Résumé : Written for undergraduate students studying the politics of conflict and cooperation, Understanding War and Peace considers the roots of global conflicts and the various means used to resolve them. Edited by Dan Reiter with contributing authors who are all leading scholars in the field, it balances approachable, engaging writing with a conceptually rigorous overview of the most important ideas in conflict studies. Focusing on concepts, policy, and historical applications, the text minimizes literature reviews and technical jargon to engagingly present all major topics in international conflict, including nuclear weapons, peacekeeping, terrorism, gender, alliances, nuclear weapons, environment and conflict, civil wars, public opinion. Enriching the textbook pedagogy, each chapter concludes with a summary of a published quantitative study to introduce students with no prior quantitative training to quantitative analysis. Online resources for instructors include an instructor manual, a test bank and contemporary case studies for each chapter topic regarding the conflict in Ukraine. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : This book seeks to critically review and evaluate the changes and consistencies in how warfare is interpreted and represented by academics, mass media outlets and political actors in the 21st century. The authors suggest that it is essential to understand the evolution and transformation of contemporary warfare's conceptualisation and practice in order to make sense of the current global geopolitical transformations that are in process, from a unipolar to multipolar global order. They therefore examine the various key actors in international relations from conceptual, theoretical and empirical perspectives through thematic chapters that demonstrate the increasingly central role played by intangible factors in the representation and management of contemporary armed conflict. The book stresses the need to reflect and rethink the potentially highly problematic trajectory of the global community within the framework of 21st century warfare's political and informational influence and effects. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : Through an analysis of the use of drones, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi explores the ways in which, in the context of counterterrorism, war, technology and the law interact and reshape one another. She demonstrates that drone programs are techno-legal machineries that facilitate and accelerate the emergence of a new kind of warfare. This new model of warfare is individualized and de-materialized in the sense that it focuses on threat anticipation and thus consists in identifying dangerous figures (individualized warfare) rather than responding to acts of hostilities (material warfare). Revolving around threat anticipation, drone wars endure over an extensive timeframe and geographical area, to the extent that the use of drones may even be seen, as appears to be the case for the United States, as part of the normal functioning of the state, with profound consequences for the international legal order. - Note de l'éditeur

Résumé : With the rise of new technologies and disruptive innovations reshaping the global economy, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been characterized as a fusion between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. From the increasing adoption of mobile devices to the entrepreneurial use of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and robotics, trends across Africa speak to the continent's potential for growth and sustainable development in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this innovative and timely study, Landry Signé examines the meaning, drivers, and implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for Africa. Drawing upon comparative, continent-wide analysis, Signé powerfully challenges our understandings of Africa's transformation and sheds light on the potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to change and shape the Global South. By defining and investigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Signé develops a valuable framework for further study and suggests strategies that Africans and their global partners can use to capitalize upon this rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Résumé : "This handbook highlights the limitations of quantitative data analytics, promoting qualitative approaches (in tandem or separately) in analysing and understanding data and phenomena. It will appeal to scholars conducting research projects with digital assets in Information Systems, Management, Strategic Management, and Organisation Studies"

Résumé : This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes : that between statistically predictable future events (“risks”) and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events (“uncertainties”). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving phenomena such as pandemics, natural disasters, and climate change as uncontrollable Acts of God. As a result, there has been little if any preparation for future catastrophes. Our modern society is more interconnected and more globalized than ever. Dealing with uncertain future events requires a stronger and more globally coordinated government response. This book suggests a larger, more global government role in dealing with theses disasters and keeping economic inequalities low. Major institutional changes, such as regulating the private sector for the common good and dealing with special harms, risks and crises, especially those concerning climate change and pandemics, are necessary in order to achieve any semblance of future progress for humankind.

Résumé : Existing scholarship has not systematically examined BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) as a rising power de-dollarization coalition, despite the group developing multiple de-dollarization initiatives to reduce currency risk and bypass US sanctions. To fill this gap, this study develops a 'Pathways to De-dollarization' framework and applies it to analyze the institutional and market mechanisms that BRICS countries have created at the BRICS, sub-BRICS, and BRICS Plus levels. This framework identifies the leaders and followers of the BRICS de-dollarization coalition, assesses its robustness, and discerns how BRICS mobilizes other stakeholders. The authors employ process tracing, content analysis, semi-structured interviews, archival research, and statistical analysis of quantitative market data to analyze BRICS activities during 2009-2021. They find that BRICS' coalitional de-dollarization initiatives have established critical infrastructure for a prospective alternative nondollar global financial system.

Résumé : Transformations caused by increasing virtual connectivity reach all business touchpoints, but the surge towards digital technologies is not distributed evenly across European markets, with the Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) region showing the strongest diversity of digital adoption levels. This Element outlines the characteristics of CEE digital markets, along with an additional contextual layer investigating online consumer behaviors. In-depth analysis of the similarities and differences in the region will allow the pace of ongoing digitization to be traced. The authors' objective in delivering this Element is to analyze the opportunities presented by the digital economy in CEE and to provide an actionable outlook for the e-commerce potential within the region's markets. Observations are based on in-depth analysis of dependencies between globalization of consumer behaviors and ongoing barriers to digital adoption caused by both economic and geo-political limitations.

Résumé : Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen, and why some have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences whilst others have actually benefited society. They reveal that bubbles start when investors and speculators react to new technology or political initiatives, showing that our ability to predict future bubbles will ultimately come down to being able to predict these sparks.

Résumé : "China's Grandmothers looks at the lives of women who once dominated Chinese families, and contiue to exercise major influence. It covers periods of tumultuous change from the late 19th Century to the present. Grandmothers cared for their grandchildren, managed the family economy and transmitted popular culture. They have their grandchildren's boundless love and emotional security. In traditioanl China the lives of women were lived on an upward trajectory: temporary members of their natal families; married in their teens; young mothers under the thumb of their mothers-in-law. Becoming grandmothers made them powerful in their families. The trajectory has flattened, but grandmothers still play major roles in their families. Many care full-time for their grandchildren, notably the seventy million left-behind children of labour migrants. Without this low-cost care China's economic boom, which depends in part on low wages, would not have been possible. The book is illustrated with pictures and photographs, and with Chinese proverbs and sayings"