Books on the topic 'Cultura della Visione'

La dominazione di Filippo Maria Visconti in Lombardia (1412-1447) fu il risultato di un tentativo, solo parzialmente riuscito, di ricomporre i vasti territori già dominati dal primo duca, Giangaleazzo Visconti. Per trentacinque anni, il terzo duca di Milano governò uno stato ampio, ricco e prospero, ne rafforzò le istituzioni, coltivò alte ambizioni monarchiche e proclamò idee di pace, di concordia e di giustizia. L’uso delle armi e della diplomazia e il serrato confronto con gli attori politici, sociali ed economici del dominio furono gli strumenti adottati per rafforzare e consolidare il dominio ducale. Gli autori di questo volume illustrano i modelli politici sottostanti all’esercizio dell’autorità del duca, i modi di relazione che si stabilirono tra autorità e sudditi, la costruzione dell’apparato simbolico e ideologico, la committenza artistica del principe, la politica ecclesiastica e le vicende religiose del ducato sullo sfondo dei concili di Costanza e Basilea. Sono inoltre analizzati alcuni specifici momenti della politica ducale: gli atti di dedizione del 1412, l’assetto geopolitico fissato nel 1435 dopo la vittoria di Ponza, la crisi degli ultimi anni del ducato caratterizzata dalla spietata esecutività delle pratiche di governo. Il libro, in definitiva, vuole offrire una visione più approfondita e problematica della dominazione del terzo duca di Milano, che nei suoi chiaroscuri risulta essere un momento importante della stabilizzazione degli assetti dello stato regionale lombardo.

I contributi raccolti in questi Atti offrono una rappresentazione varia e articolata dei rapporti tra l’opera di Dante Alighieri e la cultura teologica tardomedievale, osservata in alcuni suoi aspetti fondamentali e con un’attenzione particolare all’esegesi antica della Commedia. I temi trattati coprono uno spettro ampio di problemi: la presenza dell’eresia nel poema; la presunta eterodossia dello stesso Dante; i riferimenti alla Croce e alla Passione, esaminati alla luce delle dottrine teologiche e delle pratiche devozionali del tempo; l’influsso esercitato dalla cosiddetta ‘mistica affettiva’ sulla riflessione poetologica dantesca; il problema della creazione e resurrezione dei corpi; l’apparentamento tra teologia e cielo Empireo proposto nel Convivio; l’arduo tema della visione profetica, indagato a partire dall’Epistola a Cangrande. A episodi ancora poco noti della ricezione del poema dantesco sono dedicati gli ultimi due contributi: le chiose dell’Anonimo Teologo al Paradiso e la presenza di Dante nei sermoni quattrocenteschi di Gabriele Barletta e Paolo Attavanti.

La prospettiva nel figurativo nacque con forma diversa da quella con cui è presentata nella didattica attuale e si sviluppò accompagnando le trasformazioni del pensiero scientifico. Lo studio smonta e rimonta dall’interno le immagini prospettiche di una serie di opere, seguendo con chiare elaborazioni grafiche le trasformazioni del tema. La successione dei saggi spiega l’evolversi del ruolo dell’abaco e della misura nelle opere dei primi artisti-scienziati, secondo il pensiero scientifico della cultura coeva. Dall’Umanesimo al Barocco, la prospettiva si trasforma alla fine, da ricerca sulla verità della visione, in ricerca del suo inganno, attraverso espedienti meccanici e complessi teoremi di ottica geometrica. L’istanza originaria è dissolta nei virtuosismi tecnici. Il repertorio finale offre una selezione di esempi che, attraverso i secoli, fa intravedere la larga dimensione del tema.

Il tema, di grande respiro, prende come punto di partenza il concetto braudeliano di Mediterraneo. La sua visione di un mare chiuso come una opportunità geografica per una integrazione economica fra popolazioni diverse per religioni, linguaggi ed entità etniche e politiche continua a funzionare come modello per studi applicati ad un ampio raggio di contesti. L’obiettivo che si è posta la 50ª Settimana di studi è stato quello di andare oltre lo studio dei singoli sistemi visti in modo isolato per combinare diverse analisi di mari aperti e chiusi o aree costiere, allo scopo di comprendere il ruolo di integrazione giocato in Europa dalle connessioni marittime. Poiché nelle civiltà preindustriali il trasporto per via d’acqua era più facile di quello via terra, è sembrato giunto il momento di richiamare l’attenzione sul modo in cui queste reti di relazione operavano a livello europeo e con i partner commerciali asiatici e nordafricani. Il volume prende le mosse dalle grandi tradizioni di ricerca su base regionale o tematica, che però sono state raramente integrate su una più ampia scala continentale. Immanuel Wallerstein ha elaborato il concetto braudeliano concettualizzandone le dimensioni interculturali e transnazionali e il ruolo nel sistema di divisione del lavoro. Egli lo chiamò un “sistema mondo”, non perché coinvolgesse il mondo intero, ma perché è più vasto di qualunque unità politica giuridicamente definita. E si tratta di una “economia mondo” perché il legame di base tra le varie parti del sistema è economico. I vari aspetti e le tradizioni regionali di ricerca sono stati collegati tra loro in un approccio coerente che si posto l'obiettivo di valutare: - Sulla base di quali elementi geografici, nautici, tecnici, economici, giuridici, sociali e culturali siano emerse le varie reti regionali, e come funzionavano, - Il carattere e il ruolo dei porti marittimi come punti nodali delle rotte marine e del loro hinterland, attraverso fiumi, canali e strade, - I legami commerciali e personali tra mercanti e armatori in vari porti, - In quale modo le reti regionali si collegavano tra di loro e come, nel corso del tempo, finirono per integrarsi in unità più ampie, - In quale modo le reti private, inizialmente costituite da organizzazioni di mercanti e navigatori, finirono per trattare con le autorità locali e, una volta cresciute, con gli stati e gli imperi, per proteggere i propri interessi

La crisi della motivazione diventa un nuovo e diverso fenomeno di “patologia giudiziaria”, in quanto i rimedi apprestati dalle recenti riforme normative – sulla struttura, sul contenuto e sul controllo motivazionale delle sentenze – non riescono a fornire una soluzione al problema generale dell’aumento del carico giudiziario, il quale continua a trovare il principale “collo di bottiglia” nel momento della redazione della parte motiva della decisione. L’idea di riconoscere uno stretto legame tra completezza argomentativa e correttezza della motivazione – frutto di una cultura crociana ispirata all’eleganza estetico-letteraria – non risulta più attuale ed è destinata al tramonto, poiché non giova innanzitutto all’efficacia e ai tempi della giustizia. Si sta facendo oggi avanti l’idea di una motivazione che punta più al rafforzamento del proprio profilo funzionale che di quello formale: flessibile, deformalizzata ed improntata a conciliare i bisogni di effettività della tutela delle parti con le esigenze di efficienza del sistema. Si cerca, infatti, di rendere una motivazione comprensibile ed idonea ad esplicitare il ragionamento decisorio ma, al contempo, di giungere alla conclusione della lite in tempi ragionevoli. In questo volume, l’autore, dopo un’attenta analisi della disciplina vigente e della giurisprudenza di legittimità, propone una lettura sistematica della motivazione all’interno di una più ampia visione del nostro sistema processuale contemporaneo, giungendo al risultato che essa è, da un lato, in crisi, ma dall’altro, comincia a rinascere a nuova vita, ponendosi più in linea con le molteplici forme e contenuti che caratterizzano oggi la decisione giudiziaria. Un costrutto motivazionale, dunque, sempre più vicino a un processo civile prossimo a lasciare modelli rigidi per schemi flessibili e semplificati, nel quale si affida al giudice e alla sua sensibilità il potere di calibrare anche il momento decisorio, rendendolo più aderente allo scopo del singolo processo

Nella cultura mafiosa, eventi religiosi come battesimi, funerali, feste patronali, pellegrinaggi ricoprono da sempre un ruolo importante. Lo stesso si può dire per il mondo dell’antimafia, nel quale i rituali devozionali occupano uno spazio simbolico irrinunciabile. Nel tempo queste tipologie di interazione hanno però trovato forme di rappresentazione anche in media diversi rispetto a quelli tradizionalmente vocati alle pratiche religiose e devozionali. A essere investiti di questa funzione sono così stati teatro popolare e di ricerca, letteratura agiografica e romanzo d’inchiesta, stampa quotidiana e fotografia, cinema e fiction tv, reportage documentario e servizi del tg, graphic novel e pagine dei social web. Muovendosi a largo spettro fra i vari luoghi di questa complessa mediasfera, il presente volume propone uno sguardo trasversale proprio su questo fenomeno, integrando fra loro, nell’analisi, saperi e linguaggi tipici del mondo dello spettacolo, delle arti visive e della storia dei media con quelli legati alla storia contemporanea e delle religioni.

L’archeologia dell’infanzia è un campo di ricerca molto attuale nel quadro internazionale degli studi dedicati all’antichità e negli anni più recenti ha visto una crescita considerevole anche grazie all’approccio interdisciplinare che arricchisce le indagini archeologiche di prospettive complementari, prime fra tutte quella dell’antropologia fisica e culturale. Il mondo infantile resta tuttavia molto difficile da analizzare per la scarsa visibilità che i bambini hanno in termini archeologici, a causa della fragilità dei resti ossei e della limitata evidenza sul piano sociale e culturale. Occorre allora adottare specifiche metodologie di indagine, capaci di fare emergere le tracce di una componente delle comunità antiche tanto significativa, quanto poco rappresentata a livello funerario. La attenta lettura contestuale dei dati riferibili ai bambini è il necessario presupposto per approdare a corrette ipotesi ricostruttive sulla percezione che ogni popolo aveva dell’infanzia. L’opera affronta il tema per la prima volta in modo sistematico e organico, mappando il fenomeno delle sepolture infantili nell’Italia del primo millennio a.C. Trenta saggi, scritti da circa sessanta studiosi, rendono questo volume la più aggiornata e completa raccolta di dati e di studi sull’archeologia dell’infanzia della penisola nell’età preromana. L’attenzione è rivolta non solo all’ambito sepolcrale, certamente il più ricco di informazioni, ma anche a quelli abitativo e santuariale molto meno noti, per ottenere un quadro conoscitivo il più possibile esteso e articolato. Dopo alcuni saggi che introducono alla riflessione teorica sviluppatasi attorno al tema, la prima parte dell’opera è dedicata ad un caso studio del mondo etrusco, oggetto di un recente progetto multidisciplinare; la seconda parte comprende numerosi contributi sull’Etruria, un territorio per il quale mancava finora una visione d’insieme su tutti i principali centri; la terza parte raccoglie saggi sulle popolazioni dell’Italia antica, offrendo uno straordinario sguardo sul mosaico di culture; infine un saggio finale, che delinea le coordinate culturali e antropologiche del fenomeno, valorizza la ricchezza e la complessità dell’opera. BIRTH costituisce il più completo strumento di conoscenza e di analisi del comportamento dei popoli dell’Italia antica nel trattamento funerario del bambino. Numerose appendici forniscono una dettagliata registrazione delle tombe infantili, base per ogni ricostruzione storica. L’opera è il primo passo di un percorso di studi destinato a proseguire, perché ancora molte sono le prospettive di indagine che l’archeologia dell’Italia preromana consente di sviluppare nell’ambito del più vivace dibattito scientifico internazionale sull’infanzia.

Attraverso l’analisi critica e dialettica del dibattito costituzionale più recente in tema di orientamento sessuale, l’autore analizza i principi ritenuti fondamentali per la costruzione di una società democratica e aperta a stili di vita differenti. Egli dimostra come le argomentazioni legali siano pesantemente condizionate dalla pressione di tabù sessuali, di paradigmi culturali sessisti, di tradizioni radicate che assurgono al ruolo di veri e propri miti sociali. Da più parti continuano infatti a sostenersi visioni discriminatorie (socialmente costruite) soprattutto in tema di rapporti sessuali consentiti, famiglia, matrimonio, filiazione, e spesso ci è possibile grazie all'utilizzo di contestate – e pur tuttavia diffuse – prassi d’interpretazione costituzionale che, secondo logiche solo in apparenza coerenti e razionali, considerano la tradizione o la storia come parametro normativo ultimo di definizione dei limiti dei diritti fondamentali e/o dell’ammissibilità di nuovi diritti, così ostacolando l’emersione di un vero e proprio diritto fondamentale al libero orientamento sessuale. L’obiettivo della ricerca è duplice e circolare: da un lato si vuole offrire un fondamento logico, razionale e convincente capace di giustificare le politiche pubbliche e costituzionali che salvaguardano le minoranze sessuali stigmatizzate e storicamente discriminate. Dall'altro si vuole dimostrare come le valutazioni interpretative e il diritto delle società aperte al nuovo e al diverso influenzino le credenze di persone appartenenti a culture chiuse e tradizionaliste in merito agli orientamenti sessuali considerati come anormali, o immorali, o comunque devianti, affinché i loro rispettivi sistemi possano sostenere, anche emotivamente, la ragionevolezza e desiderabilità del cambiamento politico e costituzionale. Un processo duplice e circolare, dunque, che gradatamente anela all'affermazione di un paradigma normativo "sessualmente" decostruito e garantista per tutti.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.