This book highlights and examines the role of the textbook in legitimising established political and social orders. It analyses the way in which the ‘other’ is presented in school textbooks, focusing on a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and argues that the role of textbooks in developing and maintaining a national identity should be afforded greater critical attention. Textbooks can help form national identities by developing a society’s collective memory; this might involve a historical narrative which may be self-contradictory or even fabricated to a certain extent, including myths, symbols and collective memories that divide “us” from “them”, and ultimately resulting a dichotomy between the Self and the Other. As well as addressing a range of theoretical questions relating to the study of textbooks generally, the volume also covers a broad spectrum of Middle Eastern states and societies, with contributions from Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Cyprus, Lebanon, Iraq, Kurdistan, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel and Palestine. It will be essential reading for researchers and students working in the fields of Education, Sociology and History, particularly those with an interest in national identities in the MENA region.

Until today, Western, European sociology contributes to the social reality of colonial modernity, and gender knowledge is a paradigmatic example of it. Multiple Gender Cultures, Sociology, and Plural Modernities critically engages with these ‘Western eyes’ and shifts the focus towards the global variety of gendered socialities and hierarchically entangled social histories. This is conceptualised as multiple gender cultures within plural modernities. The authors examine the multifaceted realities of gendered life in varying contexts across the globe. Bringing together different perspectives, the volume provides a rereading of the social fabric of gender in contrast to androcentrist-modernist as well as orientalist representations of ‘the’ gendered Other. The key questions explored by this volume are: which social mechanisms lead to conflicting or shifting gender dynamics against the backdrop of global entanglements and interdependencies, and to what extent are neocolonial gender regimes at work in this regard? How are varying gender cultures sociohistorically and culturally structured, and how are they connected within (global) power relations? How can established hierarchies and asymmetries become an object of criticism? How can historical, cultural, social, and political specificities be analysed without gendered and other reifications? That way, the volume aims to promote border thinking in sociological understanding of social reality towards multiple gender cultures and plural modernities.

The concept of alterity is fundamental to all psychological theories. Most of these theories operate as if this concept is well understood and quite stable. This book challenges that notion by examining ideas about alterity in several different fields. It also offers an organizing template for the concept utilizing ideas from Lacan, Levinas and Dabrowski.

The Stage Lives of Animals examines what it might mean to make theatre beyond the human. In this stunning collection of essays, Una Chaudhuri engages with the alternative modes of thinking, feeling, and making art offered by animals and animality, bringing insights from theatre practice and theory to animal studies as well as exploring what animal studies can bring to the study of theatre and performance. As our planet lives through what scientists call "the sixth extinction," and we become ever more aware of our relationships to other species, Chaudhuri takes a highly original look at the "animal imagination" of well-known plays, performances and creative projects, including works by: Caryl Churchill Rachel Rosenthal Marina Zurkow Edward Albee Tennesee Williams Eugene Ionesco Covering over a decade of explorations, a wide range of writers, and many urgent topics, this volume demonstrates that an interspecies imagination deeply structures modern western drama.

Russia, one of the most ethno-culturally diverse countries in the world, provides a rich case study on how globalisation and associated international trends are disrupting, and causing the radical rethinking of approaches to, inter-ethnic cohesion. The book highlights the importance of television broadcasting in shaping national discourse and the place of ethno-cultural diversity within it. It argues that television’s role here has been reinforced, rather than diminished, by the rise of new media technologies. Through an analysis of a wide range of news and other television programmes, the book shows how the covert meanings of discourse on a particular issue can diverge from the overt significance attributed to it, just as the impact of that discourse may not conform with the original aims of the broadcasters. The book discusses the tension between the imperative to maintain security through centralised government and overall national cohesion that Russia shares with other European states, and the need to remain sensitive to, and to accommodate, the needs and perspectives of ethnic minorities and labour migrants. It compares the increasingly isolationist popular ethnonationalism in Russia, which harks back to "old-fashioned" values, with the similar rise of the Tea Party in the United States and the UK Independence Party in Britain. Throughout, this extremely rich, well-argued book complicates and challenges received wisdom on Russia’s recent descent into authoritarianism. It points to a regime struggling to negotiate the dilemmas it faces, given its Soviet legacy of ethnic particularism, weak civil society, large native Muslim population and overbearing, yet far from entirely effective, state control of the media.

Is sex identity a feature of one's mind or body, and is it a relational or intrinsic property? Who is in the best position to know a person's sex, do we each have a true sex, and is a person's sex an alterable characteristic? When a person's sex assignment changes, has the old self disappeared and a new one emerged; or, has only the public presentation of one's self changed? "You've Changed" examines the philosophical questions raised by the phenomenon of sex reassignment, and brings together the essays of scholars known for their work in gender, sexuality, queer, and disability studies, feminist epistemology and science studies, and philosophical accounts of personal identity. An interdisciplinary contribution to the emerging field of transgender studies, it will be of interest to students and scholars in a number of disciplines.

An ethical reappraisal of postmodern and poststructuralist theory, including works by Levinas, Foucault, Derrida, Jameson, Zizek, and Butler.

This exciting collection of essays explores the role of the Other in Tolkien’s fiction, his life, and the pertinent criticism. It critically examines issues of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, language, and identity in The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and lesser-known works by Tolkien. The chapters consider characters such as Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Saruman, Éowyn, and the Orcs as well as discussions of how language and identity function in the source texts. The analysis of Tolkien’s work is set against an examination of his life, personal writing, and beliefs. Each essay takes as its central position the idea that how Tolkien responds to that which is different, to that which is “Other,” serves as a register of his ethics and moral philosophy. In the aggregate, they provide evidence of Tolkien’s acceptance of alterity.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. This is the first book-length study in English of the Japanese-language literary activities of early Japanese migrants to Brazil. It provides a detailed history of Japanese-language bookstores, serialized newspaper fiction, original creative works, and critical apparatuses that existed in Brazil prior to World War II. This case study of the reading and writing of one diasporic population challenges the dominant mode of literary study, in which texts are often explicitly or implicitly understood through a framework of ethno-nationalism. Self-representations by writers in the diaspora reveal flaws in this prevailing framework through what Edward Mack calls “acquired alterity,” in which expectations about the stability of ethnic identity are subverted in surprising ways. Acquired Alterity encourages a reconsideration of the ramifications (and motivations) of cultural analyses of texts and the constructions of peoplehood that are often the true objects of literary knowledge production.

The French philosopher Félix Guattari frequently visited Japan during the 1980s and organized exchanges between French and Japanese artists and intellectuals. His immersion into the “machinic eros” of Japanese culture put him into contact with media theorists such as Tetsuo Kogawa and activists within the mini-FM community (Radio Home Run), documentary filmmakers (Mitsuo Sato), photographers (Keiichi Tahara), novelists (Kobo Abe), internationally recognized architects (Shin Takamatsu), and dancers (Min Tanaka). From pachinko parlors to high-rise highways, alongside corporate suits and among alt-culture comrades, Guattari put himself into the thick of Japanese becomings during a period in which the bubble economy continued to mutate. This collection of essays, interviews, and longer meditations shows a radical thinker exploring the architectural environment of Japan’s “machinic eros.”