Books on the topic 'Web service contract'

This chapter uses a randomized community development programme in rural Pakistan to assess the impact of citizen engagement on public service delivery and maternal and child health outcomes. The programme had a strong emphasis on organizing women, who also identified health services as a development priority at baseline. At midline, we find that the mobilization effort alone had a significant impact on the performance of village-based health providers. We detect economically large improvements in pregnancy and well-baby visits by female health workers, as well as increased utilization of pre- and post-natal care by pregnant women. In contrast, the quality of supra-village health services did not improve, underscoring the importance of community enforcement and monitoring capacity for improving service delivery.

Previous accounts of ‘causation’ in the law are flawed by their failure to appreciate that causal language is used to express different information about the world. Because causal terms have been used to communicate answers to different questions, any philosophical search for a free-standing account of causation is doomed. Lawyers require precision of terminology, so they should explicitly choose just one interrogation to underlie causal usage in law. It is argued that this interrogation should be chosen to serve the wide projects of the law. In these projects the law is interested to identify when a specified factor was ‘involved’ in the existence of a particular phenomenon, where the notion of ‘involvement’ identifies a contrast between the actual world and some specified hypothetical world from which we exclude (at least) that specified factor: this contrast being that, while in the former world the phenomenon exists, in the latter it does not. (Such contrasts of necessity can be generated in three ways, all of importance to the law.)

This epilogue argues that Castile was solvent throughout Philip II's reign. A complex web of contractual obligations designed to ensure repayment governed the relationship between the king and his bankers. The same contracts allowed great flexibility for both the Crown and bankers when liquidity was tight. The risk of potential defaults was not a surprise; their likelihood was priced into the loan contracts. As a consequence, virtually every banking family turned a profit over the long term, while the king benefited from their services to run the largest empire that had yet existed. The epilogue then looks at the economic history version of Spain's Black Legend. The economic history version of the Black Legend emerged from a combination of two narratives: a rich historical tradition analyzing the decline of Spain as an economic and military power from the seventeenth century onward, combined with new institutional analysis highlighting the unconstrained power of the monarch.

This paper examines the income inequality implications of a ‘premature deindustrialization’ trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and value-added share of manufacture. Among these five conditions, the first and second examine the deindustrialization pattern in economies. The last three classify the identified deindustrialization phase as premature or not. We apply panel fixed-effects and bootstrap-corrected dynamic fixed-effects models to empirically examine the relationship between premature deindustrialization and income inequality. Our findings suggest that income inequality rises with premature deindustrialization if the displaced workers are absorbed into low-productivity and informal market services (especially with employment increase in non-business market services such as trade, transport, hotels, and accommodation activities). In contrast, if high-productivity non-market services are the dominant employment provider, this helps to reduce income inequality even in the presence of premature deindustrialization.

Seller reputation can incentivize the fulfillment of contractual obligations and the provision of noncontractible services if buyers have lower willingness to pay for products offered by sellers with poor reputations. For this reason, reputational mechanisms can substitute for court enforcement of contracts, when court enforcement is costly or unavailable, and more generally can improve sellers’ behavior toward buyers. This Chapter examines the market for professional escorts, a high-quality segment of the market for prostitution. Since prostitution is illegal in most US locations, court enforcement of contracts between buyers and sellers is problematic. We examine how the diffusion of websites that allow escort customers to share information with each other has created an important reputational mechanism where only weak measures of reputation were previously available. We show that the diffusion of one well-known website appears to correlate with a trend toward better escort behavior toward buyers. Welfare implications of this reputational mechanism are, however, ambiguous, since it likely expands the market for prostitution, potentially generating negative externalities.

This article appears in theOxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aestheticsedited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. “Multimedia” is not simply a genre category but also a mentality. Aesthetic thinking has been conditioned by text-based approaches according to which meaning is inherent. By contrast, multimedia practice and theory are predicated on dynamic interaction of media and generation of emergent meaning in real time. Digital and Internet technologies have enabled significant extension of multimedia practices, transforming principles of montage and extreme intertextuality into a core cultural practice. The chapter illustrates this through a case study of the remix trio Eclectic Method, whose work ranges from Web-based multimedia to live performance and from subversion of copyright to innovative forms of marketing for multinational corporations. The chapter also considers the collision between such practices and intellectual property law, which identifies creativity with individual authorship. The media business has been based on the exploitation of intellectual property, but aesthetic and technological developments suggest that it is becoming a service industry.

In this chapter we discuss how paradox theory proposes that contrasting approaches to paradox—interwoven and persistent contradictions—fuel vicious and virtuous cycles in organizations. Interwoven cognitive, emotional, and behavioural responses can trigger cyclical dynamics. Defensive responses reinforce counterproductive, either/or approaches, fostering stuckness in a struggle against the experience of tensions. In contrast, we explore the way in which engaging paradox enables movement that fosters both confidence and humility in one’s ability and need to continuously learn and change. The dramatic pendulum swings of the LEGO company serve as an illustration of this, enabling insights into these cycles and their fuel in practice.

The Foundational Economy encompasses those goods and services, together with the economic and social relationships that underpin them, that provide the everyday infrastructure of civilized life. Policies that promote commodification, privatization and financialisation have incorporated many of these goods and services within market logics, with profound and damaging impacts on the daily lives of citizens. This edited collection extends theoretical and empirical work on the Foundational Economy to explore its relevance to the civil sphere and to civil repair. Our aim is to advance foundational thinking in three key areas. First, we set out detailed evidence on the impact of growth based and financialised solutions on local democracy, citizenship and civil society and explore alternative approaches to citizenship and social justice that are rooted in the Foundational Economy. Second, we provide, for the first time, important comparative perspectives on the development of foundational thinking. And third we document detailed and critical case studies in core areas of economic and social life. Addressing a range of substantive areas of concern, individual chapters use case studies at different national and regional levels to illustrate the arguments being developed. This unique collection demonstrates that there is clear evidence that The Foundational Economy is already influencing policy making at devolved nation and city region scales and is having international reach. In contrast to exclusively ‘bottom-up’ approaches however, we maintain that a Foundational Economy approach requires us to address the key institutions of our societies and the role of public action in those institutions.

This chapter develops a view of shadows as pure visibilia: objects constitutively and exhaustively connected in nature, existence and qualities to our experience of them. It takes as its stalking horse Sorensen’s very different view, arguing that, contrary to his intended purpose, the hypothesis that shadows are pure visibilia provides a more satisfying account of his striking cases of shadow movement. The claim that shadows are pure visibilia is further motivated by drawing on considerations from aesthetics and vision science. The chapter ends with a puzzle: if shadows do not strictly represent independent elements of our environments, why do we perceive them at all? A speculative answer is tendered. Shadows are visual artefacts: creatures of the light world, carved by our visual systems in the service of the better detection and discrimination of ordinary material objects.

Foreword Start-up future It has felt like Covid-19 had a stranglehold on us. But we haven‘t allowed ourselves to be defeated. On the contrary, we are taking advantage of the opportunities that arise as a result. Not only the long-overdue push towards digitalization, for example, but also the time gained by making fewer journeys. Those who show strength now and position themselves for the future will win. And that is exactly the reason why we have been preparing ELIV 2021 with such a lot of enthusiasm. As usual, we have prepared an up-to-date program with the familiar mixture of technically demanding and strategic papers and are sure that the ELIV platform will once again be a trendsetter for the automotive industry. The CASE megatrends (Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric) continue to disrupt the industry. In the Connect environment, there is still a struggle for user-friendly services and competition amongst digital ecosystems is in full swing. The entry of powerful central computers into electronic architectures poses major challenges for all parties involved. On the way from Level 2 to Levels 3, 4 and 5 all manufacturers are cur...

This book defends libertarianism and more broadly a classical liberal view of political economy. It is often assumed that libertarianism depends on thinking that property rights are absolute, or on fetishizing individual liberty. This book argues that, on the contrary, the foundations of libertarianism can be found in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs–particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. The core of libertarianism, on this interpretation, lies not in an exaggerated sense of our rights against other people, but in modesty about what we can demand from them. The book then connects these philosophical arguments with related ideas in economics, history, and politics. Among the questions addressed are what the moral basis of private property is; how to think about property in a service economy; what the significance of luck is in determining social outcomes; what the history of capitalism tells us about free markets; whether libertarians should support reparations for slavery; what role political correctness plays in shaping policy debates; and whether classical liberals should favor incremental change over utopian policy shifts.

Getting to Church explores the ways in which congregations continue to provide an arena in which adults deepen and expand a sense of identity, connection, and growth. Data for this analysis come from three years of participant observation, focus groups, and personal interviews with clergy, current members, and prospective members in three congregations representing diverse traditions within US Christianity. Our analysis demonstrates that historic tradition or denomination as embodied in buildings and programs, as well as the specific teachings and ethos of congregations, draws men and women differently toward membership. Contrary to the generalization that women are more religious than men, we argue that women’s and men’s religious identity, experience, and practice vary in substance, direction, and breath across religious tradition. Gender shapes joining, though not in the directions or degree we might expect. For both women and men, connecting to congregations provides an opportunity to experience dimensions of personhood that are broader than the current cultural gender script. Congregations provide robust narratives of transcendence that are experienced as empowering to women, as well as narratives of community, connection, and service for men. The fact that these themes appear in congregations located at very different points across the religious field underscores the salience of formal religious affiliation in the formation of adult personhood.

This book presents a critical evaluation of conventional wisdom and traditional assumptions about suicide, with particular attention focused on the assumed centrality of mental illness. It argues that suicide prevention efforts have disproportionately emphasized mental health-focused solutions, notably access to treatment and crisis services, based on research studies that are susceptible to bias and faulty interpretations of research findings. Instead of viewing suicide as a mental health issue, suicide should instead be seen as a “wicked problem” that defies ordinary solutions. Wicked problems cannot be definitively solved or eliminated by conventional solution-oriented thinking, and require process-based thinking that may, in some cases, defy or contradict many of our long-held assumptions about suicide. To flesh out this alternative approach to suicide prevention, the book interweaves historical accounts and personal stories with explanations of scientific findings to illustrate the limitations of widely-used practices and introduce alternative perspectives that could catalyze a paradigm shift in how we think about and prevent suicide.

The effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on the brain and behavior can be sexually dimorphic, especially during the course of development (Bales, Kim, et al., 2004; Bales, Pfeifer, et al., 2004; Bales, Plotsky, et al., 2007; Bielsky et al., 2005a; Carter, 2003; Thompson et al., 2006; Yamamoto et al., 2005; Yamamoto et al., 2004). Given the sexual discrepancy observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), these two neuropeptides, oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP), have received attention for their potential role in ASDs (Green and Hollander, 2010; Insel et al., 1999; Leckman & Herman, 2002; Welch et al., 2005; Winslow, 2005; Young et al., 2002). Changes in either OT or AVP and their receptors could be capable of influencing symptom domains or behaviors associated with ASDs. Arginine vasopressin is androgen dependent in some brain regions (De Vries & Panzica, 2006), and males are more sensitive to AVP, especially during development. We hypothesize here that AVP, which has a unique role in males, must be present in optimal levels to be protective against ASDs. Either excess AVP or disruptions in the AVP system could play a role in development of the traits found in ASDs. In contrast, OT may possibly be secreted in response to adversity, especially in females, serving as a protective factor.

Democracy and the Discourse of Relevanceis set against the backdrop of the spread of neoliberal ideas and reforms since the 1980s, accepting also that these ideas are rooted in a longer history. It focuses on how neoliberalism has worked to transform the university sector and the academic profession. In particular, it examines how understandings of, and control over, what constitutes relevant knowledge have changed. Taken as a whole, these changes have sought to reorient universities and academics towards economic development in various ways. This includes the installation of strategies for how institutions and academics achieve recognition and status within the academy, the privatisation of educational services and the downgrading of the value of public higher education, as well as a steady shift away from the public funding for universities. Research universities are increasingly adopting a user- and market-oriented model, with an emphasis on meeting corporate demands, the privileging of short-term research, and a strong tendency to view utility, and the potential to sell intellectual property for profit, as primary criteria for determining the relevance of academic knowledge. The privatisation of education services and the reorienting of universities towards the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’ have largely succeeded in transforming the discourse around the role of the academic profession in society, including in many African countries. Makerere University in Uganda has often been lauded as an example of successful transformation along neoliberal lines. However, our research into the working lives of academics at Makerere revealed a very different picture. Far from epitomising the allegedly positive outcomes of neoliberal reform, academics and postgraduate students interviewed at Makerere provide worrying insights into the undermining of a vibrant and independent academic culture. The stories of the ordinary academics on the ground, the empirical focus of the book, are in contrast to the claimed successes of the university; and the official stories of the university leadership and administration paint a picture of an academic profession in crisis. With diminishing influence on deciding what is relevant knowledge and thus on processes of democratization of their own institution and society, academic freedom is also losing its value. This perspective from the ground-level exposes the many problems that neoliberal reforms have created for academics at Makerere, leaving them feeling disempowered, often reducing them to the status of consultants. We also show how a range of local initiatives ­are steadily increasing resistance to the neoliberal model. We consider how academics and others can further mobilise to regain control over what knowledge is considered relevant, and thereby deepen democracy. In so doing, we aim to highlight some responses and actions that have proven effective so far. Democracy and the Discourse of Relevancewill hopefully help to change the systems that value knowledge in ways that are driving research institutions towards competitive and market-like behaviour. We also aim to contribute to contemporary debates about what knowledge is relevant.

Through a study of recent trends within contemporary media and art, this book considers how political transformation might be facilitated from within the much maligned aesthetic category of realism. It challenges both the enduring position that the realist form tends to be complicit with ideological conservatism and the arguments traditionally made for how realism can, on occasion, play a politically transgressive role. In cases where it is appreciated for its disruptive potential, realism is assumed to have the ability to guide spectators toward previously unseen truths by lifting the veil of ideological deception. In short, at its political best, realism is seen to serve a consciousness-raising politics. By contrast, this book contends that realism’s radical political potential emerges not by revealing deception but precisely by staging deceptions—particularly deceptions that imperil the very categories of true and false. Deception, it argues, does not function as an obstacle to truth, but rather as a necessary lure for snaring the truth. In other words, rather than seek to unearth the truth behind fiction, this book argues that we would do better to turn our attention to the truth of fiction. To make the case that particular relationships between realism and deception maximize the potential for realism to disrupt ideological formations, it draws upon insights from a range of cultural theorists, most notably, Jacques Rancière, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard. But rather than simply apply these theoretical frameworks to the media and artworks, it also engages in the reverse move of using the “cases” to illuminate and interrogate their theories.

This book is about the political events and decisions in the 1980s and 1990s that established the global economy we have today. Different social scientists and other commentators have described the foundations of globalization very differently. Some have linked the rise of free trade and multinational enterprises to the democratic expression of ordinary people’s hopes and desires; others have said they were a top-down project requiring, if anything, the circumvention of democracy. This book shows that politicians did not decide to embrace globalization because of the preferences of the mass public. Instead, using comparative-historical case studies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, this book shows that politicians’ decisions reflected the agendas and outlooks of various kinds of elites. On the basis of more than a hundred interviews, and analyses of materials from archives in all three countries, the book tells the story of how the three countries negotiated and ratified two agreements that substantially opened and integrated their economies: the 1989 Canada-US and trilateral 1994 North American Free Trade Agreements. Contrary to what many people believe, these agreements (like free trade elsewhere) were based less on mainstream, neoclassical economics than on the informal, self-serving economic ideas of businesspeople. This folk economics shaped the contents of the agreements, and helped bind together the elite coalitions whose support made them politically possible. These same ideas, however, have reinforced some harmful economic misunderstandings, and have even contributed to the recent backlash against globalization in some countries.

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen new ways of doing things emerge. Various aspects of everyday life have been digitalized. What was once face-to-face, in context, is now done at a distance. For better or worse, healthcare and health research also had repercussions. On the one hand, there were aspects that improved, while others left something to be desired. I will not list them, because they have already been widely debated and it is now important to discuss what brought us to this page. In the particular field of qualitative research in health, also evident in this edition of NTQR, new trends can be observed in the way of researching, collecting data and producing results. We can even say that the successive confinements and constraints in data collection in the field have led us to a more reflexive process, to look more at what others have produced. We have seen, in the different scientific areas, an increase in literature reviews and other ways of collecting data, such as those latent on the internet. But this is not necessarily harmful, on the contrary, it has created opportunities to map and systematise knowledge. Not reinventing the wheel, but noting the "wheels" that exist, what is done, what needs to be done, innovating and finding ways to improve healthcare in its different perspectives. Perhaps due to better accessibility to data and easier logistics, scoping reviews, for example, sprang up, which, based on the qualitative approach, are one of the best ways to establish the state of the art of what we want to know. We have also observed a growth in thinking outside the box, using visual methods to gather information, such as images and even videographic analysis. We live overwhelmed with communications, content created and exchanges of information, by ordinary citizens, service users, professionals, scientists and many other people. A vast amount of unexplored data that has now emerged, perhaps because the imposed brake of our routines has led us to look more reflectively and give it a chance. All this to say that the more sedentary research has not only changed the vision of doing scientifically valid research but has also reinvented processes for obtaining data that are visible, but that were rarely used. Systematizing dispersed knowledge, shortens the time and resources spent and accelerates the acquisition of skills and, as is often said, the practice based on evidence. The evidence exists, perhaps it is not within everyone's reach, so it is no disrespect to gather, systematize, facilitate the interpretation and publish knowledge produced by others. To research from the office in a protocoled and structured way, is to produce knowledge, which should be poured and drunk by those without access and without availability to start investigations from scratch. Sometimes the best knowledge has already been produced, let us guide its discovery!

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.