Affirm Press is an independent publisher in Melbourne, Australia, dedicated to publishing great stories, big ideas, and the most engaging local and international authors. Our children's list was shortlisted for the 2020 BOP Bologna Best Children’s Publisher of the Year award.
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'Mercenaries', 'cheats', 'destroying the soul of (English) football', 'destroying the link between football clubs and their supporters': foreign football players have been accused of being at the origin of all the ills of contemporary football. How true is this? Foreign players and football supporters: The Old Firm, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain is the first academic book to look at supporters' reactions to the increase in the number of foreign players in the very clubs they support week in week out. It shows that football supporters identify with their club through a variety of means, which may change or be replaced with others, and provides the most comprehensive view on football supporters' attachment to their club in the European Union, following the increase in European legislation. Divided into three case studies on Glasgow (Celtic and Rangers), Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in London, the book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to chart the evolution of the link between supporters and club between 1995 and today. It is based on extensive research through the press of three nations, as well as interviews with officials and supporters. It provides an excellent read for students and researchers in Sports Studies, Politics, European Studies, French Studies and other Social Sciences, or to anyone interested in one of the most original institutions of contemporary western societies: mass spectator sports. ;
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In the new world order mapped out by Japanese and Western imperialism in East Asia after the mid-nineteenth century opium wars, communities of merchants and settlers took root in China and Korea. New identities were constructed, new modes of collaboration formed and new boundaries between the indigenous and foreign communities were literally and figuratively established. Newly available in paperback, this pioneering and comparative study of Western and Japanese imperialism examines European, American and Japanese communities in China and Korea, and challenges received notions of agency and collaboration by also looking at the roles in China of British and Japanese colonial subjects from Korea, Taiwan and India, and at Chinese Christians and White Russian refugees. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the history and anthropology of imperialism, colonialism's culture and East Asian history, as well as contemporary Asian affairs.
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This book offers important new insights into the history and culture of the Gaelic-speaking world from the mid-fifteenth century through to the reign of James VI and I. Throughout this period, the reach of the English and Scottish crowns within these western regions was limited. The initiative lay with local communities and royal power was contingent upon negotiating with well-established and largely autonomous aristocratic lineages. Moreover, events within this western world could exert a powerful, often unpredictable, influence upon the affairs of the wider archipelago. Using a series of case studies, this collection examines the evolving relationship between Ireland and Scotland in rich detail. It demonstrates how this world interacted with the encroaching English and Scottish states and underlines the importance of paying closer attention to this neglected area of Irish and British history.
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Aid for Dominance addresses the analytic weaknesses of mainstream analysis of foreign aid, which often focuses on its material dimensions. The book underscores the constitutive relationship between foreign aid as a material resource and the diplomatic discourses and practices that constitute complex bilateral relations between donor and recipient states. Written by two leading scholars of contemporary United States and Chinese foreign policies in the Global South, Aid for Dominance offers a pioneering, theoretically conscious, and empirically rich account of the two great powers' grand strategies in the global development sector. By deploying a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis, this book draws from a wide range of evidentiary materials from primary sources, including data from fieldwork interviews, government documents, local and international newspapers, speeches by high-ranking government officials and diplomats, and secondary data from scholarly publications and policy papers.
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Medieval and early modern texts reflect a fascination with material objects, from ancient heirlooms to ingenious automata. Often imbued with power or beauty, these objects carry an uncanny sense of otherness, their mysterious origins evoking wonder and suggesting temporal and spatial distance. Acting as repositories of temporal alterity, such artefacts bridge the past and present in profound ways. This volume, featuring contributions from experts in literature and art history, explores how texts from these periods use material objects to engage with temporal otherness. From everyday items to marvellous creations, objects challenge distinctions between human and material, natural and cultural. Whether examining the hybrid status of Hector's body in Lydgate's Troy Book or the temporal agency of humble bubbles, the chapters illuminate the vibrant networks connecting people and objects. By highlighting the 'hybridity' of matter, the book offers fresh insights into Bruno Latour's critique of nature-culture divides.
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The first comprehensive account of the public and cultural diplomacy campaigns carried out by the US in Yugoslavia during the height of the Cold War, this book examines the political role of culture in US-Yugoslav bilateral relations and the fluid links between information and propaganda. Tito allowed the US Information Agency and the State Department's cultural programmes to enter Yugoslavia, liberated from Soviet control. The exchange of intellectual and political personnel helped foster the US-Yugoslav relationship, yet it posed severe ideological challenges for both sides. By providing new insights into porous borders between freedom and coercion in Tito's regime, this book shows how public diplomacy acted as an external input for Yugoslav liberalisation and dissident movements. Using extensive archival research and interviews, Konta analyses the links between information and propaganda, and the unintended effects of propaganda beyond the control of producers and receivers.
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Over four decades as a diplomat, Sir Frank Roberts dealt with headline issues, including policy towards Germany during the years of appeasement, the Second World War alliance with the Soviet Union, the origins of the Cold War, NATO affairs, the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises, European integration, and relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Collaborating with the renowned American diplomat, George F. Kennan (the cryptonymous author 'X' of an influential 1947 article), his despatches from Moscow in 1946 shaped Britain's Cold War strategy. In 1954 he played an integral part in the diplomacy behind the rearmament of the Federal Republic and her incorporation into NATO, helping to build an enduring structure of transatlantic security. Roberts' career sheds new light on British foreign policy across an era in which Britain slipped from global pre-eminence to regional power status.
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The shortage of skilled nursing staff is glaring. Staffing needs will increase strongly due to retirements over the next ten years. To improve the situation, professional associations are calling for better working and general conditions, adequate staffing and remuneration, greater investment in training and professional development, and more decision-making powers for nursing professionals in the healthcare system. Recruiting and integrating foreign nursing professionals is an important element in reducing the shortage of skilled workers.
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Numerous women artists engaged with industrial materials such as plastics in the 1960s and 1970s, contrary to what the discourse of the time would have us believe. As Feminist substances shows, their works offered unique approaches to plastics in art, introducing new material meanings through a feminist lens. With a focus on Europe and Latin America, the book discusses the practices of Carla Accardi, Lea Lublin and Alina Szapocznikow, combining close readings of selected artworks with broader considerations of their social contexts. It explores their use of Sicofoil, plexiglass, plastic inflatables, polyester resin and polyurethane foam to address key concerns of feminist thought in relation to social reproduction, motherhood, memory, desire and illness. Beyond commonplaces of plastics as generic bad materials, Feminist substances considers more complex ways of engaging with synthetic matter, taking into account our messy relationships with these controversial materials.
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Sophie is teased by her classmates because of her condition: her skin looks different; she has flaky, red patches. That’s why her classmates only call her “Flake”. Sophie is often sad and doesn’t feel like she belongs. She is afraid to tell her classmates about her illness. One day, Lennart makes friends with her after his mom, a doctor, tells him about neurodermatitis. Sophie realizes how important it is that other people know about her illness and has an idea: together with Lennart she wants to talk about it to the children in her class during a school lesson (“Mission Flake”). This book helps children who suffer from atopic dermatitis (neurodermatitis) to learn more about the condition and the best way for them to cope with it. For:• children of elementary school age(between 6 and 12 years) who sufferfrom atopic dermatitis (neurodermatitis)• parents and relatives• teachers• therapists
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Materials carried the meaning of early modern art. Transformed and crafted from the matter of nature, art objects were the physical embodiment of both the inherent qualities of materials and the forces of culture that used, refined and produced them. The study of materials offers a new approach to this important period in the history of art, science and culture, linking the close study of painting, sculpture and architecture to much wider categories of the everyday and the exotic. Drawing on new research and models from anthropology, material culture and the history of art, scholars in The matter of art explore topics as diverse as Inka stonework, gold in panel painting, cork platforms for shoes, and the Christian Eucharist.
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In Straight Nation, Pavan Mano reveals the logic of straightness that sits at the heart of postcolonial nationalism in Singapore. Mano rejects the romantic notion of the nation as a haven of belonging, showing it to be a relentless force that is allied with heteronormativity to create a host of minoritized and xenologized figures. Through meticulous exploration and close reading of a swathe of texts, Mano unveils the instrumental role of sexuality in structuring the national imaginary. The book adroitly demonstrates how queerness is rendered foreign in postcolonial Singapore and functions alongside technologies of "race", gender, and class. A provocative critique of narrow contemporary identity politics and its concomitant stymying of a more ambitious political critique, Straight Nation sets out an argument that moves beyond the negativity of traditional critique into a space of (re)thinking, (re)building and (re)imagining.
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This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars have treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book would appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism, and women's studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies.
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