Books on the topic 'Unit: Centre for Academic Development'

The subject around which the contributions in this volume gravitate is the creation of a higher institute of engineering studies in Florence in the late nineteenth-century. On the eve of the unification of Italy, Florence was a promising centre for a Polytechnic, in view of the experience of the Corpo di Ingegneri di Acque e Strade, the precocious railway building, the importance of the mining sector and the solidity of the Istituto Tecnico Toscano. Despite this, unlike what took place in Milan and in Turin, the Istituto Tecnico Toscano was not transformed into a Polytechnic for the training of engineers. The reasons for this non-development can be traced to the lack of "industrialist" propensities in the managerial group that emerged victorious from the "peaceful revolution" of 1859, to a desire for independence from the national academic system built on the Casati law, and to a local demand for engineering skills that was less dynamic than expected. Consequently, the prevailing winds were those of "normalisation" blowing from the government, the universities and the most prestigious Colleges of Engineers. Nevertheless, Florence continued to represent an important technological centre, especially in relation to railway infrastructures, public works, and the mechanical engineering industries (for example Pignone and Galileo). In the end it was not until one hundred years after unification that the city finally became the seat of a Faculty of Engineering.

Universities and economic development in Africa: Pact, academic core and coordination draws together evidence and synthesises the findings from eight African case studies. The three key findings presented in this report are as follows: 1. There is a lack of clarity and agreement (pact) about a development model and the role of higher education in development, at both national and institutional levels. There is, however, an increasing awareness, particularly at government level, of the importance of universities in the global context of the knowledge economy. 2. Research production at the eight African universities is not strong enough to enable them to build on their traditional undergraduate teaching roles and make a sustained contribution to development via new knowledge production. A number of universities have manageable student-staff ratios and adequately qualifi ed staff, but inadequate funds for staff to engage in research. In addition, the incentive regimes do not support knowledge production. 3. In none of the countries in the sample is there a coordinated effort between government, external stakeholders and the university to systematically strengthen the contribution that the university can make to development. While at each of the universities there are exemplary development projects that connect strongly to external stakeholders and strengthen the academic core, the challenge is how to increase the number of these projects. The project on which this report is based forms part of a larger study on Higher Education and Economic Development in Africa, undertaken by the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA). HERANA is coordinated by the Centre for Higher Education Transformation in South Africa.

Federations have existed in a modern form since the constitution of the United States entered into force in 1789. Riker defines a federation as follows (1975, p. 101) “a political organization in which the activities of government are divided between regional governments and a central government in such a way that each kind of government has some activity on which it makes final decision.” The process of getting to the federation, the integration process, is best described as federalism.There is some agreement on the core of what a federation is, and some disagreement over whether to apply the term “federation” strictly to states and state-like actors or in a broader sense. Federations are concrete ways to organize government, but in many writings, they are also given positive attributes, such as enhanced democracy and efficiency, too.There are two ways to think about federalism: as a politico-ideological theory of action and as an academic theory of regional integration. The first theory is propagated by writers such as Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Jean Monnet, and Altiero Spinelli. This theory is of political rather than academic interest. Academic theories of regional integration are divided into two groups, following the common practice in international relations theory: liberal theories (by far the largest group) and realist theories.Federalism theory as a theory of regional integration was abandoned too early because, inter alia, it had been linked to the development of the European Community, which was in crisis from the mid-1970s till the mid-1980s. This was a mistake. Federalism theory provides the scholar with at least two tools. First, under the title “federation,” it introduces a large number of theories, methods, and empirical studies on how to analyze the European Union and other regional integration projects. Second, as a federalism theory, especially in the realist or the Riker-McKayian version, it provides a theory of how countries may unite peacefully. This approach must be developed in terms of (a) the concept of threat, which must be broadened to include economic, social, and cultural elements, and (b) the role of a basic common culture, which primarily facilitates the founding of the federation and constitutes the foundation securing the maintenance of the new federation.A brief analysis of the development of today’s European Union, following the realist approach, demonstrates that, broadly speaking, a correspondence exists between threat and the integration process: In times of threat, the process of integration and federalization advances; in periods of peace and no crisis, the integration process stagnates.

This book examines the influence of statistics on Victorian society and culture, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration and conflicts between social classes. A defining feature of nineteenth-century Britain was its fascination with numbers. The processes that made Victorian society, including the growth of population and industry and the increasing competence of the state, generated profuse numerical data. Numbers were gathered in the 1830s by newly-created statistical societies in response to this ‘data revolution’. Their collection and analysis became a regular feature of government, and inspired new ways of interrogating both the natural and social worlds. William Farr used them to study cholera: Florence Nightingale deployed them in campaigns for sanitary improvement; Charles Babbage was inspired to design and build his famous calculating engines to process them; the statistics of living standards inspired working-class protest. The mid-Victorians employed statistics consistently to make the case for liberal reform. In later decades, however, the emergence of the academic discipline of mathematical statistics—statistics as we use them today—became associated with eugenics and a contrary social philosophy. Where earlier statisticians subscribed to the unity of mankind, later practitioners, following Francis Galton, emphasised variation and difference within and between groups. In chapters on learned societies, government departments, international statistical collaborations, natural scientists and intellectuals, as well as statisticians, this book traces the impact of numbers on the era, and the relationship of Victorian statistics to ‘Big Data’ in our own age.

There has been a renewed global interest in expanding home dialysis (both peritoneal dialysis (PD) and home haemodialysis (HHD)), but the majority of patients are maintained on in-centre haemodialysis (HD). While the importance of in-centre haemodialysis cannot be overlooked, home dialysis has many advantages. If so, why are so few patients maintained on home dialysis therapies? From the perspective of the patient, both inadequate modality education and self-perceived barriers limit selection of home dialysis. Physicians are less likely to consider elderly frail patients as candidates for home therapies. In addition, inadequate training and poor reimbursement for home dialysis are important physician barriers. From the facility perspective, the limited availability of personnel and physical resources to maintain a home unit are important barriers. However, while there are many obstacles to home dialysis, they can be overcome. Improved patient education, home support for elderly dialysis patients, and financial incentives may be effective measures. In addition, at the facility level, an emphasis needs to be placed on infrastructure development. Overall, while the appropriate balance of in-centre versus home-based renal replacement therapy has not been determined, maximizing the number of patients on home therapies is a reasonable target.

This volume contains revised, updated, and enhanced versions of papers delivered during the inaugural International Shipping Law Roundtable on arbitration of shipping disputes organized by Centre of Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. The collective sentiment has been that there has been rather limited academic discourse of issues relating to the current development of shipping law and the role of arbitration. This has been an excellent opportunity to bring together leading scholars and practitioners from around the world to debate and test ideas in the presentations, which formed the basis of the contributions contained in this volume. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

The book traces the evolution of Mahbub ul Haq’s thinking on development, and highlights its impact on global, regional and national policy debates, and relevance to today’s headline events. It situates the origins and significance (both in affecting academic and policy debates) of Haq’s development philosophy focusing on social justice. The introduction to the volume explains Haq’s reasons for moving away from growth-only philosophy to growth with distribution. The four parts of the book show Haq’s contributions to the larger development debate from the 1960s to the 1990s, including on issues ranging from global governance, sustainable development, trade and debt, to food security, gender equality, and nuclear disarmament. Each part is introduced to place Haq’s work in the context of that period, explain its significance in shaping development theory, policy, and practice, and highlight its ongoing influence and relevance to today’s issues and debates. The book analyses Mahbub ul Haq learning lessons from his close encounter with the political reality of the day that made him evaluate some of his own assumptions and to refine his tools to achieve his ultimate goal—to make people the centre of all development policies, programmes and actions.

The Gold Coast is a well-known and loved destination for local and international tourists, a city of surf and sun, pleasure and leisure. However, it is also one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, occupying the largest urban footprint outside the state capitals. How did the Gold Coast come to be what it is today? Off the Plan is the first in-depth, multidisciplinary academic study on the urbanisation and development of the Gold Coast. It addresses the historical circumstances, both accidental and intentional, that led to the Gold Coast’s infamous transition from a collection of settlements unburdened by planning regulations or a city centre to become Australia’s sixth largest city. With chapters on tourism, environment, media, architecture, governance and politics, planning, transportation, real estate development and demographics, Off the Plan demonstrates the importance that historical analysis has in understanding present-day planning problems and the value of the Gold Coast as a model for the rapidly evolving western city.

Various forms of academic co-operation criss-cross the modern university system in a bewildering number of ways, from the open exchange of ideas and knowledge, to the sharing of research results, and frank discussions about research challenges. Embedded in these scholarly networks is the question of whether a global template for the management of both higher education and national research organisations is necessary, and if so, must institutions slavishly follow the high-flown language of the global knowledge society or risk falling behind in the ubiquitous university ranking system? Or are there alternatives that can achieve a better, more ethically inclined, world? Basing their observations on their own experiences, an interesting mix of seasoned scholars and new voices from southern Africa and the Nordic region offer critical perspectives on issues of inter- and cross-regional academic co-operation. Several of the chapters also touch on the evolution of the higher education sector in the two regions. An absorbing and intelligent study, this book will be invaluable for anyone interested in the strategies scholars are using to adapt to the interconnectedness of the modern world. It offers fresh insights into how academics are attempting to protect the spaces in which they can freely and openly debate the challenges they face, while aiming to transform higher education, and foster scholarly collaboration. The Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a partnership of higher education institutions from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SANORDs primary aim is to promote multilateral research co-operation on matters of importance to the development of both regions. Our activities are based on the values of democracy, equity, and mutually beneficial academic engagement.

With the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, the purpose of development is being redefined in both social and environmental terms. Despite pushback from conservative forces, change is accelerating in many sectors. To drive this transformation in ways that bring about social, environmental and economic justice at a local, national, regional and global levels, new knowledge and strong cross-regional networks capable of foregrounding different realities, needs and agendas will be essential. In fact, the power of knowledge matters today in ways that humanity has probably never experienced before, placing an emphasis on the roles of research, academics and universities. In this collection, an international diverse collection of scholars from the southern African and Nordic regions critically review the SDGs in relation to their own areas of expertise, while placing the process of knowledge production in the spotlight. In Part I, the contributors provide a sober assessment of the obstacles that neo-liberal hegemony presents to substantive transformation. In Part Two, lessons learned from North-South research collaborations and academic exchanges are assessed in terms of their potential to offer real alternatives. In Part III, a set of case studies supply clear and nuanced analyses of the scale of the challenges faced in ensuring that no one is left behind. This accessible and absorbing collection will be of interest to anyone interested in North-South research networks and in the contemporary debates on the role of knowledge production. The Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a network of higher education institutions that stretches across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Universities in the southern African and Nordic regions that are not yet members are encouraged to join.

COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.

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.