Home Team Away calls for a rethinking of sport fandom that is divorced from an attachment to location. As the first comprehensive account of the European football fandom in China, this book explores how the Chinese middle class subjectivity is formed through the cross-cultural, digital consumption of the Big Five leagues. Yuan Gong captures the embodied experiences of fans and fan clubs, fan discourses and activities unfolding on digital platforms on Weibo, Weixin, and Hupu, combining fieldwork in Shanghai and virtual ethnography. Gong argues that Chinese fans’ decisions to follow and engage with European football result from their material conditions, ideological contestation, and technology appropriation as a new demographic bloc arising during China’s transition to authoritarian digital capitalism. By engaging with their home teams away, the Chinese middle class fans perform as citizens with a global vision despite the resurgence of the nationalist and anti-Western sentiments.

Feminist ideas spread quickly while feminism remains unpopular by designIn contemporary China, feminism circulates widely across digital media, popular culture, and consumer markets, yet it remains politically precarious. Viral Dissent examines this paradox through an incisive study of feminist activism, misogyny, and gender politics in China’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Drawing on interviews, ethnographic observation, and analysis of high-profile online controversies, Sara Liao traces the complex life of feminism in a system shaped by platform capitalism, techno-nationalism, and individual users. Feminist discourse spreads through social media campaigns, influencer culture, and viral debates, but its visibility?and survival?is carefully managed. Through case studies of #MeToo activism, anti-victim-blaming campaigns, online misogyny, and digital feminist groups, Liao conceptualizes “unpopular feminism,” a feminism that operates as both a popular cultural genre and a stigmatized political project. Some forms of feminist expression are celebrated as part of the booming “sheconomy,” while others?particularly those calling for collective action or structural change?face marginalization, censorship, harassment, and nationalist backlash.

Bridging media studies, gender studies, and transnational feminist theory, Viral Dissent offers a powerful account of how feminist struggle is reshaped at the intersection of capital, technology, state power, and everyday media use, illuminating the possibilities and limits of activism in an era of global platforms, commercialized visibility, and authoritarian governance.

This book seeks to untangle the slippery notions of wellbeing constructs of the Trans-Tasman Pacific Islander community and presents case studies from diverse disciplines that grapple with Pacific wellbeing. Subjective and objective realms of Pacific wellbeing are woven together through Indigenous-led research approaches. The edited book redefines and illustrates notions of wellbeing as it relates to Pacific people living in Australia and New Zealand?the Trans-Tasman diaspora?through values-driven and strengths-based transdisciplinary research to inform applications in real-world contexts. The book presents broad and focused insights of the multi-faceted understandings of Pacific wellbeing compiled and authored by leading Pacific Islander researchers in the fields of Pacific communities, health, education, psychology, housing, economic mobility, and identity politics. Book chapters are presented with didactic sections about research methodologies and research recommendations contributing accessible tools for policy-making and to support future research about Pacific wellbeing.

The volume aims to introduce Baul to the global audience by delving deep into their songs and performances. It offers a fresh perspective on the Bauls, showing how, through their unique lifestyle and strategies, they are capable of foregrounding their cultural habitus, accentuating the sahajiya principle, dismantling scriptural religion and the monopoly of colonial Bengali intellectuals, and forging an affinity with land and nature in an age of religious intolerance, global economy, and jingoism. The volume features a range of compelling chapters analysed from various critical perspectives. Postcolonialism, Religious syncretism, Resistance, Ethical Sociality, Cultural pastiche are the key traits of the volume. This comprehensive volume is unparalleled in its breadth of coverage on the Baul tradition, offering a unique perspective that has not been explored hitherto. It promises to deepen our understanding of the Baul culture from multiple critical angles, providing a significant contribution to South Asian cultural and spiritual studies. Scholars and students in fields such as Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, and Philosophy will find this volume particularly valuable for its scholarly insights and nuanced exploration of an esoteric tradition that holds a distinct place within the broader tapestry of South Asian spirituality and culture.

This book discusses?environmental, social and governance?(ESG) reporting as a measurement of the performance of organisations in achieving sustainable development. It provides an understanding of how businesses manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities, and assists readers in communicating sustainability initiatives by facilitating investors' measurement of risk and company performance to accurately inform business decisions in a sustainability context.?From January 2024, according to the UE 2022/2464 Directive, known as “Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive” (CSRD), the number of companies required to submit their ESG report is expected to grow by about 50.000 companies in Europe. Given the importance of the subject, the book presents an examination of the concept of sustainability combined in three dimensions: environmental, social, and economic. In addition, the manuscript describes the significance and role of the ESG report for enterprises, which will, in a short time, also involve small and medium-sized enterprises, not currently covered by the obligations of the Community Directive, but that, operating within production and distribution chains, will be led to present their sustainability report.?The book is aimed at entrepreneurs and practitioners who want to use sustainability reporting to declare their ESG performances.

This book provides a theoretically grounded, practically oriented framework for fostering creativity in second and additional language education. Creativity is among the most valued graduate qualities of our time ? yet how to cultivate it deliberately in language education in the age of generative AI remains an open question. Drawing on sociocultural, psycholinguistic, cognitive, and linguistic theories, it offers research-informed pedagogical strategies and assessment methods that integrate AI ethically and productively ? as a partner for idea generation, a scaffold for multilingual practice, and a prompt for critical reflection. Illustrated with authentic classroom cases, it addresses learner agency, teacher creativity, academic integrity, and inclusive assessment. An essential resource for language teachers, researchers, curriculum designers, and students navigating creativity and AI in language education.

This open access volume employs case studies in selected African countries to investigate the emergence and evolution of sustainable entrepreneurship within the continent. Utilizing a comparative approach, it integrates management, neo-institutional, and entrepreneurship theories to fully understand the meanings and practices of sustainable entrepreneurship across diverse African contexts. Though often viewed as homogenous, entrepreneurship practices in Africa exhibit variations shaped by cultural beliefs. Contributions explore three streams: individual (vision, emotion, rationality, and values and norms), organizational (entrepreneurial orientation, MSP, internal culture, routines), and context (opportunities, industry culture, isomorphisms). Drawing insights from experiences in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, this book is a valuable resource for researchers and policymakers focusing on the development of sustainable entrepreneurship in Africa.

Industry 5.0 is currently a highly topical challenge for production and service sectors. Large companies are already responding to this challenge and mobilizing their potential. This book addresses the unique challenges that SMEs face in implementing Industry 5.0, particularly when they do not have their own R&D departments to apply the modernize their production in line with the concept of Industry 5.0.

Covering concepts such as the barriers to implementing Industry 5.0, integrating design methods, and the potential for artificial intelligence, this Open Access volume takes an international approach that will be of interest to researchers and practitioners involved in SMEs alike.

Die Autorinnen und Autoren beleuchten, wie sich der Bundesrechnungshof als Teil eines historisch gewachsenen Institutionengefueges von einer klassischen Rechnungspruefungsbehoerde zu einem wirkungsvollen Berater von Parlament und Regierung entwickelt hat. Aus diesem Rollenverstaendnis heraus werden aktuelle Herausforderungen wie die Schwaechung der Schuldenregel, der Umgang mit Desinformation und die ueberfaellige Staatsmodernisierung analysiert. Der Band setzt damit wichtige Impulse zur Diskussion um solide Staatsfinanzen und staatliche Kernaufgaben.

The security landscape in Europe has changed dramatically in the 2020s. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as the shifting transatlantic relations during the second Trump presidency, have challenged long-standing assumptions about stability and cooperation. This book examines these changes through the perspectives of authors from 23 countries across Europe and Central Asia.
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Organized by region, the volume employs Robert Jervis’s theory of perception and misperception as a unifying framework to demonstrate how states perceive and react to emerging risks and uncertainties. It shows how national security outlooks are shaped by local concerns and broader geopolitical shifts.
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Additionally, the book examines how countries are repositioning themselves in relation to the European Union, NATO, and the OSCE, offering a timely and nuanced account of an increasingly complex security order.

Plastic surgery has exploded in popularity in the recent decades, with South Korea emerging as a leader of the global beauty economy. In Remedying the Body So-Rim Lee explores a cultural discourse of plastic surgery in South Korea through the feminist politics of care. Pulling together archival and cultural materials from the 1950s to the 2020s, Lee takes Korea as a paradigmatic example to reimagine coalitional ways of surviving a world governed by oppressive bodily norms.

??Drawing from the Korean term koch'ida ("to cure or mend"), Lee uses "remedy" to name a broad spectrum of medical interventions performed to change the bodily appearance to arrive at a bodily norm. Remedy, however, is much more than medical treatment alone. This book contends that remedy is also a critical cultural ethos, a social performance of subjectivity, and a material practice of embodiment where state biopolitics and individual desire for belonging are inextricably entangled.

Rethinking space from the ground up through trans theory, philosophy, and radical possibility

Disorienting Phenomenology takes as its point of departure the trans mundane: entering a public restroom, moving through airport security, navigating professional spaces. These ordinary yet unsettling encounters become portals into urgent philosophical questions about space, embodiment, perception, power, and violence. Attending closely to how trans people experience everyday life, Eden Kinkaid shows that space is never neutral. It is felt, negotiated, and contested at the level of the body, shaping one's capacities, safety, and sense of self.

Weaving together philosophy, queer and trans studies, geography, and personal narrative, Kinkaid develops an intersectional theory of space grounded in lived experience. They bring the foundational spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre together with critical phenomenologies of gender, race, and disability to demonstrate how systems of oppression are built into the environments we inhabit, configuring movement and constraining possibility for minoritized people. Bold and interdisciplinary, Disorienting Phenomenology offers vital conceptual tools for understanding ? and transforming ? the worlds we move through each day.

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This book offers a unique perspective on reimagining the youth justice system by drawing on diverse international models of justice and applying a scientific lens to core global youth justice issues. Unlike existing works that focus solely on either reimagining the system or addressing global issues, this volume pioneers an exploration of how an evidence-based, reimagined system intersects with and addresses central concepts and topics from a global perspective. Drawing upon contemporary evidence, this book dissects and challenges longstanding presuppositions in youth justice, ranging from the nature of youth offending to responses to it, and highlights the crucial role of scientific insights in shaping these domains.

With a focus on core global issues such as the school-to-prison pipeline, gang culture, the radicalisation of youth, child soldiering, and the distinctive category of child victim-offender overlap, this comprehensive work serves as a vital resource for scholars, students, policymakers, and practitioners alike. By fostering dialogue between empirical evidence, varied justice models, systemic organisational structures, and pressing global issues, this book aims to provoke critical reflection and drive transformative change in the field of youth justice.

The volume offers a pioneering intervention in global literary and cultural studies by tracing representations of disability across the entire twentieth century-from early modernist literature to late postcolonial and popular cultural forms. Unlike most existing works that focus primarily on twenty-first-century narratives, this volume provides rare historical depth and a globally inclusive perspective.

Bringing together literary, cinematic, regional, and mythic narratives from Western and non-Western contexts-including Indian literature and film-the book constructs a comparative framework that illuminates how disability is embedded in diverse historical, cultural, and political settings. Covering texts from Kafka and Faulkner to Odia fiction and Indian partition narratives, it spans early modernism, interwar poetics, post-World War II trauma narratives, and late-century cultural media such as cinema, comics, autobiography, and myth.

Balancing academic rigour with accessibility, this book is an essential resource for scholars, students, and educators interested in literature, culture, and critical disability studies.

This book explores the rapidly evolving Metaverse, where digital and physical realities merge to create immersive interactions and transactions. As virtual real estate and digital assets gain traction, investors increasingly view them as a new asset class, akin to traditional real estate or collectibles. Blockchain technology underpins this transformation, ensuring secure transactions through decentralized and transparent systems. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) play a crucial role in establishing ownership, enabling value exchange, and preserving intellectual property within virtual economies.

The book presents the financial and legal dimensions of Metaverse investments, covering blockchain, Web3, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. It examines how digital property markets operate, with investors purchasing, selling, and monetizing virtual land and assets in platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland. Key factors such as virtual location, user traffic, and economic activity influence the valuation of these assets.

Beyond investment opportunities, the book highlights the broader economic impact of the Metaverse, including monetization avenues for creators, developers, and businesses. It explains how smart contracts and financial assurance mechanisms enhance trust and security in virtual transactions. Additionally, it addresses the evolving legal frameworks for digital intellectual property rights, ensuring regulatory clarity and integrity.

This book is essential for investors, legal scholars, financial analysts, policymakers, and tech enthusiasts looking to understand the intersection of digital assets, blockchain, and virtual economies. By providing a comprehensive analysis of Metaverse finance, it equips readers with the insights needed to navigate this transformative digital landscape.

Was Brexit more than a political and economic rupture - was it a civilisational one?

This book uncovers the cultural and identity foundations of Brexit, exploring how British elites came to see the UK not just as a nation, but as a civilisation state. Moving beyond party politics and policy debates, it traces how leaders and thinkers evoked Britain's exceptionalism - a sovereign, maritime, and Atlantic power with a global destiny rooted in empire. These narratives, mirroring those of civilisation states, shaped the country's uneasy relationship with Europe, and its final decision to withdraw from the EU. By revealing the deep historical and symbolic layers beneath the Brexit process, the book discloses how civilisational thinking is used to strengthen a nation's global voice, but drives it towards isolation.

This book explores the intricate relationship between time and politics, offering a comprehensive analysis of how temporal strategies have shaped political discourse in Poland from 1989 to 2024. By equating social time with political time, the monograph reveals the continuity of change despite attempts to disrupt it, providing a unique perspective on the socio-political transformations that have occurred since the fall of communism. Key concepts such as the manipulation of temporal strategies, the use of time as a political tool, and the impact of watershed moments are thoroughly examined. The book delves into how politicians have used time to influence public perception, create political narratives, and maintain power. By tracing the evolution of these strategies, the author uncovers the profound effects of temporal manipulation on political competition and societal change. Ideal for scholars, researchers, and students of political science and history, this monograph offers valuable insights into the dynamic interplay between time and politics. It is an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of political discourse and the role of time in shaping political realities.

Understanding the world of art - particularly antiquities and archaeological artifacts - requires tracing how objects are removed from the ground, displaced by conflict or economic hardship, and ultimately reappear in the international art market. The odyssey of an artifact from its excavation site to an auction house, a private collection, or a museum display case raises a host of pressing concerns about the fragility of cultural heritage but also the global mechanisms that sustain its circulation. In recent years, growing awareness of a possible link between the illegal antiquities trade and terrorist financing has brought new scrutiny to regions marked by war and instability, particularly in the Middle East. In such places, archaeological sites are especially vulnerable to looting and illicit excavation, with the profits from these "blood antiquities" sometimes flowing back to fund further violence.

Art for War examines how this transformation in perception - from an archaeological concern to a matter of international security - reshaped the global response to antiquities trafficking. Viewing the trade through a security lens, the book offers scholars, policymakers, and students of international affairs a new way to understand how the protection of cultural heritage became entangled with the politics of counterterrorism and global security sparking new debates over art, heritage, and security.

In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous security environment, military leaders are required to operate under conditions of extreme pressure, uncertainty, and risk. Military Leadership in Extreme Situations: An International Perspective brings together leading military scholars from around the world to examine how armed forces understand, train, and enact leadership in such demanding contexts. This edited volume presents sixteen country case studies spanning six continents, offering unique insights into diverse military systems, operational environments, and leadership traditions. From combat operations and peacekeeping missions to disaster response and hybrid threats, the contributions highlight how leaders are prepared to make decisions under pressure, maintain cohesion, and act ethically in situations where consequences are immediate and profound. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, the book emphasizes adaptability, resilience, communication, and the critical role of followership in extreme contexts. By comparing national approaches and identifying shared challenges, it advances a deeper understanding of leadership as a relational and context-dependent process. This volume is essential reading for scholars and practitioners in military studies, leadership research, security studies, and crisis management, as well as for professionals engaged in preparing leaders for high-stakes environments.