Cultural groups address the initiation, development, and maintenance of romantic relationships and marriage in diverse ways. Western values, beliefs, and populations have dominated theory and research, which has led to a relatively monocultural science of relationships. This chapter explores the developing literature on East Asian ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to suggest avenues for further investigation of culturally-defined relationships. We first focus on relatively broad social, ideological, and institutional factors that shape the East Asian Confucian cultural model of marriage in comparison to Western models of relationships. Then we review research linking distinctive East Asian ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving to culturally valued practices, attitudes, and behaviors in romantic relationships and marriage.

Literary and filmic renditions of war are often organized around expressions of heightened sensation and aptitude. Sensation functions as a kind of other or alternative to trauma, a way of figuring the extreme experience of war in terms that, like trauma, separate the soldier from the ordinary citizen. At the same time, civilian texts by writers as diverse as H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Kurt Vonnegut have explored the way sensation and other forms of exaltation, including the sublime, might also characterize the civilian experience of war. This chapter explores the close connection between the motifs of sublimity and sensation in war with other related principles that have characterized twentieth-century literature, considering both combatant and civilian texts. The chapter argues that the moral culture of the twentieth century requires that we acknowledge the shared experience of war across combat and non-combatant lines, and second, that the slippage between these two, and the rendering of exaltation as a value that can be abstracted from war, carries its own moral risks.

Chapter 10 explores the work of Foster Parents Plan (PLAN), whose presence in the Asian region began in the 1950s, extending its scope beyond Europe from where it originated during the Spanish Civil War. PLAN was distinct from other humanitarian programmes in that it developed a child sponsorship scheme. The language of development, financial assistance to so-called Third World nations and humanitarian aid invariably reflected earlier practices of colonialism, such as sending administrators to colonies and developing narratives of Western superiority. PLAN at this time shows a hybrid form of humanitarianism in which the organisation never entirely relinquished its charity label. The human rights campaigns that marked this period were absent from PLAN’s firmly embedded form of humanitarianism, which retained elements of colonial paternalism as well as newly formed concepts of social justice, underpinned by moralism. Max Harris, Australian writer, poet and journalist, took an active and leading role in promoting the aims of PLAN in the region. He did so with great zest and enthusiasm. A study of the correspondence with the children that Harris sponsored, which aimed to capture the voices of children, reveals these voices were severely compromised and appropriated to serve the fundraising endeavours of PLAN itself. These attempts reflected Western constructs that aimed to elevate PLAN donors and sponsors to the status of saviours of ‘Third World’ countries and communities and satisfy their gaze.

Sometimes killing by male-female couples represents an escalation of an adventure that starts with entirely, or at least relatively, harmless activities, as in looking at fringe pornography, sharing fantasies or accounts of earlier experiences, S&M or swinging. In some cases, this could be seen as grooming by the male. The existence of killer couples raises the issue of whether the female derives sexual pleasure from killing or the pleasure comes solely from pleasing the male . In each of the couples described here, the male would appear to be the dominant partner. For Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, it is unclear what set them on his tragic course. For Brady, it was possibly resentment against illegitimacy and social standing. Fred and Rosemary West both came from abusive backgrounds. The case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka raised the issue of whether Homolka showed evidence of Stockholm Syndrome.

In the 30 years since the introduction of sustainable development and its acceptance as a concept in education, much can be gained from its successful implementation across the world. It is largely driven by the Brundtland Report of 1987, when the term ‘sustainable development’ (SD) was coined. While much has been achieved since then, there are, however, still a number of gaps, conceptually and in practice, when viewed from the perspectives of indigenous knowledge and wisdom, especially the non-Western-centric worldviews. This can be well observed within the diverse indigenous communities of the Asia-Pacific, such as in Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand. Overall, each provides a unique input to the understanding of SD as a concept and its practice beyond what is conventionally framed by the Brundtland Report. By taking due consideration of the various indigenous perspectives, the vista of SD could be further enhanced and expanded, at the same time enriching the concept through real-life examples, making SD even more relevant and viable as a way of life. Instead of regarding these as divergent views, it is more instructive to integrate them into what has been constructed thus far to generate a more holistic and balanced framework with a higher sense of purpose, as spelt out by the overarching goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, namely dignity, justice, and partnership, apart from the usual 3Ps of planet, people, and prosperity.

To a God Unknown has typically been viewed as one of John Steinbeck’s most problematic novels, not least because of the its jarring mixture of realistic and fantastic elements. This chapter reevaluates Steinbeck’s early novel by placing it in the context of emergent ideas about race and climate in the American West. To a God Unknown is an experimental work that attempts to fuse realist and symbolic modes in ways parallel to the genre of magical realism, which first developed in post-Expressionist art of the 1920s. By exploring Steinbeck’s thinking during his composition of the novel, particularly his interest in “race psychopathology” and his reading in early climate science, we discover how Steinbeck’s magical realism is a pioneering attempt to understand and represent the aridity and drought that define the climate of the West and have profound implications for the kind of human society it can sustain. Through formal analysis in historical context, the chapter lays the groundwork for considerations of Steinbeck as a writer of the Anthropocene and of environmentalist critique.

Steinbeck received much of his early training in creative writing classes at Stanford University. Focusing on Steinbeck’s short story cycle, The Pastures of Heaven, this chapter explores Steinbeck’s education in writing--and his resistance to many of its principles--as it relates to his understanding of the colonial history of the American West. The unstable mixture of realist and fantastic forms, particularly as they relate to the construction of literary character, here encapsulates an ambivalent resonse to the haunting lagacies of slavery and race in the California land. The second part of the chapter, on the story “The Snake,” traces another aspect of Steinbeck’s education--this time in the scientific laboratory--to understand an approach to gender more complex than critics would admit. The experiment with narrative point of view uncovers sexist ideologies in the purportedly objective act of scientific observation, thus bringing attention to the process of attention itself.

In “African American Literature of the West and the Landscape of Opportunity,” Janet Neary considers the ways in which Black writers of the American West presented California as a brief loophole of economic opportunity for Black citizens in the expanding and consolidating nation – a way of defining place with fascinating parallels to Marrs’s work on memory. Although early Black newspapers in California linked economic mobility with legal enfranchisement, Neary suggests that California’s idiosyncratic response to Reconstruction paradoxically shut down certain avenues of opportunity for Black citizens, centering wealth production with white property owners. Focusing on James Williams’s 1873 Life and Adventures of James Williams and Thomas Detter’s 1871 Nellie Brown, or the Jealous Wife, Neary argues that African American Western writers articulated economic possibility and upward mobility with social justice and racial equality, while simultaneously highlighting the mercenary and racially biased nature of the law both before and after Reconstruction.

Understanding network formation is essential to building a cohesive theory of network connectivity in the social relations that form historical regimes. Using diagrams of network structure in which nodes represent components and lines represent their interactions, we can recognize essential features of the interactive configurations that lead to patterns (institutions) and behaviors (regimes) and emergent properties. When we capture how agents interact and self-organize, we can infer structure; and knowing structure we can infer patterns of information transmission and thus collective behavior, including why system growth or breakdown follows a critical event. Theoretical network models – random, scale-free, small-world, and hub-and-spoke – capture these regularities and allow us to infer the principles underlying their construction and the trade-offs of stability and resilience. Knowing the patterns of structure and interaction, we gain a deeper grasp of two critically important and strongly correlated phenomena of contemporary political economy: the Great Divergence of East and West, and the global impact of China’s contemporary and unprecedented economic transformation.

On a business trip to Manila, one of the authors’ first meetings was to be hosted at a restaurant. Establishing business relationships in the social environment of a restaurant is what one expects in the Philippines: it is a recognised characteristic of doing business in Asia. On another occasion, when the same author went overseas to discuss a possible joint venture, he was also hosted at a restaurant – not in Asia this time, but in New Zealand. So just how Asian is the characteristic of doing business in a social environment?

The Conclusion summarizes the book’s arguments about Muslim and Western countries’ comparative conditions of development and their historical origins. It emphasizes that these countries are similar, at least comparable. It reiterates that neither Islam nor Western colonialism can simply explain the problems of violence, authoritarianism, or socioeconomic underdevelopment in Muslim countries. Thus, both essentialist and post-colonial explanations are unsatisfactory. Instead, the ulema–state alliance, which emerged in the eleventh century and marginalized intellectual and bourgeois classes, has been the main reason for Muslims’ long-lasting problems. At the end, the book recommends that Muslims pursue a political and socioeconomic reform to revive the intellectual and economic dynamism they had in early Islamic history. For such a reform to take place, Muslims need creative intellectuals and an independent bourgeoisie, who can balance the power of the ulema and state authorities.

This chapter begins by examining Muslims’ military, commercial, and intellectual achievements between the seventh and eleventh centuries. At that time, most of Islamic scholars (ulema) were funded by commerce, while only a few of them served the state. The merchants flourished as an influential class. The chapter goes on to analyze the beginning of the intellectual and economic stagnation in Muslim lands in the eleventh century. It explains how, gradually, the ulema became a state-servant class and the military state came to dominate the economy. The alliance between the ulema and the military state diminished the influence of philosophers and merchants. This changing distribution of authority led to the long-term stagnation, if not the decline, of Muslim intellectual and economic life. This gradual process began in the eleventh century and continued for centuries, as subsequent chapters elaborate.

This chapter analyzes the problem of violence in many Muslim countries. It emphasizes that there is no Muslim exceptionalism; violence has occurred in all parts of the world. The frequent Muslim terrorist activities are a relatively recent trend that began in the 1980s. This trend is related to the worldwide decline of socialism and the rise of religious political movements. The chapter critically analyzes the explanations that point to either Islam or Western colonialism as the root cause of violence in several Muslim countries. The chapter examines the roles of Jihadi-Salafism and the ulema in Muslim countries’ problems with violence. It emphasizes that military conflicts and terrorism have multiple causes, including socioeconomic and political conditions, especially in authoritarian states.

This chapter analyzes the problem of violence in many Muslim countries. It emphasizes that there is no Muslim exceptionalism; violence has occurred in all parts of the world. The frequent Muslim terrorist activities are a relatively recent trend that began in the 1980s. This trend is related to the worldwide decline of socialism and the rise of religious political movements. The chapter critically analyzes the explanations that point to either Islam or Western colonialism as the root cause of violence in several Muslim countries. The chapter examines the roles of Jihadi-Salafism and the ulema in Muslim countries’ problems with violence. It emphasizes that military conflicts and terrorism have multiple causes, including socioeconomic and political conditions, especially in authoritarian states.

The Introduction summarizes the book's main research questions and arguments. It asks why forty-nine Muslim-majority countries have higher levels of violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, in comparison to world averages. It criticizes the explanations that point to Islam or Western colonialism as the root cause. Instead, it argues that the ulema–state alliance, which emerged in the eleventh century, has been the main reason for Muslims' enduring problems. The ulema–state alliance marginalized the intellectual and bourgeois classes. This alliance also eliminated a certain level of separation between religious and political authorities, as well as intellectual and economic dynamism, which existed in the Muslim world before the eleventh century.