A fascinating visual exploration of all things linguistic, tracing how words, sounds, scripts, norms, and borders are in constant flux

Did you know that more than 7,000 languages are spoken today, but that fifty percent of the world's people use only fifteen of them? Or that there are hundreds of separate sign languages? Or that a dog's bark is represented with wildly different sounds in English, Czech, and Thai? In The World Atlas of Language, Gaston Dorren, the international bestselling author of Lingo, Babel, and other books about languages, invites readers on a captivating journey that charts the geographical spread of languages and dialects around the world through the ages-and tells the incredible stories behind them in his unmistakable style. The result is an essential reference for anyone who loves how humans speak, write-and vary.

Organized by theme and richly illustrated throughout with full-color maps, timelines, and other graphics, this book traces the origins and evolutions of the world's languages and of the communities that nurture and live in them. From Old, Middle, and Modern English and the great linguistic variety of the Americas to the lingua francas of Africa and the many unique tongues that are about to fall silent, the atlas reveals an astonishing linguistic diversity.

• Features 100 full-color maps, timelines, and other graphics
• Tells engaging stories about the origins and evolutions of languages and how they have been carried around the world by nations, religions, and empires
• Includes sections on:

• An essential reference for readers interested in languages, words, and their histories

This book explores how the global shift to clean energy affects people differently, and what can be done to make this transition fair for everyone. It explains the idea of energy justice and shows why questions of fairness and equity are as important as technology and economics in shaping future energy systems.

The volume explores who benefits and who risks being left behind in the energy transition - from households facing energy poverty to women and older generations whose needs are often overlooked. It introduces practical ways to measure these inequities, highlights examples from different countries, and shows how policies can be designed to protect vulnerable groups.

By linking social issues with energy policies, the book demonstrates how fairness can be built into decisions about energy access, costs, security, and innovation. It also offers insights into how governments and institutions can create more inclusive strategies for a low-carbon future.

Written for both experts and readers interested in the human side of the energy transition, this book provides a guide to making energy systems not only cleaner but also fairer and more socially sustainable.

In this celebration of chapters, New Perspectives on African Business covers terrain across Africa that has rarely been examined, particularly outside familiar settings, in a way that is both insightful and engaging, answering the mystery around how business is conducted across the continent and the associated challenges.

In this highly curated collection, scholars Harrison and Omeihe connect theory to context and draw on diverse perspectives to deepen understanding by bringing together research from leading African scholars. Drawing from insights across key disciplines, the authors examine themes such as entrepreneurship, leadership in cultural contexts, economic development, and less explored areas including tourism, CSR, and SMEs through the lens of specific countries across the continent.

This volume is of benefit to both undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as advanced scholars, opening avenues for future contributions by pointing to areas where further research is needed to develop the field.

The New Frontiers in African Business and Society book series is dedicated to the exploration of theoretical and conceptual discussions that consolidate conventional knowledge about Africa. The purpose of the series is to invite new reflections on the nature of business and society across parts of Africa. The series contributes by interrogating the socially constructed practices, assumptions and beliefs which provide meaning for scholarship across Africa.

This book is a go-to source for educators, including those in late-primary education, secondary education, and undergraduate higher education, interested in teaching genocide studies. The author makes the subject more accessible for students, as well as for educators who do not have a background in this subarea. Each chapter includes discussion questions, research prompts, and suggestions for further reading. The book will also appeal to fans of the Harry Potter series.

How to avoid the trap of taking conflicts so personally

We're all imperfect. Good relationships require seeing each other through these imperfections-distinguishing what is signal, and what is noise. But sometimes we mistake noise for signal-or worse, signal for noise. And even when we get things right, the other person can be getting them wrong. In When Things Get Personal, Mark Schroeder shows that the better we can learn to tell the difference between signal and noise in our relationships, the better we can predict and avoid everyday misunderstandings that, if left unchecked, can lead to "discord"-fundamental, sometimes chronic failures to see eye to eye that lead us to take things personally that we shouldn't, to treat others in ways that they take personally, to abandon relationships that are worthwhile, and to stay in relationships that we'd be better off without.

Engagingly written, story-driven, and rich with powerful ideas and insights, When Things Get Personal addresses conflicts between colleagues, friends, and partners-and between parents and their children. Along the way, it explores the role discord plays in abusive relationships, in tragic coming-out stories, in political polarization, in small ongoing disagreements over things like how to load the dishwasher, and much more.

Discord gets us all into serious trouble. But unrecognized discord is even worse. When Things Get Personal teaches you to recognize the causes and symptoms of discord, allowing you to escape many of its worst effects. You will understand other people better-and maybe yourself, as well.

This book is the first to explore Argentine tango as both a philosophical practice and a metaphor for human existence. Written by an Argentine professional dancer and academic philosopher, it bridges embodied experience and intellectual inquiry to propose a transformative "philo-tango" approach. Drawing on classical philosophy, existentialism, and contemporary therapeutic movements, the book argues that tango's five loves-of music, self, partner, floor, and community-offer a kinesthetic path to virtue ethics and personal growth. Through lyrical analysis, case studies, and philosophical reflection, Carone shows how tango can heal, connect, and inspire, making it not just a dance but a way of life. This groundbreaking work will appeal to scholars in philosophy, dance studies, and ethics, as well as practitioners of tango and philosophical counseling.

When reading this book, there are moments I literally leap for joy. Tango as a Metaphor for Life will make an important contribution to the fields of dance studies and philosophy. It is original; it breaks new ground in both philosophy and dance studies; it is filled with illuminating anecdotes, observations, and analyses of both dances and texts; and it is grounded in the author's extensive knowledge and personal expertise in both dance and philosophy. Carone's overarching claim that the practice of Tango, when integrated with philosophical dialogue, functions not only to represent life but transform it, will resonate across disciplines. Her Philo-Tango approach has enormous, proven potential for breaking open conversation and catalyzing healing in a number of venues, from academic to therapeutic settings. The range and depth of the author's scholarship are consistently impressive. Brava!

Kimerer L. LaMothe, Ph.D., Harvard University, USA

"Gabriela Carone brings together her expertise in academic philosophy and tango to reveal how tango dance and culture can give substance to the Socratic quest to live an examined life, and how, in turn, a philosophical life of self-reflection can bring tango to its most expressive and deeply meaningful manifestations. This outstanding book masterfully threads together the naturally congenial-yet often, for human beings, hard to harmonize-strands of the non-verbal, kinesthetic, and embodied nature of dance with the dialectical, conceptual, and reflective demands of philosophy. This work makes a much-needed contribution not only to the study and philosophy of dance, especially tango, but also to broader debates in practical philosophy, the philosophy of love, embodied approaches in the psychology and philosophy of cognition, Latin American philosophy, and, more generally, to investigations that situate themselves within the ancient tradition of philosophy as a way of life and a therapy for living."

--Patricia Marechal, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Philosophy Department, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This edited volume examines the unforeseen effects of the notion of intangible heritage on conservation practices not only for urban contexts, but more generally for cultural practices. The notion of monumentality that UNESCO asserted focused on the material, tangible qualities of objects. It inevitably favoured European heritage sites and largely ignored forms of 'living' cultural heritage. This criticism not only came from scholars, but also from UNESCO member states from the Global South that addressed this omission and lobbied intensely for a more inclusive notion of World Heritage. One of the outcomes of these debates was the 2003 'Intangible Heritage Convention' - which was hoped to offer a remedy to the imbalanced global spread of World Heritage. Much academic research focuses on assessing whether or not the Convention indeed met its promises of broadening the heritage concept and ensuring a more even spread of World Heritage. Less attention has, however, been given to its unforeseen implications for contemporary heritage practices. By introducing less strict notions of authenticity, UNESCO and ICOMOS helped lay the conceptual grounds for many urban and industrial developments that it now resists. Urban planners, politicians and developers have used the notion of intangible cultural heritage to legitimize intrusive changes to historic urban landscapes or heritage sites. The introduction of the concept of intangible cultural heritage has thus not simply created 'just another list', but produced shifts in how we discuss, define and manage historic built environments in the 21st century.

The chapters address the history of the 'Intangible Heritage Convention', as well as its current uses in various contexts. The book includes both contributions that are theoretical in nature, as well as chapters that explore specific case studies. Key questions that the volume addresses include: How did the notion of heritage evolve to include cultural practices? What is the history of intangible heritage as concept and a practice? How did the notion of intangible heritage affect conservation philosophy and practice? How was the notion of intangible heritage criticized and by whom? How did the conservation philosophy evolve in relation to the notion of intangible heritage? And how do these issues influence views on and dealings with intangible heritage today?

The book brings together different disciplinary and cultural perspectives from different parts of the globe. Contributing authors are based in Southern Africa, Europe, South Asia and North America. The book's main audience includes academics interested in heritage and heritage practitioners.

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.

A close-up examination of the roots of congressional politics in nominations for the House of Representatives.

With most House seats all but guaranteed for one party in general elections, primary elections for party nominees often decide who goes to Congress. Yet primaries are notoriously difficult to study, due in part to both the variety of rules that govern them and the differences in the influence of local leaders. Based on wide-ranging evidence from field interviews to fundraising data to exit polls, Parties on the Ground overcomes these challenges to take readers under the hood for an in-depth look at the nomination process.

Although progressive reformers sought the adoption of primaries to empower voters' control over nominations, Parties on the Ground finds that most voters pay too little attention to make use of the opportunity. Instead, the most important actors are intense policy demanders-such as interest groups and activist organizations-who supply campaign resources to some candidates and deny them to others. These groups care most about securing an agent for their own interests and values; to this end, they put serious effort into vetting candidates and often coordinate among themselves or with local parties in support of their choices. At the same time, competition between establishment and insurgent groups can be high, especially in the Republican Party. Developing a nuanced account of House nominations in today's parties, Parties on the Ground offers a host of new insights into this understudied but significant piece of the puzzle of American politics.

This book explores the Innovation Ecosystems enabled by digital technologies from the start-ups perspective in the framework of Circular Economy. Bringing together contributions from geographically-diverse entrepreneurship scholars, it offers a unique startup-centric lens, investigating how emerging ventures collaborate with corporations, navigate power asymmetries, and leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence, IoT, and data analytics to drive sustainable innovation. Through a blend of empirical case studies and conceptual frameworks, the book addresses key themes including startup-corporate collaboration dynamics, coopetition strategies, and digital platform governance. It also examines the impact of digital technologies on decision-making, resilience, and adaptability. Ideal for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, this book provides insights into how startups can catalyze systemic change and accelerate the transition toward sustainable, tech-driven innovation ecosystems.

This book examines the critical intersection of human rights and ocean heritage, encompassing the protection of underwater cultural heritage, the preservation of intangible cultural traditions tied to the sea, and the rights of island communities to self-determination. It highlights the role of navigation practices, maritime knowledge, and cultural identities in sustaining ocean heritage, advocating for equitable frameworks that balance ecological preservation with the cultural and economic needs of those most connected to the oceans. The author combines human rights, cultural heritage, and oceanic studies to address the complex relationship between people and the sea from multiple perspectives. Integrating cultural, ethical, and political dimensions, the author focuses on underrepresented voices and issues, highlighting the challenges faced by island and coastal communities, including their intangible maritime traditions, navigation practices, and struggles for self-determination. This book also explores the role of underwater cultural heritage in global identity, an under-researched and under-represented topic to date.

This monograph examines women and girls' experiences of online harms on social media platforms in Australia. Drawing on qualitative survey responses from forty women aged 18-30 and interviews with fifteen subject matter experts, it explores the types of online harms women and girls encounter on social media and the strategies they employ to navigate and respond to abuse. It foregrounds the experiences of women and girls with marginalised identities, demonstrating how ethnicity, age, sexual orientation and disability compound their exposure to identity-based stereotyping, vilification and targeted harassment. It also explores the regulatory, technological and platform governance contexts that facilitate online harms, interrogating the adequacy of existing legislative and platform responses. In doing so, it bridges the gap between academic research, policy and industry, offering a practical framework for understanding and responding to online harms. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, practitioners and technology companies seeking to create safer and more inclusive online environments for women and girls.

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 volume is the first to assemble a wide-ranging body of research on the history of a certain pattern of theorizing about cognizing as a kind of being, or even being itself. As such, it addresses a notable silence in contemporary scholarship about the mind, and even about the history of philosophy of mind, which stands in contrast with its appearances throughout the historical tradition of philosophy. This book therefore enhances with historical richness the growing interest in related concepts such as idealism and pansychism. The original research presented in the book advances our understanding of the philosophical richness of various concepts of "cognizing as being" and draws on both Western and non-Western philosophical traditions. In doing so the books fosters a dialogue among these interconnected philosophical traditions that includes Indian philosophy, Aristotelian and Neoplatonic traditions, medieval Latin and Islamic traditions, Renaissance and early modern Platonism, varieties of early modern panpsychism or pannoeticism, German idealism, and early phenomenology. By bringing these together these collected works provide an illustrative model that will help scholars "see" a long-overlooked insight about mind across various historical traditions, and spark new ideas about how this approach might manifest in unexpected places. This volume is of interest to scholars working in the history of philosophy, the philosophy of mind and ancient philosophy.

This book explores the diverse nature of Chinese manufacturing activity in Ethiopia and highlights how investments can be guided by local political economy conditions. It examines the economic potential of foreign direct investment and its role in facilitating structural change within African economies. The approaches taken by Ethiopia to steer investment towards development objectives are compared with global trends of industrial relocation and corporate adaptation to illustrate how foreign direct investment can benefit both China and African countries. Ethiopia's proactive industrial policies are highlighted to show that African states can leverage Chinese manufacturing capital to enable industrial development and economic growth.

This book provides unique detail into the specific strategies used in Ethiopia to maximise foreign development and drive economic development. It will be relevant to students, researchers and policymakers interested in development economics, industrial policy, and the international political economy.

This book examines the populist economic policies implemented by the Polish government and the impact they have had on business stakeholders. With a particular focus on the period 2015 to 2023, it explores the mechanics of populist politics to provide insight into the relationship between governments and business, and to show how these policies undermine economic development and impact broader society. The legacy of populist regimes is also evaluated, with a particular focus given to the legal and institutional obstacles created by these governments that restrict the ability of subsequent governments to create positive change.

This book offers unique insight into the downfall of the recent Polish government and provides a warning for other countries enacting populist economic policies. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the political economy and economic policy.

A guide to persuasion for people who want to change minds without manipulation or coercion.

Most of us have given up on persuasion. We say our problems are too pressing, people are too polarized, and success is too dubious-and it's true! After all, when was the last time you heard someone actually change their mind? To improve our persuasive powers, self-help books often ask us to stoop to dishonest, manipulative tricks that rarely achieve lasting results. But perhaps there is a way to persuade people that is neither hopelessly misguided nor morally suspect.

In Just Hear Me Out, philosopher Colin Marshall describes a persuasive method that is both effective and ethical. Rather than share a flurry of tips for how to win friends and influence people, Marshall invites us to take up persuasion as fundamentally civil work, good both for our conscience and our communities. Real-world persuaders such as Jane Addams, Daryl Davis, and Fred Rogers show us an ethical route, he argues, to changing hearts through patience, respect, and compassion.

Accessible, practical, and buoyed by hope, Just Hear Me Out offers a powerful method for all who want to persuade others but aren't interested in winning at any cost. When it works, people don't just change their minds; they discover anew how to value our common humanity.

This book proposes the theory of dual (analog-digital) transformation (ADX) as a new framework for business transformation in the digital era, highlighting leading Japanese manufacturing firms. At its foundation, the book presents two core perspectives, the three-core competence strategy and the architecture strategy, which explain how firms build and reconfigure organizational capabilities in response to technological change. By tracing the evolution of manufacturing architecture and competence development, the book shows how analog and digital systems can coexist and reinforce each other.

While digital transformation (DX) has gained global attention, the enduring strength of Japanese manufacturing lies in its continued evolution through analog transformation-the refinement of craftsmanship, process integration, and tacit knowledge. The book examines how current IT technologies, including data analytics, IoT, and AI, are reshaping the traditional foundations of monozukuri (Japanese manufacturing), and how firms can align IT architecture and organizational competences to sustain innovation in the AI era.

Beyond the conventional framework of digitization, digitalization, and DX, this book proposes ADX as the next step for firms rooted in collaborative monozukuri-a model integrating analog excellence with digital innovation. Sustainable competitiveness emerges not from replacing analog systems, but from combining the two.

Through multiple cases of Japanese firms, the book demonstrates how Japanese manufacturers are restructuring capabilities, bridging management and production, and achieving deep analog-digital integration. Ultimately, it offers a roadmap for traditional manufacturing firms to evolve their IT strategies and thrive in the age of AI and organizational reinvention.

This book explores two fundamental concepts in philosophy: truth and relation. These concepts indicate the unconditioned condition and the empirical-formal universe that truth unilaterally conditions, respectively. Indeed, truth conditions the empirical-formal universe without being conditioned by it. It is argued that the reduction of truth to various theories explaining its empirical use has led to the unconditioned nature of truth itself being lost. But if truth is not grasped for its absolute value, it is reduced to relation.

The book aims to show that the concept of relation - if understood as a static construct of two terms and a nexus - is a contradictory construct, since it reconciles the irreconcilable: dependence and independences of the related terms. Thus, only insofar as truth is absolute is it authentic truth, because it does not depend on anything else, but is autonomous and self-sufficient. Indeed, if truth were not absolute, it would be determined and, as such, would be defined by a limit that would place it in relation to something other than itself, i.e. non-truth. But this is contradictory as it would make truth reliant on what is not truth. Instead, no determination can ground itself: the circle of referring that requires the determination to refer beyond itself cannot be the ground, because it configures nothing other than an infinite regress.

In conclusion, the book shows that truth has to be understood not only as the end of a quest, but also as its condition, since it is only in virtue of absolute truth that the inadequacy and therefore the unintelligibility of all that is finite or relative are recognised.

Truth and Relation is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of philosophy and, in particular, of metaphysics and epistemology.

Drinking and drugs have long led to a multitude of problems within families. Given the availability of various forms of substances, and the potential harm to families, it is essential that greater research be focused upon substance use and addiction. This edited volume offers a broad examination of substance use and the family.

Featuring a broad variety of chapters across the many issues pertaining to substance use and addiction, topics include those such as spousal addiction and marital quality, parenting and substance use, financial tolls of addiction upon families, coping with adolescent substance use and addiction, multi-generational patterns of substance use in families, substance use and family violence, child neglect and substance addiction, family interventions, addiction concealment within families, role modeling among siblings, gender differences in parental substance use, and child abuse, among others.

Substance Use and the Family is appealing reading for scholars of family sociology, the sociology of health, and childhood and youth alike.

This book explains how the OECD's Product Market Regulation (PMR) Indicators treat civil law notaries. It explains why applying a pro-competition metric designed for goods and private services to German notaries - who are independent holders of a public office and integral to the preventive administration of justice - produces distorted and policy-misleading results. At its core, the book shows that civil law notaries are not market actors in the conventional sense. In Germany, notaries exercise state-delegated functions, create enforceable public deeds, safeguard the reliability of land and commercial registers, combat money laundering, and guarantee universal, affordable access to legal certainty under a fixed, socially balanced fee schedule. The analysis reconstructs the PMR methodology and demonstrates its misfit for services whose quality is defined by independence, impartiality, and legal reliability - qualities that cannot be reduced to price/quantity proxies or ranked alongside architects, estate agents, or accountants. The book is intended for policymakers, regulators, competition economists, legal scholars, ministries of justice, bar and notarial bodies, and graduate students in law and public policy.

Putting ancient Greek and East Asian philosophies into conversation, this book argues that learning a martial art can provide practitioners with a deeper understanding of the philosophical views that animate the cultures from which traditional martial arts have developed. In this respect, a martial art has more to offer than techniques for self-defense or exercises that promote power, strength, flexibility, and coordination. Martial arts training can develop more aspects of a person than the various skills related to handling specific attacks and a clearer feeling of how to deal generally with conflict. Against the view that martial arts promote fighting and vicious behavior, this book argues that training in the traditional martial arts builds character and leads to virtue. Martial arts training provides experiences which integrate mind and body provide a philosophically informed and sound way to cultivate virtue. Building on the author's three decades of Aikido practice, the book also includes exercises readers can use to integrate martial arts practice into philosophy courses.

This open access book examines the subject of 'contentious governance', a situation in which lower-level governments collaborate with activists to contest policies implemented by other governmental actors. Drawing from three case studies, it introduces the concept and relevance of 'contentious governance', before assessing how it works in action. The book demonstrates that the processes of 'contentious governance' are inherently political and riddled with power struggles, as those involved vie over the interpretation of public interest. As instances of 'contentious governance' become increasingly common, it also proposes a framework through which to better understand its complexities. In doing so, it provides fresh perspectives on numerous classical issues, including the political nature of policy, power dynamics, governance processes, government-citizen relations, and policy conflicts.

This book offers a clear, comparative perspective on how leading jurisdictions are responding to the rapid rise of financial technologies. Through jurisdiction-specific chapters, it highlights practical regulatory strategies, emerging legal trends, and the balance between innovation and financial stability across 11 key markets.

What sets this work apart is its focus on real-world applications and collaborative regulatory approaches, providing insights that are both globally informed and locally grounded. Covering developments in digital assets, cross-border payments, CBDCs, and data governance, the volume brings together perspectives from experts embedded in each legal system.

Written for policymakers, legal practitioners, scholars, and advanced students, the content is accessible yet analytically rigorous.

Key benefits include:

? A unique, side-by-side comparison of global FinTech regulatory ecosystems

? Forward-looking analysis that supports international dialogue and policy alignment

This book explores deep learning as a next-generation approach to online payment fraud detection in the face of increasingly complex and adaptive threats. Traditional rule-based or shallow learning methods are no longer sufficient. Through ten focused chapters, this book tackles challenges such as behavioral modeling, spatiotemporal anomaly detection, class imbalance, behavior drift, and graph-based inference. It applies advanced neural architectures including LSTM, GRU, GANs, GNNs, and spatiotemporal transformers. With a problem-driven structure, each chapter links real-world fraud problems to tailored neural solutions, validated on large-scale transaction data. This book blends theory, practical design, and empirical rigor, offering researchers and practitioners a foundation for scalable, adaptive, and reliable fraud detection systems.