This groundbreaking book gives counselors, psychologists, social workers, clergy, and other helping professionals the tools they need to ethically and compassionately support clients who report paranormal or anomalous experiences. Without debating the reality of ghosts, visions, or unexplained encounters, Dr. Steve F. Bain and Dr. Kristopher K. Garza focus on what truly matters-the emotional and psychological impact such experiences can have on a person's life. This book offers strategies for bracketing personal beliefs, fostering empathy, and guiding clients toward meaning and peace. For the first time, mental health professionals are provided with a concise, accessible resource that bridges the gap between clinical training and the lived realities of those who face the mysterious. This readable, practical book is the definitive resource for introducing compassionate skills that you as a professional can implement in your sessions.

Key features include:

Multicultural Approach: Understand how culture affects work with clients dealing with unexplained phenomena.

Theoretical Foundations: Learn from time-honored theoretical perspectives that provide a basis for assisting clients with perception, awareness, acceptance, and personal growth.

Ethical Considerations: Examine ethical obligations to practice and model non-maleficence, beneficence, and veracity when working with clients reporting unexplained phenomena.

G.H.O.S.T. Method: Explore and integrate basic counseling skills while applying the G.H.O.S.T. method when addressing paranormal experiences.

God and Ghosts: Discover how to reconcile paranormal experiences with the spirituality and beliefs of your clients-as well as your own.

Evidence-Based Strategies: Review proven treatment approaches designed to strengthen your therapeutic toolbox.

Case Studies, Examples, and Exercises: Field-based stories and exercises designed to help you read, reflect, analyze, and integrate key concepts.

Accepting the Paranormal as Normal: Develop a genuine, empathetic approach toward clients that does not compromise your own beliefs.

Navigating Organizational Complexity: Resilience and Adaptability from Black Swans to Green explores the challenges of contemporary management in an era defined by unpredictability, complexity, and environmental volatility. Drawing on Nassim Taleb's metaphor of the "black swan", this book expands this concept to include a typology of transformative events: Black Swans (negative and unexpected), White Swans (positive and unexpected), Gray Swans (known but neglected threats), and Green Swans (long-term environmental megatrends). Through interdisciplinary analysis, it examines how organizations can build resilience, adapt to uncertainty, and thrive in the face of disruption. It offers practical tools and frameworks for strategic foresight, leadership, and risk management, making it an essential resource for navigating the complexities of the modern business environment. Key features include an innovative approach to the "black swan" metaphor, integrating concepts such as antifragility, organizational resilience, and sustainability. This book combines insights from management, sociology, psychology, and economics, with references to global crises, climate change, and digitization. Readers will benefit from practical strategies for fostering adaptability, learning cultures, and visionary leadership, supported by rich academic literature and real-world examples. It is ideal for academics, researchers, and advanced students in management, organizational studies, and sustainability, as well as business leaders seeking actionable insights to future-proof their organizations.

Amid global dialogue on the nature of human enhancement, this book traces humanity's pursuit of self- transcendence and enhancement from ancient times to the present, as reflected in diverse traditions across the globe.

The book examines how the term 'transhuman' can move beyond its scientific and technological origins by linking it to ideas, symbols, and practices of transcending human limits found in Asian and global religions and philosophies, including spiritual practices. It critically explores human enhancement in its various forms and considers the potential for complementarity or cooperation between traditions by situating perspectives on the Divine Human and the Transhuman within a comprehensive conceptual framework. Chapters delve into Indian Tantric, Yogic, and Buddhist Tantric views on enhancement, highlighting the intersections and divergences between transhumanist ideas and enhancement discourses in world philosophies and religions. Ultimately, the book argues that many religions in Asia and beyond emphasize the desire to transcend human limits, addressing life enhancement both spiritually and physically and advancing a philosophy of self-transcendence that embraces the physical nature of human existence.

By bridging perspectives from scholars of Indic spirituality, Buddhist tantric, and transhumanist philosophical discourse, the book facilitates the ability for mutual understanding and will be of use to researchers studying philosophy of religion, Asian philosophy, the philosophy of science, and philosophical anthropology. Those working in the fields of posthumanism and transhumanism studies will also find the volume useful.

The Balkans in the Late Middle Ages, 1300-1500 is the first publication of its kind to provide a point of reference for the history of Southeastern Europe during the late medieval period. Scholars have long recognized the 14th and 15th centuries as an extremely important period in the history of the medieval Balkans. This was an era of intense political and military tumult, financial crisis, and social disruption, but also a time of cultural and intellectual innovation and achievement.

While a growing body of literature has focused on developments in the Byzantine Empire and Latin Greece (i.e., the states created by Western/Latin rulers in the Greek Peninsula and some of the Aegean islands), most of the other states in the region, including Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania, have been largely neglected. What is more, no study has examined the whole peninsula as a geographic unit. The ultimate ambition of this 12-chapter volume is to fill this gap and produce a closely argued, fresh interpretation of events for the entire region, from Dalmatia, Wallachia, and Moldavia in the north to Byzantium and the Latin states in the south.

This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students and scholars with academic interests in the medieval Balkans, as well as to readers wanting to learn more about the history of the region.

Exploring how different scholars conceptualise norms and how these principles have emerged, the book analyses the implementation and impact of norms on global environmental governance. Chapters examine a diverse array of case studies that investigate the rights of nature, anti-fossil fuel, recycling and species protection norms, among others. The book advances norm theory, particularly in the context of international relations, providing fresh insights into how morality shapes humanity's impact on the planet.

Understanding Environmental Norms is a valuable resource for scholars and students of international politics, political science, environmental law, geography, sociology and environmental studies. It is also beneficial to practitioners and policymakers working on environmental governance and seeking a better understanding of the evolving power of norms.

Integrating architecture, art, and design, this book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on aesthetics to address contemporary issues related to nature, urban spaces, and media environments.

Exploring how different environments, both virtual and physical, impact our aesthetic experiences across various social contexts, the book focuses in particular on the environmental aspect, which includes protecting natural resources, habitats, and ecosystems to ensure their long-term health and sustainability. It also presents current debates surrounding commodification, innovation, and the democratization of artistic practices with a focus on the growing opportunities and challenges posed by digital technologies and artificial intelligence in shaping public perception, participation, and interest. To do so, it extends beyond traditional art institutions, engaging with built environments as active spaces for artistic intervention, aesthetic experiences, and collective imagination, and covering topics such as social well-being, fulfilling public needs related to the arts, and the seven pillars of sustainability.

This book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and upper-level students in aesthetics, philosophy, visual cultural studies, communication studies, sustainability, and media studies, particularly those with an interest in sociopolitical and environmental discussions.

This book explores the development of the ecological monetary paradigm in which money is created for the restoration and improvement of the Earth's ecology in a way that simultaneously addresses environmental and human well-being issues. Ecological money is created via the facilities of monetization and proliferated by the pricing of products.

The book, however, postulates that the development of an ecological monetary paradigm is hampered by a trilemma between inflation, the expenditure needed to mitigate ecological and climate crises, and the profit-making behaviour of enterprises. Namely, undertaking such massive expenditure would increase cost-push inflation, whilst, simultaneously, the refusal of enterprises to compromise on their profit-making would lead to profit-led inflation remaining intact if not strengthened. The book identifies the causes of the trilemma and calls for the emergence of new enterprises that would help mitigate the trilemma. The categories of such enterprises are derived, and the examples of enterprises that would satisfy these criteria are illustrated.

This book will interest any reader working in ecological, environmental, and sustainable development topics. It will also appeal to those working on ecological macroeconomics, monetary theory and policy, valuation of firms, and the history of economic thought.

Universities shape more than what students know. They shape who students can be and become. This book, therefore, examines how educational systems simultaneously shape knowledge production and ways of being.

Drawing from philosophy of education, decolonial thought, social epistemology, and Japanese aesthetics, the book develops the concept of onto-epistemic educational injustice through theoretical analysis of how injustice in educational contexts, particularly higher education, operates at both epistemological and ontological levels. Unlike existing approaches that focus primarily on knowledge-related harms, the book demonstrates that educational experiences fundamentally shape both what students know and who they become. Through examination of language practices, academic conventions, and philosophical traditions such as the Japanese concept of ma (?), chapters consider how approaches to understanding educational injustice might engage more comprehensively with the intersection between knowing and being. Written across multiple registers-argument, narrative, and poetry-the author practises the intellectual plurality it advocates and experiments with what academic writing itself can become.

The book will be of interest to scholars, students, and educators in the fields of philosophy, philosophy of education, critical theory, higher education, and sociology of education. Those working in student support services and academic advisors will also benefit from it.

This book explores how HR technologies may mitigate the negative impacts of work-family conflicts on work engagement, a topic of increasing relevance in the digital era.

Acknowledging the changes in gender stereotypes and its impact on work engagement, this book undertakes systematic literature reviews on gender stereotypes, work-family conflicts, work engagement, and disruptive HR technologies to identify gaps in existing Human Resource Management research. Grounding on the theories such as social role theory, role-conflict theory, and the job-demand resource mode, Priyashantha surveys over 600 Sri Lankan private sector executives and shows that changing gender stereotypes both enhance work engagement and intensify work-family conflict; while the perceived desirability of disruptive HR technologies raises engagement, it can amplify the negative impact of work-family conflict on work engagement when not matched by credible implementation. Practical implications of the research for organizations and HR practitioners are also discussed.

This book is of interest to scholars of human resource management and organizational behaviour.

Israel's Public Administration: Structure, Functions and Needed Reforms provides a comprehensive and critical examination of Israel's civil service, its institutional evolution, and the challenges it faces in maintaining effective and democratic governance.

Drawing on extensive historical analysis, quantitative data, and comparative perspectives, Itzhak Galnoor and Nissim Cohen trace how foundational institutional choices have shaped the structure, culture, and performance of Israel's public administration. The book identifies key structural weaknesses - including fragmented accountability, politicized appointments, opaque budgeting practices, and problematic privatization policies - and explains how these dynamics have contributed to inefficiency, inequality, and democratic deficits. This second edition incorporates the latest available data and introduces a new chapter examining the public administration's handling of the coronavirus crisis, offering timely insight into state capacity under conditions of emergency. The authors conclude with concrete and practical reform proposals, including legal safeguards, strengthened accountability mechanisms, outcome-oriented budgeting, and measures to reinforce professionalism and inclusivity in the civil service.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of public administration, political science, and Israeli politics, as well as policymakers, civil servants, and practitioners interested in governance reform, state capacity, and democratic accountability.

This fourth edition of Social Work Practice in Mental Health builds on the underpinning principles of the previous editions whilst reflecting how the context for practice has steadily evolved.

Organised into two parts and 11 chapters, the book focuses on recovery theory, the importance of relationships and an examination of the social context and consequences of illness. It explores the perspectives of consumers and family carers in shaping practice, together with a focus on key skills such as risk assessments, working in a multidisciplinary team, working with trauma, working within a legal framework and spirituality in practice. The book maintains the key theme from previous editions of valuing lived experience, with new content on the NDIS program and its extension to cover people with serious mental health illness, further detailed analysis of trauma, working with individuals and targeted mental health interventions in community settings.

Featuring numerous vignettes and illustrations from practice, this book is both essential reading for social work students and an invaluable resource for practitioners in the fields of social work and mental health.

Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the Handbook assesses the overlapping constructs and ongoing debate surrounding the definition of 'sense of place'. It explores connections to natural environments, virtual places, change over time and also broader questions such as how place can be understood across cultures and how attitudes toward places evolve. Chapters engage with non-Western, First Nations worldviews which treat 'Country' as a living, relational entity, contrasting sharply with typical Western, object-oriented models. They provide weight to the view that 'place' must be studied from many angles, and that respecting diverse, especially Indigenous, perspectives is essential for a fuller, more inclusive understanding of how people relate to the world around them. This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of this fast-developing field, while also developing theory and encouraging future research in subjects such as regeneration, social relations and digital advancements.

The Handbook on Sense of Place is a valuable resource for students and scholars of human geography, environmental psychology, cultural studies and sociology. Its insights into how people relate to the world around them will also benefit practitioners in urban and regional planning and environmental policymakers.

Sustainability Transitions in Tourism and Hospitality offers vital conceptual and practical insights into the domains of sustainability transitions (ST) in tourism and hospitality sectors, business models, and operations.

Using ST theory, this book addresses the extent to which the tourism and hospitality industries drive the ST by revamping business models and practices to incorporate sustainability into their innovation strategy. The chapters are structured to examine these topics through ST, which entail a comprehensive consideration of the state of knowledge, conceptual underpinning about ST in tourism and hospitality, as well as current and alternative models and governance frameworks that support ST. By doing so, it sheds light on how ST in tourism and hospitality, by virtue of being multi-dimensional and multi-actor, are at the interface of political sciences, geography, sociological and behavioural sciences, technology, and innovation studies. This is supported with case-based insights throughout. This timely volume advances the tourism and hospitality research agenda towards generating an in-depth understanding of the dynamics, processes, and structures that shape the industry's transition to more sustainable consumption and production systems.

This book will be of pivotal interest to students, researchers, and academics of tourism as well as in development studies disciplines.

Focusing on local sustainability transitions from a broad spectrum of socio-political regimes, contributors examine key questions concerning the role of community capital, cultural context, conflict mediation and public sector capacity. They discuss empirical findings from the GOGREEN Project, exploring factors which support and challenge activists in their efforts to co-create sustainability transitions. Chapters assess the impact of private entrepreneurs initiating and facilitating green co-creation, as well as conflict resolution in sustainable energy projects.

International in scope and perspective, this is an essential read for researchers and graduate students of public policy, environmental studies and sustainable governance. Policymakers and practitioners working in environmental governance and regulation, as well as those focusing on implementing the SDGs, will likewise benefit from its novel and timely analysis.

This book critically examines the discourses and policy responses surrounding China's success in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), offering alternative approaches to engaging with Chinese education through a nuanced understanding of its experiences and intellectual traditions.

China's exceptional PISA performance has ignited a global conversation on "learning from Chinese education." Yet this discourse often reflects the geopolitics of knowledge and remains entangled in Orientalist frameworks rooted in Western modernity. Drawing on the decolonial theory, this book challenges the Western-oriented representations of Chinese education and advocates for a deeper engagement with Chinese intellectual resources. It explores how such engagement can illuminate the complexities of Chinese education while fostering meaningful dialogues between China and other traditions. These dialogues aim to cultivate social-ecological relationality and interdependence through education, offering insights that extend beyond China's borders.

This volume is an essential resource for scholars and students in Chinese education studies, comparative and international education, decolonial studies, and the philosophy and culture of education.

Evaluating theories, methodologies, performance and practice, the Handbook explains the ideas behind ESG investing and how applications relate to real portfolios. Chapters explore topics including the use of AI and machine learning for measuring ESG performance, the issues surrounding sustainability reporting in global value chains and cognitive biases in ESG investing. Authors highlight the growing need for consistent and transparent data, as differing rating systems and reporting standards make it difficult to compare companies. Ultimately, the Handbook emphasises that ESG investing is becoming an essential part of modern finance but must overcome data and measurement challenges to reach its full potential.

Bridging theory and practice, the Handbook of ESG Investing is a valuable resource for scholars and students of economics, finance and the environment. Its focus on policy and regulatory implications will also benefit policymakers and practitioners in the finance sector.

After taking stock of current systems, the book identifies forces that are reshaping and will continue to reshape fiscal decentralization globally, nationally and locally. Contributing authors address both enduring constraints, such as local fiscal autonomy, and emerging issues, including the evolution of globalization, political and socioeconomic context changes and rapid technological development. They explore how to design better intergovernmental fiscal systems as well as how to deal with decentralization measurement challenges, strengthen local capacity, manage extreme events, and improve equity and impact. The conclusion outlines strategies for adapting decentralization policies for the coming decades.

These insights will be of value to public finance scholars seeking advanced analysis of fiscal federalism, taxation and intergovernmental finance. Policymakers and international development practitioners will also benefit from this practical guidance on the design and reform of decentralization policies.

Organization Design equips readers with advanced tools and frameworks for understanding and re-designing organizations by simplifying complex roles, processes, and structures. Now in a fully updated third edition, it introduces new pedagogical features to spotlight significant debates and encourage critical reflection on core ideas.

Grounded in both research and practical experience, this book offers a balanced approach to organizational efficiency and complexity, complemented by actionable insights throughout and supporting online material. Drawing on Russell Ackoff's system theory, Worren emphasizes the interconnected nature of all organizational elements as a key to support strategic goals. The book is designed around broad thematic areas: from a review of foundational theory to core components of organization design, methodologies for re-design projects, and a diagnostic framework for complex organizations. This structured division enables readers to follow chapters consecutively or consult each section independently.

Rigorous in focus, this textbook serves as an authoritative source that bridges academia and the professional world. Students, scholars, and practitioners alike will benefit from its comprehensive guidance and pragmatic orientation.

This long-awaited second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Thailand offers a comprehensive, authoritative, and multidisciplinary investigation into the complex forces shaping the nation in the 21st century.

New for this edition is an in-depth exploration of the persistent dominance of the monarchy and the military; the systemic "lawfare" used to neutralise democratic challengers; and the emergence of vibrant, youth-led movements demanding fundamental structural reform. Beyond the political arena, the volume maps the intricate landscape of a society in flux: the digital transformation that has fostered both networked activism and sophisticated authoritarian surveillance; the historical roots of the violence in the southern border provinces; and the shift in gender and sexual politics from the margins to the forefront of human rights discourse. By assembling leading scholars to analyse the country's turbulent modern trajectory, this volume transcends traditional narratives to provide an incisive examination of the systemic power dynamics, social fissures, and evolving political identities that define Thailand today.

The volume will be an essential guide for researchers, students, and policymakers specialising in fields such as Southeast Asian studies, comparative politics, international relations, sociology, and human rights, providing a roadmap for navigating the profound contradictions inherent in the contemporary Thai state.

The Moral Economy of Plant-Based Futures explores the complex interplay between plant-based social movements and the evolving global economy, offering a timely analysis of how these movements respond to and shape calls for reduced meat and dairy production.

While meat and dairy production and consumption are increasingly being held responsible for climate change and general environmental destruction, questions of how social movements respond to and are affected by global calls for a reduction of meat and dairy products remain underexplored in relation to markets. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Telangana, India, and California, USA, the author adopts a multi-sited, sociomaterial approach to investigate how moral issues intersect with economic arrangements, revealing how movements influence markets and vice versa. It establishes an empirically based, interdisciplinary research agenda for exploring how the plant-based moral economy is understood, practised and contested at different social levels across both the Global North and South, and advances a broader theorization of the moral economy of plant-based futures.

An examination of the interaction of moral issues with economic arrangements, which combines a social movement's perspective with a moral-economy approach, this book offers a compelling lens for exploring how movements make markets. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, geography, development, movements and globalization with interests in food, the environment and the moral economy.