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.

The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics provides a clear and up-to-date overview of contemporary developments in the field, exploring the current role of Spanish as an international language used across academic, social, and professional activities. Now in a fully revised edition, it highlights new areas of interdisciplinary research as well as the fast-paced worldwide growth of the Spanish language.

Under Lacorte's editorship, this handbook is firmly grounded in a notion of applied linguistics as an autonomous scientific field that addresses language-based issues and problems in real-world contexts. Specifically, the volume:

• covers key areas in Hispanic applied linguistics including teaching and learning Spanish as a second language (L2), Spanish in the professions, discourse analysis, and social and political issues related to the Spanish language;
• provides state-of-the-art knowledge contributed by prominent scholars and researchers from institutions around the world;
• offers a multidisciplinary approach written in English to the analysis and resolution of language-based issues in Spanish-speaking environments;
• addresses the increasingly varied needs of graduates in Hispanic linguistics, noting how they run in parallel to the study of practical applications of Spanish.

Across forty chapters, contributors identify growing opportunities for Spanish graduates in various areas, including teaching, translation and interpretation, language program administration, instructional technology, and content creation.

Wide-encompassing and future-oriented, this handbook is an ideal resource for students and researchers of the Spanish language and applied linguistics as well as teachers and professionals.

This essential book brings together leading criminology researchers from across the globe to explore the critical role of the 'evidence base' in crime and criminal justice. It began with a simple question: if experts were asked to write about the evidence base in their area of expertise, what would they say? Casting the net widely to ensure a diverse range of topics, contributors were given a straightforward brief: 5000 words on any aspect of the evidence base within their field. The result is a lively and accessible collection of papers offering critical assessments and insightful commentary on the state of research evidence.

This book is designed for students, academics, policymakers, and practitioners in criminology, criminal justice, and related fields. It addresses the challenges of turning empirical evidence into effective policy and practice, while highlighting methodological, political, and practical issues faced by researchers. The chapters provide research-driven insights into the evidence base across various areas, making this an invaluable resource for understanding the intersection of research and public policy in criminal justice.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Evidence Base.

This book offers a broad introduction to print culture and communication in the Stuart world, exploring the emergence of the anglophone global publishing industry in the early modern period and its interaction with various forms of communication in the Stuart dominions.

The volume begins by providing comprehensive and accessible guidance on how to find and use major online digital resources on early modern print and other forms of communication as well as how to find and analyse material in archives. The second part focuses on the processes of communication and print from composition to dissemination and offers students an introductory overview of these processes at work. The third part consists of case studies showing how the sovereign's relationship with the printing press and other forms of communication shaped key events during the century. The final part introduces how exiled communities and colonies interacted with the printing press both at home and abroad and the place of anglophone communication within these complex linguistic and religious communities.

Written in a clear and accessible style and by leading experts in the field, the book offers a starting point from which to explore this multifaceted and ever-growing field, in particular introducing readers to the new digital resources available to help them engage with key primary material. With a comprehensive glossary, a timeline and specially curated reading lists at the back of each chapter, this textbook is a valuable resource for students and lecturers of early modern Britain, print culture and the history of communication.

Presenting a sociological perspective on globalisation and COVID-19 impacts, this book examines the lasting effects of COVID-19 on the structure of work and unpaid domestic labour.

Labour patterns have influenced political, social, and economic spheres that affect organisational practices. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this book showcases these effects upon household labour, care work, unpaid domestic work, and organisational practices, with attention to systemic inequalities by gender and age, net zero, privacy, and digitisation transitions. It examines the exponential post-pandemic growth of digitisation and what this has meant in encouraging remote, home-working or hybrid work health, and wellbeing. Taking a sociology of work approach with a critical eye for neoliberalism influences, this book explores the first years of the pandemic's aftermath, analysing both its short-term and potential long-term effects on paid work and unpaid domestic labour.

This book will be of interest to academics, students, and practitioners in the areas of sociology, global studies, occupational health, and international relations. In particular, those engaged with the sociology of work and the sociology of family will find this a valuable resource for understanding work in the post-pandemic world.

This book provides a new perspective on the history of the United States from the eighteenth to early twenty-first century. It brings together 15 chapters that engage with the changing contour of the United States, its changing political culture, and its internal and international politics, and provides a critique of its democracy. It focuses on marginalized social groups - indigenous tribes, indentured labor, slaves, and immigrants - to understand their role and contributions in the making of the United States. The book examines gender roles, class, race, ethnicity and the movements for rights that heralded the beginning of a new political agenda, viz. the mobilization of African-Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, and New Environmentalism. It also adds to the discussion on major phases of Black history -enslavement, bondage and emancipation, sharecropping and tenancy, and the initiation of the Black Movement, led and influenced by the political ideology of its leaders and institutions like Booker T. Washington, WEB Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and the NAACP.

Providing an in-depth study and critique of American capitalism and imperialism and its impact on the global environment, the book will be of interest to academics, university teachers and students seeking new methodologies of teaching-learning and pedagogical strategies, and readers keen to delve into the history of the United States.

Drawing on global case studies, expert contributors demonstrate AI's capacity to enhance efficiency, reduce resource consumption, minimize bias, and strengthen employee well-being. They also combine environmental HR policy and digital transformations into one holistic framework, going beyond the traditional scholarly approach of treating them as separate entities. Chapters provide a practical guide for AI integration, addressing critical concerns over algorithmic transparency, data privacy, unequal access, and environmental costs. Adhering to specialized ethical guidelines, the contributing authors argue that successful AI integration will come from human-centered designs which prioritize participatory implementation and align with social and environmental values.

This is an essential resource for scholars and students of business, employment relations, knowledge management, and disruptive technologies. HR practitioners and organizational managers will also benefit from its actionable guidance for leveraging AI tools.

Technomorphisms and the Posthuman Turn explores the profound intersections between psychoanalysis and posthumanism, shedding light on the evolving complexities of subjectivity in a hyper-technological world.

This ground-breaking volume delves into the hybridization of the human, nature, and technology, examining how these intersections reshape notions of gender, sexuality, identity, and subjectivity. Through contributions from leading thinkers, the book addresses the ethical and theoretical challenges posed by posthumanism, including the rise of nomadic subjectivities, prosthetic bodies, and the dominance of digital culture. It critically investigates the impact of these transformations on psychoanalytic theory and practice, urging a re-evaluation of traditional epistemological frameworks. By fostering dialogue with other disciplines, the book seeks to deepen our understanding of unconventional subjectivities and the shifting itineraries of sexuality and gender in contemporary society.

This book is an essential resource for psychoanalysts, scholars, and students interested in the intersections of psychoanalysis, gender studies, posthumanism, and technology. It is also invaluable for anyone seeking to understand the ethical and theoretical implications of living in a world where the boundaries of the human are constantly being redefined.

This insightful Research Agenda assesses the ways in which agricultural law can be reshaped to promote a more secure and sustainable food system. Contributions tackle recent challenges such as food price crises, the Ukraine War and tariff barriers on food products, as well as more chronic sources of concern for the industry, such as climate change and the effect of diet on health.

Surveying the latest research in agriculture, international experts examine the shifting boundaries of food sovereignty, ways of regulating new technologies (with focus on cultivated meat and gene-editing) and the role of the consumer. These pertinent topics are supplemented by detailed analyses of future sustainability initiatives, extending from instances of food waste mismanagement on farms to solutions for improved water infrastructure. The book ultimately illustrates that, in order to ensure a successful future for agricultural law, it is necessary for legislators to operate across traditional boundaries and embrace the complexity generated by numerous interlocking legal issues.

Scholars and students of agricultural and environmental law will benefit greatly from the foundational ideas and practical solutions supplied throughout this Research Agenda. It also provides informed, actionable insights for policymakers and specialist practitioners seeking to develop their knowledge in this field.

The expanded group of BRICS nations informally known as BRICS+ encompasses of both established members and the new additions nations which includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These BRICS+ nations stand at the cusp of unparalleled growth and economic expansion. BRICS+ contributes significantly to global primary energy production, accounting for 48% of the sector.

This book emphasizes the significance of energy for growth and sustainability, highlighting the role of BRICS+ nations in enhancing global energy resilience. This resilience could be achieved through collaborations, policy strategies, and economic implications, calling attention to energy trading free from sanctions. Further, it embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic landscape inhabited by the BRICS+ nations, a collective that includes established BRICS+ countries as well as new members. At its core, the narrative confronts the looming spectre of structural shocks, with a keen focus on the energy sector, and the profound implications these disruptions pose for the economic potential of these nations. What sets this work apart is its emphasis on the vulnerabilities of the BRICS+ nations, characterized by fiscally fragile economies heavily reliant on imported energy. It delves into the international externalities that make these nations susceptible, compounded by their geological predisposition to volatility. The book charts a course for change, proposing a systematic departure from these disruptions through academic insights and elaborations, laying the foundation for sustained and successful growth.

As such, it will be a useful guide for academics, students, researchers and policymakers concerned with the discourse on sustainability and resilience in BRICS+ nations, paving the way for a more informed and innovative approach to the challenges faced by these nations in the interconnected global landscape.

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed media and journalism teaching and practice, introducing efficiencies and innovations that can help streamline content creation and dissemination, albeit with inherent limitations and ethical considerations requiring careful critical examination.

This book investigates AI's impact on media landscapes within Africa, offering a range of practical case studies and strategic recommendations for practice, teaching, governance, and regulation. The book delves into how AI technologies are rapidly being integrated into African journalism, broadcasting, public relations, advertising, and media and communications education. As well as providing real-world case studies of how AI is changing content creation, distribution, and consumption in Africa, the book also critically analyses the ethical challenges posed by AI, such as misinformation, algorithmic bias, and job displacement. The book concludes by providing strategic recommendations for how educators, media professionals, and policymakers can effectively harness AI's potential.

Bringing together leading researchers and practitioners, this book provides a platform for informed discussions, knowledge-sharing and innovation in African media and communication studies.

This book centres on neurodivergent social workers and how managers and supervisors can ensure they offer neuroinclusive support and guidance in social work teams and organisations.

Explaining key theory, information, and practice regarding neurodiversity to develop understanding, it will also enable practitioners to connect with how neurodivergent social workers may experience social work practice and the impact on their practice and well-being. Using a strengths-based and neuro-affirming perspective, it shows how managers and supervisors can understand, value, and utilise the knowledge skills and values of neurodivergent social workers within teams and services. Offering frameworks, ideas, and advice on specific social work contexts such as supervision, organising, and planning work, enabling a sensory-affirming workplace, as well as developing trusted and empathic working relationships, it will help social work professionals to practice inclusively and anti-oppressively with their neurodivergent colleagues.

This book will be a useful resource for social work managers and supervisors, as well as practice educators and the wider organisation. Neurodivergent social workers will also find the information useful in terms of their own working strategies and approaches.

The earliest collections of Egyptian artifacts were those pieces taken by the Roman empire. There are more Egyptian obelisks in Rome today than there are left in Egypt. In the nineteenth century, British collections were built by the same people whose work comprises volume two. They began as private collections, meant as status symbols usually for the wealthy, or for those who wished to show evidence of their wide travels. However, gradually, many of these collections were left in wills to municipal institutions or turned into publicly available collections themselves.

The British Museum, originally founded in 1759, opened its first purpose built gallery for Egyptian antiquities in 1808. The Townley Gallery was built to house the antiquities seized from the French in 1801, including the Rosetta Stone, and the collection has been growing ever since. Later, the British Museum hired people who were already in Egypt, or who were going to Egypt of their own accord, to gather and send back artifacts. As the discipline of archaeology in Egypt became a scholarly pursuit, museums began to sponsor their own expeditions in order to fill their now bursting stores. Collecting in order to possess the past, both physically and ideologically, of a subjected people was the point.

Banal Fascism Online: Weaponizing the "Everyday" for Extreme Ends offers a novel lens through which to research, conceptualize, and understand fascism and its place in today's political culture. It allows space for its authors to explore fascism as it exists in the digital world, outside the rigid boundaries of historically recognized fascist states.

The digital seeps into every avenue of the political and social, and thus offers a useful framing for analyzing the inherent banality of fascism. Specifically, this edited volume considers the different ways the digital world supports and structures our political and social identities: How do social media and online fora create spaces for extremist values that are perceived as mundane? What technological affordances provide fascist thought leaders access to - and influence over - various audiences? Which platforms offer the most comprehensive opportunities for anti-democratic political strategizing? As the United States and much of Europe continue to see their democratic institutions come under attack by rising fascist and authoritarian movements, this volume provides an indispensable examination of the ways fascism has not only increased in its mainstreaming and palatability, but also how it has always been integral to our societies. This groundbreaking framework and the chapters evidencing its utility offer a tangible means of identifying and ultimately combating fascist structures.

As a result of the strategic deployment of banal fascism across the globe, this volume will appeal to academics, students, politicians, journalists, and anyone concerned about the precarity of liberal democracy and its potential replacement with, at best, illiberal democracy and, at worst, fascism.

Simon Susen's trilogy offers a systematic account of Juergen Habermas's Also a History of Philosophy. It provides a comprehensive overview of the central issues at stake in this magnum opus and, crucially, assesses its most significant limitations and shortcomings.

Susen shows how Habermas's approach to the history of philosophy seeks to reconstruct the genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking by tracing the tension-laden relationship between faith and knowledge back to the major developments brought about during the Axial Age. The trilogy examines how Habermas's latest project invites us to reconsider not only classical antinomies - such as faith vs. knowledge, the sacred vs. the profane, religion vs. science - but also the role of philosophy in the twenty-first century, particularly with regard to its capacity to overcome the tension between 'ideologization' [Verweltanschaulichung] and 'scientization' [Verwissenschaftlichung]. This endeavour, Susen argues, sheds light on the extent to which the emancipatory potential of rational freedom, far from being reducible to a mere product of the Enlightenment, has been present throughout human history - most notably in the processes of 'the linguistification of the sacred' in advanced civilizations during the first millennium BCE. Informed by a meticulous analysis of the Epilogue to the original German-language edition - which contains valuable insights into Habermas's retrospective reflections on his main arguments and engages with the reception of his ambitious theoretical enterprise - this definitive trilogy serves as an essential guide to one of Habermas's seminal works.

The second volume, The Consolidation of Postmetaphysical Thinking, explores the dimensions that are particularly important to Habermas's project of developing a genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking.

This trilogy is for all those in the social sciences and humanities studying and researching classical and contemporary social theory, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, political sociology, cultural sociology, social and political philosophy, epistemology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, and the history of social and political thought.

Most previous studies of Adam Smith's methodology, with a few exceptions, have placed considerable emphasis on the undeniable influence of Newtonian physics and Humean empiricism.

This book argues that other sources are at least as important: Smith's own didactic rhetoric and the methodological writings of Rene Descartes. Smith began his public life in 1748, lecturing on rhetoric in Edinburgh. During this time he also wrote a history of astronomy, tracing its development from the age of mythical thought to Descartes (later incorporating Newton's ideas). In his History of Astronomy, he was less concerned with the truth value of theories than with their ability to quiet the human imagination by systematically combining numerous phenomena under a few unifying principles. In his lectures on rhetoric, he considered this approach to be the best method of didactic exposition. In both cases, he attached the greatest importance to one of the authors he cited most often between 1748 and 1763, Descartes. As such, Descartes and rhetoric were central to the young Smith's thinking prior to the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Consequently, any methodological examination of Smith's published works must be framed as a question of didactic exposition seen through a Cartesian lens.

This book will appeal particularly to historians of philosophy and economic theory, as well as to scholars of Adam Smith's life and work.

This book addresses pertinent issues faced by South Asians in the diaspora today, such as questions of home and belonging. The chapters offer nuanced understandings of South Asian Diasporic literary writings through various theoretical and methodological approaches.

From 19th-century colonial indentured labor migration to various European plantation economies to 20th-century skilled migration to developed countries in the West, the South Asians today constitute the largest diasporas in the world. For South Asians in the diaspora, the question of home and belonging remains a subtle and contested topic. Home and belonging are critical to diasporic communities because they address core challenges of identity, displacement, and navigating dual lives. They negotiate multiple belongings, leading to a hybrid identity that is never completely fixed. The contributions explore pertinent questions of hybridity and liminality of the diasporic subject, as reflected in media and literary writings produced over the last three decades.

This volume will be of great interest to scholars working on the South Asian diaspora, English literature, cultural studies, migration, gender, and transnationalism. The chapters were originally published in various issues and volumes of South Asian Diaspora.

This volume presents up-to-date insights into the ethical theories of Aristotle's followers, beginning with his colleagues Theophrastus and Eudemus and covering a broad range of figures, topics and applications up to the Imperial Roman period.

The ethical work of the Peripatetic school in antiquity included a number of authors who engaged with Aristotle's own legacy as well as emerging Hellenistic schools of philosophy, particularly Stoicism and Epicureanism. Much of the evidence for these views is fragmentary; this book guides readers through Peripatetic ethics in Theophrastus' work and beyond, encompassing a wide selection of philosophers, works and topics. It explores two controversial ethical treatises attributed to Aristotle but arguably not by him (the Eudemian Ethics and the Magna Moralia); fresh looks at animal and plant ethics in the School of Aristotle; four studies of various aspects of the ethical thought of Theophrastus; and another four studies on Peripatetic ethical thought after Theophrastus, from Hieronymus of Rhodes in the 3rd century BCE to Aspasius in the 2nd century CE.

Peripatetic Ethics in Theophrastus and After is of interest to students and scholars of ancient Greek philosophy and ethics, particularly Aristotelian ethics and other Peripatetics.