In Austronesia—the region that stretches from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east—music plays a vital role in both the construction and expression of social and cultural identities. Yet research into the music of Austronesia has hitherto been sparse. Drawing together contemporary cultural studies and musical analysis, Austronesian Soundscapes will fill this research gap, offering a comprehensive analysis of traditional and contemporary Austronesian music and, at the same time, investigating how music reflects the challenges that Austronesian cultures face in this age of globalization.
An in-depth exploration of digital culture and its dissemination, Sharing offers a counterpoint to the dominant view that file sharing is piracy. Instead, Philippe Aigrain looks at the benefits of file sharing, which allows unknown writers and artists to be appreciated more easily. Concentrating not only on the cultural enrichment caused by widely shared digital media, Sharing also discusses new financing models that would allow works to be shared freely by individuals without aim at profit. Aigrain carefully balances the needs to support and reward creative activity with a suitable respect for the cultural common good and proposes a new interpretation of the digital landscape.
Despite the controversial reputation of Hizbullah in the West, and the significant role this powerful Islamist organization plays in Lebanese politics, there are few reliable, published English translations of the party’s primary documents. With this extensive work, Joseph Alagha seeks to remedy this problem and rectify the distortions and misrepresentations that have resulted from inaccurate translations.
Through privileged access to the party, Alagha was able to compile and meticulously translate a host of original primary documents, from the party’s 1985 Open Letter; through its eight clandestine conclaves from 1989 to 2009; to all of its election programs from 1992 to 2010, as well as all of the agreements, understandings, and pacts the party has ratified over the years; ending with the 2009 Political Manifesto. This firsthand portrait of Hizbullah’s metamorphosis, especially in the past decade, is complete with thorough footnotes, commentary, background information, chronology, and a detailed introductory chapter that maps the party’s transformation by analytically comparing the Open Letter with the 2009 Manifesto. This volume will be an invaluable companion for both scholars and policy makers.
As the dominant political force in Lebanon and one of the most powerful post-Islamist organizations in the world, Hizbullah is a source of great controversy and uncertainty in the West. Despite the significant attention paid to this group by the media, the details of Hizbullah’s evolution have frequently confounded politicians—and even scholars. In this important study, Joseph Alagha, a scholar with unprecedented access to the organization, exhaustively and objectively analyzes Hizbullah’s historical evolution and offers a revolutionary new perspective on the political phenomenon of the organization.
Cinema Beyond Film elaborates on the theoretical uses of two key terms—dispositif and episteme—in order to examine their relationship as well as their larger connections to film, technology, and modernity. Although both terms originate in the work of Foucault, dispositif (“device”) intrinsically links itself to the mechanics of movement and speed behind cinematics, while more generally referring to the mechanisms and structures that hold power in place. Episteme(“to know”), on the other hand, refers to the conditions and possibilities of knowledge and reception, more than to technological innovation. Each term is explored here in relation to the other, allowing this edited collection to assess the wide array of potential materialities that arise from the mechanics behind cinema and the changing face of its technology.
In 2007 at the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences in Amsterdam, a colloquium on new perspectives on games and interaction brought together researchers on games in logic, computer science, linguistics, and economics in order to clarify their uses of game theory and identify promising new directions for the field. This volume is a collection of papers presented at the colloquium, and it testifies to the growing importance of game theory as a tool that can capture concepts of strategy, interaction, argumentation, communication, and cooperation amid the disciplines.
Synthesizing almost thirty years of Dutch archaeological research in central and southern Italy, this book discusses and compares settlement and land use patterns from the late protohistoric period to the late Roman Republic. Considering both social and environmental factors, the authors analyze the long-term progression of indigenous Bronze Age tribal pastoralist societies towards the complexity of urbanized Roman society. Drawing on a decade of collaboration between Dutch and Italian researchers, this exhaustive study will be of great interest to students and scholars of Mediterranean archaeology.
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