In this book, economist Orhan Erdem breaks down key social insights from COVID-19 and other pandemics throughout human history. It explores the myriad ways that a global pandemic impacts social structures and communities.

Drawing on examples throughout human history, the book highlights the key insights researchers have gathered and what the public can do to prevent the same disruptive responses in the future. The chapters explore core aspects of social life: healthcare, politics, education, community, and technology. Building on stories from literature and lived experience, the book offers a narrative exploration of how a pandemic's aftershocks reshape social life, educational systems, public policy, technology, and economies.

This brief reconceptualizes the immigration-crime relationship by examining how immigration reshapes low-skill labor markets in ways that may disproportionately disadvantage economically marginalized Black workers. Challenging the prevailing consensus that immigration either reduces crime or has no effect, it shifts attention away from immigrant offending and toward the structural conditions under which immigration may indirectly elevate crime among Black populations. Rather than treating immigration as uniformly beneficial or criminogenic, the brief argues that its social consequences are unevenly distributed across racial and economic groups.

Results from longitudinal analyses of city-level data drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the U.S. Census show that higher levels of immigration are associated with increased weekday and weeknight/weekend crime levels among Black but not White offenders. These findings suggest that competition within low-skill labor markets may weaken legitimate employment opportunities for some economically vulnerable Black workers, thereby increasing exposure to criminogenic pressures.

Integrating perspectives on labor market segmentation, strain, routine activity, and race-specific opportunity, the brief develops a theoretical framework linking immigration, racial inequality, and urban crime. By reframing the immigration-crime debate through the lens of economic displacement and racial inequality, this work offers a provocative, policy-relevant account of how immigration and racial justice agendas intersect in contemporary urban America.

This book traces how city councils, medical practitioners, and urban society developed their understandings of and responses to the 'French pox,' a pandemic that swept through Europe during the winter of 1494-1495, and is now more commonly known as syphilis. Focusing on the disease in Frankfurt am Main and Nuremberg, two major cities in early modern Germany (1495- 1700), and using a range of primary sources, including government records, medical publications, and writings of the sick, the author argues that the city councils' responses to the disease, the orders that they issued to control its spread, and their provision of poor relief, were driven by three key factors: contagion; practicality (considerations on fnances and resources); and morality. Their understandings of these elements led to a response that prioritised the provision of aid to support the sick as a way to control the disease, protect the economy and population, and satisfy moral beliefs. Moreover, the book demonstrates the signifcant and enduring infuence of non-sexual contagion theories - the belief that the French pox spread through mechanisms like shared clothing, cutlery, and money - in law, medical thinking, and the self-portrayals of the sick. Providing an important contribution to our understanding of early modern contagion theories and their role in municipal authorities' responses to disease, this timely book will provide new insights for early modern historians researching the social history of medicine and welfare.

Despair is one of the most substantial health concerns of the twenty-first century, as the number of suffering persons around the globe rises exponentially. This book contends that widespread despair is a direct product of disconnections which are facilitated by crises of care across our societies. We develop and apply the care disconnection framework to explain how humans are dependent across their lives, how responsibilities emerge from specific relationships grounded in dependency, and how psychological attachments support need fulfillment. More importantly, the framework reveals how despair ensues from disruptions in these processes. Using insights from philosophical, psychological, sociological, and neuroscientific work on the subject of despair, this book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of connection across the crises of our time - the polarization of our political communities, the instability of economic opportunities and resources, the steady collapse of natural environments, the migration to addictive technology for social interaction, the insecurity of faith and spirituality across generations and places, and the deficiencies of modern mental health care systems. Caring With Despair is a restorative project in the face of crises: a way of identifying disruptions, rebuilding connections, and pointing towards conditions of shared flourishing. To care with despair requires an honest acknowledgment of what has been broken, a steady reconstitution of what has been lost, and a persistent development of the relational arrangements which make a good life possible for more persons in more places. To this end, this book extends an invitation to examine despair as a disorder of our social systems and our ability to connect, rather than as the private dysfunction of suffering individuals.

This book is the second volume of the publication on Legal Language, Legal Discourse: Variation and Beyond, edited by Panagiotis G. Krimpas and Lelija Socanac. It contains ten chapters on legal language and/or discourse issues with particular focus on topics ranging from Eurolects and intrasystemic variation of legal terminology to specific geographical legal language varieties, plain legal language, neology, and emerging legal discourses with environmental relevance, discussed through the lens of contemporary approaches and research methods. The chapters are distributed in two parts, each comprising five contributions. The first part discusses issues of legal language that can be mostly attributed to intrasystemic chronological, sociolectal and/or institutional variation and intersystemic diatopic variation connected with pluricentricity, while the second deals with terminological and text-linguistic approaches. The book will be useful primarily for academics, linguists, legal translators and lawyers, and it can also provide additional reading for students of law, legal linguistics and/or legal translation.

This book provides an indispensable and pioneering expansion of political epistemology beyond its traditional Anglo-American focus. With sixteen chapters from leading and up-and-coming European political epistemologists, the volume focuses on multi-partisan political environments, the legacy of different historical systems, and case studies from frequently underrepresented European countries.

The book's chapters explore how epistemic agents form and revise beliefs about European political actors, institutions, and political phenomena. The European Face of Political Epistemology provides an epistemological analysis of political parochialism, political multi-partisanship, the European Union, European governments, polarisation, corruption, and political coalitions.

A necessary first step in encouraging further research on this topic by philosophers from a wider range of countries, this book is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of political epistemology.

Humanity faces unprecedented threats, many of which are of our own making. These risks, ranging from nuclear war and climate collapse to engineered pandemics and the rise of artificial intelligence, challenge the survival of civilization itself. This book takes a unique approach to exploring these threats by engaging in direct dialogue with leading AI systems. How do these digital minds perceive the dangers we face? Can they help us mitigate these risks, or will they become part of the problem?

Drawing on conversations with five advanced AI assistants, the author examines the "Big Four" anthropogenic risks, their probabilities, and potential prevention strategies. By combining historical context, expert analysis, and machine-generated foresight, this book initiates a critical conversation about the future of life on Earth and the role of technology in shaping it.

This Handbook, an international endeavor in cultural political psychology, integrates global experts' insights to elucidate the psychological role of sign systems in policy, power, and politics. The focus is on how meaning, derived from action, influences power negotiations, requiring an exploration of the individual and their co-created signs. Addressing the challenge of converting rich theories into practical applications, the Handbook aspires to clarify complex phenomena, promoting a holistic understanding of individuals, communities, and the interplay of symbols, identity, and politics. By democratizing discourse and promoting inclusivity, especially from non-Western and underrepresented contexts, we hope to unravel the world's intricate political tapestries.

This book provides an overview of different approaches to research on language and multimodality in social interactions. The author examines five strands - multimodal discourse analysis, multimodal corpus analysis, conversation analysis, gesture studies, and human multimodal communication - providing rationales and case studies to elucidate how each approach to language and multimodality has evolved, describing its theories, methodological frameworks, and positioning them in the field. The volume foregrounds how research on multimodal social interactions contributes both to theoretical development and to social problem-solving, and it will be of interest to a range of readers with backgrounds in fields including language and multimodal research, communication in social interaction, discourse and pragmatics, and applied linguistics.

This book provides new perspectives on the history of the philosophy of science in the twentieth century, through the exploration of the intellectual roots of the thought of Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-1994) in Austrian philosophy. In addition to new research papers on the connection between Feyerabend and thinkers such as Boltzmann, Mach, Wittgenstein, Frank, Neurath, and Popper, the volume offers rich and as yet unpublished manuscripts and correspondence of archival origins by Feyerabend, Naess, Shapere and Finocchiaro. This collection pays specific attention to Feyerabend's problematic reception of Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language Philosophy; influences, convergences and resonances of Feyerabend's evolving philosophical work with different trends within the Vienna Circle; and the controversial Feyerabend-Popper relationship. Following Feyerabend's 2024 centennial, the volume provides historians of the philosophy of science and intellectual historians with a deeper, more articulated and stimulating view of the far-reaching ramifications and global impact of Austrian philosophy in the twentieth century.

This book contains the contributions to the World Law Congress 2025 in Santo Domingo that brings together the legal world to discuss current issues on the Rule of Law. We are living in times of change, in many regards: technologically, ecologically, geo-politically, etc. Established principles of the Rule of Law are under threat. The contributions to this book want to highlight and denominate these risks and challenges and want to offer solutions. The articles are contributed by Presidents of Constitutional and Supreme Courts, renowned scholars, and prominent figures of the (legal) society.

The book is a significant contribution to the body of existing migration studies study and is genuinely comprehensive in its covering. In addition to the many people in Bangladesh, the global north, and South Asia whose concern is extremely practical rather than academic because they must coexist with the system in order for it to function. The Rohingya situation is a severe humanitarian disaster that necessitates a thorough comprehension of the media's function in influencing public opinion and foreign policy. The effectiveness of media strategies in the Rohingya repatriation process is investigated in this study, which offers insightful information to help governments, media outlets, and humanitarian organizations enhance their crisis management initiatives.

This book provides the first comparative analysis of how state size and administrative scale influenced responses to the COVID-19 pandemic across the five Nordic states and two territories. It produces valuable insight into how state size, polity and structural arrangements, and culture influenced the management of the crisis in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In an era of recurring global crises, the book offers critical lessons for policymakers, crisis leaders, and public administration scholars.

This book focuses on county governance and development in Zhejiang Province, exploring the theoretical logic, practical context, and typical models of county governance under the guidance of Xi Jinping's important insights on county governance and development. By analyzing seven representative county (city) models-Yiwu, Jiashan, Deqing, Xinchang, Haining, Longgang, and Anji-it dissects how Zhejiang's counties leverage their unique advantages to promote high - quality development through reforms in commerce, integration with national strategies, digital empowerment, technological innovation, market - oriented factors, township - to - city transition, and ecological civilization construction. The book provides valuable references for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners engaged in county governance, regional development, and public administration across the country.

This book focuses on the symbolic power of a talking filibuster. Since a true filibuster requires hours of standing and talking, it is physically grueling. While some talking filibusters obstruct the passage of undesirable bills and nominees, other aims may include publicizing an ignored issue, revising a bill, or forcing consideration of an otherwise dead bill. Moreover, filibustering can give voice to an unheard group that can coalesce and create a political movement, such as the libertarian posse that formed during Rand Paul's 2013 filibuster against drone killings or the feminist army that formed during Wendy Davis's filibuster against a Texas abortion bill that same year. It's this suffering of the legislator on behalf of constituents that captures the cultural imagination and leads to filibuster depictions in film ("Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), on television (The Simpsons, The West Wing, Parks and Recreation, Scandal), and helps filibusters to go viral on social media. Charting the history of the filibuster from Ancient Rome until today, this book argues that the filibuster's evolution can be traced through eras of anti-tyranny, deliberation, drama, and emancipation. Chapter by chapter, this evolution is described with Jean Baudrillard's conception of the real, simulation, simulacra, and the hyperreal, and with Jacques Ranciere's theories of dissensus and emancipation.

In a timely and insightful volume, Evan Johnson has produced a detailed and cogent rhetorical history of the filibuster. Filibustering Tyranny provides a well-written, thoughtful, and useful analysis of the purposes and uses of the filibuster from ancient times to our present moment. This work will be of significant interest to students and scholars of communication, political science, history, and democracy writ large.
Mary E. Stuckey, Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Penn State University

A provocative exploration of the corrosive impact of secrecy on Australian intelligence organizations' effectiveness and operations

Secrecy is central to popular understandings of intelligence and how intelligence services operate. Intelligence agencies generally resist oversight and transparency, arguing that decreases in secrecy come at the cost of intelligence efficacy.

In Blind Trust, Melanie Brand challenges this view. Using archival research examining the role, functions, and public perceptions of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), she shows that operating in secrecy did not ensure intelligence efficacy in Cold War Australia. With little oversight from the government, ASIO's products became increasingly irrelevant to policymakers, and politicians lost sight of ASIO's value. With no external guidance or requirement to be accountable for its actions, secrecy allowed ASIO's staff to break the law and become involved in overtly partisan affairs. Finally, excessive secrecy asks for society's blind trust in an intelligence service, and ASIO lost the public's trust during the Cold War because it was able, for a time, to cover up its mistakes and exceed its authority.

This groundbreaking history of Australia's domestic spy agency is relevant to the security experiences of other democratic nation-states. Blind Trust will inform students, scholars, and professionals in the fields of intelligence studies, international relations, security studies, and history.

This book examines the implementation of responsible robotics through the lens of design thinking, fostering dialogue among scholars across law, philosophy, psychology, engineering, and related disciplines. Bringing together contributions from researchers based in East Asia, North America, and Europe, the volume offers a truly interdisciplinary and international perspective on the ethical challenges posed by emerging robotic technologies.

The book is organized into four interconnected parts. Part I explores the prospects and challenges of a society in which humans and robots coexist. Part II addresses ethical design principles for the governance of robotic systems. Part III investigates innovative
methodologies that can be employed to develop ethically grounded designs, while Part IV analyzes the intersection of design, human-robot interaction (HRI), and governance.

By integrating ethical reflection with practical design approaches, this volume offers valuable insights for policymakers and legislators seeking guidance on responsible robot governance, as well as for engineers aiming to incorporate ethical and legal considerations into system development. At the same time, it will appeal to scholars, students, and members of the wider public concerned with the societal implications and governance of emerging technologies.

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 thorough and nuanced examination of restorative justice (RJ) as it unfolds across Chinese societies in different places of the world, where it has emerged as a dynamic and influential approach to conflict resolution. While RJ is still a relatively new concept globally, Chinese societies have developed some of the world's most extensive and diverse restorative justice programs, often regarded as an "oriental flower" rich with insights that might make a dialogue with Western RJ practices. Yet despite its growing prominence, RJ in Chinese contexts remains understudied, with many of its cultural, historical, and practical dimensions still awaiting deeper exploration.

In most countries, bureaucratic agencies handle regulatory enforcement. But the United States does things differently. Embedded in statutes governing consumer protection, antitrust, employment, civil rights, and the environment are more than 10,000 "private rights of action"-legal provisions that empower ordinary citizens and their lawyers to enforce the law through lawsuits. This is how Americans regulate everything from wage theft to air pollution to corporate fraud.

How Americans Enforce the Law tells the story of this distinctively American approach to governance. Diego Zambrano reveals that private enforcement is not a modern innovation but an inherited tradition dating to medieval English "penal statutes" that colonial America adopted and intensified. The book traces how this system evolved through critical junctures and was boosted by twentieth-century procedural innovations like broad discovery rules and class actions that transformed scattered statutory clauses into a mass-litigation engine.

This is the first comprehensive account of private enforcement's origins, operations, and future. Offering both celebration and critique, Zambrano shows why private enforcement works well in employment law, for instance, but has been weaponized in environmental law. He creates a framework for determining when this uniquely American form of governance serves the public interest, and when it can be used to undermine democracy.