This book examines the outcomes and impact of the interaction between three factors: British foreign policy, political legitimacy, and popular resistance in Oman, and how these factors contributed to the emergence and shaping of the 'Qaboos regime'. This book argues that, despite its formal independence, Oman functioned as a de-facto British protectorate, consolidated through treaty agreements and covert support. Although there were various potential political outcomes at the onset of Sultan Qaboos' rule, British policy favoured absolute individual authority aligned with their economic and strategic interests. Despite Qaboos's attempts to distance himself from his predecessor, in effect he was merely a new link in the chain of British imperial sovereignty. The ramifications of the leftist 'Oman Revolution' significantly shaped the regime's subsequent attitude to information control and security. This quasi-totalitarian approach, marked by a cult of personality imposed on the Omani populace, also distinguishes the Qaboos regime from other Gulf states. This study thus sheds light on the multifaceted historical relationship between Oman and Britain, examining the complex dynamics which culminated in 'Qaboosism'.

This book delves into the intricate relationship between environmental challenges and communication strategies in Africa. It delves into the history of environmental communication, the factors that led to its emergency, the role of traditional and social media in disseminating information, and indigenous communication methods used by African communities. The book also highlights the importance of stakeholder engagement and the role of environmental communication in environmental education. Besides, the book explores importance and ways of monitoring and evaluating environmental communication programmes. It also provides practical recommendations for policymakers, stakeholders, and communication professionals. The book equips readers with the tools to effectively communicate about environmental issues in Africa, making it an essential read for anyone interested in understanding how communication can drive positive change for the environment.

For three decades the philanthropist and billionaire investor George Soros has played a prominent role in promoting a vision of 'Open Society' in Central Eastern Europe (CEE), promoting the transition from communist statism to liberal democracy through his philanthropic measures, most notably his support for the Open Society Foundations. Within this body of work an important aspect has been Soros support and commitment to the development of Roma civil society. Support from Soros endeavours has enabled the development and progression of Roma civil society, especially at the transnational level, preparing and training Roma community leaders in the skills of community development and project management. Thousands of Roma individuals have also benefited from generous scholarship programmes funded by Open Society and Soros, completing school and university studies and other forms of training, thereby engendering role models. Soros-supported initiatives have also been highly influential in transnational diplomacy within for example the Council of Europe and the European Union, playing an important role in policy frameworks like the Decade for Roma Inclusion and the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

How do international climate and energy organizations survive and thrive despite powerful contestation? This analysis reveals how the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) maintain legitimacy when key players like the United States withdraw from global agreements.

Using qualitative research including interviews and participant observation, this book unveils the 'norm for climate change action'-a powerful principle that transforms contestation into reinforcement of international climate governance. In doing so, it demonstrates how opposition doesn't destroy these organizations but paradoxically strengthens their role in global climate action.

At a time when concerns about sexual violence, online harms and the efficacy of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) frameworks are at the forefront of public discourse, this book offers a timely and necessary intervention. Presenting the concept of 'safe uncertainty' as a transformative framework for understanding adolescent intimacies and relationships, authors Setty and Hunt critique current deficit models in relationships and sex education in place of a more nuanced engagement with digital intimacies, online sexual learning and sex media, healthy relationships, gender and consent.

Traditional approaches to RSE, while well-intentioned, can reduce complex social and emotional dynamics to simplistic binaries, leaving young people ill-equipped to navigate the inherent ambivalences and ambiguities of intimacy and relationality. Drawing on original research and case studies from the authors' practice, this text demonstrates how safe uncertainty acknowledges ambiguity and ambivalence as integral parts of relationships and intimacy and involves creating environments where young people can explore their perspectives and experiences without fear of judgment or rigid moral or legal solutions. Aligned with a broader need for relational, developmental and contextual approaches to understanding adolescent intimacies, Setty and Hunt explore how this framework encourages educators, policymakers and researchers to move beyond knowledge-transfer models and instead focus on equipping young people with the skills to navigate uncertainty in ways that promote emotional resilience and ethical decision-making as sexual citizens.

Connecting the concept of safe uncertainty with critical debates on consent, gender and digital culture, this timely contribution bridges gaps between research, practice and policy on both a national and an international scale.

This book offers a comprehensive corpus and analysis of all the Formosan 'Shooting the Sun' myths. The 'Shooting the Sun' myths describe a series of historical events in mythology that is preceded by the origins of man myths and followed by the deluge myths. These diverse mythologemes are an integral part of the national culture in Taiwan, particularly among the Austronesian tribes. The myths continue to be the subjects of contemporary art exhibits, literary works, public works, performances, and political protests, and remain essential tribal icons upon which various ritualistic practices are founded. Ninety 'Shooting the Sun' myths from over forty different sources published between 1903 and 2024 covering all of Taiwan's tribes are anthologized and explored in this book.

This book rethinks one of the most pressing issues of our time. Addiction is often framed solely as a brain disease, yet it reflects conditions that can touch anyone, shaped by culture, society, and the emotional worlds we inhabit. Culture and Addiction: Neuroscience and Affective Scaffolding suggests that a philosophical approach and critique of the reified addiction-as-disease concept is needed, before addressing the impact that non-evolutionary and evolutionary factors may have on human behavior. Presenting an ambitious interdisciplinary synthesis, this book challenges exclusively biomedical paradigms in addiction studies through what the authors term: "An Integrated Approach." It highlights the crucial role of affective, sensory, and spatial landscapes, while rigorously examining the cultural mechanisms that shape the emergence and remediation of addictive phenomena. By viewing addiction through the lens of scaffolding theory, cultural interaction, and social cognition, this book moves beyond conventional treatment models to reveal deeper, more nuanced ways of understanding compulsive behaviours and choices. The central aim is to integrate biological, psychological, and cultural dimensions, resisting the tendency to reduce addiction to either a purely medical condition or a purely social problem. Appealing to scholars, clinicians, policymakers, and advanced students in medicine, philosophy, and law, this book offers a transformative lens on one of society's most urgent challenges.

This book provides an in-depth examination of China's diplomatic endeavors in the Middle East, tracing the evolution of its approach since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Through a rigorous textual analysis of published literature from Chinese government sources, as well as Western research institutions and academia, this study reveals a significant thesis: China has strategically employed a soft power approach to reposition itself as a rising imperial power, directly challenging the long-standing dominance of the United States in the Middle East.

This book is one of the first to systematically examine the debate about global order in International Relations from an ecological perspective.

Bringing together an international team of expert contributors, chapters offer a well-rounded exploration of the ecological view on world order from a diverse mix of cultural and theoretical backgrounds. The book provides a nuanced understanding of the social structures underlying specific world political challenges and offers valuable insights into the complex interplay of various global orders and their implications for international affairs.

This interdisciplinary volume examines how movement between the margins and mainstream of warfare is impacting contemporary conflict. Actors, battlefields, and practices traditionally considered within the margins of war - such as propagandists, and private companies - have increasingly found themselves at the centre of conflicts, while traditional practices, actors, and locations of war - such as geographically bounded battlefields and uniform clad soldiers engaging their enemy in direct battle - have become increasingly marginalized. Anchored in the war studies tradition with its prudent, multidisciplinary approach, this volume offers a fresh conceptual frame for an overdue investigation into how the changing practices in contemporary wars permit us to reevaluate our understandings of fighters and battlefields.

This book absorbs the experience and wisdom of the application of evidence in judicial practice, explains the principles of evidence law with the help of Chinese and foreign classic evidence cases, and interprets the evidence system and rules of interpretation of evidence. In the arrangement of style, this book adopts the heuristic paradigm of linking cases and questions, which can improve students' awareness of evidence issues. In the selection of typical evidence cases, this book highlights the application skills of evidence rules through controversial cases. In the explanation of the rules of evidence, this book can improve students' ethical thinking of using evidence to identify facts with the help of fresh and meaningful classic cases. This book also takes into account the characteristics of the evidence rules of administrative law enforcement, arbitration and discipline inspection and supervision, and interprets the common issues of evidence from the basic knowledge, basic principles and basic systems of evidence law. On the basis of following the rules of evidence law, this book maintains the practical discipline characteristics of both substantive and procedural norms of evidence law and achieves the goal of solving practical cases by using evidence rules. This book can be used as a textbook for undergraduate students to study evidence law and as a reference for law enforcement and judicial authorities to apply evidence rules to determine the facts of cases

This edited collection illuminates what the concept of a specifically epistemic type of injustice has to offer socio-legal analysts. The epistemic aspects of injustice comprise more than knowledges, meaning and understanding, to include the supporting material and discursive (infra)structures for their production and dissemination arising in space/place/time. This book focuses on legal and regulatory arrangements, and the forms of knowledge and meaning they carry and with which they interact, in order to bring to light their spatial and place-relatedness or boundedness, which includes their temporal dimensions at various scales.

These highly innovative studies of epistemic injustice encompass the responsibilisation of patients in the North of England and Northern Ireland, housing, the systemic operations of law, the construction of digital spaces by algorithms, hospital discharges, case law affecting Indigenous communities in Kenya, the experience of mining disaster in Brazil, and the perspectives of rare diseases patients in Austria during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The book contributes towards law and geography, in particular through the emphasis on temporality as part of space and place. By highlighting the importance of author positionality and reflexivity, and pausing so as to bolster the development of humility and sensitivity for more fully informed studies on epistemic injustice and its ameliorations, the book also advances methodology for future studies.

This book offers a comprehensive assessment of Mauritius's engagement with the African human rights system. Based on the premise that Mauritius has not fully leveraged this relationship, it first outlines the opportunities the system presents for promoting and protecting human rights within the country. It then examines the rationale, role, and effectiveness of regional human rights mechanisms in the Mauritian context. The book assesses the extent to which Mauritius has implemented African Union human rights treaties it has ratified, analyzing the country's constitutional, legal, and institutional frameworks, relevant jurisprudence, and its participation in the procedures of the African human rights system.

Drawing on these insights, the book provides practical recommendations to strengthen Mauritius's interaction with the African human rights system.

This book critically examines the failures and contradictions of UK drug policy, exposing how current laws disproportionately target marginalised communities while overlooking the widespread harms of legal substances like alcohol. Drawing on the author's unique experiences as a magistrate and bouncer, alongside academic research, policy analysis, and lived experience testimonies, it reveals the systemic injustices embedded in drug enforcement. By contrasting the treatment of so-called "problematic" versus "functional" drug users, the book highlights how class, race, and power shape who is punished and who is protected. It also interrogates the influence of moral panic, media narratives, and political ideology on drug legislation, questioning the absence of evidence-based, harm-reduction approaches. Ultimately, the book aims to challenge prevailing assumptions, inform public discourse, and advocate for a more just, ethical, and effective drug policy rooted in health, evidence, and equality.

Volume 27 of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law addresses key controversies relating to the application and interpretation of international humanitarian law (IHL) raised by the armed conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. Such controversies not only provoke fundamental legal questions, but have become central in public discourse surrounding the conflicts and beyond - placing significant pressure on key principles of IHL. This pressure - sometimes emanating from radical interpretations of the rules of IHL by various actors - has exposed fault-lines and boundaries in the understanding of IHL among different interpretive communities. This Volume is therefore dedicated to the rigorous doctrinal and theoretical analysis of pertinent areas of tension within the contemporary field of IHL.

Considering the numerous pressures raised within IHL at present, this Volume contains seven chapters dedicated to this theme. Topics addressed include siege warfare, the protection of healthcare, forcible displacement, determining violations of the law of targeting, the use of artificial intelligence in decision-support systems, harmful speech, as well as the protection of marine species under IHL. The Volume concludes with the Year in Review, which describes and analyses the most important IHL-related developments that took place during 2024.

The Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law is a leading annual publication devoted to the study of IHL. It has always strived to be at the forefront of the debate of pressing doctrinal and theoretical questions of IHL, and provides an international forum for high-quality, peer-reviewed research on this crucial branch of international law. Distinguished by contemporary relevance, the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law bridges the gap between theory and practice, serving as a useful reference tool for scholars, practitioners, military personnel, civil servants, diplomats, human rights workers, and students.

This book explores the complexities of globalization, examining its evolving role in a world characterized by increasing interdependence and tension. Globalization has enabled the free flow of people, capital, information, and trade, driving economic prosperity. However, its legitimacy is increasingly questioned, particularly as institutions that underpin the global economy continue to reflect post-World War II structures, favoring Western hegemonic actors while limiting the influence of developing nations. The rise of China and organizations like BRICS has amplified calls for more equitable representation and a rethinking of global economic governance.

The book presents a series of essays, offering diverse perspectives on key issues shaping the future of globalization. Unlike earlier works, this book emphasizes the broadening conception of geopolitical conflict, which now extends beyond the military sphere to include economic legitimacy. The contributions focus on the economic security implications of global developments, touching on themes such as nationalism, technological decoupling, and the shifting balance of power between the West and emerging economies.

Central to the book is the fragmentation of globalization, with discussions on the challenges posed by rising nationalism, protectionism, and the impact of major geopolitical shifts such as Brexit, China's Belt and Road Initiative, and the US-China rivalry. It also delves into the role of emerging economies in reshaping global trade dynamics, the challenges facing global institutions like the WTO, and the implications of technological advancements for global governance. Overall, this book offers a timely and critical analysis of globalization, exploring its stressors and future direction.

A wide-ranging engagement with one of contemporary epistemology's most influential thinkers

Hilary Kornblith is one of the world's leading philosophers theorizing about knowledge and related issues. A key figure in the naturalized epistemology tradition, Kornblith integrates traditional empiricism with contemporary cognitive science, rejecting inward-looking, first-person approaches in favor of a third-person, scientifically grounded perspective on mind and knowledge.

Kornblith's contributions have reshaped debates about the nature and structure of knowledge, justification, and epistemic normativity; he has challenged the legitimacy of conceptual analysis and the reliability of reflection and reasoning, besides charting and defending a mature and self-consciously naturalistic philosophical methodology. By exploring this terrain, Kornblith and His Critics offers an in-depth examination of some of the most unique and innovative work in the last 40 years of anglophone epistemology.

This volume brings together fifteen original essays by leading philosophers engaging with Kornblith's work, each written specifically for this collection. Organized into three main thematic sections - Knowledge and Justification, Reflection and Inference, and Naturalism and Methodology - the collection systematically traces and tests the implications of Kornblith's work across key debates. The volume also includes a substantial reply from Kornblith, offering his own response to the critical challenges raised by the incisive contributions.

Kornblith and His Critics is ideal for graduate and advanced undergraduate philosophy students, especially those taking a variety of courses on epistemology and philosophical methodology. Key features include:

• A complete and detailed overview of how Kornblith's work compares with, and contributes to, key debates in epistemology.
• Cutting-edge engagement with the foundations, nature, and future of naturalized epistemology.
• Thorough discussion of core issues in epistemology: from the nature of knowledge, justification, and inference to the epistemic value of reflection and conceptual analysis.
• A lengthy and unique reply by Hilary Kornblith, directly addressing the critical challenges raised by the incisive contributions.
• A systematic and thematic structure for easy integration into graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses.

Kornblith and His Critics is a vital resource for researchers and instructors within philosophy programs in both MA and PhD curricula, as well as general readers interested in post-analytic and empirically-informed philosophy.

As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, language and criticism, and truth and desire.

The associations between madness and language - and madness and silence - preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot, before taking up questions about Artaud's literary correspondence, 'lettres de cachet', and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing - particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette - he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on notions of literary self-consciousness.

This volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault's thought and it is an indispensable text for anyone interested in his work and intellectual development.

The re-election of Donald Trump has illustrated in spectacular fashion the extent to which politics all over the world is in a state of continual flux. Old political configurations and parties are under unprecedented strain, with new forces, particularly on the hard right, challenging the status quo everywhere.

Rejecting stale analyses based on moralistic panics about 'populism' or social media, political commentator Steve Davies shows how we are going through a deep-seated process of realignment rooted in underlying structural trends. We are transitioning, he argues, from an era where the key political division was over the economic structure of society to one where the primary division is between a vision rooted in national identity and sovereignty, and an essentially post-national cosmopolitanism. This change upends the ideological and electoral alliances that have structured our political systems for decades.

No-one who wishes to truly understand the crises currently roiling the political status quo can afford to miss this stunning panoramic analysis of how this process works and how it is playing out across the world, from the USA and Germany to Argentina and India, and beyond.

The idea that a wave of distrust has swept over established democracies in recent years is commonly accepted. This book presents a contrary view. Drawing on various datasets, it reveals a disconnect between the popular commentary and the empirical reality.

The Trust Gap suggests that the most extreme cases - such as the US and the UK - distort our thinking about trust. It looks beyond trust in government to examine trust in a range of institutions, including courts, universities and the media. In doing so, it suggests that while countries such as the US do face a crisis of trust, many established democracies demonstrate resilience rather than vulnerability.

Using the framework of trust gaps, this book offers a stocktake on the state of trust in the 21st century, contributing a more nuanced and hopeful account than the headlines suggest.

This powerful and reflective book explores the losses encountered during social research-of people, communities and environments-collectively referred to as The Lost. Drawing on the contributors' varied research experiences, it gives voice to lives marked by marginalisation, trauma or quiet disappearance. Stories emerge from women who didn't survive domestic abuse to those displaced by 'natural' disasters, or affected by homelessness. Through deeply personal and ethical reflections, each chapter considers how these losses shape both research and researcher.

Offering new insights into harm, reflexivity and the emotional toll of fieldwork, this is an essential contribution to critical criminology and social research methodology.