front cover of Reading Rembrandt
Reading Rembrandt
Beyond the Word-Image Opposition
Mieke Bal
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition explores the potential for an interdisciplinary methodology between visual art and literature. In a series of close analyses of works by “Rembrandt” – works as we see them today, through all the ways of seeing and commenting that precede – and texts related to those works, Mieke Bal questions the traditional boundaries between literary and visual analysis. Bal also studies Rembrandt’s complex handling of gender and the representation of women in Rembrandt’s painting. The methods used in this study come from both in- and outside the history of art. They demonstrate the author’s sensitivity to the visual aspects of Rembrandt’s work as meaningful. The works by Rembrandt gain in depth and interest, but an original perspective of the role of visuality in our culture also emerges, which ultimately has consequences for our views of gender, the artists, and the act of reading.
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Real Time Convex Optimisation for 5G Networks and Beyond
Long D. Nguyen
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2022
There is no doubt that we are facing a wireless data explosion. Modern wireless networks need to satisfy increasing demand, but are faced with challenges such as limited spectrum, expensive resources, green communication requirements and security issues. In the age of internet of things (IoT) with massive data transfers and huge numbers of connected devices, including high-demand QoS (4G, 5G networks and beyond), signal processing is producing data sets at the gigabyte and terabyte scales.
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Redesigning Social Inquiry
Fuzzy Sets and Beyond
Charles C. Ragin
University of Chicago Press, 2008
For over twenty years Charles C. Ragin has been at the forefront of the development of innovative methods for social scientists. In Redesigning Social Inquiry, he continues his campaign to revitalize the field, challenging major aspects of the conventional template for social science research while offering a clear alternative.
            Redesigning Social Inquiry provides a substantive critique of the standard approach to social research—namely, assessing the relative importance of causal variables drawn from competing theories. Instead, Ragin proposes the use of set-theoretic methods to find a middle path between quantitative and qualitative research. Through a series of contrasts between fuzzy-set analysis and conventional quantitative research, Ragin demonstrates the capacity for set-theoretic methods to strengthen connections between qualitative researchers’ deep knowledge of their cases and quantitative researchers’ elaboration of cross-case patterns. Packed with useful examples, Redesigning Social Inquiry will be indispensable to experienced professionals and to budding scholars about to embark on their first project.
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Reforming the Welfare State
Recovery and Beyond in Sweden
Edited by Richard B. Freeman, Birgitta Swedenborg, and Robert H. Topel
University of Chicago Press, 2010
Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. 
Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.
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Reimagining the American Pacific
From South Pacific to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond
Rob Wilson
Duke University Press, 2000
In this compelling critique Rob Wilson explores the creation of the “Pacific Rim” in the American imagination and how the concept has been variously adapted and resisted in Hawai‘i, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. Reimagining the American Pacific ranges from the nineteenth century to the present and draws on theories of postmodernism, transnationality, and post-Marxist geography to contribute to the ongoing discussion of what constitutes “global” and “local.”
Wilson begins by tracing the arrival of American commerce and culture in the Pacific through missionary and imperial forces in the nineteenth century and the parallel development of Asia/Pacific as an idea. Using an impressive range of texts—from works by Herman Melville, James Michener, Maori and Western Samoan novelists, and Bamboo Ridge poets to Baywatch, films and musicals such as South Pacific and Blue Hawaii, and native Hawaiian shark god poetry—Wilson illustrates what it means for a space to be “regionalized.” Claiming that such places become more open to transnational flows of information, labor, finance, media, and global commodities, he explains how they then become isolated, their borders simultaneously crossed and fixed. In the case of Hawai’i, Wilson argues that culturally innovative, risky forms of symbol making and a broader—more global—vision of local plight are needed to counterbalance the racism and increasing imbalance of cultural capital and goods in the emerging postplantation and tourist-centered economy.
Reimagining the American Pacific leaves the reader with a new understanding of the complex interactions of global and local economies and cultures in a region that, since the 1970s, has been a leading trading partner of the United States. It is an engaging and provocative contribution to the fields of Asian and American studies, as well as those of cultural studies and theory, literary criticism, and popular culture.


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Reinventing State Capitalism
Leviathan in Business, Brazil and Beyond
Aldo Musacchio and Sergio G. Lazzarini
Harvard University Press, 2014

The wave of liberalization that swept world markets in the 1980s and 90s altered the ways that governments manage their economies. Reinventing State Capitalism analyzes the rise of new species of state capitalism in which governments interact with private investors either as majority or minority shareholders in publicly-traded corporations or as financial backers of purely private firms (the so-called “national champions”). Focusing on a detailed quantitative assessment of Brazil’s economic performance from 1976 to 2009, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio Lazzarini examine how these models of state capitalism influence corporate investment and performance.

According to one model, the state acts as a majority investor, granting the state-owned enterprise (SOE) financial autonomy and allowing professional management. This form, the authors argue, has reduced many agency problems commonly faced by state ownership. According to another hybrid model, the state uses sovereign wealth funds, holding companies, and development banks to acquire a small share of equity ownership in a corporation, thereby potentially alleviating capital constraints and leveraging latent capabilities.

Both models have benefits and costs. Yet neither model has entirely eliminated the temptation of governments to intervene in the operation of natural resource industries and other large strategic enterprises. Nevertheless, the longstanding debate over whether private ownership is superior or inferior to state capitalism has become irrelevant, Musacchio and Lazzarini conclude. Private ownership is now mingled with state capital on a global scale.

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Resonance
Beyond the Words
Unni Wikan
University of Chicago Press, 2012
Resonance gathers together forty years of anthropological study by a researcher and writer with one of the broadest fieldwork résumés in anthropology: Unni Wikan. In its twelve essays—four of which are brand new—Resonance covers encounters with transvestites in Oman, childbirth in Bhutan, poverty in Cairo, and honor killings in Scandinavia, with visits to several other locales and subjects in between. Including a comprehensive preface and introduction that brings the whole work into focus, Resonance surveys an astonishing career of anthropological inquiry that demonstrates the possibility for a common humanity, a way of knowing others on their own terms.
 
Deploying Clifford Geertz’s concept of “experience-near” observations —and driven by an ambition to work beyond Geertz’s own limitations—Wikan strives for an anthropology that sees, describes, and understands the human condition in the models and concepts of the people being observed. She highlights the fundamentals of an explicitly comparative, person-centered, and empathic approach to fieldwork, pushing anthropology to shift from the specialist discourses of academic experts to a grasp of what the Balinese call keneh— the heart, thought, and feeling of the real people of the world. By deploying this strategy across such a range of sites and communities, she provides a powerful argument that ever-deeper insight can be attained despite our differences.
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Rethinking Workplace Regulation
Beyond the Standard Contract of Employment
Katherine V.W. Stone
Russell Sage Foundation, 2013
During the middle third of the 20th century, workers in most industrialized countries secured a substantial measure of job security, whether through legislation, contract or social practice. This “standard employment contract,” as it was known, became the foundation of an impressive array of rights and entitlements, including social insurance and pensions, protection against unsociable working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. Recent changes in technology and the global economy, however, have dramatically eroded this traditional form of employment. Employers now value flexibility over stability, and increasingly hire employees for short-term or temporary work. Many countries have also repealed labor laws, relaxed employee protections, and reduced state-provided benefits. As the old system of worker protection declines, how can labor regulation be improved to protect workers? In Rethinking Workplace Regulation, nineteen leading scholars from ten countries and half a dozen disciplines present a sweeping tour of the latest policy experiments across the world that attempt to balance worker security and the new flexible employment paradigm. Edited by noted socio-legal scholars Katherine V.W. Stone and Harry Arthurs, Rethinking Workplace Regulation presents case studies on new forms of dispute resolution, job training programs, social insurance and collective representation that could serve as policy models in the contemporary industrialized world. The volume leads with an intriguing set of essays on legal attempts to update the employment contract. For example, Bruno Caruso reports on efforts in the European Union to “constitutionalize” employment and other contracts to better preserve protective principles for workers and to extend their legal impact. The volume then turns to the field of labor relations, where promising regulatory strategies have emerged. Sociologist Jelle Visser offers a fresh assessment of the Dutch version of the ‘flexicurity’ model, which attempts to balance the rise in nonstandard employment with improved social protection by indexing the minimum wage and strengthening rights of access to health insurance, pensions, and training. Sociologist Ida Regalia provides an engaging account of experimental local and regional “pacts” in Italy and France that allow several employers to share temporary workers, thereby providing workers job security within the group rather than with an individual firm. The volume also illustrates the power of governments to influence labor market institutions. Legal scholars John Howe and Michael Rawling discuss Australia's innovative legislation on supply chains that holds companies at the top of the supply chain responsible for employment law violations of their subcontractors. Contributors also analyze ways in which more general social policy is being renegotiated in light of the changing nature of work. Kendra Strauss, a geographer, offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of pension systems and calls for a new model that offers “flexible pensions for flexible workers.” With its ambitious scope and broad inquiry, Rethinking Workplace Regulation illustrates the diverse innovations countries have developed to confront the policy challenges created by the changing nature of work. The experiments evaluated in this volume will provide inspiration and instruction for policymakers and advocates seeking to improve worker’s lives in this latest era of global capitalism.
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front cover of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
Duke University Press, 2017
A trillion-dollar industry, the US non-profit sector is one of the world's largest economies. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the non-profit model. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers essays by radical activists, educators, and non-profit staff from around the globe who critically rethink the long-term consequences of what they call the "non-profit industrial complex." Drawing on their own experiences, the contributors track the history of non-profits and provide strategies to transform and work outside them. Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded presents a biting critique of the quietly devastating role the non-profit industrial complex plays in managing dissent.

Contributors. Christine E. Ahn, Robert L. Allen, Alisa Bierria, Nicole Burrowes, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), William Cordery, Morgan Cousins, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Stephanie Guilloud, Adjoa Florência Jones de Almeida, Tiffany Lethabo King, Paul Kivel, Soniya Munshi, Ewuare Osayande, Amara H. Pérez, Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, Dylan Rodríguez, Paula X. Rojas, Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo, Sisters in Action for Power, Andrea Smith, Eric Tang, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Ije Ude, Craig Willse
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front cover of Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond
Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond
Jirí Kraus
Karolinum Press, 2014
Rhetoric in European and World Culture traces the position of rhetoric in cultural and educational systems from ancient times to the present. Here, Jirí Kraus examines rhetoric’s decline in importance in a period of rationalism and enlightenment, presents the causes of negative connotations of rhetoric, and explains why rhetoric in the twentieth century regained its prestige.
           
Kraus demonstrates that the reputation of rhetoric falls when it is reduced to a refined method for deceiving the public and increases when it is seen as a scientific discipline that is used throughout all of the fields of the humanities. In this sense, the author argues, rhetoric strives for universal recognition and the cultivation of rhetorical expression, spoken and written, including not only its production but also reception and interpretation.
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front cover of The Role of 6G and Beyond on the Road to Net-Zero Carbon
The Role of 6G and Beyond on the Road to Net-Zero Carbon
Muhammad Ali Imran
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2023
In the race against climate change, the focus has turned towards achieving the 2050 net-zero carbon target. Achieving net-zero means balancing between the amount of greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere and those produced and released. Efforts are needed on both sides to find suitable solutions to reduce released emissions and to remove current emissions from the atmosphere. A collective effort revolving around the utilisation of new technologies, particularly in wireless and mobile communications, is needed to achieve the net-zero carbon target.
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Russia Abroad
Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond
Anna Ohanyan, Editor
Georgetown University Press, 2018

While we know a great deal about the benefits of regional integration, there is a knowledge gap when it comes to areas with weak, dysfunctional, or nonexistent regional fabric in political and economic life. Further, deliberate “un-regioning,” applied by actors external as well as internal to a region, has also gone unnoticed despite its increasingly sophisticated modern application by Russia in its peripheries.

This volume helps us understand what Anna Ohanyan calls “fractured regions” and their consequences for contemporary global security. Ohanyan introduces a theory of regional fracture to explain how and why regions come apart, consolidate dysfunctional ties within the region, and foster weak states. Russia Abroad specifically examines how Russia employs regional fracture as a strategy to keep states on its periphery in Eurasia and the Middle East weak and in Russia's orbit. It argues that the level of regional maturity in Russia’s vast vicinities is an important determinant of Russian foreign policy in the emergent multipolar world order.

Many of these fractured regions become global security threats because weak states are more likely to be hubs of transnational crime, havens for militants, or sites of protracted conflict. The regional fracture theory is offered as a fresh perspective about the post-American world and a way to broaden international relations scholarship on comparative regionalism.

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