This book is the first work to systematically study the development of large-size economies. From a completely new perspective, it defines and selects a set of representative large-size economies. It first analyzes the basic characteristics of large-size economies and the mechanisms behind economic growth, and then explores how a country's scale shapes industrialization, urbanization, institutional change, and governance structures, describing a path for a major economy to an economic powerhouse. The book is selected for China's National Achievements Library of Philosophy and Social Sciences and has made notable contributions to the development of China's economic discourse system.

The edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online.

The One Health (OH) approach recognizes that the health of humans, animals, plants, and the wider environment are closely linked and interdependent. This holistic framework aims to improve health outcomes by promoting collaboration among various sectors, including public health, veterinary medicine, environmental science, agriculture, and ecology. But what contributions can sociology provide for the implementation of One Health initiatives? As global health threats such as COVID-19, Zika virus, and Ebola have increasingly demonstrated the need for an integrated approach, this text breaks fresh ground by demonstrating the policy, research projects, educational interventions, and institutional communications that sociology can offer to the OH approach. Written by a medical sociologist and expert researcher in One Health, this practical book provides a focused approach to the sociology of health in One Health research and highlights the most recent advances in this field. Aimed at researchers interested or involved in OH research, as well as academics and social scientists in organizational studies, sociology and anthropology with a passion for interdisciplinary learning, this powerful study offers a new agenda for the role of social sciences in One Health.

This book explores how the recent COVID-19 pandemic not only brought the tourism industry to an unparalleled halt but also generated long-lasting and devastating effects on global trade. The virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, spread worldwide in a matter of weeks, affecting four continents. The current mobility culture, supported by recent technological breakthroughs, has paradoxically been both a main carrier and a main victim of COVID-19. The paradox of mobility culture lies largely in the fact that we now move faster, yet this increased speed generates further global public-health risks. Travel bans and restrictions changed not only the security and safety protocols at transport hubs and airports, but also our travel behaviour. Although the effects of the pandemic on the tourism and hospitality industry have been widely examined by scholars, less attention has been paid to the changes in travel behaviour that occurred during the Virocene. This edited volume will be of interest to scholars, postgraduate students, and professionals in the fields of mobility theory, sociology, anthropology, social geography, and tourism.

This book deepens and provides specificity to conversations about what multispecies climate justice might look like, both conceptually and empirically. Bringing together a range of humanities, social sciences, and critical physical sciences scholars who draw on case studies in a variety of geographical settings, each chapter is animated by the politico-ethical impulse to dismantle anthropocentric and liberal ideas of justice and build practices and modes of interspecies solidarity in their place. The book draws substantially on the scholarship in environmental justice and political ecology, alongside materialist, post humanist, Indigenous, and feminist geographies, to assert an understanding of climate change as a multispecies problem, the solutions for which can only be found in decolonial, intersectional, and abolitionist praxis. It is anchored in transdisciplinary approaches to multispecies climate justice to explore what interspecies climate solidarities are - and could be. In doing so, the book offers a diagnosis of the complicated injustices embedded in climate change, encourage and prefigure more just and inclusive scalar imaginaries anchored in multispecies recognition and transformative climate just futures.

We live in a collective moment that, for many, goes beyond uncertainty and holds unease and worry about the future. And while most, if not all, of these "Anxious Age" issues affect other states and even nations, Michael L. Walden, one of the foremost experts in North Carolina economics, makes clear the specific ways they'll affect North Carolinians, making this a must-read for policymakers, politicians, and everyday folks alike. Walden covers everything from the increasing numbers of workers doing their jobs at home, to climate change, to questions of whether big urban centers like Raleigh and Charlotte will begin to lose population rather than continuing to grow. Walden even considers AI and how its use will affect the North Carolina economy, one that is increasingly focused on technology and research.

In covering a broad array of concerns and uncertainties, Walden promises to offer a clear roadmap of where we've been and where, in this tumultuous era, we may be headed.

This book consists of selected full-length research articles that were presented at the International Conference of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka 2023 with multidisciplinary approaches for a sustainable and resilient future through sustainable agriculture and food technology, applications of geomatics, biosystems and engineering technologies, business and management studies, computing, medical and health sciences, natural and applied sciences and social sciences and humanities.

Billions of species have been wiped out in the face of perpetual aggressions of nature ever since the world came into existence, yet humans have always prevailed. They always knew how to adapt, innovate and be defiant to circumvent the deadly challenges on their way. With the rising energy prices, inflation, declining food supply, soaring world population, unwarranted political conflicts, culture wars and major environmental challenges, we are yet again at a crossroads. The present demands action to reverse course and find sustainable solutions to save the world from the brink of total collapse. With eight tracks and over 200 speakers, the 9th International Conference of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka (ICSUSL 2023) yields a platform for scholars and scientific minds around the world to create global partnerships to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations and lead the movement by advancing multidisciplinary approaches for a sustainable and resilient future.

The different sub-themes that focus on a sustainable and resilient future suggest different methodologies and solutions to burning global issues. Given its multidisciplinary nature, this book is useful to a vast array of stakeholders from a wide spectrum of disciplines including academics, policymakers and practitioners who work towards sustainability.

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist illuminates how physicists think about and do physics

What principles guide physicists' ways of thinking and the practice and culture of the discipline? In The Physicist's Way, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist P.J.E. Peebles argues that definite assumptions underpin the working physicist's approach, the elements of which are learned organically by incoming generations of students and shared across the field. Peebles outlines these basic principles, elucidating how physicists apply their approach to a broad range of topics, from quantum physics to the physics of the expanding universe.

After discussing physicists' demanding tests of the fundamental theories of quantum physics and relativistic cosmology and how physicists think about the puzzling lack of consistency between the two, Peebles considers the sociology of the field and where physics might be headed. Engaging throughout with ideas developed by scientists, philosophers, and historians, he elucidates the unique place physics holds in the natural sciences for the ability to discover theories that make definite predictions that agree with what can be observed.

The Physicist's Way offers an enlightening perspective on how physicists think about and approach the practice of physics.

Forms of Suffering demonstrates how Geoffrey Chaucer transformed pity into a central ethical and aesthetic concern in English literature by tracing his reformulations of trans-European pity discourses for an English audience. In these reformulations, Chaucer brought to the fore the modes and effects of pity's work in challenging, even overturning, traditional power structures such as social status, gender, and race. Critically, his consideration of pity also explores its precarity: the ways that pity could easily slide from transformative justice into a weapon of unjust oppression.

Jessica Hines describes how Chaucer's writing was formative in shaping an English pity discourse increasingly critical of the sociopolitical capacity of pity to act as a tool for challenging injustice and reforming oppressive social structures. Forms of Suffering makes clear the profound appeal of pity's ability to challenge structures of power in Chaucer's writing, as well as the ways that pity itself could be - and was being - manipulated by the powerful for their own ends.

In the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the OEEC-OECD constituted an intergovernmental forum for determining policy for the reconstruction and integration of European economies, and addressing significant issues of underdevelopment in individual member states. Using previously unstudied documents from the OECD's Paris archives, this book illuminates the role of the OECD in this period and how its interventions addressed and contributed to the issue of European development and integration in the regional dimension.

Focusing on six Mediterranean countries, the book reconstructs a forgotten chapter of European development policy through archival research, revealing how these regions served as early testing grounds for development economics, regional planning, and educational reform. By highlighting initiatives like the Vanoni Plan, the Mediterranean Regional Project, and the work of the European Productivity Agency, the study reframes the OECD not just as a forum for wealthy nations, but as a critical space where the 'southern question' of underdevelopment was theorized and acted upon. With implications for our broader understanding of the history of international organizations, this book is a fascinating resource for scholars of economic history and historical political economy, as well as development studies and the economics of education.

America's staggering racial and economic divides did not emerge by accident-they were built. Stratification Economics exposes how centuries of law, policy, and institutional design manufactured inequality, from slavery and land dispossession to redlining, deregulation, and modern tax regimes that funnel wealth upward. Neoliberal ideology, the book shows, cloaks these structures in the language of markets and meritocracy, obscuring how privatization, austerity, and constitutional doctrine consistently entrench hierarchy. Across domains-housing, labor, education, corporate power, and the courts-the same pattern recurs: policies that appear neutral in theory reproduce racial and class stratification in practice.

Against this backdrop, the manuscript advances Stratification Economics as a transformative framework for understanding and undoing inequality. Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research, it reveals discrimination as a rational strategy of group advantage and offers a clear blueprint for equitable reform. In doing so, it reframes the American economy not as an engine of opportunity, but as a system we must redesign to achieve it.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of how artificial intelligence (AI), and large language models (LLM) are reshaping leadership strategies in business and economics, emphasizing sustainable development and entrepreneurial innovation. Drawing from selected research papers presented at the 9^th Prague Institute for Qualification Enhancement (PRIZK) International Leadership Conference held in Prague, Czech Republic, this volume focuses explicitly on novel AI-driven business models, strategies, and leadership paradigms, including such topics as leadership in AI-guided energy policy, or AI in strengthening military and economic leadership. These cases provide unique perspectives on integrating frontier technologies within traditional sectors, presenting successes and lessons that have global applicability. By emphasizing the interplay between AI technologies, entrepreneurial leadership, and sustainable economic growth, this book offers actionable insights and practical frameworks relevant worldwide.

The book is designed for a broad audience, including academics, policymakers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals involved in shaping future-oriented business practices and economic policies. It addresses a critical gap by highlighting regional leadership insights within a global context, emphasizing how lessons learned from today's volatile and dynamic markets can inspire innovative strategies globally.

Reveals the intertwined nature of imperial mapping and map history through the making of the colony of French Soudan in nineteenth-century West Africa.

Thomas J. Bassett's Writing the Land argues that mapping played a key role in France's territorial conquest of Africa, and that the process of imperial expansion and colonization shaped map history by influencing how maps were constructed, circulated, and used. Analyzing military and surveying campaigns over half a century in an area that became the colony of French Soudan, Bassett focuses on the social and spatial problems that surveyors and mapmakers tried to solve in the process of territorial conquest, as well as the conflicts that arose as they pursued their goals.

In their efforts to obtain this territory, French military leaders, cartographers, and expedition members came into continual contact with local Africans, with whom they negotiated and clashed. Often, imperial officers relied on intermediaries to navigate West African geography, drawing on the knowledge of political authorities, interpreters, guides, and long-distance traders; the maps they produced are inextricable from these interactions. Ultimately, Bassett claims, examining the processes of mapping in the context of these encounters leads us to understand these maps anew as Euro-African constructions, ones that emerge from a complex process of exchange and domination.

This book gathers original contributions from philosophers working at the intersection of logic, epistemology, and philosophy of science. The chapters explore a wide range of perspectives on the boundary between logic and science, focusing on the implications of conceiving logic as a dynamic, revisable discipline. Contributors analyze the interplay between logical and scientific methodologies, offering new insights into the relationship between logical and scientific theories.

This book provides a thorough examination of African society from a sociological standpoint. While previous works have addressed specific themes, such as urban life, education, gender, and globalization, this book encompasses the full range of sociological inquiry related to Africa. Topics include theory, methodology, culture, ethnicity, social relations, stratification, media, health, religion, education, and modernization, among others.

Drawing on established scholarship and original analysis, the book provides a structured framework for understanding the development, structure, and functioning of African societies. Therefore, it will appeal to scholars, students, and researchers seeking to engage deeply with African contexts and contribute to a more inclusive global sociology.

Reclaiming the Climate Agenda: Indigenous Knowledge and Global Sustainability is a pioneering volume that challenges the dominant climate discourse and advocates for a more inclusive approach to sustainability. Through a diverse collection of contributions from experts in environmental science, Indigenous studies, and climate policy from around the globe, this edited collection highlights the critical role Indigenous knowledge plays in fostering resilience, adaptation, ecological balance and economic growth. It presents compelling case studies of Indigenous-led conservation, explores the intersections between traditional ecological knowledge and scientific innovation, and calls for decolonizing climate governance. By centering Indigenous voices and advocating for epistemological pluralism, this work provides an essential roadmap for integrating Indigenous knowledge into global sustainability efforts.

Bringing together scholars, policymakers, and Indigenous leaders, this collection is an invaluable resource for anyone committed to climate justice and sustainable development. Whether you are a researcher, activist, or policymaker, Reclaiming the Climate Agenda offers critical insights into building a more just, inclusive, and effective response to the climate crisis.

This book offers a unique analysis of the economic and political rise of the BRICS. It examines their contribution to the global economy and international institutions, as well as their contrasting interests and agendas. The BRICS' place within the global order is acknowledged to highlight the role they have in promoting sustainable development, encouraging South-South cooperation, developing new technologies, and participating in global governance. Understanding the trajectories of these emerging economies is essential for identifying new responses to contemporary global challenges.

Moving beyond Western-centric perspectives, the book explores both the opportunities and constraints facing the BRICS and other emerging economies, while also emphasizing the importance of identifying common ground to address present and future global issues. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and policymakers working in development economics, global governance, and international relations.

Struggles over critical urban technologies during and after Morocco's French Protectorate reveal a fundamental conflict over the nature of decolonization in the country.

Concrete Futures is a history of concrete that complicates our view of the building material, revealing it as a site of contestation over resources and authority in twentieth-century Morocco. Beginning with the French protectorate period between 1912 and 1956 and continuing into the post-independence era, Daniel Williford uses debates surrounding concrete building technologies as a conduit through which to explore struggles over colonization, modernization, and decolonization. The half-finished cinder block buildings found in cities all over Morocco, he shows, are a product of the system that colonial engineers and officials developed to deal with labor disputes, contests over knowledge, and anticolonial unrest.

By exploring concrete and its uses, Williford discloses how conflicts between experts, workers, and residents over construction and urban renewal-from the introduction of reinforced concrete to strategies of slum clearance-shaped the meaning and the trajectory of decolonization in Morocco.

A critical history of the US dollar's dominance in the world economy-and what has kept China's currency from overtaking it.

The dollar is the primary currency of the world economy. With China now rivaling the United States on the world stage, a critical question hangs in the balance: will the Chinese renminbi challenge the status of the dollar and, in doing so, deprive America of its "exorbitant privilege"?

In GreenbackEmpire, Ho-fung Hung offers a powerful account of why, even as American shares of global production, ownership, and trade continue to decline, its currency has retained the support of governments and investors around the world. For six decades, Hung shows, the dominance of the dollar has rested on the security umbrella that the US offers to the world's wealthiest countries-including oil producers. To these countries, support for the value of the dollar is tantamount to maintaining US protection. While China has become a serious geopolitical and economic rival to the US, the Chinese state's airtight control of its financial system has delayed the free trading of the renminbi, limiting the currency's internationalization. In short, the same strategy that engineered growth in China's economy is restraining its currency's rise in opposition to the dollar. Hung's Greenback Empire is an essential history of the dollar's prowess, indispensable for understanding the future of the global monetary system.

The book presents a political-scientific overview of Albanian-Chinese relations. It is an attempt to understand and explain the motives behind the close alliance between China and Albania and the role this alliance played in their domestic relations and foreign policy. Since both countries viewed the USSR as their political, ideological and military opponent during the Cold War, they moved closer together to withstand Soviet pressure. The book analyzes the personality cults surrounding Enver Hoxha and Mao Zedong, their ideological concepts, absolutist logic, and their harshness against their opponents. It examines the breakdown of Albania-China relations in the final phase of the Cold War and the gradual normalization of diplomatic relations in the post-Cold War period. The analysis covers various aspects of Albania's relations with China, from the establishment of diplomatic relations to the present day. The book focuses on topics such as ideology, nationalism, interstate relations, economic and trade relations, and military affairs.

The definitive biography of Enver Pasha, the larger-than-life Young Turk revolutionary who bent the arc of history and reshaped the modern Middle East and Eurasia

Enver Pasha (1881-1922) is a hotly contested figure whose career spanned the Young Turk Revolution, the First World War, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of global anti-colonialism. To millions he was an icon of hope and a folk hero. Others reviled him as a ruthless conspirator and a merciless sower of death. But all, from Kaiser Wilhelm II through Churchill to Stalin, found him a man of consequence. A Life Lived like a Storm tells the story of the man whom even a jealous rival, Mustafa Kemal Atatuerk, likened to the splendor of a setting sun.

The first biography of Enver to make use of an abundance of archival sources in multiple languages, this book radically transforms our understanding of Enver and his era. A reserved, pious boy from the Balkans schooled to become an elite officer in the Ottoman army, he vaulted to global fame in 1908 when he risked all to topple a repressive sultan's regime. Bloodied on Balkan and North African battlefields, Enver later seized power, imposed one-party rule, married a princess. He plunged his empire into a world war-and ultimately into defeat-but also laid the foundation for the Turkish Republic. Hunted for war crimes, he fled the empire to make common cause against colonialism with the Bolsheviks, only to take up the banner of Islam and die battling the Red Army in Central Asia as the son-in-law of the Caliph.

An epic account of a consequential life by one of our foremost historians, A Life Lived like a Storm paints a riveting, multifaceted portrait of a man whose boundless ambition and lust for peril put him at the center of the collapse of one world and the birth of another.

A multifaceted cultural history of pilgrimage and travel to the Holy Land from the Middle Ages to the dawn of the twentieth century

For countless pilgrims throughout history, the Holy Land was a destination unlike any other. Travelling there could free you of your sins, get you knighted or offer hope of being cured of illness. Above all, it brought you closer to the mystery surrounding places laden with religious meaning. But for Christians in particular, the journey was often very different from what they expected and the gap between expectation and reality plunged more than a few into deep crisis. They Came to the Holy Land tells the remarkable stories of those who undertook this taxing and often dangerous trip to Palestine.

Drawing on travel writings spanning the medieval era to the end of the Ottoman Empire, many newly translated and presented in English for the first time, Bernd Brunner reveals how the Holy Land was a place of both fulfillment and disappointment for Jews, Muslims and Christians who were drawn there by religious fervour, the thirst for knowledge or misinformation. We meet a host of fascinating characters, from German Templers and American missionaries to Zionist visionaries, Indigenous dragomans, scientists, aristocrats and pilgrims journeying alone. What they all had in common was a destination whose peoples, cultures and arid landscape often proved a source of profound disillusionment.

Historically insightful and richly told, They Came to the Holy Land brings to life the experiences of swashbucklers, true believers and border crossers of every kind, offering a vivid portrait of how the Holy Land was imagined, misunderstood and rediscovered over the centuries.

As a global conversation around political transformation and environmental struggles continues, Southern Visions of Nature examines how Chilean environmental organisations use visual digital media to shape public discourse, build collective identity, and collaborate during political upheaval, revealing the unique intersections of environment, politics, and communication in a Global South context.

Through a rich methodological combination, Aravena-Ortiz explores how environmental organisations in Chile use visual media in digital spaces to advocate, mobilise, and construct collective identities during politically charged moments. Providing a compelling case study of a country with deep environmental challenges, ranging from water scarcity to extractive economies, and a society marked by growing ecological awareness and civic mobilisation, the chapters unpack how environmental discourse became a prominent theme in public debate and visual media emerged as key tools in how EOs communicated their concerns and visions for the future. The author reveals how these communication strategies were used to shape public discourse, are shaped themselves by internal logics, and how they interact with formal and informal partnerships. Centring the voices, practices, and visual languages of Chilean organisations, chapters challenges the often Global North-centric narratives that dominate discussions of digital activism.

Providing a cohesive portrait of contemporary environmental communication in Chile, Southern Visions of Nature contributes to multiple academic fields, including environmental communication, media and visual culture studies, political communication, and Latin American studies. It is both a timely scholarly intervention and a testament to the creative resilience of environmental activism in an age of interconnected crises and within the struggle to imagine and communicate a new future from the Global South.