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1377672 results in Books

Page 1412 of 68884

R.K. Narayan
  • John Thieme
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • R. K. Narayan's reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English is re-examined in this comprehensive study of his fiction. Arguing against views that have seen Narayan as a chronicler of authentic ‘Indianness’, the book locates his fiction in terms of specific South Indian contexts, cultural geography and non-Indian intertexts. It draws on recent thinking about the ways places are constructed to demonstrate that Malgudi is always a fractured and transitional site – an interface between older conceptions and contemporary views which stress the inescapability of change in the face of modernity. Offering fresh insights into the influences that went into the making of Narayan's fiction, this is a wide-ranging guide to his novels to date.

Livingstone’s ‘Lives’
  • A metabiography of a Victorian icon
  • Justin D. Livingstone
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • Dr. David Livingstone, the Victorian ‘missionary-explorer’, has attracted more written commentary than nearly any other heroic figure of the nineteenth century. In the years following his death, he rapidly became the subject of a major biographical tradition and indeed he continues to sustain an academic trade as well. Yet, out of the extensive discourse that has installed itself around him, no single unified image of Livingstone emerges. Rather, he has been represented in diverse ways and put to work in a variety of socio-political contexts. This book interrogates the heterogeneous nature of Livingstone’s legacy and explores the plurality of identities that he has posthumously acquired. Investigating Livingstone’s own self-staging, his Victorian commemoration, his imperialist and Scottish reputations, and his afterlife in postcolonial fiction and drama, it offers the first full exploration of his many incarnations over a lengthy chronological period. In approaching Livingstone’s ‘lives’ this book adopts a metabiographical methodology, namely, a biography of biographies. This framework, which weds the insights of reception theory and postmodern historical enquiry, does not aim to uncover the true nature of the subject but is rather concerned with the malleability and ideological embeddedness of biographical representation. Instead of staking yet another claim to Livingstone’s ‘real’ identity, in the manner of his many biographers, this study in metabiography reveals the political motivations of his many recreations and focuses on what he has been made to mean.

The search for democratic renewal
  • The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia
  • Rob Manwaring
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • This book attempts to understand how two sister centre-left parties, the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party (ALP), have sought to adapt to the modern era and effect changes. It identifies and examines a range of drivers for Labour's desire to experiment and find new forms of citizen engagement. Linked to the influence of the New Social Democracy (NSD) is the lingering legacy of the new public management (NPM) reforms implemented in the public sectors in both countries. For Labour, democratic renewal is an attempt to secure wider legitimacy in neoliberal settings; similarly, the NSD is also linked to the debates about the perceived shift from government to governance. The NSD has attempted to respond to these debates and in Britain a concerted effort has been made to reformulate the role of the state and, by extension, civil society. The book examines how far the NSD has influenced Labour governments in Britain and Australia. It establishes Labour's interest in democratic renewal, specifically, the role of political participation and civic engagement in the wider context of democratic theory. Given that the NSD calls for an 'active citizenry', this is important. A central motif of democratic theory is an ambivalence about the role of political participation in a modern liberal democratic polity. The book explores how far New Social Democratic governments in Britain and Australia have been successful in seeking to link new forms of public dialogue to existing democratic decision-making processes in the modern western world.
Sensory Contact Zones in the City

Sensory Contact Zones in the City
  • Kelvin E.Y. Low
  • Published online:
    22 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • What does it require to critically investigate our sensory engagement with urban living? How can one analytically study sensory behaviours of both human and animal actors? This Element explores how sensory encounters of smells and sounds in urban living shape human-animal relations in the city. Conceptually anchored upon the proposed notions of sensory contact zones and sensory citizenship, this study further highlights how smells and sounds may be subject to the purview of law and sensory jurisprudence. It conceptualises new modes of fostering and analysing these themes through interrogating a range of sensory interactions in historical and contemporary contexts.

Modern women on trial
  • Sexual transgression in the age of the flapper
  • Lucy Bland
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • This book looks at the highly publicised, sensational trials of several young female protagonists in the period 1918-1924. These cases, all presented by the press as morality tales involving drugs, murder, adultery, miscegenation and sexual perversion, are used as a prism through which to identify concerns about modern femininity. The book first examines a libel case, brought by a well-known female dancer against a maverick right-wing MP for the accusation of lesbianism. One aspect of this libel trial involved the drawing up of battle-lines in relation to the construction of a new, post-war womanhood. The book then looks at two inquests and three magistrate-court trials that involved women and drugs; young women in relationships with Chinese men were also effectively in the dock. One way of accessing court proceedings has been via the account of the trial published as part of the Notable British Trial Series. There are no extant trial transcripts. But there are prosecution depositions lodged at the National Archives, much press reportage, and a number of relevant memoirs, all giving a keen sense of the key issues raised by the trial. The book also focuses on an extraordinary divorce case, that of Christabel Russell, involving cross-dressing, claims of a virgin birth, extreme sexual ignorance, and a particular brand of eccentric modern femininity.

The British New Wave
  • A certain tendency?
  • B. F. Taylor
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • This book offers an opportunity to reconsider the films of the British New Wave in the light of forty years of heated debate. By eschewing the usual tendency to view films such as A Kind of Loving and The Entertainer collectively and include them in broader debates about class, gender and ideology, it presents a new look at this famous cycle of British films. Refuting the long-standing view that films such as Billy Liar and Look Back in Anger are flawed and therefore indicative of an under-achieving national cinema, the book also challenges the widely held belief in the continued importance of the relationship between the British New Wave and questions of realism. Drawing upon existing sources and returning to unchallenged assumptions about British cinema, this book allows the reader to return to the films and consider them anew. In order to achieve this, the book also offers a practical demonstration of the activity of film interpretation. This is essential, because the usual tendency is to consider such a process unnecessary when it comes to writing about British films. The book demonstrates that close readings of films need not be reserved for films from other cinemas.

States of apology
  • Michael Cunningham
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • The book considers the issues surrounding the political apology. These include the relationship between the personal and the political apology, reasons for the emergence of the political apology and the principal issues relating to the coherence of the political apology as a project. It also considers the dynamics of apologies between states and those within states and tries to explain the basis of support and opposition to different apologies.
Bounded Ambition

Bounded Ambition
  • China as a Multilateral Actor in World Politics
  • Rosemary Foot, Xueying Zhang
  • Published online:
    22 April 2026
    Print publication:
    14 May 2026
  • Since the 1980s, China has become steadily enmeshed in multilateral international organizations (MIOs). A rich body of rhetoric and behaviour is available to deepen our understanding of why and how Beijing engages with MIOs, additionally allowing a response to the question of whether China's engagement is shifting the global normative landscape in ways that significantly affect the on-going transition in global order. With these aims in mind, this Element first adopts a 'snapshot' macro-analytical perspective that draws on existing scholarship and official documentation to compare two eras of Chinese MIO engagement across several issue areas. The Element next adopts a case-study, process-driven, understanding of China and MIOs, examining the evolution of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It concludes that China, through incremental measures, is fashioning reordering that pushes in similar directions. However, this capacity to effect significant change varies considerably across institutional settings.

The politics of old age
  • Older people’s interest organisations and collective action in Ireland
  • Martha Doyle
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • The politics of old age in the twenty-first century is contentious, encompassing ideological debates about how old age is conceptualised and the rights and welfare entitlements of individuals in later life. Synthesising key theoretical writings in political science, social/critical gerontology and cultural sociology, the book provides an insight into the complexity of older people’s identity politics, its relationship with age-based social policy and how the power of older people’s interest organisations, their legitimacy and existence remain highly contingent on government policy design, political opportunity structures and the prevailing cultural and socio-economic milieu. The book situates the discussion in the international context and outlines findings of an Irish case study which explores the evolution of older people’s interest organisation in Ireland from their inception in the mid-1990s to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The book is essential reading for policymakers and organisations interested in ageing, policy and the political process and for students of ageing, social policy and political sociology.

Civilians into soldiers
  • War, the body and British Army recruits, 1939–45
  • Emma Newlands
  • Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026
  • Civilians into Soldiers is an examination of British Army life during the Second World War. Drawing on a wealth of official records and servicemen’s personal testimonies it explores the ways in which male civilians were turned into soldiers through the techniques by which they were inducted into military culture. The book demonstrates that the body was central to this process. Using strict physical regimes, the military authorities sorted men into bodily types that reflected their cultural assumptions and sought to transform them into figures that they imagined to be ideal. However, soldiers’ bodies were often far from ideal and served to frustrate these designs. While recruits were willing to engage in practices and routines that they found desirable they also resisted the army’s demands by creating subversive bodily cultures. The book follows the chronological experiences of army personnel, from their recruitment and training to their confrontations with wounding and death, tracing the significance of the body throughout. It analyses the extent to which the British Army organised compliance and relied on consent to achieve its objectives, the ways in which resistance was manifested and experienced, and what can be drawn from these instances by way of larger observations about wartime society in general. By examining soldiers’ embodied experiences it also illuminates broader issues of gender, class, national identity and emotional life. As such, it makes a major contribution to military history, medical history and the social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War.

  • 1 - Introduction: Coupland's contexts

  • Andrew Tate
  • Book:
    Douglas Coupland
    Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026, pp 1-37

  • Summary

    This book is structured around thematically focused chapters that consider Douglas Coupland's engagement with narrative, consumer culture, space and religion. This chapter locates Coupland's writing—both his novels and non-fiction—alongside parallel examples of music, film, television and cultural debate of the period. It prioritizes his emergence in the 1990s in relation to the wider X generation phenomenon but also considers issues of reception and thematic and formal development. In most instances, the books have been grouped chronologically, although Life After God and Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) are discussed together primarily on the basis of a shared theme.

  • 2 - <italic>Heart of Darkness</italic> and death

  • Paul Wake
  • Book:
    Conrad’s Marlow
    Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026, pp 36-65

  • Summary

    Questions surrounding the instant of death form the basis of this chapter which offers a reassessment of two influential readings of Heart of Darkness, those of Miller and Brooks. These readings are linked by a common recognition of the significance of death with regards to meaning, specifically, the death of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. The discussion approaches this case with reference to Heidegger's notion of Dasein as Being towards death and his formulation of death as the ‘possibility of impossibility’ both of which appear in Being and Time. It then critiques Miller and Brooks's readings in relation to Derrida's Aporias which examines the possibility of the experience that is denoted by the phrase ‘my death’ and which poses a radical challenge to Heidegger's notion of death.

  • 10 - Diverging paths

  • Sarah Glynn
  • Book:
    Class, ethnicity and religion in the Bengali East End
    Published by:
    Manchester University Press
    Published online:
    22 April 2026, pp 240-262

  • Summary

    The final chapter begins by highlighting how this has been a history of segregation, and how this segregation has been encouraged both by Bengali political mobilisation and by mainstream politics. It then looks at why this matters, and at what can be done, developing a Marxist critique of multiculturalism and identity politics. It makes use of comparisons with earlier Marxist theory and practice, stressing the importance of maintaining a socialist materialist analysis while working sensitively with people of different cultures. It shows how the rare liberal critics of multiculturalism have exposed its inherent dangers, but not provided an alternative route that could lead to a fairer less prejudiced society; and it argues that this could be achieved by a new focus on economic structures and class-based politics.

Page 1412 of 68884