Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel tracks the mystery of narratives in the Hebrew Bible and their allusions to Sinai laws by highlighting intertextual allusions created by verbal resonances. While the second and the third parts of the volume illustrate allusions to Sinai narratives made by some narratives occurring in the post-Sinaitic era, twenty-three Genesis narratives are analyzed to show that the protagonists were bound by Sinai Laws before God supposedly gave them to Moses, anticipating the Book of Jubilees. Legal Friction suggests that most of Genesis was composed during or after the Babylonian exile, after the codification of most Sinai laws, which Genesis protagonists consistently violate. The fact that they are not punished for these violations implies to the exiles that the Sinai Covenant was unconditional. In addition, the author proposes that Genesis contains a hidden polemic, encouraging the Judean exiles to follow the revisions of laws of the Covenant Code by the Holiness Code and Deuteronomy. Genesis narratives, like those describing post-Sinai events, often cannot be understood properly without recognition of their allusions to biblical laws.

Today, it has been said, the world is "flat," as online media allow information to move easily from point to point across the earth. International legal differences, however, are increasingly affecting the ease with which data and ideas can be shared across nations. Copyright law, for example, affects the international flow of materials by stipulating who has the right to replicate or to share certain kinds of content. Similarly, perspectives on privacy rights can differ from nation to nation and affect how personal information is shared globally. Moreover, national laws can affect the exchange of ideas by stipulating the language in which information must be presented in different geopolitical regions. Today's technical communicators need to understand how legal factors can affect communication practices if they wish to work effectively in global contexts. This collection provides an overview of different legal aspects that technical communicators might encounter when creating materials or sharing information in international environments. Through addressing topics ranging from privacy rights and information exchange to the legalities of business practices in virtual worlds and perspectives on authorship and ownership, the contributors to this volume examine a variety of communication-based legal issues that can cause problems or miscommunication in international interactions. Reviewing such topics from different perspectives, the authors collectively provide ideas that could serve as a foundation for creating best practices on or for engaging in future research in the area of legal issues in international settings.

This book considers how legal reforms and awareness raising associated with building the rule of law have engaged the popular legal consciousness, producing contradictions that have in turn shaped the nature of the resultant legality. How are popular legal-justice beliefs and practices transformed when legal reforms encounter local contexts and cultures? For over a decade, scholars have engaged with the argument that legal reform through rule of law building is the answer to the various ills of countries transitioning from war to peace or authoritarianism to democracy. Yet, scholars have also repeatedly critiqued rule of law building projects: The rule of law, in theory and in practice, is a product of Western liberal thought and development and provides limited space for local culture, norms, and practices. This tension has been playing out in multiple locations, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo for about two decades. This book examines how rule of law reforms in the Democratic Republic of Congo shape local understandings and practices of law and justice. Instead of focusing on their so-called successes and failures, it explores popular legal consciousness – how people think about, perceive, and engage with the law – to draw broader conclusions about the practical, everyday outcomes of attempts to build the rule of law. This book will appeal to comparativists, Africanists, and socio-legal scholars who study post-conflict reconstruction, rule of law building, legal consciousness, access to justice and legal pluralism, as well as those with practical interests in these areas.

Homosexuality is anathema to Islam – or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fines to the death penalty. Likewise, numerous scholars and commentators maintain that the Qur’an and Hadith rule unambiguously against same-sex relations. This pioneering study argues that there is far more nuance to the matter than most believe. In its narrative of Lot, the Qur’an could be interpreted as condemning lust rather homosexuality. While some Hadith are fiercely critical of homosexuality, some are far more equivocal. This is the first book length treatment to offer a detailed analysis of how Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, and Hadith, can not only accommodate a sexually sensitive Islam, but actively endorse it.

This is the final book in a series of volumes on the history of the Transport & General Workers’ Union (T&G). After the neo-liberal assault on the unions and working people more generally carried through by Margaret Thatcher and John Major in the 1980s and 1990s, the unions, including the T&G, were faced with making some tough decisions about their future. The T&G initially turned to restructuring and engaged US management consultants to make recommendations about how the union should be moulded to fit the fast approaching new millennium. In other parts of the world at this time, particularly in the US and Australia, forward thinking unions were realising that the way out of the crisis was to switch from what was called the servicing model, where the union did things for its members, to an organising model, where the union did things with its members, and early in the millennium, the political and industrial logic of forming a large general workers’ union became more and more apparent. This fascinating volume looks at this history of the T&G, and considers how a three way union merger eventually became a reality with the merger of the T&G and Amicus to form Unite.

Friction Material Composites is the first volume of the five volumes which strongly educates and updates engineers and other professionals in braking industries, research and test labs. It explains besides the formulation of design processes and its complete manufacturing input. This book gives an idea of mechanisms of friction and how to control them by designing .The book is useful for designers of automotive, rail and aero industries for designing the brake systems effectively with the integration of friction material composite design which is critical. It clearly emphasizes the driving safety and how serious designers should select the design input. The significance of friction material component like brake pad or a liner as an integral part of the brake system of vehicles is explained. AFM pictures at nanolevel illustrate broadly the explanations given.