Roots are good to think with indeed most of us use them as a metaphor every day. A root can signify the hiddenness of our beginnings, or, in its bifurcating structure, the various possibilities in the life of an individual or a collective. This book looks at rootedness as a metaphor for the genealogical origins of people and their attachment to place and how this metaphor transformed so rapidly in twentieth-century Europe. Christy Wampole s case study is France, with its contradictory legacies of Enlightenment universalism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism. At one time, French nationalist rhetoric portrayed the Jews as unrooted and thus unrighteous people. After the two world wars, the root metaphor figured in the new French philosophy (notably Deleuze and Guattari). And recently, Caribbean thinkers in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique have debated whether their roots were in Africa, France, the Caribbean, or in some pan-national network that could not be identified on a map. Walpole argues that while the metaphor was perhaps once useful in the establishment of communities and identities, that usefulness has expired. The longer we remain attached to the figure of rootedness, the more discord it sows. Giving up on the metaphor of rootedness, Wampole urges, allows us to see at last that we are in fact unbound by the land we inhabit."

rootedness Discover the insights and lessons of architect Juhani Pallasmaa In Rootedness: Reflections for Young Architects, Juhani Pallasmaa delivers an insightful and expansive collection of his most compelling ideas into architecture’s position among arts and culture. Pallasmaa speaks to architecture students and young professionals, discussing each topic with sincerity and openness, suggesting what can be learned from areas of culture beyond the boundaries of familiar professional disciplines. He outlines the growing need for an architecture based in self-awareness, reconnection to the environment, and a sense of ethical responsibility. Each essay in Rootedness was initially conceived and presented as an educational lecture and has been carefully edited with clarifications, refinements, and valuable expansions. Accompanying sketches by the author emphasize the personal and intimate nature of the essays. The book also includes: Explorations of perception, creative practice, and the need for an ethical stance Thoughts, meditations, and challenges emerging from the author’s search for identity and purpose in his architectural work A wealth of references within the essays, as well as recommendations for books and films from which readers may draw further inspiration Designed for students of architecture at any age, Rootedness: Reflections for Young Architects will also inspire professional architects, designers, and those in other creative professions.

Development interventions often generate contradictions around questions of who benefits from development and which communities are targeted for intervention. This book examines how the Baka, who live in Eastern Cameroon, assert forms of belonging in order to participate in development interventions, and how community life is shaped and reshaped through these interventions. Often referred to as ‘forest people’, the Baka have witnessed many recent development interventions that include competing and contradictory policies such as ‘civilize’, assimilate and integrate the Baka into ‘full citizenship’, conserve the forest and wildlife resources, and preserve indigenous cultures at the verge of extinction.

The Singapore Perspectives series is a yearly publication that provides critical analysis of emerging trends and issues Singapore faces in terms of social, economic and political development. It is a quick and essential reference for understanding the broad policy discussions that animate thought leaders, policy-makers and the public in the country during the immediate period or that are likely to do so in the short and medium term. In this volume, contributors take an in-depth look at four topics of pertinent interest to Singapore's mid- to long-term future and offer some radical ideas for Singaporeans' consideration. They are: Can Singaporeans Afford a High-Cost Singapore?; Can Singaporeans Remain Rooted?; Can Singapore Preserve Its Hub Status?; Can Government Do Less, and Singaporeans More? Contributors include Member of Parliament Inderjit Singh, playwright and law academic Eleanor Wong and former president of the Law Society of Singapore Philip Jeyaretnam. Co-published by the think-tank, the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore, this is a useful publication for those with an interest in understanding the governance challenges facing a small, highly globalised economy and nation-state, or those who want a quick feel of the pulse of Singapore.

For many years, I have been interested in global analysis of nonlinear systems. The original interest stemmed from the study of snap-through stability and jump phenomena in structures. For systems of this kind, where there exist multiple stable equilibrium states or periodic motions, it is important to examine the domains of attraction of these responses in the state space. It was through work in this direction that the cell-to-cell mapping methods were introduced. These methods have received considerable development in the last few years, and have also been applied to some concrete problems. The results look very encouraging and promising. However, up to now, the effort of developing these methods has been by a very small number of people. There was, therefore, a suggestion that the published material, scattered now in various journal articles, could perhaps be pulled together into book form, thus making it more readily available to the general audience in the field of nonlinear oscillations and nonlinear dynamical systems. Conceivably, this might facilitate getting more people interested in working on this topic. On the other hand, there is always a question as to whether a topic (a) holds enough promise for the future, and (b) has gained enough maturity to be put into book form. With regard to (a), only the future will tell. With regard to (b), I believe that, from the point of view of both foundation and methodology, the methods are far from mature.

This book discusses Process Pragmatism, the view that whatever is, derives from interactions. The contributors examine and defend its merits by focusing on major topics, including truth, the existence of unobservables, the origin of knowledge, scientific activity, mathematical functions, laws of nature, and moral agency.

The migration of people within and beyond Asia no longer takes the form of permanent ruptures, uprooting, and resettlement. Today, such movement is more likely to be transient and complex, ridden with disruptions and detours, and based on translocal interconnections between places and multiple chains of movement. Written from various disciplinary perspectives, this collection of essays explores the migration experiences of a wide spectrum of people, from professional and managerial elites to contract workers and refugees. In addressing the nature of these Asian migrations, the authors demonstrate how mobility in today's world has transformed notions of citizenship and identity, and of displacement and home.

Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.