate the reality that many disabled people already live full and fulfilling erotic lives. With contributions that foreground the lived experiences, representations, and self-understandings of disabled people as sexual beings, some contributions explore how disabled individuals and communities resist the social, cultural, and political forces that render their sexualities deviant, invisible, or dangerous. Other contributions turn to the urgent task of transforming sex education, critically examining how sex education for disabled people can be radically transformed. Finally, there are a number of pieces that highlight how disabled people navigate the affective, embodied, and increasingly digital landscapes of intimacy and connection.

In sum, this volume imagines sexuality as a site of access, interdependence, creativity, and joy, in hopes that it reshapes the broader sexual cultures in which we all participate.

This edited volume explores the prospects for entrepreneurship and digital transformation across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf (Red Sea) economies. Through in-depth scholarly discussions, it highlights the significance of these twin forces in shaping economic and social development within a region that occupies a critical position in global trade and international interdependence.

Chapter contributions to this volume investigate diverse themes relevant to digital and entrepreneurial ecosystems in the PGAG (Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf) region. Topics include: consumer adoption of contactless payments; government initiatives supporting digital readiness; the role of emerging technologies in entrepreneurship education; challenges in digital entrepreneurship; comparative analyses of artificial intelligence practices; the impact of digital transformation on youth entrepreneurship; bibliometric insights into digital sports marketing; and sociological analyses of social exploitation and agency.

Together, these chapters offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of how entrepreneurship and digital transformation can advance regional development, economic resilience, and global partnership. As such it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, development economics, Middle Eastern politics, and political economy, as well as practitioners and policymakers interested in strengthening entrepreneurial systems, advancing economic diversification, and promoting social inclusion in an era of rapid technological change.

A Call to Action Part 2: Transforming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Norms, Leadership Practices, and Mindset turns the spotlight from systems and policy levers to the human, cultural, and relational forces that determine whether DEI efforts thrive, stall, or collapse. In an era marked by backlash, polarization, and rapid organizational change, this volume brings together leading scholars to examine how leaders, teams, and institutions can cultivate the mindsets and practices needed to sustain meaningful progress.

Across its chapters, contributors explore the psychological, interpersonal, and cultural dynamics that shape DEI work on the ground. Authors offer evidence based insights on allyship, identity based safety, stereotype awareness, inclusive leadership, and the role of dialogue in bridging divides. They also confront emerging issues-from generational stereotypes to the implications of generative AI-while highlighting the strengths, creativity, and resilience that diversity brings to organizations.

This book speaks directly to researchers, educators, and organizational leaders seeking to navigate resistance with clarity and courage. It argues that transforming DEI requires more than policy; it demands intentional norms, reflective leadership, and a mindset oriented toward accountability, authenticity, and collective responsibility.

Together with A Call to Action Part 1: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Systems, Institutions, and Policy Levers, the two volumes offer a comprehensive roadmap for scholars and practitioners committed to defending, reimagining, and advancing DEI in an era of profound challenge and possibility. In a moment of heightened scrutiny and challenge, A Call to Action Part 2 provides the insight and resolve needed to lead with purpose and create workplaces where all people can thrive.

An incisive account of how equality transformed from an abstract ideal into a concrete social and political vision, thanks to seventeenth-century English dissidents like the Levellers and the political philosophers they inspired.

Today, political theorists and philosophers treat as axiomatic the claim that all persons are equal. Dig deeper, however, and what we mean by equality-and what it demands from us, politically and otherwise-is far from obvious. Does it mean that we are all the same, and so the same standards should apply indifferently to everyone? Or does it mean that we are all different in ways similarly deserving of respect? These questions, and many more, reflect the profound ambiguities and contradictions that have riddled the history of the idea of equality.

First Among Equals examines a radical turning point in that history. Since antiquity, influential legal and philosophical traditions have held that all humans are fundamentally equal. Yet these claims proved surprisingly at home in a world defined by social hierarchy, political exclusion, and enslavement. In seventeenth-century England, the meaning-and practical circumstances-of equality began to change. Political philosopher Teresa Bejan traces this transformation, revealing how equality finally became a concrete and actionable political ideal.

Crucially, Bejan shows that influential early modern theorists of equality-chief among them Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the early feminist Mary Astell-were responding to the increasingly radical visions proffered by contemporary social movements like the Levellers, Diggers, and Quakers. Inspired by the Leveller leader John Lilburne, these movements insisted that equality must be a basis on which ordinary men and women could demand to stand shoulder to shoulder with elites. These early modern activists and philosophers can still enchant us today, Bejan argues, while also helping us to restore the power of equality as a political ideal.

This book develops the concept of Asian Commons as a conceptual and methodological tool to engage with Asia, both in its incredible heterogeneity and its important historical resonance. The contributions in this edited volume engage in a rethinking of Asia in an inclusive and collective manner without privileging any region/nation. The Asia that emerges from the world of policy-making and academic discourse is composed of regional blocks: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia are identified more for expediency than as imagined communities. In looking at Asia beyond these units, examining new and forgotten networks, the book foregrounds the lived experiences-and cultural productions emanating from these experiences-making visible the alternative pathways that nurture the notion of Asian Commons. The desire to create an Asian Commons comes from a collective history of anti-colonial struggles and shared vision for social and economic justice. As a working concept, Asian Commons is informed by the historical resources accumulated through Asia's varied but connected experience with decolonization. Mindful of the trap of exclusionary nationalism and false internationalism which flattens the differences between/within nations and peoples, Asian Commons would allow intellectual and political innovation that embraces both the heterogeneities and commonalities of Asia. In its re-examination of the current state of decoloniality, this book discusses alternative visions of Asian Commons. It is a key text for academics and students specialising in Asian cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on postcolonial perspectives, and for researchers focused on Asian history and contemporary issues, seeking a deeper understanding of the region's interconnectedness.

This volume examines key theoretical and practical dimensions of current world-economic developments, emphasizing emerging analytical frameworks, shifting industrial policies, the digital and green transitions, disinflation dynamics, productivity recovery, investment in human capital, fiscal sustainability, and financial-market vulnerabilities. Featuring selected contributions presented at the 2024 Economic Scientific Research - Theoretical, Empirical and Practical Approaches (ESPERA) International Conference, the book analyzes the transformative forces reshaping national economies and the policy instruments suited to diverse regional contexts. The shared challenges confronting countries worldwide are considered to highlight the need for new policy levers to strengthen resilience and long-term development. In addition, the chapters call for a renewed economic vision that integrates technological advances, including generative AI, with sustainability and shock-resistant growth models.

Featuring dynamic modeling, innovative methodology, and quantitative analyses and evaluations, this volume is beneficial to researchers, scholars, academics, students, professionals, and decision-makers interested in the developments in the new world economy.

This book unpacks the process of financialization in the planning of urban mega-projects. On one hand, it explores the literature on real estate finance within the context of planning; on the other, it showcases two case studies to explain how the financialization of urban mega-projects operates. By framing urban mega-projects, real estate, and financialization trajectories, the book examines unconventional planning and real estate concepts nowadays affecting urban studies. Conceptualizations of urban mega-projects, planning tools, as well as real estate markets, assets, and funds are widely described. Moreover, the case comparative analysis of the property financialization and spatial planning of Amsterdam South Axis and Milano Innovation District provides evidence-based and usable knowledge for both scholars and practitioners, by illustrating aspects of plan-making, decision-making and business strategies usually unknown in the field of urban policy analysis.

Now in its third edition, this authoritative practitioner-led guide to investor relations (IR) builds on the foundations laid in its 2008 debut and 2013 update, reflecting how the discipline of IR has evolved. While tools, technologies, and investor expectations have developed, the book remains anchored in its core conviction: Investor relations is a strategic management function that influences valuation, access to capital, and the cost of capital.

Combining financial analysis, strategic communication, and capital markets insight, the book provides structured frameworks and practical methodologies drawn from decades of international experience. It offers clear guidance for senior executives, investor relations professionals, financial analysts, and students seeking a rigorous understanding of how companies compete for capital in increasingly complex and scrutinised markets.

Unlike much of the existing literature, which often focuses on compliance or US-specific regulatory practice, this edition adopts a distinctly global perspective. It addresses the realities faced by both public and private companies seeking to attract long-term investors and diversify their shareholder base across borders, including from an emerging markets standpoint.

Whether refining an established IR function or building one from the ground up, readers will find actionable frameworks, real-world examples, and measurement approaches that position investor relations as an integrated driver of valuation discipline, long-term shareholder value creation, and sustained stakeholder trust.

This book offers a deeply grounded ethnographic account of the women coal workers in Jharia-known locally as Kamins-whose labor sustains one of India's most hazardous extractive frontiers. Moving beyond narratives of victimhood or romanticized resilience, the study situates their lives within the historical evolution of India's coal economy, from colonial expansion and post-independence nationalization to contemporary regimes of subcontracting, informalization, and ecological degradation. It reveals how women's apparent "disappearance" from formal mining work is not a simple retreat but the outcome of institutional reclassification, managerial practices, and gendered-caste hierarchies that reorganize labor, risk, and recognition in the coal industry. The Kamins' experiences illuminate how extraction is governed through everyday bureaucratic and political mechanisms that are deeply shaped by the intersection of gender, caste, and class, structuring who is seen as a legitimate worker, whose injuries are acknowledged, and whose labor remains invisible. Foregrounding these layered exclusions, the book demonstrates that mining ecologies are not only environmental but also social and institutional terrains where toxicity, precarity, and dispossession are unevenly distributed. Rather than presenting the coalfields as an isolated site of exploitation, the book situates Jharia within broader national and global energy regimes, showing how the demand for cheap coal is sustained through institutionalized invisibility and differential exposure to harm. By centering the knowledge, strategies, and political insights of the Kamins, the study rethinks labor politics in extractive economies and offers a critical account of how survival itself becomes a mode of analysis and resistance. This book will be of interest to researchers in gender studies, sociology of labor, feminist political economy, feminist ecology, and development studies.

This book covers the use of digital technologies to improve human health and wellbeing. Included are policy trends in Japan, innovative examples, and recommendations for future directions, providing references not only for Japan but for other countries as well.

In Japan, digital technologies have been introduced in health and wellbeing services over the past 20 years. These technologies have expanded the scope of healthcare from simply treating illness to promoting health and preventing disease.

Early adopters, both providers and recipients of the digitally enabled services, have reaped the advantages of their introduction; however, these technologies have not yet been adopted by the country as a whole. For that reason, and especially with the decline in the working-age population, the government has adopted measures to promote and facilitate the use of digital technologies for health and wellbeing. Those and other steps are being taken to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of health and wellbeing services.

This book introduces the current status of the use of digital technologies to promote the health and wellness of recipients. It also explains the improvement of healthcare institutions using digital data as evidence. Additionally, for comparison, the book shows trends in international standardization activities.

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has changed several views on the practical conduct of military conflict, combat doctrines, the use of military means, logistics, and communication. Not only regarding war on the ground, but also cyberwar, hacks, and attacks on networks are coming to the forefront of military activity.

The chapters in this volume stand at the intersection of the social, geopolitical, economic, and military fields. For too long, these subjects have been treated differently, even though they overlap for various reasons. Public expenditures are the foundation for all strategic planning decisions and political objectives. Economic foreign investment, on the other hand, must be viewed in the larger context of how these decisions impact the strategic regional environment.

Books in this series compile quantitative and qualitative studies in finance, insurance, and risk management. Subjects of interest may include banking, accounting, auditing, compliance, sustainability, behaviour management, and business economics.

Challenging decades of scholarship and Supreme Court jurisprudence, newly discovered historical documents reveal that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause was meant to protect only the freedom to worship, not broader rights of conscience.

The First Amendment proclaims that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This language has been taken to provide sweeping constitutional protection for the freedom of belief and the freedom to act on one's beliefs, underpinning conscience-based claims by people seeking to avoid military service, mandatory schooling for their children, or being required to work on the Sabbath. Recently, religious traditionalists have appealed to the Free Exercise Clause to seek exemptions from laws connected with abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage.

In The Free Exercise Clause and the Rights of Conscience, Donald Drakeman demonstrates that such readings of the First Amendment are dramatically overbroad. Numerous newly available sources clearly show that when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Americans understood "free exercise of religion" as a well-established term of art referring solely to the ability to hold public worship services. That meaning remained unchanged well into the twentieth century. Time and again, when believers asked the courts for conscience-based exemptions from statutes, judges turned them down, telling them to address the legislature instead. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that the Supreme Court radically reimagined the Free Exercise Clause, granting religious exemptions from statutory duties for the first time in American history.

As a result, today's Free Exercise Clause bears little resemblance to that of the framers and the American tradition of religious liberty. Given the current Supreme Court's heavy emphasis on original meaning and tradition when interpreting the Constitution, Drakeman's discovery could have significant implications for the future of conscience-based exemptions and the First Amendment itself.

A Call to Action Part 1: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Systems, Institutions and Policy Levers confronts one of the most pressing challenges in contemporary organizational life: how to sustain and strengthen DEI commitments amid intensifying political, cultural, and institutional resistance. Rather than retreating from this moment, the contributors to this volume respond with clarity, evidence, and resolve.

Drawing on cutting edge research across management, public policy, organizational behavior, and social justice scholarship, the chapters speak directly to researchers, leaders, policymakers, and institutional stakeholders. Each contribution identifies a critical priority for advancing DEI through structural, systemic, and policy based interventions. Together, they illuminate the wide-ranging levers-legal, economic, cultural, technological, and organizational-that shape whether DEI efforts falter, stagnate, or meaningfully transform workplaces and communities.

The book's breadth reflects the complexity of the current landscape. Topics span parent supportive policy design, science censorship, disability inclusion, sexual harassment prevention, workforce reintegration, reproductive benefits, entrepreneurial ecosystems, anti discrimination legislation, and the emotional and institutional work that sustains inequity. Authors examine the backlash against DEI, dismantle persistent myths, and offer bold strategies for resilience, refinement, and renewed purpose. Across these chapters, a shared message emerges: DEI is not a passing trend but a foundational requirement for organizational effectiveness, societal well being, and long term success.

Together with A Call to Action Part 2: Transforming Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Norms, Leadership Practices, and Mindset, the two volumes offer a comprehensive roadmap for scholars and practitioners committed to defending, reimagining, and advancing DEI in an era of profound challenge and possibility.

This book explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty's provocative claim that "the unconscious is feeling itself," reframing the unconscious as a fundamentally relational phenomenon rather than a private repository of repressed content. Drawing on clinical insights from Francoise Dolto, Pierre Marty, Didier Anzieu, and Rene Kaes, Stefan Kristensen bridges psychoanalysis and phenomenology to show how bodily manifestations of unconscious processes shape selfhood and social bonds. The book traces the development of the self through speech and body, examines psychosomatic illnesses as symbolic interactions, and investigates the unconscious dynamics of power relations within groups. By articulating the interplay between corporeality, relationality, and symbolic structures, Kristensen offers a groundbreaking perspective on the unconscious as an intercorporeal linking force essential to the integrity of the self. This work will appeal to psychoanalysts, philosophers, and scholars of clinical psychology seeking to understand the political and ontological dimensions of unconscious life.

This book examines how various methods of digital communication have entered the domain of EU Civil Procedure, with a primary focus on the service of documents, electronic submissions, the taking of evidence, and videoconferencing. It offers a comprehensive overview of legal issues surrounding the use of digital technology in the aforementioned areas and draws insight from the national legal doctrines of 15 EU Member States and select candidate countries. On the one hand, the research employs the comparative legal method to draw conclusions on commonalities and differences, as well as prospects for future approximation of laws. On the other hand, the book addresses open issues at the EU (supranational) level. The research is rooted in the observation that a paradigm shift from traditional to digital means of communication between courts and other judicial partakers is currently taking place. This shift is manifested through a variety of technologies and affects a wide legal landscape. The EU is heralding the incorporation of these developments in its latest legislation on cross-border disputes. The research deals with analyzing both existing (digital and traditional) and prospective means of communication in national and cross-border disputes. The book identifies problems in the national and EU legal frameworks and provide potential solutions for tackling these problems in the current or assess prospects for future developments.

This edited volume explores the evolution of public sector reforms in Nigeria since the return to democracy in 1999. Marked by decades of inefficiency, corruption, and underperformance, Nigeria's public sector has long required structural transformation. It critically examines the reform initiatives that emerged under President Obasanjo's administration and beyond, offering a comprehensive review of the strategies, outcomes, and lingering challenges across multiple administrations. With an emphasis on democratic governance and developmental state-building, the book contributors explore reform efforts in civil service restructuring, digital governance, anti-corruption, education, agriculture, pensions, security, housing, and power sector transformation. This volume also assesses policy tools like the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021-025 (FCSSIP25), and the role of innovation in service delivery. Special attention is given to sector-specific case studies and the use of empirical and econometric approaches to evaluate reform impacts.

It includes comparative perspectives from Ghana, South Africa, and Cote d'Ivoire. This volume not only enhances the sparse academic literature on Nigeria's public sector reforms but also provides practical insights for policymakers, scholars, and reform practitioners.

By situating Nigerian reforms within the broader context of democratic consolidation and governance reforms in Africa, this work underscores the public sector's pivotal role in delivering services, implementing policy, mobilizing revenue, and strengthening intergovernmental coordination. It will benefit scholars, students, policymakers, and development partners engaged in African governance, public administration, and institutional reforms.

An authoritative introduction to strategy-its enduring essentials, its inherent challenges, and the ways it will change in the twenty-first century

We live in a world in which America's previous dominance has disappeared, violent states seek to remake the global order, and war itself has taken new forms. The Strategist is the definitive guide to the use of military means to achieve political ends. In this incisive book, Eliot Cohen addresses the deceptively straightforward questions at the heart of strategy, the reasons why strategists often choose badly, and the ways in which strategy, inevitably imperfect, can be improved.

Who is the enemy? What are our means? What is the sequence in which we should act? Why do we believe we will succeed? These are some of the seemingly elementary questions all strategists must answer, and success or failure rests on choices that may also seem simple, such as selecting campaigns and deciding when to launch a war and when to stop it. Yet devising effective strategy, while achievable, is extremely difficult. Cohen draws on illuminating examples from history as well as his own experience as a strategic adviser to government to explain why. He demonstrates how to mitigate these limitations through habits of thought and qualities of character that enable a strategist to make the best possible decisions under conditions of profound uncertainty.

We wish to be done with war, but unfortunately war is not done with us. At a time of radical change in geopolitics and military technology, The Strategist sheds light on the perils before us, and ways to cope with them.

This book is a sociological critique of colonialism and its successors as applied to Highland Burma. This is a subject which has long-attracted outsiders interested in "developing" the highlands, and integrating them into the capitalist world system. Among those who have tried (and failed) to "govern", in the modern sense, are British colonial powers beginning in the nineteenth century, Japanese militarists, Burmese nationalists and militarists, American CIA agents, Chinese engineers, and United Nations bureaucrats. All have failed to reach their goals for "development." The result is a series of failed political, infrastructure, and economic experiments.

The book distinguishes itself from others by starting with an assumption that the development of Myanmar's highlands is a result of flawed policies by outsiders, rather than the lack of development and governance by the highlanders themselves. Despite the success of such policies in many other countries of Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, Highland Burma remains a place that is ungovernable by international standards. The distinctive questions are two-fold. First, why have the outsiders so persistently promoted policies which seemingly inevitably failed? And second, what does the response of highlanders themselves tell about what James C. Scott calls "The Art of not Being Governed?" Such questions are largely left out of the reams of consultancy reports produced about Myanmar development, politics, governance, and economy during the last 30 years.

This book analyzes the institutional foundations, global expansion, and investor dynamics of green bonds in Japan, China, and beyond. Beginning with the evolution of international standards-most notably the Green Bond Principles-it traces how GB issuance surged after the Paris Agreement and how governments, municipalities, and industries have embraced the market. Drawing on original surveys and empirical models, the book uncovers what truly motivates investors. In Japan, individual investors reveal a powerful blend of environmental values and social responsibility that often outweighs financial return. In China, institutional investors show strong demand shaped by policy signals, project transparency, and certification practices. Rich in data and comparative insight, this volume illuminates the forces propelling the green bond market and offers an essential guide for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand or shape the future of sustainable finance.

This book addresses Saudi Arabia's aspirations and challenges as they look toward democratic transformation. The book examines the country's political history, economics, international relations, and the state of freedom and human rights. Research and writing on this topic have expanded widely since 9/11. Many researchers have tried to study Saudi Arabian society, state, politics, and religion to understand some aspects of Saudi Arabia. Still, despite the insistence of this research agenda, the existing literature consists primarily of standalone journal articles scattered across different disciplinary fields. Readers and researchers, therefore, lack a comprehensive, in-depth examination of the challenges and prospects for the possibility of transition toward democracy in Saudi Arabia. There's a rich history of democratic movement in Saudi Arabia that is overlooked and to date not well documented or publicized, which goes against the most common assumption that Saudi Arabia or its citizens are not yet ready for democracy. What can we learn from the achievements and failures of democratic mobilization in Saudi Arabia about the future prospects of democracy? What are the implications and significance of this study's findings on democratic transformation in Saudi Arabia and the region? Why is it important to have a volume that brings together articles and writings on the topic? Our proposed volume, The Quest for Democracy in Saudi Arabia, bridges this gap. By bringing together pioneering scholars on the topic, the book will provide a comprehensive overview of the quest for democracy in Saudi Arabia and its challenges. In so doing, the book makes novel empirical and theoretical contributions to discussions of challenges to democracy in Saudi Arabia, state repression, economy, international relations, and social movements. Given its scope and timeliness, the book will appeal to scholars and practitioners alike, including those who study democracy, authoritarianism, international relations, and studies in the Middle East; political science; sociologists interested in mobilization, civil society, and migration; legal and human rights advocates; and policymakers concerned with democracy and authoritarianism.

This book takes a novel approach to analysing tax evasion by integrating classic economic deterrence models with intrinsic motivation research. Bringing together these two so-far disparate strands of research, it will bridge economic and behavioural perspectives on tax compliance and offer future directions for research and policy applications.

The book examines tax evasion through the combined lenses of external incentives (including audit probabilities, penalties, enforcement) and intrinsic motivations (such as tax morale and the exchange equity model). Addressing a crucial topic in public economics and finance, the book explores a range of social contexts in which tax behaviour manifests and integrates these fully into classic economic analyses of tax avoidance. This will be a fascinating read for scholars working across law, economics and behavioural science, as well as professionals in public policy.

This book attempts to answer the most fundamental questions of BRI by applying economic methods: What is, what to do, and how to do. Whether in China or the international community, whether in academia or in decision-making circles, there is no consensus on these issues, even though BRI has been around for eight years. As a result, there are many misunderstandings and suspicions about BRI, which have become a major obstacle to its smooth development. As an academic study, this book is not a simple interpretation of the official Chinese BRI representation, but an analysis of it is based on a unified theoretical framework. In addition to tracing the evolution of BRI and the cognition of the international community, the focus of this book is to analyze the attributes, positioning, and governance structure of BRI, as well as to discuss the internal and external risks it faces and its future development direction. The author starts from the development orientation of BRI (different from the current rule orientation of global governance) and makes a normative definition of it. Emphasizing development orientation does not mean that BRI does not need rules, but to jointly formulate rules according to the needs of development. Therefore, one of the directions to promote the high-quality development of BRI is institutionalization.

The transformation of Asia demonstrated in its demographic transition, social progress, economic development, and technological innovation has been phenomenal. Dragon Innovation: Shenzhen is one of the first comprehensive analyses on the formation of China's technology hub, Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area, in a multidimensional and multicultural society in the 21st century amid global trade war and great power competition. It examines how and why Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area emerged as Asia's leading technology cluster from historical, cultural, political, institutional, business and social perspectives to present an innovation experience that differs from the widely known western innovation hubs. In-person interviews with Shenzhen local government officials, renowned Shenzhen business leaders including Huawei's Ren Zhengfei, Tencent's Pony Ma Huateng, and the chief scientists at major technology & AI companies as well as EV companies including BYD make this book authentic and outstanding. Interviews with tech investors, academics, salespeople, grassroots entrepreneurs and migrant professionals make this book rich, vivid and informative. This book will interest scholars, policymakers, development practitioners, technologists, transnational entrepreneurs and global investors.

Digital platforms have garnered both apprehension and admiration for their disruptive influence on social systems, structures, and everyday lives. However, research insights on digital platforms and ecosystems, both in theory and practice, largely emerge from the Global North. Pivoting this focus to the Global South, An Introduction to Platform Economy in India explores the operational socio-technical framework of India's growing platform economy at the confluence of numerous platform ecosystems developed both globally and nationally.

Employing an economic sociology perspective, the authors examine the pivotal roles of individuals and collectives, alongside their embedded socio-economic and technical arrangements, to show the multifaceted dimensions of the rapid proliferation of platforms, burgeoning platform memberships, and the ensuing multidimensional social exchanges in India. The chapters respond to growing interest in India's platform economies by showing how the country figures prominently in visions of platform futures, whether as an emerging market, a critical node in global supply chains, or a catalyst for technological innovation.

Promising to be a timely intervention grounded in economic sociological analysis, this introductory text bridges the existing gap in the production of such scholarly literature from the Global South. By shedding light on the intricacies of platform dynamics, adoption, usage, and their impact on the social and economic lives of people in India, readers gain valuable insights that inform our understanding of the broader global dynamics of platform economies.

There is a growing body of research suggesting that wellbeing and environmental sustainability have little or no interplay or relationship, with some viewing them as often conflicting goals. This book addresses this misconception by highlighting a range of social factors that influence wellbeing challenges. It uniquely advances the traditional emphasis on economic growth by shedding light on the need for the development of pro-social attitudes and behaviours that are essential for achieving more harmonious coexistence with nature. The nascent discoveries from this emerging discipline are already exerting influence on economics, psychology, healthcare, urban planning, and the methodologies employed by national statistical agencies that inform policy decisions.

The editors advance reader's understanding of these complex issues by bringing together critical perspectives that explore best practices of utilising digital transformation as a catalyst, rather than an obstacle, for constructing an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable Global South in alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the expertise of 30 leading scholars to provide an up-to-date coverage of sustainability and wellbeing issues confronting the Global South, providing potential solutions.

The International Studies in Small Business and Entrepreneurship Research series opens a new chapter, as it seeks to advance discussions that consolidate conventional knowledge. The purpose of this initiative is to invite new reflections on the nature of entrepreneurship and small business across contexts. The collections in this series aim to improve the theoretical rigour and practical relevance of the field. The emphasis is to advance contemporary contributions that matter for small business and entrepreneurship, directing us to underexplored and under-theorised contexts.