Volume 4, Avoiding Absolution, aims to describe a path of avoidance toward a dissolutive state by mapping the process of and into. The goal is not to relish and dwell in the fear of catastrophe but become aware of the potential for absolution event characteristics to exist within the structure of our social model; here, now, and measurable in the past toward the future. Malignancy, whether internal or external, acts to threaten the strength of bondage between and among sector supports in different forms. In observation, determinants of the perceivable frame of reference, threat potential can be identified. The theme of preceding volumes are functions and forms in the arts and sciences. Continuing from the ending to Volume 3, hive dynamics continues to adapt and evolve our model into newer and higher dimensions. Psychology, as the interpretation of individual and the collective group psyche, is used to understand differentiation between progress toward equilibrium and a dissolution state. In the use of understanding intent, in the ID, Ego and Superego, current themes in society, as well as in historical context, can diagnose malignancy that threatens the balance of. The moon, and all the stars, are not immune to our use in interpretation. Time, both in balance and in purity, is but an orbit in the relationship to our experience of it. A queen can be maniacal or the purpose of the hive in reason and sustenance. Differentiation, as a dependent variable within our function, is but a derivative of field vector characteristics. As we continue into further adaptations of Hourglass Socioeconomics, our purpose is to subject the power of the collective in the effort toward equilibrium.

Hourglass Socioeconomics Volume 3: Global Interpretation steps into the realm of national involvement with foreign entities in twos, threes, fours and more. From economic partnership to armed conflict a third person viewpoint of interaction through historical events measures the capacity a relationship between, or among, holds for the greater good or nefarity. Alliance through economic partnership suspend expansions by cohesive principles if a successful relationship is maintained. Adhesive fundamentals arise when the band aid of cooperation is ripped off where any matter of involvement is spun gravitationally toward equilibrium or armed conflict and determined by the genetic coding and accelerants of each nation or entity-mass in relativity to another. A bridge between requires maintenance. Biology, cell division and replication, open the topic of chain sequencing through time and space as historical events act to accelerate or manipulate mass-genetic coding to pull nations closer together in cohesion or drive them apart. In conflict, the focus is on proxy involvement in manipulative measures against a nation through proctor action. The Civil War, unrest in Africa and war in the Middle East among mentions of other large scale conflicts act to set the stage in principality. NAFTA, CAFTA, the EU and the Asian Pacific Partnership draw lines into economic cooperation as humanity's continued success or failure. And then, there are always Black Holes.

Elizabeth DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean (‘tidalectics’) to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along—at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature. —Vilsoni Hereniko, University of Hawai‘i "Elizabeth DeLoughrey brings contemporary hybridity, diaspora, and globalization theory to bear on ideas of indigeneity to show the complexities of ‘native’ identities and rights and their grounded opposition as ‘indigenous regionalism’ to free-floating globalized cosmopolitanism. Her models are instructive for all postcolonial readers in an age of transnational migrations." —Paul Sharrad, University of Wollongong, Australia Routes and Roots is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the "tidalectic" between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots. The first section looks at the sea as history in literatures of the Atlantic middle passage and Pacific Island voyaging, theorizing the transoceanic imaginary. The second section turns to the land to examine indigenous epistemologies in nation-building literatures. Both sections are particularly attentive to the ways in which the metaphors of routes and roots are gendered, exploring how masculine travelers are naturalized through their voyages across feminized lands and seas. This methodology of charting transoceanic migration and landfall helps elucidate how theories and people travel, positioning island cultures in the world historical process. In fact, DeLoughrey demonstrates how these tropical island cultures helped constitute the very metropoles that deemed them peripheral to modernity. Fresh in its ideas, original in its approach, Routes and Roots engages broadly with history, anthropology, and feminist, postcolonial, Caribbean, and Pacific literary and cultural studies. It productively traverses diaspora and indigenous studies in a way that will facilitate broader discussion between these often segregated disciplines.

Covering a wide range of substances, this new edition has been extensively updated, with an updated bibliography and two new chapters on cannabis and khat. Consuming Habits is the perfect companion for all those interested in how different cultures have defined drugs across the ages.

"Edgy and often deeply personal, the twenty-one essays collected here come from a wide variety of writers. Some identify as witches, others identify as writers, musicians, game developers, or artists. What they have in common is that they've created personal rituals to summon their own power in a world that would prefer them powerless. Here, they share the rituals they use to resist self-doubt, grief, and depression in the face of sexism, slut shaming, racism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression"--

Winner of the 2012 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award in Holocaust Literature. A survivor of concentration camps and the Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn looks back on his Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences to compare patterns of human behavior in extremis with those of ordinary life. What he finds is that the concentration camp Muselmann, who has lost his hunger for life and is thus shunned by his fellow inmates on the soup line, bears an eerie resemblance to an office employee who has fallen from grace and whose coworkers avoid spending time with him at the water cooler. Though the circumstances are unfathomably far apart, the human response to their situations is triggered by self-preservation rather than by calculated evil. By juxtaposing these two separate worlds, Pfefferkorn demonstrates that ultimately the human condition has not changed significantly since Cain slew Abel and the Athenians sentenced Socrates.

In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. However, historians have long recognized that medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law and legal procedure. This book makes the case that one cannot understand the era's cultural trends without considering the profound development of law.