Dark Abyss Edizioni
Emanuela A. Imineo: Publisher; Consuelo Baviera: Graphic Director; Lisa Bilotti: Social Media Manager; Arianna Petracin: Assistant Management; Francesco Spada: Foreign Scouting
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Travellers in Africa
British travelogues, 1850-1900
by Timothy Youngs
Works of travel have been the subject of increasingly sophisticated studies in recent years. This book undermines the conviction with which nineteenth-century British writers talked about darkest Africa. It places the works of travel within the rapidly developing dynamic of Victorian imperialism. Images of Abyssinia and the means of communicating those images changed in response to social developments in Britain. As bourgeois values became increasingly important in the nineteenth century and technology advanced, the distance between the consumer and the product were justified by the scorn of African ways of eating. The book argues that the ambiguities and ambivalence of the travellers are revealed in their relation to a range of objects and commodities mentioned in narratives. For instance, beads occupy the dual role of currency and commodity. The book deals with Henry Morton Stanley's expedition to relieve Emin Pasha, and attempts to prove that racial representations are in large part determined by the cultural conditions of the traveller's society. By looking at Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it argues that the text is best read as what it purports to be: a kind of travel narrative. Only when it is seen as such and is regarded in the context of the fin de siecle can one begin to appreciate both the extent and the limitations of Conrad's innovativeness.
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Geography & the EnvironmentJuly 2024Living the urban periphery
Infrastructure, everyday life and economic change in African city-regions
by Paula Meth, Sarah Charlton, Tom Goodfellow, Alison Todes
The edges of cities are increasingly understood as places of dynamism and change, but there is little research on African urban peripheries, the nature of building, growth, investment and decline that is shaping them and how these are lived. This co-authored monograph draws on findings from an extensive comparative study on Ethiopia and South Africa, in conversation with a related study on Ghana. It examines African urban peripheries through a dual focus on the experiences of living in these changing contexts, alongside the logics driving their transformation. Through its conceptualisation and application of five 'logics of periphery', it offers unique, contextually-informed insights into the generic processes shaping urban peripheries, and the variable ways in which these are playing out in contemporary Africa for those living the peripheries.
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Trusted Partner
2024Where 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.
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The ArtsJanuary 2019Popular cinema in Brazil, 1930–2001
by Stephanie Dennison, Lisa Shaw
Brazil has one of the most significant and productive film industries in Latin America. This ground-breaking study provides an entertaining insight into the Brazilian films that have most captured the imagination of domestic audiences over the years. The recent international success of films such as Central Station and City of God, has stimulated widespread interest in Brazilian film, but studies written in English focus on the 'auteur' cinema of the 1960s. This book focuses on individual films in their socio-historical context, drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Latin America. It argues that Brazilian cinema has almost always been grounded in intrinsically home-grown cultural forms, dating back to the nineteenth century, such as the Brazilian music-hall, the travelling circus, radio shows, carnival, and, later, comedy television. Combining a chronological structure with groundbreaking research and a lively approach, Popular cinema in Brazil is the ideal introduction to Brazilian cinema.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2025Revolution 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 SciencesOctober 2022Germany'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.
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2024The political ecology of colonial capitalism
Race, nature, and accumulation
by Bikrum Gill
This book situates the post financial crisis phenomenon of the "global land grab" within the longue duree of the capitalist world system. It does so by advancing a theoretical and historical framework, called the political ecology of colonial capitalism, that clarifies the key role played by the co-production of race and nature in provisioning the "ecological surplus" that has historically secured the emergence and reproduction of capitalist development. The key premise of this book is that the global land grab constitutes another such attempted moment of re-securing the cheap food premise through racialized frontier appropriation. The argument advanced here is that, within the neoliberal crisis conjuncture, the hegemonic resolution of capital's escalating social-ecological contradictions necessitates, through the practice of "global primitive accumulation," the racialized construction of frontiers of unused nature in emergent zones of appropriation.
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September 2022Right-Wing Judges in Germany
AfD judges, prosecutors and jurors: a danger to democracy?
by Joachim Wagner
— How politics are increasingly influencing the rule of law in Germany — Systematic failures of democracy to protect itself — Based on numerous interviews with different members of Germany's legal system Ever since the right-wing party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) secured representation in the Bundestag and in all state parliaments, Germany’s judiciary is facing a new challenge for which it is unprepared: AfD-affiliated judges and public prosecutors are attracting attention through right-wing biased decisions and investigations. Other members of the legal system cause further damage by ignoring the right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic background of crimes and thus punishing offenders too leniently or not at all. Both the judiciary and policy-makers have so far underestimated the new danger from the right. As a result protection against the appointment of right-wing legal professionals has been insufficient. Joachim Wagner systematically analyses numerous examples from German courts in recent years. He calls on the democratic judiciary to remember the principles of a well-fortified democracy.
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July 2018Deutschland und Israel
by Amos Oz, Lydia Böhmer, Norbert Lammert
Als Kind im Jerusalem der 40er Jahre erlebt Amos Oz den Hass auf Deutschland als etwas Absolutes, Unverrückbares. Die Deutschen sind Mörder, ihre Sprache, ihre Produkte geächtet, das Wiedergutmachungsabkommen von 1952 noch als Schande verschrien. Und in jedem Pass des jungen Landes steht "Gültig für alle Länder – mit Ausnahme von Deutschland". Doch dann sind da die Bücher, die Literatur, dann liest er und das ganze Land Lenz, Böll, Grass, und ein Wandel vollzieht sich, im Kleinen wie im Großen, in ihm wie im Staate Israel … Amos Oz kombiniert persönliche Erfahrungen mit historisch-politischem Nachdenken. Auf diese Weise liefert er eine beeindruckende Bestandsaufnahme des alles andere als normalen Verhältnisses zweier Nationen. Ein Buch über Deutschland, über Israel, über den mehr als sechzig Jahre währenden Prozess der Verständigung. Und zur gleichen Zeit ein Plädoyer für die brückenschlagende Kraft des Erzählens.
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November 1988Über Deutschland reden
by Martin Walser
Seit zehn Jahren beschäftigt sich Martin Waiser mit einem Thema, das in der öffentlichen Meinung, bei den Politikern und bei den Intellektuellen als obsolet gilt: Deutschland. Und er beharrt darauf, daß das Wort Deutschland nicht nur im Wetterbericht Verwendung findet. Für Waiser bezeichnet dieses Wort vielmehr ein Fehlendes, das nicht dadurch einfach zu beseitigen ist, daß man es als geschichtlich notwendig ansieht, als verdientes, zu bejahendes Resultat der Geschichte. Eine solche Auffasssung ist für Waiser gerade unhistorisch - versperrt sie doch von vornherein die Möglichkeiten jedweden historischen Prozesses.
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February 1992Über Juden in Deutschland
by Gert Mattenklott
Der Schriftsteller und Literaturwissenschaftler Gert Mattenklott schaut hinter die großen Linien historischer Darstellung, fragt nach dem Innenleben, den Erfahrungen von Juden in Deutschland. Hier ist der Plural genau zu nehmen: Mattenklott zeichnet eine Vielzahl jüdischer Lebensgeschichten nach, die alle zu der einen Geschichte von Juden in Deutschland und zu deren tiefem Einschnitt nach 1933, der Entrechtung, Vertreibung und dem Völkermord, gehören. Am Leitfaden von Korrespondenzen zeichnet Gert Mattenklott nach, wie sich jüdisches Bewußtsein äußert. Das Spektrum reicht von unbekannten Kaufleuten der frühen Neuzeit bis zu den großen Briefschreibern des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Gegenwart ist nicht durch Briefe, sondern durch Gespräche dargestellt, die Gert Mattenklott geführt hat.
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017European Empires and the People
Popular responses to imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy
by John M. MacKenzie
This is the first book to survey in comparative form the transmission of imperial ideas to the public in six European countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters, focusing on France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy, provide parallel studies of the manner in which colonial ambitions and events in the respective European empires were given wider popular visibility. The international group of contributors, who are all scholars working at the cutting edge of these fields, place their work in the context of governmental policies, the economic bases of imperial expansion, major events such as wars of conquest, the emergence of myths of heroic action in exotic contexts, religious and missionary impulses, as well as the new media which facilitated such popular dissemination. Among these media were the press, international exhibitions, popular literature, educational institutions and methods, ceremonies, church sermons and lectures, monuments, paintings and much else.
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December 1995Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland
1933–1945. Die Entfesselung der Gewalt: Rassismus und Krieg
by Ludolf Herbst, Hans-Ulrich Wehler
Das vorliegende Buch von Ludolf Herbst macht es sich zur Aufgabe, diese Prozesse zu untersuchen. Dabei stehen Krieg und Rassenpolitik im Mittelpunkt. Sie werden jedoch nicht isoliert betrachtet, sondern mit wesentlichen innenpolitischen und gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen verknüpft. Dies geschieht in der Annahme, daß die außerordentliche Dynamik, mit der das nationalsozialistische Deutschland in der Außen- und Rassepolitik agierte, wesentlich von diesen korrespondierenden Bereichen mitgeprägt wurde.
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Society & culture: generalA TIME OF WOLVES: GERMANY AND THE GERMANS 1945 - 1955
by Harald Jähner
A dance among the ruins: Harald Jähner’s major new portrait of Germany’s post-war societyCountless former soldiers drift through the towns and cities; countless children grow up without a father. The old order has been destroyed and although the streets seem eerily empty, the traditional annual street carnivals are soon back in full swing, jazz can be heard among the ruins, intellectuals rekindle a culture of discussion and debate.Harald Jähner’s book is the first history of Germany’s national mentality in the immediate post-war period. It focusses on the German people in all their diversity: the “re-educators” Alfred Döblin and Rudolf Herrnstadt, who tried in two different zones of occupation to win the trust of their fellow Germans; Beate Uhse, owner of a mail order company for “marital hygiene”, who questioned the old moral code governing what was deemed proper; the many nameless black market traders, pockets stuffed with Lucky Strike cigarettes; stylish housewives sitting at kidney-shaped coffee tables that were to become emblematic for a freer and affordable world. Using major political developments as a backdrop, this book weaves a series of life stories into a nuanced panorama that makes the monumental changes affecting the nation tangible for its readers. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras, portrayed here as a period that proved decisive for Germany’s future development – and one starkly different to how most Germans imagine it today.
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Literature & Literary StudiesJanuary 2013Eleventh-century Germany
The Swabian chronicles
by I. Robinson
Three of the most important chronicles of eleventh-century Germany were composed in the south-western duchy of Swabia. The chronicles reveal how between 1049 and 1100 the centripetal attraction of the reform papacy became the dominant fact of intellectual life in German reformed monastic circles. In the abbey of Reichenau Herman 'the Lame' composed a chronicle of the reign of Emperor Henry III (1039-56). His pupil, Berthold of Reichenau, continued his master's work, composing a detailed account of 1076-1079 in Germany. Bernold, a clergyman of Constance, continued the work of Herman and Berthold in a text containing the fullest extant account of 1080-1100. Herman's waning enthusiasm for the monarchy and growing interest in the newly reformed papacy were intensified in Berthold's chronicle, and writing in the new context of the reformed monasteries of south-western Germany, Bernold preached total obedience to the Gregorian papacy. The Swabian chronicles are an indispensable resource to the student of the changing loyalties and conflicts of eleventh-century Germany.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2009Regional politics in Russia
by Cameron Ross
This innovative, multi-contributed book, now available in paperback, argues convincingly that Russia will never be able to create a viable democracy as long as authoritarian regimes are able to flourish in the regions. The main themes covered are democratisation at the regional level, and the problems faced by the federal states in forging viable democratic institutions in what is now a highly assymetrical Federation. A major strength of the book lies in its combination of thematic chapters with case studies of particular regions and republics. Very little has been published to date on the actual processes of democratisation in particular republics and regions. The book takes into account the literature available on the 'new institutionalism' and outlines the importance of institutions in developing and maintaining democracy. It looks at the importance of sovereignty, federalism and democratic order, and considers the distinct problems of party-building in Russia's regions. Electoral politics are also considered fully, before the book goes on to consider the whole issue of regional politics and democratisation in five particular areas of Russia - Novgorod, the Komi Republic, Russia's Far East, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. The authors, the majority of whom are internationally recognised experts in their field, have been drawn from Britain, the USA, Russia and Germany, giving the book a truly global perspective. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2024
US public diplomacy in socialist Yugoslavia, 1950–70
Soft culture, cold partners
by Carla Konta
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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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2006Securitising Russia
The domestic politics of Vladimir Putin
by Bettina Renz, Edwin Bacon, Julian Cooper
Securitising Russia shows the impact of twenty-first-century security concerns on the way Russia is ruled. It demonstrates how President Putin has wrestled with terrorism, immigration, media freedom, religious pluralism, and economic globalism, and argues that fears of a return to old-style authoritarianism oversimplify the complex context of contemporary Russia. The book focuses on the internal security issues common to many states in the early twenty-first-century, and places them in the particular context of Russia. Detailed analysis of the place of security in Russia's political discourse and policy-making reveals nuances often missing from overarching assessments of Russia today. To characterise the Putin regime as the 'KGB-resurgent' is to miss vital continuities, contexts, and on-going political conflicts which make up the contemporary Russian scene. Securitising Russia draws together current debates about whether Russia is a 'normal' country developing its own democratic and market structures, or a nascent authoritarian regime returning to the past. ;
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Trusted Partner
Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2018Popular science and public opinion in eighteenth-century France
by Michael Lynn, Joseph Bergin, Penny Roberts, Bill Naphy
In this book, Michael R. Lynn analyses the popularisation of science in Enlightenment France. He examines the content of popular science, the methods of dissemination, the status of the popularisers and the audience, and the settings for dissemination and appropriation. Lynn introduces individuals like Jean-Antoine Nollet, who made a career out of applying electric shocks to people, and Perrin, who used his talented dog to lure customers to his physics show. He also examines scientifically oriented clubs like Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier's Musée de Monsieur which provided locations for people interested in science. Phenomena such as divining rods, used to find water and ores as well as to solve crimes; and balloons, the most spectacular of all types of popular science, demonstrate how people made use of their new knowledge. Lynn's study provides a clearer understanding of the role played by science in the Republic of Letters and the participation of the general population in the formation of public opinion on scientific matters.
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