This book interrogates the major challenges of postcolonial Africa that have hindered development, peace, and security. It advocates for different paths to secure peace and tranquillity, more specifically by employing indigenous knowledge systems, and examines the sources of African military coups d'etat in political and other contexts, and how to prevent their recurrence. The author conducts a multidisciplinary examination of postcolonial Africa's peace and security dynamics, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of the continent's challenges and opportunities in these critical areas. By synthesizing insights from political science, history, sociology, and international relations, they offer a holistic perspective that transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries. In the wake of decolonization, Africa emerged as a continent grappling with myriad challenges, particularly in the realms of peace and security. From colonial legacies to contemporary geopolitical dynamics, the journey towards stability has been fraught with complexities and contradictions. This book?delves into these complexities, offering a comprehensive exploration of the factors shaping Africa's peace and security landscape.

This book is dedicated to the introduction and research on safety and security intelligence science. It is the first time to put forward the idea of intelligence-led safety management, which demonstrates distinct interdisciplinary characteristics. It caters to the needs of safety and safety intelligence in the era of big security and big intelligence, and enhances the academic value of safety intelligence research. Whether you are engaged in practical work or scientific research on safety and intelligence, or are interested in issues about safety and intelligence, this academic book will prove to be a worthy collection.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of ethical issues raised by advanced medical technologies. The field's leading authorities explore how artificial intelligence, telehealth, robot caregivers, genetic therapies and enhancement, stem cell research, neurotechnology, electronic health records, data collection, and digital nudging are reshaping the landscape of medical practice. Organized around core ethical themes, the chapters consider how new and emerging technologies transform personal identity, the provider-patient relationship, privacy and autonomy, and social equity. Contributors clarify the complex values involved in medical innovation and practice, and explore what is at stake in the current ethical debates around these issues. While offering a valuable introduction for advanced students, professional philosophers, medical ethicists, and policymakers, this book also advances the scholarly discussion by presenting original theses and arguments, making it essential reading for specialists.

This book is an ethnography of the important cultural characteristics, local myths, and legends in Shawo Town, a subordinate to Dongming County in Shandong Province. Based on the author’s fieldwork in this unique region of the Yellow River area, this book examines the local people’s daily practice and religious beliefs in the dominant symbol “Qi.” In local society, Qi has three levels of structural characteristics and significance. First, it is a material entity which exists in people’s living world as three different forms of existence: Qi of Heaven, Qi of Earth, and Qi of Humans. Second, in a material sense, Qi has individual cultural significance and collective action social significance: QiXing, YunQi, QiShu, and so on, can concisely express this meaning. Thirdly, Qi has the most important symbolic meaning in its special form of Shen (god or goddess) and ancestors. This meaning can represent local society’s basic clan organization and can also include the traditional construction of local identity and local political power, as well as the performance of fairness and justice, and good and evil. The concept of Qi plays a crucial role in the construction of local people’s universe view, and through the holism of Qi, much can be understood about the daily lives, religious beliefs, and societal connections of the local people.

This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)'s role in peace-making in the Horn of Africa (HoA), focusing on its efforts in the South Sudan conflict. Blending rigorous academic analysis with practitioner insights, it shows how IGAD's distinctive, adaptable approach challenges Eurocentric models of peace, security governance, and regional integration. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews across East Africa, the book examines African regionalism, Pan-Africanism, hybrid governance, and the decolonisation of peace theory and practice. It traces IGAD's facilitation of the 2018 peace agreement, revealing how the organisation weaves together contending ideas and practices of peace. Through strategic hybridisation and platformisation, it underscores African agency and calls for reimagining peace, security, and integration from an African perspective. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in African peace processes, global governance, regional organisations, and the politics of peace in the Global South.

This book challenges dominant, top-down approaches to climate mitigation in the land sector, arguing that without genuine negotiation, recognized land rights, and tailored capacity building for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), most solutions will inevitably fail or do harm.

With civil society increasingly acting as a driving force for transparency and accountability around the world, the possibility of achieving feasible, impactful Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is growing. This vision echoes Brazil's call for a mutirao - a collective, bottom-up mobilization being championed at COP30 in Belem. Drawing on decades of fieldwork and critical analysis, Michael Brown reveals why prevailing strategies - from REDD+ to other NbS - remain implausible and risk compounding poverty and marginalization in the Global South. Instead, Brown proposes a paradigm shift, elevating a governance innovation: Negotiated Governance Platforms (NGPs) that bring IPLCs, governments, and climate financiers together as mutually interested partners. Through a rich set of case studies that include successes and failures, he demonstrates how social license, tenure security, and robust capacity building are essential for achieving climate action that will be sustainable because it works for key actors at multiple levels.

Rejecting technocratic quick fixes, this book offers a pragmatic blueprint for moving beyond rhetoric to operational reality, even in contexts characterized by corruption or weak governance. It is essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in climate change, natural resource management, conservation, and green economics who seek grounded, actionable strategies that benefit both people and planet.

This edited volume explores the complex relationship between AI, media and international security, focusing on key criteria. First, identifying AI applications like automated content and deepfakes. Second, evaluating security risks, including AI-driven information and psychological warfare, while considering geopolitical factors in a shifting global landscape. Written by a collection of international experts across diverse disciplines and regions in the world, the chapters take a multidimensional perspective to provide a holistic understanding of the various implications of the use of AI in media.

This volume contributes to research on AI's intersection with media and international security, examining AI's implications, challenges, and malicious uses. It also explores media diplomacy's role in navigating shifts in global power dynamics. Bridging political science, international relations, security studies, journalism, and communications, this book will benefit researchers and students across these fields.

This book explores the significant yet understudied role of non-state actors (NSAs) as agents of disruption and dissent in public diplomacy. While existing research mainly focuses on collaborative aspects of state-NSA relations, this book delves into instances where NSAs challenge their states' foreign and domestic policies, directly impacting public diplomacy efforts. From protests challenging the "good" image that the state governments try to project, to activities of governments-in-exile and dissenting diaspora groups, to cities taking actions that defy official state policies - examples of non-state actors engaging in political dissent and disrupting the public diplomacy efforts of their states can be found in virtually any region and political system. Yet the phenomenon of political dissent and its role in public diplomacy remains understudied by public diplomacy scholars. This book seeks to fill this gap.

This volume brings together essays on a wide range of topics, from the popular notion of ‘climacterical’ years believed to recur every seventh year, and the origins and development of the concept of ‘palliative’ care in premodern medicine, to the early modern understanding of ‘melancholia’ as a disease rather than just a temperament, and its visual representation in the famous ‘Melancholia’ paintings of Lukas Cranach the Elder. It examines the casuistic training, empirical observations, and public self-fashioning of learned physicians, and explores major concepts of early modern medical theory, such as ‘innate heat’ and diseases of the ‘total substance’ as presented and elaborated in Avicenna's ‘Canon medicinae and in Daniel Sennert's atomistic interpretation of body and soul. Published for the first time in an English translation, these essays offer readers many illuminating insights into the fascinating world of early modern medicine.

This book explores the complexity of peacebuilding in Mozambique following its devastating 16-year war. While international efforts aimed to establish a stable market democracy, this book reveals how the country’s post-war journey has been marred by recurring violence and the rise of authoritarian governance. Drawing on extensive qualitative research of historical and contemporary challenges, the book transcends traditional critiques of liberal peacebuilding by navigating the intersection of liberal ideals and authoritarian practices. It meticulously examines how Mozambique’s leadership has outwardly embraced liberal strategies such as dialogue, decentralisation and entrepreneurship while simultaneously deploying authoritarian tactics to maintain control. Through this dual approach, the book argues, Mozambique has developed a form of "contested peace" marked by violence, instability and unpredictability. This book offers theoretical contributions and empirical insights to scholars, students, and practitioners. It sheds light on the delicate balance between liberal and authoritarian governance and provides a fresh perspective on how peace can be achieved?and lost?in post-conflict nations.

This book analyzes the issue of peripheral security governance from the perspective of the European Union. It reviews the different stages of the EU’s peripheral security governance since the end of the Cold War, based on the criteria for successful security governance. The study focuses on the Balkans, Eastern neighbors, the South Caucasus countries, and Mediterranean countries, exploring the effectiveness of the EU’s peripheral security governance in each stage. This analysis aims to address the reasons behind the deep-seated challenges faced by the EU in peripheral security governance

This book offers several European perspectives on Indo-Pacific dynamics by a set of internationally recognized experts who have collaborated in the Franco-German Observatory of the Indo-Pacific. The observatory was established in 2021 by the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, Paris and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg and has since come to include many scholars and institutions from both countries. The book speaks to and updates existing scholarly discussions on Indo-Pacific dynamics, investigating the nexus of order(ing) and agency in that strategic space. The authors take US-China strategic competition as a contextual given and explore the Indo-Pacific as an interregnum, in terms of institutional dynamics and in terms of geo-narratives. The book also offers several case studies of middle and small power agency in the Indo-Pacific, examining the cases of Australia and Japan, India, the Philippines and Vietnam, and of Pacific Island Countries. A final chapter explores the perspectives of Chinese scholars on the Indo-Pacific as a strategic space.

This book offers theoretical and empirical insights into analyzing, measuring, and assessing the political power of the Chinese state in shaping society. Focusing on the widely debated Social Credit System (SCS) and the sanctioned group known as laolai (deadbeats), it explores how national policies impact citizens ? especially entrepreneurs ? and how they respond in return. Political power has long been central to China’s development. In today’s market-driven economy, the fate of entrepreneurs continues to be shaped by the state and remains deeply intertwined with the nation’s future. As such, the evolving power dynamics between political authorities and entrepreneurs provide an efficient lens through which to understand China’s culture, economy, media, governmental efficacy, and state-society relation.

The book addresses six key questions: (1) How do Chinese leaders and entrepreneurs help us understand the SCS and China’s trajectory? (2) How has the CCP shifted the SCS from supporting to controlling entrepreneurs? (3) How did entrepreneurs rise, why are they punished now, and how severe are the sanctions? (4) How have they resisted through legal and institutional means?and with what outcomes? (5) How are they perceived publicly amid negative media portrayals? (6) What do their interactions with the state reveal, from a Daoist perspective, about China’s future? The book is intended for policymakers, business leaders, scholars, and graduate students, speaking to the field of sociology, political economy, business, media, and China studies. It contributes to our understanding of the limits and reach of political power in contemporary China, the societal impacts of policy implementation, and the evolving role of entrepreneurs in shaping China’s future.

Lectures on Chinese Historical Geography?is a landmark work that bridges a three-decade gap in English-language introductions to China’s historical geography. This comprehensive volume offers profound insights into how the dynamic interplay between geography, history, and human civilization has shaped China’s landscape, culture, and development from prehistoric times to the present.?Covering a wide range of topics, the book examines the evolution of territorial boundaries, the long-standing debates over warm and cold periods in the past 2,000 years, and the connections between shifting economic centers and migration patterns. It also explores the strategic role of rivers, canals, and ancient roads, as well as the cultural exchanges fostered by the Silk Road and the influence of geography on ancient strategic spaces and capital cities.?Since its original publication in 2015, the book has been reprinted over a dozen times and republished twice. It has become a key reference for historical geography courses at universities across China and is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive and influential works in the field.?Lectures on Chinese Historical Geography?is an essential resource for understanding the geographical foundations of China’s history and the evolution of human-environment interactions.

This book examines the effects of norm contestation on EU foreign policy through three significant empirical cases: arms control, migration, and gender equality. The subject is particularly relevant in the current context of increasing contestation of the liberal international order. Drawing on norm research and European studies literature, the book applies the concept of norm contestation to the broader study of EU foreign policy.

Chen examines the Chinese Nationalist government's distinctive support for private Muslim teachers schools between the 1920s and 1940s, and explores the complex relationship between these institutions and the Chinese state during the Republican period.

In 1933, the government issued the Teachers Schools Regulations, mandating that all teachers schools be state-run. However, the Nationalists viewed private Muslim teachers schools as valuable allies in their efforts to assert influence in China's Muslim-dominated northwestern frontier region and deliberately refrained from enforcing the 1933 Teachers Schools Regulations on them. Instead, the government applied the 1933 Amended Private Schools Regulations, which did not specifically address teachers schools, to govern Muslim teachers schools. By charting the evolving dynamics between the Nationalist state and Chinese Hui Muslims, this book reevaluates the Hui Muslims' role in shaping modern China.

Offering crucial context on the role of Islam in modern China, this book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of Chinese history, as well as for policymakers and journalists interested in religion in China.

This comprehensive volume examines how artificial intelligence (AI) can either strengthen or undermine democratic society. It introduces groundbreaking frameworks including "AI-Enhanced Reflexive Control" (AIRC), and categorizes vulnerable democracies into three types - underdeveloped, strained, and stressed - each of which facing unique AI-related challenges.

Drawing on extensive case studies including Romania's 2024 election annulment, Bulgaria's disinformation networks, and democratic innovations in Kenya and the Philippines, contributors analyze AI's impact across electoral processes, legal systems, and public discourse. The book systematically examines five critical categories of unethical AI applications - disinformation, electoral interference, human rights manipulation, cultural exploitation, and privacy invasion - while exploring AI's potential as a democratic equalizer.

Featuring accessible introductions to AI topics, real-world case studies, and actionable policy recommendations, this volume serves as an essential guide for policymakers, technologists, and those studying AI's complex relationship with democratic governance.

This book offers the hitherto unknown history of physics in Uruguay. To describe this history, it is necessary to take a broader view of the first Latin American attempts at research in physics. These first researchers dedicated to the understanding of physics received the "giants" achievements of the discipline from Europe or the United States, but all they could do was find ways to preserve most of this knowledge. Thus, instead of thinking of science as an international enterprise in which all members participate with the same goal of looking far ahead, this book reflects on the real circumstances of Uruguayan and Latin American scientists, who were willing to become part of the international communities, but did not have the proper training, resources and cultural support to do so. That's why the history contained in this book is mixed with some philosophical problems about the real nature of the practice of physics and science in general. The mainstream definitions of scientific activity, or the proper concept of science should be adapted to material conditions and different kinds of aims and proposals. This book explores, based on the history of physics in Uruguay and Latin America, new standards of "the scientific" itself, making it of great interest to historians and philosophers of science and those interested in the history of Latin America and Uruguay in particular.

This book considers how public diplomacy is employed as an instrument of statecraft by Middle Eastern and Asian governments to leverage soft power. Senior, mid-career, and junior scholars from academia and think tanks synthesise their expertise to deploy historical, geopolitical, and economic approaches in their analyses and observe how new practices of public diplomacy have been developed, tested, and applied in the two regions. Building and extending on the extant scholarship, which remains mostly focused on East Asia, it incorporates the Middle East not only as a recipient but also as a practitioner of public diplomacy. The thematic focus is underpinned by case studies of individual nation-states, enabling analysis of concrete examples that shed light on the evolution of Asia-Middle East ties.

This volume is an essential reference for scholars and policymakers in the fields of international relations, international political economy, and area studies who seek to explore relations between these two geographical areas beyond traditional diplomacy.