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The Mercenary
Ever since the French Revolution and the rise of the rise of national armies, the mercenary has been viewed as a maligned and marginalized actor in international relations. The Mercenary challenges this view, suggesting instead that while delegated to the periphery of Great Power politics, the mercenary remained a coercive instrument of state power who was willing to discretely promote the client's foreign policy when called upon to do so. Never has this been more evident than today. This book offers fresh insight into the future of the mercenary as an instrument of state coercion and explains why there is a mercenary renaissance in the 21st century. The start of the 21st century has seen renewed interest in the mercenary from across the political spectrum. The growing reliance by the US, Russia, and China on military and security contractors suggests that the mercenary remains a key player in International Politics, now emerging from the shadows to help expand state influence on the world stage by serving as an important actor in the conduct of conflict and the winning of small wars. Far from being marginalized, the future of the mercenary is set to be increasingly active.
The Cancer Plot
In The Cancer Plot, Reginald Wiebe and Dorothy Woodman examine the striking presence of cancer in Marvel comics. Engaging comics studies, medical humanities, and graphic medicine, they explore this disease in four case studies: Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Thor, and Deadpool. Cancer, the authors argue, troubles the binaries of good and evil because it is the ultimate nemesis within a genre replete with magic, mutants, and multiverses. They draw from gender theory, disability studies, and cultural theory to demonstrate how cancer in comics enables an examination of power and responsibility, key terms in Marvel’s superhero universe. As the only full-length study on cancer in the Marvel universe, The Cancer Plot is an appealing and original work that will be of interest to scholars across the humanities, particularly those working in the health humanities, cultural theory, and literature, as well as avid comics readers.
Thug Criminology
Thug Criminology combines the urgent and as yet silenced voices of former gang/street-involved peoples turned academics, alongside their allies, in order to challenge and disrupt mainstream and academic knowledge about urban youth gangs specifically, and the "streets" more broadly. The book questions how the "streets" – and the racialized and marginalized urban communities who inhabit them – are researched, taught, and subsequently politicized. It looks at who gets to produce such knowledge, who benefits from such knowledge, and whose voices are privileged within dominant academic and public policy discourses. Drawing on decolonizing methodologies, the book seeks to give voice to scholars with lived experience of a "street" or gang life. Adam Ellis, Olga Marques, and Anthony Gunter reclaim the terms thug and gang to reconstruct the narrative around street-involved youth, seeing them not as criminals but rather as survivors of historical oppression and trauma. Challenging the colonial structure of criminology and other disciplines that focus on street crime, Thug Criminology aims to disrupt and disentangle the knowledge that has been produced on gangs and urban violence.
Fragile and Failing States
The focus on state fragility is part of an agenda that begun to attract greater prominence in the 1990s as part of a widening of the post-Cold War international security environment. It has continued to develop subsequently, not just by the US government who claims that international security is as likely to be adversely affected as much by state fragility as strength, but wider, with the UK for instance, committing 50 percent of its development assistance to addressing the causes and consequences of fragile and failing states. This phenomenon of state fragility is critically examined by considering the actual nature of the problem, both conceptually and geo-strategically, the security implications such developments pose at multiple levels and the legal and logistical implications of responding to the development of weaknesses in key areas of state behaviour. What lessons can be learned from the UK's approach, both military and more widely, to address the question of state failure are of importance.
Supporting Adult Learners through Games and Interactive Teaching
Games-based teaching offers an engaging way for students and adult learners to interact with concepts and build their problem-solving and communication skills. This exciting book will help educators integrate games into their classes and shows how this method of teaching improves motivation, as well as diversifies and solidifies learners’ skill sets. Bringing together expert contributors from the Professors Without Borders’ global network who have effectively used interactive games-based approaches in their teaching, the book features 13 unique games that teach a wide variety of skills across a range of difficulty levels. The chapters highlight the skills of strategy, decision-making, communication, teamwork, problem-solving, reflective thinking and empathy being used by participants alongside the pedagogical principles that underpin each game. Suitable for online and in-person teaching, this book will be valuable reading for educators working with student and adult learners looking to adopt innovative and interactive teaching methods, as well as those interested in learning about how game-based teaching can improve vital skills.
War Amongst the People
Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed 'war amongst the people'. Such conflicts increasingly require a type of soldier that is increasingly asked to be an 'armed social worker', as was seen most recently in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this increased focus on societal relations has - and should - become the area of prime concern for contemporary armed forces, this poses a series of conceptual and practical questions regarding who the people are and what is the nature of the society amongst whom war is conducted. Scholars and practitioners come together in this volume to explore armed forces' engagement at the local level, in a contemporary context, and the broader political, strategic, tactical and legal implication this engagement has had, both for the military actor and for the people themselves.
The Politics of Antagonism
This book demonstrates how populist security narratives served as the driving force behind the mobilization of Republican voters and the legitimation of an ‘America First’ policy agenda under the Trump presidency. Going beyond existing research on both populism and security narratives, the author links insights from political psychology on collective narcissism, blame attribution and emotionalization with research in political communication on narrative and framing to explore the political and societal impact of a populist security imaginary. Drawing on a comprehensive range of sources including key interviews, campaign and policy speeches, presidential addresses, and posts on social med...
State of Threat
Increasing US&– China tensions, Russia' s invasion of Ukraine, disruptions to supply chains and maritime trade, right-wing extremism, gangs and the drug trade . . . The international and domestic security environment is dynamic and fraught. In State of Threat, local and international academics and sector experts discuss the issues facing New Zealand across defence, diplomacy, intelligence, policy, trade and border management.This timely and up-to-date analysis of New Zealand' s most important security issues is a must-read for policy analysts, those working in risk management and industry leaders across all sectors of the economy.
Serbian Paramilitaries and the Breakup of Yugoslavia
This is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of the emergence, nature, and function of Serbian paramilitary units during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. The book investigates the nature and functions of paramilitary units throughout the 1990s, and their ties to the state and President Slobodan Milošević. The work relies on the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which conducted dozens of trials relating to paramilitary violence, and records from judicial proceedings in the region. It discusses how and why certain important paramilitary units emerged, how they functioned and transformed through the decade, what their relatio...
NATO and the Russian War in Ukraine
How might the Western defence alliance turn Moscow's war on Ukraine from a major challenge into a basis for renewal?
