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        Medicine

        Humanity in the Crisis Zone

        Field Report of a Nurse on H umanitarian Aid with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in South Sudan

        by Andreas F. Lutz

        A hospital somewhere in remote South Sudan. A place where peoples’ lives are marked by extreme poverty, war, vio­lence, the climate crisis and the daily struggle for survival. How does it feel to be human under these conditions? What moves someone to voluntarily go where nobody would want to? Andreas Lutz takes you on a journey to a project run by the humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières in the north­east of South Sudan. Im­pressed by encounters with people who live under the precarious condi­tions of this crisis zone, he writes about his experiences as a caregiver and, among other things, about how health­care provision works with very limited resources.

      • Trusted Partner
        June 2026

        Little wars of empire

        British veterans in a colonial world, c.1885–1918

        by Taylor Soja

        Little Wars of Empire is a group biography of British veterans who experienced multiple wars across the British empire. Throughout the nineteenth century, Britain was constantly at war in its colonies, defending against anti-colonial resistance or trying to expand its influence. The veterans of these wars did not disappear once they were over, and many of them went on to later experience World War I. By using personal sources such as letters, diaries, and photograph albums, this book works to show how colonial violence and British military history depend upon one another, and argues that colonial war fundamentally shaped the British experience of empire. This was true for all kinds of British veterans, from British Army soldiers and officers to nurses and military families, whose experiences demonstrate the central place of colonial violence to British life.

      • Trusted Partner
        January 2021

        Menschlichkeit in Zeiten der Angst

        Reportagen über die Kriegsgebiete und Revolutionen unserer Welt

        by Julia Leeb

        Die Fotojournalistin Julia Leeb berichtet von den gefährlichsten Orten unserer Welt. Hautnah erfährt sie, wie sich Menschen in Extremsituationen verhalten, sei es bei den Kämpfen der Nubier im Sudan, bei den Warlords im Kongo, im Krieg in Libyen, während der Revolution in Ägypten oder in der abgeschotteten Diktatur in Nordkorea. Dabei gerät sie selbst in Lebensgefahr: Als sie mit ihren Recherchen der Wahrheit zu nahe kommt, soll sie kaltblütig umgebracht werden. Ein anderes Mal wird sie verschleppt, um sie als Zeugin zum Schweigen zu bringen. Dennoch schildert sie in ihren Reportagen über die Vergessenen unserer Welt auch immer wieder Begegnungen voller Schönheit und Hoffnung. Es sind vor allem Frauen, die durch ihren Mut und ihre Zuversicht den Weg aus Gewalt und Unterdrückung zu Frieden und wahrer Menschlichkeit weisen.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine

        Humanitarian Aid

        Encounters with People in Need

        by Joachim Gardemann

        Joachim Gardemann outlines his encounters and experiences as a pediatrician in crisis zones while working for the Red Cross all over the world. He describes people in existential emergency situations, who have been traumatized but survived a genocide on the border with Rwanda. People who have fled from civil wars in Congo or escaped from the Kosovo war. He traces the suffering of people in Iran, China and Haiti after losing their relatives and all their possessions in severe earthquakes. At their moments of greatest vulnerability, in the shelters and dirt of a refugee camp in Jordan, he meets people who have fled from the turmoil of the civil wars in Sudan and Syria. He sketches poignant portraits of the victims of the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. He gives a striking account of the devastation wrought by the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. He creates a worthy memorial to those who died of Ebola, who lost their lives as doctors and nurses in the fight against Ebola as well as to those who survived.

      • Trusted Partner
        March 1988

        Hexerei, Orakel und Magie bei den Zande

        by Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Brigitte Luchesi, Eva Gillies

        Bei dem hier vorliegenden Band handelt es sich um eine von Eva Gillies gekürzte und eingeleitete Ausgabe des zuerst 1937 erschienenen großen Werkes »Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande«, das den seither unbestrittenen Ruf des bedeutenden englischen Sozialanthropologen E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) begründet hat. Diese Monographie gehört zu den umfangreichen Publikationen Evans-Pritchards, die eine Frucht der intensiven ethnologischen Felduntersuchungen darstellen, die er in den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren im damals Anglo-Ägyptischen Sudan unternommen hat und in deren Verlauf er neben den Zande u. a. auch die Gesellschaften der Nuer, der Anuak und der Luo studiert hat. Evans-Pritchards Arbeit weist die innere Logik des Glaubens an Hexerei und Magie auf, eines Glaubens, der in der Vorstellungswelt und der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit vieler afrikanischer Gesellschaften einen festen Platz hat. »Hexerei, Orakel und Magie bei den Zande« ist bahnbrechend für den Versuch geworden, fremde Denksysteme auf ihre eigene Logik hin zu untersuchen und ihre Grundvoraussetzungen explizit zu machen. Seit den fünfziger Jahren beeinflußt Evans-Pritchards Werk neben Ethnologen zunehmend auch Philosophen, Soziologen und Theologen. In ihrem Vorwort umreißt Eva Gillies die heutige Bedeutung des Buchs von Evans-Pritchard und beschreibt die soziale und politische Organisation der Zande um 1930, um dem Leser die Einordnung in den historischen Kontext zu ermöglichen.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2025

        Revolution in China and Russia

        Reorganizing empires into nation states

        by Luyang Zhou

        Most scholars believe that China's nationality policy, like that of other socialist states, imitated the Soviet nationality model, a system which has been termed an "affirmative action empire." This book offers two contributions to the literature which run counter to this convention. First, it argues that the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union (USSR) were different; while the PRC was aimed to build an ideal-typical nation-state, the USSR was an open union of nation-states that was only temporarily confined to a physical territory. Second, while scholars who have noted this difference attribute it to contextual factors, such as ethnic structure, geopolitical status, and Russia's intervention into the Chinese Revolution, this book contends that context shaped the Sino-Soviet difference, yet it did not determine it. Rather, there was significant leeway between the implications of the contextual factors, and what the policy-designers ultimately established. This book probes who held agency, and how these individuals bridged this gap.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2025

        China as context

        Anthropology, post-globalisation and the neglect of China

        by Di Wu, Andrea E. Pia, Ed Pulford

        Decades-old calls to promote the significance of China for anthropological theory and the social sciences more generally ring more urgently today given China's importance to social, political and economic life globally. Yet Chinese-grounded ideas remain marginal to the discipline, and scholarly discussions retain a sense of China as an 'Other' apart from the 'real' world, and thus unsuitable or generating widely applicable theoretical ideas. Inspired by East Asian postcolonial scholarship, this volume tackles this unsettling situation head-on, arguing that without taking China seriously as a powerful agent, a locus of knowledge production, and a new discursive topos of an emerging post-global imaginary, anthropologists and other social scientists may fail to adequately analyse the global present and make sense of both the material and immaterial forces that animate it, wherever and however they work. Amid the end of Western globalisation and shifting anthropological understandings of relations between ethnography and theory, we show how 'China' must be understood as the ordinary 'context' for anthropological research practices worldwide.

      • Trusted Partner
        2024

        Where is Russia Heading?

        by Jens Siegert

        Vladimir Putin has been ruling Russia for 25 years. There is no end in sight to his dictatorship. He relies on repression at home and is waging a war of destruction against a neighbouring country. The conflict with the West has long become a systemic conflict between an illiberal-autocratic ideology and liberal-democratic principles. Nothing will change as long as Putin remains in power. Nevertheless, as far as can be ascertained under unfree conditions, the majority of the population seems to be supporting Putin. Does this mean that too many people in Russia do not want democracy or peace? Will everything remain the same after Putin? Or is there a chance that Russia will eventually take a different, more democratic path? Whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia is not going to disappear. We will still have to deal with our big neighbour in the east. This makes it all the more important to focus on longer-term developments. As a recognised expert on Russian history and society, the author outlines what the post-Putin era might look like. His in-depth analysis makes it clear that Russia is partly Putin, but Putin is not everything about Russia.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Ireland and the European Union

        Economic, political and social crises

        by Michael Holmes, Kathryn Simpson, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Kathryn Simpson, Paul Tobin

        This book examines how Ireland's relationship with the EU was affected by a succession of crises in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The financial crisis, the Brexit crisis and the migration crisis were not of equal significance on the island of Ireland. The financial crisis was a huge issue for the Republic but not Northern Ireland, Brexit had a major impact in both polities, the migration and populism issues were less controversial, while foreign policy challenges had a minimal impact. The book provides a summary of the main features of each of the crises to be considered, from both the EU and the Irish perspective. Ireland and the European Union is the first volume of its kind to provide a comprehensive analysis on British-Irish relations in the context of Brexit. It assesses the Withdrawal Agreement and Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, the devolution settlement and the 1998 Agreement, as well as the European dimension to Northern Ireland's peace process. The contributors explore a number of policy areas that are central to the understanding of each of the crises and the impact of each for Ireland. Chapters examine issues such as security, migration and taxation as well as protest politics, political parties, the media, public opinion and the economic impact of each of these crises on Ireland's relationship with the EU.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2022

        Germany's Russia problem

        The struggle for balance in Europe

        by John Lough

        The relationship between Germany and Russia is Europe's most important link with the largest country on the continent. But despite Germany's unparalleled knowledge and historical experience, its policymakers struggle to accept that Moscow's efforts to rebalance Europe at the cost of the cohesion of the EU and NATO are an attack on Germany's core interests. This book explains the scale of the challenge facing Germany in managing relations with a changing Russia. It analyses how successive German governments from 1991 to 2014 misread Russian intentions, until Angela Merkel sharply recalibrated German and EU policy towards Moscow. The book also examines what lies behind efforts to revise Merkel's bold policy shift, including attitudes inherited from the GDR and the role of Russian influence channels in Germany.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Britain in China

        by Robert Bickers

        This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

      • Trusted Partner
        January 1987

        A Sudanic chronicle: The Borno expeditions of Idris Alauma (1564 - 1576)

        According to the account of Ahmad B. Furtu. Arabic text, english translation, commentary and geographical gazetteer

        by Lange, Dierk; Ibn-Furtu, Ahmad

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2023

        Golden Mummies of Egypt

        Interpreting identities from the Graeco-Roman period

        by Campbell Price, Julia Thorne

        Golden Mummies of Egypt presents new insights and a rich perspective on beliefs about the afterlife during an era when Egypt was part of the Greek and Roman worlds (c. 300 BCE-200 CE). This beautifully illustrated book, featuring photography by Julia Thorne, accompanies Manchester Museum's first-ever international touring exhibition. Golden Mummies of Egypt is a visually spectacular exhibition that offers visitors unparalleled access to the museum's outstanding collection of Egyptian and Sudanese objects - one of the largest in the UK.

      • Trusted Partner
        March 2026

        Railway imperialism in China

        A political biography

        by Yangwen Zheng

        Railway Imperialism in China: a Political Biography is the first and most comprehensive book on history and politics of all major railways in China from the late Qing to the post-Mao era. It investigates the transformation of railways from a bête noire within discussions about reform to the emblematic "engines for empire" as foreign powers used it to carve outspheres of control and exploit the late Qing, and as an instrument of nation making for Chinese regimes. The book introduces new archival sources and a wide range of secondary materials. Boldly conceived, it situates the making of modern China in the context of British, Russian, German, Japanese, American expansion. It traces China's transformation from a victim of railway imperialism in the Age of Empireto a railway expansionist in the twenty-first century.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        Catholics and the law in Restoration Ireland

        by Paul Smith

        In 1660 Charles II was restored to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, but his hold on power was precarious. In particular, Ireland was fundamentally unstable - Catholics formed the majority of the population in a country where Protestantism was the established religion, a state of affairs unique in Europe. It was through the law that the restored Stuart monarchy governed its subjects and its colonial dependencies, and this book examines how Catholics engaged with and experienced English common law primarily through the eyes of Catholic clerics and Gaelic poets. It also examines how Catholics engaged with the Courts and the particular challenges they faced as lawyers. The book draws on an extensive body of primary source materials, including Irish-language poetry and little-used archival material relating to elite Catholic families.

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        May 2025

        US diplomacy and the Good Friday Agreement in post-conflict Northern Ireland

        by Richard Hargy

        Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, as autonomous diplomats in the George W. Bush State Department, were able to alter US intervention in Northern Ireland and play critical roles in the post-1998 peace process. Their contributions have not been fully appreciated or understood. The restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government in 2007 was made possible by State Department-led intervention in the peace process. There are few references to Northern Ireland in work examining the foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. Moreover, the ability to control US foreign policy towards the region brought one of George W. Bush's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This book will uncover the extent of this fall-out and provide original accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2026

        AIDS in Soviet Russia

        A story of deception, despair and hope

        by Rustam Alexander

        The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia. Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and 'immoral' groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat. In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government's failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism. Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people's fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev's perestroika.

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