ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid engages with global scholarship on development, poverty, and applied research. It addresses the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within postsocialist neoliberal processes and analyzes the economic structures within which Romani musics circulate. Specifically, ReSounding Poverty offers a micro ethnography of economic networks that impact the daily lives of Romani musicians on the borders of the former Soviet Union and the European Union. It argues that the development aid allotted to provide economic assistance to Romani communities, when analyzed from the perspective of the performance arts, continues to marginalize the poorest among them. Through their structure and programming, NGOs choose which segments of the population are the most vulnerable and in the greatest need of assistance. Drawing on ethnographic research in development contexts, ReSounding Poverty asks who speaks for whom within the Romani rights movement today. Framing the critique of development aid in musical terms, it engages with Romani marginalization and economic deprivation through a closer listening to vocal inflections, physical vocalizations of health and disease, and emotional affect. ReSounding Poverty brings us into the back rooms of saman, mud and straw brick, houses not visited by media reporters and politicians, amplifying the cultural expressions of the Romani poor, silenced in the business of development.

Brings together the words of welfare mothers, activists and advocates, as well as scholars in a poignant and powerful challenge to the impoverishment of women.

A startling analysis of the killing of over 500 women in Ju rez to help readers understand the presence of suffering and evil. Making expert use of narrative theology, Prof. Lu vano uses the killing of over 500 women since 1993 in Ciudad Ju rez as a lens to examine and attempt to understand the role that suffering plays in God's love and relationship with humankind. The first three chapters that form Part I describe events in northern Mexico that provide the context for the killing of young women. The five chapters in the second part examine different themes within the broad context of theodicy the nature of God, the traditional teaching of the church, and contemporary theological approaches to human suffering (e.g., Soelle, Wiesel, Moltman).

The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans is a comprehensive overview of major topics, established debates and new directions in the study of popular music and politics in this region. The vibrant growth of this subject area since the 1990s has been intertwined with the region’s political and socio-economic transformations, including the collapse of state socialism in much of the region, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the advent of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of Romani activism, the complex politics of ‘Europeanization’ before and after the global financial crisis, and the region’s relationship to the European Union border regime. The handbook illustrates the wide range of disciplines and methods that contribute to this field’s interdisciplinary dialogue and highlights emerging approaches such as the study of Black diasporas in the region, popular music’s links with LGBTQ+ communities, and the impact of digital technologies on musical cultures. This volume will benefit specialist researchers, tutors creating or refreshing courses on popular music in the region, and students interested in these topics, especially those who are at the point of developing their own independent research projects.

This book examines American literary texts whose portrayal of "American" identity involves the incorporation of a "foreign body" as the precondition for a comprehensive understanding of itself. This nexus of disconcerting textual dynamics arises precisely insofar as both citizen/subject and national identity depend upon a certain alterity, an "other" which constitutes the secondary term of a binary structure. "American" identity thus finds itself ironically con-fused and interwoven with another culture or another nation, double-crossed in the enactment of itself. Individual chapters are devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.

Global Popular Music: A Research and Information Guide offers an essential annotated bibliography of scholarship on popular music around the world in a two-volume set. Featuring a broad range of subjects, people, cultures, and geographic areas, and spanning musical genres such as traditional, folk, jazz, rock, reggae, samba, rai, punk, hip-hop, and many more, this guide highlights different approaches and discussions within global popular music research. This research guide is comprehensive in scope, providing a vital resource for scholars and students approaching the vast amount of publications on popular music studies and popular music traditions around the world. Thorough cross-referencing and robust indexes of genres, places, names, and subjects make the guide easy to use. Volume 2, Transnational Discourses of Global Popular Music Studies, covers the geographical areas of North America: United States and Canada; Central America, Caribbean, and South America/Latin America; Europe; Africa and Middle East; Asia; and areas of Oceania: Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Islands. It provides over twenty-four hundred annotated bibliographic entries covering discourses of extensive research that extend beyond the borders of the United States and includes annotated entries to books, book series, book chapters, edited volumes, special documentaries and programming, scholarly journal essays, and other resources that focus on the creative and artistic flows of global popular music.

"Paint the Sky with Stars" is a collection of poetry, by people from all walks of life, reflecting their thoughts and perceptions about the Tsunami which struck South East Asia, on Boxing day 2004. The poems are all unique and thought provoking, as each poet tries to grasp the realism of this natural disaster. During a time of great loss, suffering and sorrow, the world momentarily put all differences aside, stood shoulder to shoulder, and gave back so much kindness, love and support. This book is dedicated to every single person that lost their lives, and to those that lived

Scholarly writing on the music of Arvo Pärt is situated primarily in the fields of musicology, cultural and media studies, and, more recently, in terms of theology/spirituality. Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred focuses on the representational dimensions of Pärt’s music (including the trope of silence), writing and listening past the fact that its storied effects and affects are carried first and foremost as vibrations through air, impressing themselves on the human body. In response, this ambitiously interdisciplinary volume asks: What of sound and materiality as embodiments of the sacred, as historically specific artifacts, and as elements of creation deeply linked to the human sensorium in Pärt studies? In taking up these questions, the book “de-Platonizes” Pärt studies by demystifying the notion of a single “Pärt sound.” It offers innovative, critical analyses of the historical contexts of Pärt’s experimentation, medievalism, and diverse creative work; it re-sounds the acoustic, theological, and representational grounds of silence in Pärt’s music; it listens with critical openness to the intersections of theology, sacred texts, and spirituality in Pärt’s music; and it positions sensing, performing bodies at the center of musical experience. Building on the conventional score-, biography-, and media-based approaches, this volume reframes Pärt studies around the materiality of sound, its sacredness, and its embodied resonances within secular spaces.

Sheriff Matt Simms’ days are numbered. Diagnosed with liver cancer, and waiting for a transplant, Simms remains steadfast to the things that matter: his friends, his wife, and his duty to protect the citizens of Parker County. The series of home invasions on the elderly is sudden, savage, and seemingly without motive. Shaken to his core by the brutality, Simms delves deeper into the attacks, discovering a family’s secrets and a connection to a decades-old crime. Then there’s the missing teen-ager, and a mother unsure what’s happened to her daughter. Meanwhile, Matt struggles to help his friend and former deputy in the wake of a life-changing injury that has driven the man to the brink of despair. As events escalate and turn explosive and deadly, Simms must put everything at risk—even his own life—to catch the killers. Praise for THE RIGHTEOUS PATH: “Mention noir and the typical mystery reader thinks of the mean streets of Los Angeles or New York, but The Righteous Path is anything but typical. It’s the story of rural West Virginia Sheriff Matt Simms, who’s battling a deadly illness while trying to keep peace and security in a noir-ish part of America that’s been overlooked and forgotten by society. Exquisitely written and filled with crisp dialogue and observations, The Righteous Path is one not to be missed.” —Brendan DuBois, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author “Shamus winner James D.F. Hannah expertly delivers a mystery with more switchback twists than a mountain road, peppered with characters readers will enjoy taking this wild ride with. I dare you to try to put this book down.” —LynDee Walker, Amazon Charts bestselling author of No Sin Unpunished “In The Righteous Path, James D.F. Hannah mixes ricochet banter and raw humanity to create a page-turning mystery. I have some catching up to do!” —Award-winning author J.D. Allen

The nature of globalization and the fallout from the international financial crisis have brought profound changes to societies and economies around the world. This book documents that, over the last two decades, the growth of nonstandard and informal employment has led to greater inequalities. This is partly explained by the fact that adjustment policies in the 1980s, market liberalization policies in the 1990s and, more recently, globalization and anti-poverty policies did not pay sufficient attention to policies for employment and income redistribution. As a response to these trends, this book recommends the development of clearer policies for employment and income redistribution. These policies should now become an integral part of national and international economic policy making. This is even more relevant in the current context of the international financial crisis as: Several elements of globalization, especially the unfettered markets, and the growing inequality have given cause to the current crisis and, There is growing evidence that the employment, human and social effects of the financial crisis will be felt well after an economic recovery has taken place, especially if no corrective action is taken. This volume will be of benefit to policymakers, scholars and practitioners alike. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.