Ashgate Publishing Co.
Multinationals on trial; foreign investment matters.
In contrast to analyses that view foreign direct investment from the perspective of globalization and tend to see it as the backbone of global development finance and the producer of collateral benefits in the form of technology transfer and employment generation, Petras (State U. of New York at Binghamton, US) and Veltmeyer (Saint Mary's U., Canada and U. Autonoma de Zacatecas, Mexico) argue that FDI is instead "a mechanism for empire-centered capital accumulation, a powerful lever for political control and for reordering the world economy." They review the economic, social, and policy dynamics of FDI, exposing its role in facilitating South to North capital flows, increasing social inequality in the developing world, and securing monopoly profits based on the appropriation of national enterprises and control of strategic markets. They also explore alternatives to FDI, advocating in particular for a "Worker-Engineer Public Control" model. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The music of Michael Nyman; texts, contexts, and intertexts.
Siôn (music, U. of North Wales, UK) analyzes the works and compositional methods of composer Michael Nyman. Nyman's music is criticized for quoting too much, he says, and argues that it should be analyzed differently, not in terms of the traditional view of creative individuality but based on their context: his background and upbringing, student compositions, work as a critic, and general aesthetic and stylistic bases. The notion of intertextuality and how it relates to Nyman's music is discussed, focusing on specific areas, genres, and compositions, such as film collaborations with Peter Greenaway, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Facing Goya, string quartets, and the score for The Piano. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
New business models for the knowledge economy.
Jansen (information management, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands) et al. describe new types of business models that are effective in the network economy and internet era, related to customization, innovation, and authenticity, and how they can be used by both profit and non-profit organizations, not just those in the dot-com industry. Taking an integrated design approach, they aim to explain a model that helps managers, consultants, and employees of an organization analyze its current situation, examine opportunities, and exploit them by focusing the strategy of the company and structuring its processes and IT to be more efficient, flexible, and responsive to customer demand. The book is based on discussions held in a research group of PrimaVera, a forum of the U. of Amsterdam that provides a dialogue between academic researchers, students, and business people. Distributed by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The new economic diplomacy; decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations, 2d ed.
The purpose of this collection on international economic diplomacy is largely descriptive. The 19 chapters presented by the editors (both of the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) focus on the methods and process of decision-making and negotiation in the contemporary context and not on the content of policy. The contributors use mainstream international relations theory, supplemented by rationalist and constructivist models, the two-level game model of Robert Putnam, and theories of negotiation between private parties to elucidate the drivers of negotiating behavior as governments try to reconcile tensions between politics and economics, between international and domestic pressures, and between government and other actors. In addition to chapters laying out the basic theoretical framework of the proceedings, the contributions include case studies of US economic diplomacy towards Asia, economic diplomacy experiences of developing countries, regional economic diplomacy in the European Union, and international economic diplomacy by the International Energy Agency and the World Trade Organization. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
New generation witches; teenage witchcraft in contemporary culture.
Including contributors form the fields of theology, cultural studies, sociology, history, and media studies, as well as a couple from self- identified teen witches, the editors (professors of visual and media arts at Emerson College) present 11 papers that explore the phenomena of contemporary paganism amongst self-identified teens — a subject worthy of its own volume, it seems, because teen witches are typically perceived and perceive themselves to be on the margins of adult Witchcraft. Papers provide general historical and contemporary sociological portraits of the phenomena, explore belief and value systems and discourses, and consider the influence of popular media and the Internet on teen Witchcraft practices, among other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Performing maternity in early modern England.
The underlying notion is that maternity must be considered performative, and that the maternal body therefore functions as a fertile space for cultural conflict and a site of imagination and contest. Mostly North American but also British, scholars of English literature find such conflict in early modern English texts and performances by male playwrights creating script for playhouses, boy actors performing women's parts of stage, men and women writing for publication, and women writing private diaries and prayers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A phenomenology of love and hate.
Extreme emotion is generally posited as opposite to rationality, but Hadreas (philosophy, San José State U., US) argues that love and hate develop in accordance with logical forms that constrain lovers and haters in their acts of conceptualizing. He explains how Husserlian phenomenology provides a background for understanding the foundations of the emotions, and for answering questions concerning the uniqueness of the beloved, nudity and nakedness, incest taboos, and other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Poetry and ecology in the age of Milton and Marvell.
Pointing to 17th-century England, McColley (emeritus, Rutgers U., New Jersey) identifies a ferment that included the beginnings of empirical science, the early awareness of what we now know as ecological issues, a flowering of poetry, and the divergence of the language of natural history and philosophy from the language of poetry and other kinds of speech. She focuses on the common language that writers who later ended up on opposite sides of the science/art divide still used then to talk about such matters as earth, mining, air, woods, the lives of plants, the ethics of empathy, and radical justice. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The printed image in early modern London; urban space, visual representation, and social exchange.
Some were commemorations, describing grand processions and great events. Others were forms of protest, condemning what had already been or what could be. In either case they were cheap, easily got on the streets, and anything but subtle. The content of the prints and tracts that came into London's urban market as the result of new printing technologies and better forms of distribution was generally formed more of opinion than straight fact, but through such means Londoners could learn all they needed to know about their city's politics and society pretty much at a glance. Monteyne (art, State U. of New York-Stony Brook) builds from significant new research on visual representation and identity as he describes art for the common people that taught about the ravages of plague and fire, the rise of religious fear and anti-Catholicism, and the possibility of there being a new sort of urban environment. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Problems of evil and the power of God.
Keller (philosophy, Yale U.) examines three elements of evil, namely suffering, the hidden divine and unfairness in the matter of miracles. He comes to the conclusion that as long as we believe God is all-powerful, there are no adequate answers to these three issues, and arguments that humans are too limited to understand God and evil are inadequate. He concludes that process theism, which maintains that God and his creatures are at the same level, holds the best solution to the dilemma, making it possible for evil to exist while retaining a concept of God that is religiously adequate. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The publishing history of Uncle Tom's cabin, 1852-2002.
Parfait (American studies, U. Paris 13) here completes a work she began about a decade ago as a Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Paris 7. In it she details the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel that continues to generate controversy and to sell copies a century and a half later. She begins by placing its origin in the context of Stowe's career, of the writing profession and publishing industry of the time, and of the political climate it drew from and contributed to. Features of later editions she considers are illustrations, advertising, and serializations. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Public sector records management; a practical guide.
Smith (accessions management, The National Archives, UK) provides a text for records managers that puts ideas into practice. He follows a framework based on the information life cycle, discussing the records management function and compliance and regulation; record creation and classification, maintenance, appraisal and archiving; and issues relating to access, roles and responsibilities, and training and development. He presents legislation and examples from the UK, specifically the central government, but the ideas can be used in the public sector and in different national settings. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Romantics and the May Day tradition.
Essaka (English, U. of Birmingham, England) explores literary responses and antiquarian material to investigate the variety of attitudes toward folklore expressed by Romantic-era writers of Britain, particularly England. He looks at The Lake Poets, Leigh Hunt, William Blake, and John Clare. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Romanticism, medicine, and the poet's body.
Romantic poets grew to understand bodies as anything from means of communication with the divine to the source of their identity just as medicine became a profession. As a result physicians and poets informed each other about authority and identity as represented by the human body. Allard (English language and literature, Brock U.) examines the work of poets who were also medical men, such as Keats, Thelwall and Beddoes, but also that of Wordsworth and Baillie in describing the status of the human body and ideas about the mind/body connection. He finds a distinct link between the way medical discourse consolidated the body and how the Romantics began to present their version, engaging such ideas as radical materialism and the body politic. His assessment of Keats's ideas about authority over the body and Beddoes's commentary about the interplay between body and soul are particularly interesting. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Servants and paternalism in the works of Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Gaskell.
Nash (English, U. of Massachusetts-Lowell) shows how the novels of Edgeworth (1767-1849) and Gaskell (1810-65) portray a Britain in which strict class hierarchies were being re-evaluated and re-invented. Going beyond the permissible feminine realms of courtship and marriage, she says, they addressed the exploitation of the Irish peasantry, anti-Semitism, the imbalance of power within marriage, and other areas. She finds that they also prescribed how to accommodate social change while maintaining order. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Seventh Crusade, 1244-1254; sources and documents.
The principal Western narrative sources for King Louis IX of France's first crusade are now available in English translation from the Latin and Old French, so Jackson (Keele U.) concentrates instead on contemporary or near-contemporary letters and documents that are less accessible, for example extant reports from officials traveling with the armies. They are arranged in such chapters as the first phase of the crusade, the Mamluk coup d'etat, criticism and rational explanation, and efforts to send assistance from the West. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A shorter commentary on Romans.
The treatise originated as the manuscript for lectures Swiss theologian Barth delivered at the University of Basel over the winter of 1940-41. Anglican priest Maico M. Michielin (theology, U. of Toronto) provides a substantial introduction placing the piece in the context of Barth's opposition to fascism, his banishment from Germany, and his exhortations to his fellow theologians. Van Daalen's English translation of Kurse Erklärung des Römerbriefes was first published in 1959 by SCM Press, London. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Spenser's Irish work; poetry, plantation, and colonial reformation.
The impact of Irish politics on the poetic output of Edmund Spenser (1552-99) remains a vast uncharted territory, but Herron (English, East Carolina U.) opens up a few new pathways through it. He says that most of the poet's mature work can be best understood against the backdrop of the very bloody and pious, Protestant and mercantile, reformation of his adopted country by his fellow English planters, soldiers, and administrators. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The state and terrorism; national security and the mobilization of power.
Campos (U. of Hawaii at Manoa) takes a new look at how the US government appropriates terrorism and manages it within national security discourse. He examining the five components of terrorism (the act, the actor, variations in definition, applications and meaning and use of moral authority). Campos analyzes 30 years of presidential rhetoric on terrorism, from the Cold War to the present, and uses critical theory to locate the dyad of government and terrorism within all the language, knowledge, and control of power in the name of the state. He places actions and perceptions in long-term contexts, making America's current responses to terrorism, including the abridgment of certain rights, easier to understand. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Strategic interests in the Middle East; opposition or support for US foreign policy.
As noted by the editors (both of the U. of Southern Mississippi) in the preface, the United States is arguably the most powerful actor in the Middle East, making it rather obvious that other state actors must take into account the interests and actions of the United States in formulating their own policies. This observation provides the context for the rest of the proceedings, which is comprised of 14 papers analyzing the Middle East policies of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Arab League, and the United Nations. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
