Hellemans surveys the debate on secularization, on whether, why and how the major religions of the world are in long-term decline. With a particular focus on Christianity, the book engages with the interpretation of religious change and its links to modernity, assessing how 'the great transformation of religion' has spurred the reconceptualisation of religion at the macro, meso and micro levels. Chapters investigate the theorization of spirituality, diffuse religiosity, non-specific religion, and sacralizations in a time of wandering religiosity, explaining how these are accounted for by sociologists. The book looks at the coming globalization of the sociology of religion and the possible marginalization of this subdiscipline.

Understanding the Sociology of Religion is an essential read for students and scholars in sociology, religious studies, theology, and anthropology. Researchers of the history of religion and other academics will also benefit from its topical insights on the field.

This volume offers a comprehensive examination of language policy and planning across the Arabic-speaking world, from historical Arabization to contemporary digital revitalization.

Using comparative case studies in education, justice, public services, conflict zones, and higher education, it explores key tensions such as diglossia versus dialect equity, English-medium instruction versus mother-tongue rights, and Modern Standard Arabic standardization amid Tamazight resurgence. The chapters examine implementation gaps, institutional capacity, and innovative tools such as register-aware natural language processing, while also addressing minority languages, conflict-sensitive governance, and linguistic hierarchies shaped by globalization. Bridging theory and practice, this book presents evidence-based mechanisms, including annual reviews, theory-of-change monitoring, and capacity-before-scale approaches, to promote equitable outcomes and linguistic justice.

Essential for scholars of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, and policy practitioners, it fosters inclusive dialogue aimed at preserving the region's rich multilingual heritage.

Connecting historical aspiration with contemporary reality, this book examines post-independence Bangladesh from a sociological perspective, discussing the structural and cultural factors that threaten its achievements, and how it might overcome existing hurdles to ensure continuity and long-term stability in its social transformation.

Structured around three broad phases of transformation - post-liberation reconstruction (1972-1990), globalization and digitalization (1991-2010), and contemporary transformations (2010-2025) - the book traces continuity, rupture, and reconfiguration across the evolving sociopolitical landscape of Bangladesh. The chapters chart key developments in Bangladesh's history such as July Uprising of 2024, the evolution of religious and cultural politics since 2012, and the rapid expansion of the service and digital sectors in recent years. The book also examines the transformative impact of digitalization, social media, and technology on kinship, marriage, youth culture, and everyday life.

Ultimately developing an integrated analytical framework for understanding Bangladesh's societal dynamics, the book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology, political science and South Asian studies.

This volume explores how E.J. Lowe's metaphysics relates to various issues in philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion.

Lowe's views on ontological issues have direct implications for issues in philosophical theology as well as philosophy of religion. Lowe's work is systematic in nature, and he built an extremely sophisticated ontological system in The Four-Category Ontology. The chapters in this volume are concerned with the centrality of having a proper ontology for our understanding of the core issues in philosophical theology. This means that we need to engage in ground-level debates about the ontology of theological issues. The chapters explore topics such as the existence of God, divine causality, divine presence, divine action, divine temporality, dualism, and Christology.

E.J. Lowe's Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophical theology.

This groundbreaking book explores the understudied phenomenon of victimization recurrence, introducing the clinically robust concept of the recidivist victim and translating it into an innovative diagnostic tool: the Clinical Spectrum of Recidivist Victims, developed from over twenty years of clinical practice.

Drawing from extensive psychotherapeutic experience and doctoral research in forensic psychology, Dr. Rojas presents a relational psychoanalytic framework that maps the range of psychological positions individuals may occupy in relation to repeated harm-from those who remain caught in recurrent victimization without awareness, to those who have moved out of victimization as an organizing position in their lives. Each position within the spectrum is clinically characterized through its subjective, relational, and embodied dimensions. Using embodied language, the book interweaves theoretical foundations with clinical vignettes and personal narratives, offering clear concepts and practical tools for addressing traumatic repetition without reducing it to willpower or individual deficit.

Written with depth, sensitivity, and ethical commitment, this book is intended for clinicians, researchers, and practitioners, as well as for anyone who believes they are-or have been-caught in recurring patterns of victimization and seeks to understand them without judgment.

This book explores the complex socio-cultural histories of the rivers of West Bengal in India. It goes beyond the 'seeing' of a river geo-spatially, to unearth its 'signifying' presence in the making of a regional culture.

The volume analyses myths, rituals, cultural practices, metaphysical and mystical symbolisms in folktales, oral literature and other literary representations generated by the interactions between the rivers and the communities that have lived alongside them. It explores how water histories are embedded in the collective cultural/racial memory and underscores the importance of viewing rivers as the indices of cultural transformations symptomatic of a livelihood developed from/ due to the rivers. The book archives, analyses and offers narratives on a vital ecosystem to provide a holistic take on 'river futures'. It creates an authentic framework of socio-cultural narratives to supplement the current ecological strategies towards the survival and sustenance of rivers and their communities.

This book will be of immense interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, human geography, river and water studies, environmental and ecological studies, cultural anthropology, comparative literary studies, race and ethnic studies, and South Asia studies.

The Syntax of Dutch presents a synthesis of current thinking on Dutch syntax. Its principal focus is on describing the Dutch language; technical issues related to linguistic theory are addressed only if new light is shed on the subject.

The work is organized around the four lexical categories verbs (volumes 1-3),nouns (volumes 4-5), adjectives (volume 6), and adpositions (volume 7). It includes a general introduction to the semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties of these categories, their argument structure, their modification possibilities, and issues related to word order. The functional categories (determiners, complementizers, etc.) are discussed in relation to the lexical categories with which they occur. Volume 8 concludes the work by considering a number of issues that extend beyond proper sentence grammar: main-clause external elements, coordination, and ellipsis.

The Syntax of Dutch will be an indispensable resource for researchers and advanced students of languages and linguistics interested in the Dutch language.

Feminist Subversion of Linguistic Sexism in Contemporary China: Discursive Warfare provides an in-depth investigation of gender discourse with a focus on social labeling in post-reform China.

The book delves into society's tendency to perceive women in categories, explores the social and historical context of mainstream media's role in perpetuating sexism, demonstrates feminist discursive empowerment in cyberspace, and sheds light on the complexities of a feminist awakening in today's China. Using corpus linguistics analysis, critical discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics analysis, the book highlights feminist subversion of linguistic sexism in public gender discourse, illustrating shifting roles for women from being passive targets of gender labeling to proactive agents rebuking the biased gender order. It offers a fresh perspective that encourages readers to view language as a conduit for belief systems, often operating beneath the surface, and to recognize its role in constructing and challenging gender norms. It also provides readers with a deeper understanding of contemporary Chinese women's aspirations for agency and their determined resistance against the masculinist nature of state order.

This is a key resource for scholars and postgraduate students of Chinese language and linguistics with a particular interest in media, political, and gender discourse.

Examining the administration of assets during the trial of the French Templars, as well as the settlement process that took place after the Order's dissolution, this book focuses on material aspects of the proceedings in France that have never been analysed in detail. These include the conflicts that accompanied the seizure of property, the actions of administrators, and the thefts and abuses that occurred at every stage of the process. The actions of Philip the Fair's sons to finalise the takeover of the Templars' property by the Hospitallers are also discussed. This book draws on documents that have not been used in previous research, including the report on the investigation conducted between 1322 and 1325 as part of the agreements concluded by Louis X and Philip V with the Hospitallers. This document is unknown to modern scholars and contains valuable information about the recovery of Templar property and the prosecution of abuses committed during this process.

This book adopts a new approach that departs from the dominant view that considers the Templar affair through the lens of the political aspirations of its most important participants, and this allows new insights into the circumstances and consequences of the Templar trial.

Of particular interest to scholars and students of the history of the Knights Templar, this book will also appeal to historians of the Knights Hospitaller, France under the last Capetians, and the papacy at the beginning of the 14th century.

The Syntax of Dutch presents a synthesis of current thinking on Dutch syntax. Its principal focus is on describing the Dutch language; technical issues related to linguistic theory are addressed only if new light is shed on the subject.

The work is organized around the four lexical categories verbs (volumes 1-3),nouns (volumes 4-5), adjectives (volume 6), and adpositions (volume 7). It includes a general introduction to the semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties of these categories, their argument structure, their modification possibilities, and issues related to word order. The functional categories (determiners, complementizers, etc.) are discussed in relation to the lexical categories with which they occur. Volume 8 concludes the work by considering a number of issues that extend beyond proper sentence grammar: main-clause external elements, coordination, and ellipsis.

The Syntax of Dutch will be an indispensable resource for researchers and advanced students of languages and linguistics interested in the Dutch language.

This Advanced Introduction provides a concise overview of nonprofit law in the United States, with reference to international approaches, examining how legal frameworks regulate nonprofit entities and the ongoing challenges they face. Dana Brakman Reiser explores how nonprofit law structures the way charities are organized and the activities in which charities engage, while also empowering and restricting the leaders who govern them.

Key Features

• Evaluates the key intersections of corporate, trust, tax and constitutional law for US nonprofits
• Examines the fiduciary obligations of leaders under nonprofit corporate and charitable trust law
• Analyses the symbiotic relationship between the substantial tax incentives provided to nonprofits and the deeply entrenched American reliance on them
• Incorporates international case studies that highlight alternative approaches to nonprofit regulation

Informed and succinct, this Advanced Introduction is an essential resource for students studying nonprofit law, regulation, governance, fiscal policy and comparative law. It also acts as a practical reference for professionals and policymakers working with nonprofits and NGOs on when to engage with lawyers and how to make the best use of their services.

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.

This book brings together 40 genuine questions raised by student teachers in Finnish education, sparking reflection and insight into education and wider issues amid the complexity, diversity and uncertainty of today's classrooms and ever-changing world.

What does it mean to teach social justice in today's complex and divided world? How can educators acknowledge and value the multiple diversities that students bring to the classroom, while also responding to conflicting expectations from curricula, colleagues and the wider community? This book offers no definitive answers. Instead, it invites readers to engage in a different kind of conversation revolving around gender, discomfort, interculturality, neutrality, intersectionality, and structural racism. Each chapter takes up ten of the 40 questions, grounding the responses in real classroom situations and drawing on critical theories and decolonial perspectives. Written collectively by five experienced teacher educators and researchers, this book moves beyond prescriptive checklists and shallow understandings of social justice, diversity and interculturality. The authors argue that meaningful change requires ongoing critical reflection, structural awareness and the courage to ask better questions.

This inspiring book will attract a wide spectrum of readers, including experienced teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and scholars interested in teacher education, diversity, social justice education and intercultural studies.

Drawing on diverse empirical examples from global democratic contexts, leading experts investigate how hybrid arrangements are designed, implemented, perceived and embedded in political systems. They adopt a rich multi-method approach to explore variations in design as well as critical evaluations and expectations. Chapters map prototypes, assess real-world experiences and analyse actors' perspectives to synthesise opportunities and challenges for hybrid processes, providing a foundational framework for future research.

Connecting Deliberation and Voting in Democratic Innovations is a key resource for scholars and students of politics and public policy, public administration and management, and regulation and governance. Policymakers and politicians in the field will also benefit from its insights into the potential of hybrid designs and practical lessons.

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.

Intelligent Urban Infrastructure: Smart Solutions for Sustainable Cities explores how emerging digital technologies are reshaping the design, management, and sustainability of modern cities. This comprehensive book examines the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, and intelligent automation into critical urban systems such as transportation, energy, water management, healthcare, and public safety. It presents a forward-looking perspective on how infrastructure can evolve to become more adaptive, resilient, and environmentally responsible. The book highlights practical frameworks and technology-driven content that demonstrate measurable improvements in efficiency, cost optimization, and environmental performance. Designed for researchers, postgraduate students, urban planners, engineers, policymakers, and industry professionals, this book serves as a valuable reference for those seeking to understand and implement intelligent infrastructure solutions that enable smarter, greener, and more livable cities worldwide.

This volume traces the historical development of Lutheran churches in southern Africa from colonial establishment through apartheid to contemporary unity efforts. The study examines mission-to-church transitions, responses to apartheid, and multiple attempts at achieving unity including the formation of FELCSA, LUCSA, and includes:

• Comprehensive historical analysis of Lutheran churches in southern Africa from colonial establishment to contemporary unity efforts
• Examination of mission-to-church transitions and responses to apartheid within Lutheran denominations
• Critical assessment of unity initiatives including FELCSA, LUCSA, and joint theological education at LTI
• Analysis of the 1964 UELCSA and 1975 ELCSA formations and their impact on racial divisions within Lutheran churches
• Documentation of failed unity attempts and the 2008 collapse of unity talks with lessons for future efforts

This title has been co-published with UKZN Press. T&F does not sell or distribute the print versions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The book provides a macro-level analysis of international trade law and the UN SDGs, before delving into specific issues, focusing on the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Leading scholars examine how international trade dispute settlement mechanisms such as the World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body and those established under free trade agreements are responding to the implementation of sustainable development policies. Chapters analyse case studies spanning Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, illustrating how sovereign states are leveraging their influence in global markets and adopting specific trade policies to advance the SDGs worldwide.

This comprehensive book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of international law with an interest in economics, trade, environmental and climate studies. It is also highly beneficial for practitioners and policymakers working in international trade.

Speech-to-Text Interpreting: User-Centred Communication Support for Equal Access explores speech-to-text interpreting (STTI), providing essential insights for practitioners, trainers, and decision-makers ensuring equitable communication access for deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.

Grounded in Translation & Interpreting Studies, the book demonstrates user-centred STTI implementation across typical interpreting settings. Drawing on video recordings, comparative text analysis, and interviews with users and over 30 interpreters, it provides practical assessment tools considering user expectations and multimodal communication contexts. The book addresses critical professional challenges from stress management to ethical dilemmas, outlining essential competences for user-centred service delivery. Each chapter features enriching activities and problem-solving exercises, with additional resources. Particularly timely amid advancing AI transcription technology, the book articulates human STTI's continued value through user support, individualized orientation, trust-building, and data security. A global survey of STTI service provision further informs the analysis.

Beyond equipping interpreters with theoretical and practical tools, the book supports training development and guides policymakers in establishing communication support guidelines. The text highlights DHH advocacy while advancing STTI understanding as a profession and an academic discipline. An essential text for students, teachers and researchers working in STTI , this is also a valuable resource for public institutions and private individuals employing STT interpreters.

Benz evaluates federal democracy as a complex system which is based on complementary principles that combine incongruent institutions. Based on historical, society-centred and actor-centred approaches, he analyses the potential frictions and constructive dynamics across diverse forms of federal government. In particular, he highlights the advantages of parliamentary democracy over presidential government. Chapters demonstrate the processes linking parliaments, parties, executives and interest groups across federal and regional jurisdictions, exploring how to enable intergovernmental coordination without restricting governments' autonomy.

Understanding Federal Democracy is an important resource for scientists and students of political science and public policy, particularly those focusing on governance and democracy, federalism studies and regional government. Policymakers in the field will equally benefit from the book's academic and practical insights.

This book highlights the necessary support and collaboration needed to help multilingual learners succeed and how to address opportunity gaps in schools and beyond.

School counselors need to have a working knowledge about the diverse needs of all students to effectively support the academic, career, and social development of those students. Chapters offer recommendations across multiple aspects of school counseling, including integration of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) concepts and American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model domains. Practical hands-on activity suggestions, case studies, and vignettes are integrated throughout the text that allow readers to envision these concepts in real-world practice.

Focused on humanizing approaches in school counseling for multilingual learners, this book is an essential read for pre-service school counselors and current practitioners in their work to picture the integration of the concepts discussed into their current or future practice.

Kristjan Kristjansson justifies the creation of a new category of virtues distinct from both the Big-Five trait of agreeableness and Aristotle's three virtues of agreeableness in everyday encounters. He explores considerateness and intellectual humility, assessing the independent moral value of the kindly virtues and discussing various taxonomies, including Gulliford and Roberts' allocentric virtues. The book rejects the distinction between morality and manners amidst an increasingly harsh landscape of public debate, suggesting a new moral framework for conglomerating kindness and cultural specificity and addressing rarely discussed counterpoints to traditional virtuous behavioural guidelines.

The Kindly Virtues is an essential resource for scholars and students of moral psychology, philosophy and education seeking to develop their understanding of alternative virtue frameworks. Psychologists and curriculum developers will also benefit from its insights.

This book presents the history of Poland through the lens of selected phenomena that demonstrate pan-European and global processes. It tells the story of feudalism, parliamentarism, nationalism and modernization, and explains how these processes emerged, developed or were implemented in Poland.

The comparative method adopted here aims to study the links and transnational entanglements within the region on the basis that the optimal way of writing about a country in East Central Europe is to combine national history with a regional approach. Rather than relegating the themes of gender and diversity (cultural, ethnic, social and religious) to separate chapters, the authors aim to integrate these topics into all texts, informed by their knowledge, sources and empathy. Finally, this volume recounts both facts and the distorted paths taken by the memorialization of historic events. In doing so, it seeks to answer the fundamental question: "How unique can a country's history really be?"

This volume will be useful both for beginning students and for advanced scholars who specialize in the history of Poland and the entire region of East Central Europe to gain new information and interpretations on topics beyond their key areas of focus.

This volume addresses language education through the lens of noncoloniality.

The three parts of this volume comprise a discussion of noncolonial perspectives on the language classroom, an examination of noncolonial pedagogical proposals, and a critical analysis of teaching materials and normative documents regulating teaching practice. This volume underscores the need to move beyond critique and embrace creation and a pedagogy of hope in education, in the Freirean sense.

It provides useful insights for researchers in applied linguistics, sociology, and related fields and for educators (critical pedagogues) in higher education, secondary schools, and alternative school forms.