This chapter shows how the poststructural approach provides a useful epistemological and ontological engagement with identity. It reveals that Michel Foucault has been increasingly called upon in analyses on security discourses; his work is also used to invite individuals to reflect on the connection between the constitution of identities and particular (disciplinary) practices. The chapter discusses the construction of the self, identity performance and how America has come into being using a process of imagining the absent, the elusive and that which it is not. It clarifies that identity is meant to be fabricated and not discovered, and stresses that foreign policy analysis should consider how meanings are produced.

The development of English throughout continental North America and the Caribbean, both its islands and the Rim in the past few centuries, form the focus of this volume. The chapters investigate the historical settlement of this vast area by English speakers from Britain and Ireland and focuses also on the varieties which arose in the context of colonial slavery in the Caribbean and the Southern United States. The manner in which language change has panned out since initial anglophone settlement at the beginning of the seventeenth century is a central concern as are the current cases of language change which can be observed, above all in the United States and Canada, which give testimony to the ever-changing nature of English in North America.

Virginia Woolf's study of photographs, portraits, and faces is part of her investigations of the enigma of character and the ungraspable something surrounding each human being. Critical of the biographical paradigm of the Victorian era, she attempted to depict an aspect of human life that is not about action or dialogue, but rather about emotional, thoughtful, and imaginary life. While she gave prevalence to the inner worlds of her characters, she also explored the role of visual communication. Using the technique of “showing seeing,” she dwells on situations when action and dialogue stop and a visual activity takes over. The reading of faces, with their gestures, miens, and often unreturned gazes, is a key activity in her novels, although often carried out discreetly, in scenes involving portrait photographs and painted portraits, as well as the “natural” faces of her characters. It could indeed be argued that her contribution to modernist literature is not merely her exploration of the isolated “thought worlds” of each human being, but also her reflection upon the limited access we have to other “thought worlds” and our perpetual effort to connect with others. Indeed, Woolf's brilliancy was her ability to describe the distance between people and unfold the problem of communication. She understood that in a situation where people do not understand each other and partly have lost faith in words, they are more than ever confronted with each other's faces and with unspoken feelings of sympathy, reserve, or dismay.

This chapter criticises the predominant issues on the modern missile defence debate, emphasising the tensions on feasibility, costs, and the question of arms control and non-proliferation. It tries to set up a confrontation between the ‘logic’ of NMD and its inappropriateness. The chapter also lists the emerging missile states and discusses the two documents that address the issue of an emerging multifaceted ballistic missile threat.

The first case examined in this book involved a ‘wake up call’ that sparked the evolution of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). It was also one of the significant events that prompted a reconsideration of norms and rules for action in the international system. It was later used as both a negative and a positive example of how conflicts should be handled. This chapter analyses verbal reactions to ‘Operation Allied Force’ in Kosovo, which began on 24 March 1999 and officially ended on 10 June the same year. In spite of severe differences, most notably between Russia and the UK, the conflict in Kosovo also moved EU-Russian relations forward. Above all, the subsequent strengthening of the EU's actorness favoured a gradual rapprochement.

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the situation of India in the context of globalisation. It has identified some of the problems with India's full integration into the global economy and proposed solutions based on the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi. This study has also suggested that the Indian government has to maintain a balance between economic liberalisation on the one hand and equity and social justice on the other. It also highlighted the importance of global governance in redirecting resources from the winners of globalisation towards the direction of the world's poorest citizens.

The physical remains of the Abbasid palace gardens in Lower Mesopotamia have largely disappeared and archaeologists have mostly ignored these gardens. In a letter to the orientalist Carl Heinrich Becker, dated 25 March 1911, Herzfeld wrote, ‘In Berlin ist man über die ornamentierten Wände sehr erfreut. Und Seine Majestät hat 15,000 Mark gestiftet. Ich hoffe noch weitere Mittel zu bekommen … .’ Herzfeld's publications and personal notes attest that the prime interest of the German expeditions during the two campaigns in Samarra that took place from 1910 to 1913 was merely to clarify the general plans of the buildings and specifically to discover new varieties of stucco wall decorations. As a result, the gardens, as vast open spaces adjacent to the palace buildings, were largely regarded as unimportant to the aims of their investigations. Subsequent excavations at Samarra led by the Iraq Directorate-General of Antiquities since the 1930s have predominantly concentrated on specific structures, and the garden expanses rarely had a place in their investigations.

Archaeological evidence attests to the existence of gardens attached to three palaces at Samarra: Balkuwārā, the Caliphal Palace and Jaʿfarī. The physical traces of the garden of Jaʿfarī Palace are minimal and primarily indicate its proximity to the river and a large rectangular pool, which have already been discussed in Chapters One and Three. Thus, this chapter will focus on the gardens of the Caliphal Palace and Balkuwārā, which both have particular significance to the study of gardens of the Abbasid period but for distinct reasons. Balkuwārā is the only site where a clear outline of the garden is evident, whereas certain key features of the garden of the Caliphal Palace can be discerned which permit reasonable speculations as to its layout and principal design.

Drawing on survey and interview evidence, this chapter explores the effect of coverage denials on patients’ health and economic security. Most Americans report an inability to pay an unexpected $1,000 bill, so, with notably expensive health care, denials can be devastating. Too often, when coverage is denied, patients abandon their treatments, a dynamic shown not only through physician surveys, but also through original survey evidence of patients, half of whom reported delaying or abandoning their prescribed care. Further, the people most likely to do so are typically Black or Hispanic or less affluent, and nearly half of patient respondents reported that their health condition declined. In fact, some patients may not survive at all. Marginalized patients are also more likely to postpone non-medical purchasing to accommodate unexpected health insurance barriers, suggesting the far-reaching consequences of prior authorization. The evidence shows not only that tools of managed care produce frequent coverage denials, but also that this practice shifts risk from insurers to patients, yielding new health and economic insecurities, especially for patients from marginalized backgrounds.

This chapter introduces the five core Life Design Abilities – foundational skills that help individuals navigate uncertainty and shape meaningful lives. These abilities include cultivating curiosity and empathy, adopting a “Yes, and…” mindset, prototyping low-risk experiences, applying a growth mindset, and thinking in multiple options. Through real-life stories, you’ll see how these attitudes shift default behaviors, turning stuckness into momentum and hesitation into creative action. Whether it’s Steven’s misstep from passion to pressure, Reka’s graceful shift through yoga experiments, or Sebastian’s quiet revolution with rhythm and sneakers – the stories show that Life Design isn’t about dramatic reinvention, but about integrating lost parts of ourselves through playful, thoughtful steps. This chapter equips readers with the mindsets and micro-skills to start experimenting, asking better questions, and moving from dream to action – in work, life, and everything in between.

This book brings together and cross-references Left history and gay histories that have previously been separate. The relationship between gay men and the Left is significant in itself, after all the decline of the conventional Left offered particular new possibilities for gay political organisation. But more than that, the relationship between class and identity politics also brings social and political change in post-war Britain into clearer focus, allowing us to trace changes in both political culture and the politics of culture. Across the various forms of the Left under discussion here—both revisionist and traditional Labour, Stalinism, Marxist/Leninism and Trotskyism, a shared assumption exists; that there is little relation between the politics of homosexuality and the politics of class. The book examines the Left's attitude to homosexuality and homosexuals in post-war Britain, the variety of transgressive political identities adopted by homosexual men outside of the Left, the Gay Liberation Front in London and the ways in which New Labour has negotiated the politics of sexuality.

African American English (AAE) is arguably the most studied variety of English in sociolinguistics, and much of the formative work on the variety took place in cities, setting the stage for the direction of sociolinguistics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This chapter provides an overview of the important early work on AAE in urban environments. Alongside a discussion of what we learned about the variety from early studies, the chapter will also explore how methods of study and the variables themselves have evolved. The chapter includes a discussion of differences within AAE that are conditioned not only by region, but also by finer-grained aspects of community and individual identity. The recent focus on a wider scope of variables, as well as speakers who were previously overlooked, has allowed for more detailed discussion of AAE as a flexible, evolving toolkit that speakers may use to construct and perform complex identities.