This book explores how people imagine, create, and sustain societal futures through the interplay of imagination, change, and preservation. Drawing on possibility studies and creativity research, it uses the concept of creative preservation as a unifying framework for understanding how communities creatively renew and take care of what already exists rather than only pursuing radical novelty.

Emerging from discussions held at the 4th International Conference of Possibility Studies, the volume begins at the level of global social and ecological systems, examining the extent to which social innovation can function as a force of preservation and regeneration. It then turns to intergenerational creative continuity and ageing to reveal novelty in what societies neglect in old age, before reflecting on methodological considerations from new materialism for addressing work on societal futures. The book then critically discusses the past and present disruptions in academia and proposes perspectives to care for and preserve the possibility for research to contribute meaningfully to societal change. It concludes by exploring the transformative potential of wonder and astonishment in education as a practice of caring and an attitude of exploring individual and collective possibilities.

A thought-provoking response to the growing concerns around how social scientists can provide frameworks to adjust to and contribute to a more caring and sustainable society, this book is for researchers and students in sociology and social theory, education and pedagogy, philosophy and critical theory, cultural and performance studies, creativity studies, sustainability studies, STS, and futures and possibility studies.

This book provides a unique look into the civil spaces of post-transformation societies in Central and Eastern Europe. It investigates the dynamics of civil spheres in a region characterized by overcoming dictatorship and experiencing transitions and tremendous social change. Empirically, the book provides ten case studies that analyze the often ambivalent processes of polarization and democratic backsliding, memory culture and the role of emotions, as well as new forms of democratic resilience that have emerged in the region. The book utilizes civil sphere theory and introduces the concept of post-transformation as the central parameter of complex social and political developments in Central and Eastern Europe. In combining these theories, the book illuminates the tensions between institutionalization and informality, trust, mistrust, and the evolution of a "we-ness" and abstract solidarity, and thereby, explores how democratic "software" is programmed against the backdrop of different socialist and post-socialist legacies.

Welcome to the world of sports writing, where success lies in the trust established between journalists, athletes, coaches, and other personnel who make magic, both on the field and off it.

Acclaimed sports journalists Nicole Kraft and Jean-Jacques Taylor deliver a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs of capturing and communicating sporting events. Beyond statistics and scores that dominate headlines, sports journalism is about sharing the stories of the teams, players, coaches, administrators, executives, topics, controversies, and individual events.

Learning the artistry of sports writing, you will learn to showcase the narratives, emotions, and human stories that shape the games. The authors teach essential skills, including:
- Asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers
- Building relationships with players, coaches, and staff
- Excelling at storytelling that engages readers
- Reaching audiences through social media
- Leveraging the power of AI in ethical ways

Discussion questions and actual assignments will help you build relationships and hone your journalism skills from day one, empowering you to uncover stories that excite and engage readers on a profound level.

This book offers a critical rethinking of digital urban transformation through a planning centered lens. It moves beyond technocentric views to examine how intelligent technologies shape governance, decision-making, and sustainability outcomes. The book explores key areas including housing, mobility, water management, environmental resilience, and digital civic engagement, showing that technology is deeply embedded in institutional and social contexts. It highlights how data driven systems introduce new opportunities for coordination while raising challenges related to ethics, bias, and accountability. By linking digital innovation to planning theory and governance, this book provides a clear framework for understanding how cities can achieve more inclusive and resilient futures.

This book contributes to the advancement of knowledge regarding higher education policy and management, not only in Indonesia, but in countries that have economic inequality and are forced to operationalize neoliberal-oriented education, using the analytical approach of Bourdieu's thought. The various chapters demonstrate Bourdieu's thinking for higher education policy analysis, maps neoliberal issues in higher education management, highlights internal and external environmental problems in Indonesian higher education, and showcases a series of comprehensive challenges and criticisms of Indonesia's higher education policy. This book serves as a useful reference for public policy students with an interest in the conceptualization of higher education policy and for higher education leaders to formulate strategic policies and develop higher education policies that are more just and democratic.

Contrary to popular belief, the internet is not making us stupid or lazy or subjecting us to algorithmic domination. Devin Proctor contends that it is instead changing the way we perceive our bodies, our social worlds, and our identities along a spectrum of virtuality.
Proctor conceptualizes the internet as a social space, arguing for a return to spatial understandings of the digital. The reality of this space, he posits, is co-produced through our interaction with human and non-human agents - bots, AI programs, and algorithms - that exist alongside us in a field of internet presence.
From video calls to anonymous chat forums, Proctor traces progressive levels of virtual emplacement to interrogate the embodied forms we take across digital contexts and the ways in which these forms influence communication and identity. He draws on years of digital ethnographic fieldwork among the Otherkin community - a group of people who largely socialize online and internally identify as non-human - to complicate conventional notions about our relationships with the virtual, our understandings of the Self, and what it means to be human.

This Palgrave Pivot book examines how AI-based technologies shape children's everyday lives and imagines possible digital futures. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a child-rights approach, the authors map how new AI tools are used and understood at home, at school, and among peers. They trace shifts in family routines; education, care, and health practices; and peer cultures associated with AI; cutting through the current hype to assess both promises and risks.

Building on prior work on the datafication of childhood and family life, Children and AI: Changing Digital Childhoods? rethinks AI's implications for children's wellbeing, rights, and life chances amid rapid market diffusion. It highlights potential harms, including widening digital divides and privacy violations, and calls for child-centred, safety-by-design legal and policy frameworks. Timely and interdisciplinary, it will interest scholars, students, and policymakers across childhood studies, digital and family sociology, internet studies, children's rights, and education.

Coolness and emotional self-discipline once shaped the world of sports, but recently something has shifted. Tennis legends cry. Soccer stars cry. Basketball MVPs cry. "Emotional moments" seem to be omnipresent. In close readings of tearful moments and gestures, this book explores scenes on the sidelines, at press conferences, and during acceptance speeches. It examines how contemporary media represent outbursts and breakdowns and the larger role crying athletes play in what scholars call the "Age of Emotions." Case studies include Cristiano Ronaldo and Pepe, Serena Williams and Andrea Petkovic, American basketball megastars, and Roger Federer; the essay discusses celebrity athletes as representative figures whose vulnerability and sentimentality force us to reexamine our own tears.

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. The text has subsequently been revised by the author in collaboration with a professional copy editor in order to refine the work stylistically.

Contributors explore the intertextuality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, illuminating its ability to both interpret and influence audiences and culture.

The sustained popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and its continued ability to spark fan and cultural responses with each phase of the franchise - achieving both commercial and critical acclaim in its quest to transform a once-niche genre into a pop culture powerhouse - demonstrate the vast potential it holds to convey, channel, and challenge existing discourses of culture, society, politics, entertainment, and education at their various intersection/s. While the franchise relies heavily on genre-based tropes of good versus evil, the intricate intertextuality of the extended universe offers a diversity in character, story, and setting that renders it a particularly deep well for crafting and communicating culture.
An interdisciplinary roster of contributors has selected a wide range of MCU texts, from series like She-Hulk and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to feature films including Captain Marvel (2019) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), to offer critical interrogations through varied lenses across four thematic sections of the volume: political economy and politics; gender studies and feminisms; race, ethnicity, and identity; and symbols and signs. Through their analyses, contributions to this volume ask us to reflect on what messages may be uncovered and understood through deeper interrogation of the texts that entertain and inform us.

Examines various case studies to provide a multifaceted understanding of Taiwan's literary and cultural leftism, emphasizing its transnational, diverse, and highly malleable nature.

An Unlikely Trajectory addresses a significant gap by foregrounding the often repressed or understudied literary and cultural leftist practices in Taiwan. Its twelve chapters explore how Taiwanese authors, directors, and intellectuals strategically navigated the complexities of colonial Japanese rule and authoritarian nationalist governance to articulate visions of a more just and oppression-free future for Taiwan. Taiwan's leftist practices matter because they offer essential insights into the island's social fabric and the intricate processes of identity formation as well as the broader international and geopolitical dynamics shaped by ongoing ideological conflicts. Through detailed case studies, this volume demonstrates how these leftist practices were influenced by diverse multicultural sources and have maintained their relevance and adaptability amid shifting sociopolitical landscapes. Furthermore, it explores how leftist ideologies intersect with other critical issues, including gender, class, and ethnicity.

Counters universalist narratives of mainstream feminism by examining the power exerted by four white women writer-activists to shape American society from the 1860s to 1930s.

White Woman's Burden focuses on four American writer-activists who were significant if secondary actors in the historical push for two rights that disproportionately served elite women: suffrage and equal higher education. Reflecting regional ideas about whiteness and womanhood from Massachusetts to New Mexico, Elizabeth Agassiz, Annie Fields, Annie Nathan Meyer, and Nina Otero-Warren embodied and helped nationalize the domestically defined versions of their era's mainstream feminism. Through their participation in advances in science, literary culture, higher education, state government, and language rights, these four women advocated for the interrelated objectives of (white) women's rights, US imperialism, and white nationalism. In challenging the assumption that white women's political involvement supported and supports universal goals that serve other marginalized groups, White Woman's Burden revisits mainstream feminist responses to the nineteenth-century "theory of influence," arguing that elite women's practices of social power developed during that period continue to shape our ideas about womanhood and activism into the present-from the contemporary belief in (white) women's innate civic-mindedness to white women's voting patterns in recent US presidential elections.

This book, dedicated to Professor Giulio Codognato, presents a collection of essays exploring a range of issues in general equilibrium theory under perfect and imperfect competition, game theory, and social choice theory. It offers an up-to-date overview of advanced research in these fields and will appeal to scholars and students working on these topics, as well as to readers with an interest in the foundations of economic analysis.

Examining a vast corpus of literary references and artistic representations, this volume offers the first comprehensive study of the ketos - the sea monster imagined by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The chapters examine the three central traditions of thought that existed about this imaginary animal in Graeco-Roman culture. The first tradition concerns the ketos as a divinely associated monster: a force aligned with marine gods (chiefly Poseidon) and one which was fought by Heracles and Perseus. The second tradition features the ketos in more naturalised contexts, as depicted among ancient geographers and historians, as a type of monster roaming the distant waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The third tradition concerns the fusion of the ketos with Leviathan and the other Old Testament sea monsters in the minds of early Christians. Accordingly, this classical sea monster became the image of the creature that swallowed Jonah, and, alternatively, a monster associated with the Devil and cosmological evil.

While other monsters of Graeco-Roman mythology, such as the Minotaur and Medusa, are household names in modern popular culture, the ketos has effectively been lost in the modern imagination. Yet it was no small part of the Graeco-Roman imagination. This sea monster formed a key aspect as to how the sea-adjacent societies of ancient Greece and Rome perceived ancient marine environments. It was this fantastic sea beast that so haunted ancient mariners, and in turn, which contributed to ancient perceptions of the marine world as a profoundly alien and hostile environment.