The essays in this volume explore the borderland between ecology and the arts. Nature is here read by a number of contributors as 'cultural', by others as an 'independent domain', or even as a powerful process of exchange 'between the human and the other-than-human'. The four parts of the volume reflect these different understandings of nature and performance. Informed by psychoanalysis and cultural materialism, contributors to the first part, 'Spectacle: Landscape and Subjectivity', look at ways in which particular social and scientific experiments, theatre and film productions and photography either reinforce or contest our ideas about nature and human-human or human-animal relations and identities. The second part, 'World: Hermeneutic Language and Social Ecology', investigates political protest, social practice art, acoustic ecology, dance theatre, family therapy and ritual in terms of social philosophy. Contributors to the third part, 'Environment: Immersiveness and Interactivity', explore architecture and sculpture, site-specific and mediatised dance and paratheatre through radical theories of urban and virtual space and time, or else phenomenological philosophy. The final part, 'Void: Death, Life and the Sublime', indicates the possibilities in dance, architecture and animal behaviour of a shift to an existential ontology in which nature has 'the capacity to perform itself'.

This book provides a detailed description of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China with respect to both efficiency and income distribution. It demonstrates that state ownership in the form of SOEs does not use resources efficiently, holds a poor record in income distribution, and enjoys unfair advantages while competing with other firms. To illustrate this, the book presents data on how favored policies, monopolistic powers, and subsidies benefit SOEs.This book, with its rich empirical data and information, serves as an authoritative reference for researchers interested in SOEs. It is also a good read for students of social sciences and general public.

In Encountering Ability, Scott DeShong considers how ability and its correlative, disability, come into existence. Besides being articulated as physical, social, aesthetic, political, and specifically human, ability signifies and is signified such that signification itself is always in question. Thus the language of ability and the ability of language constitute discourse that undermines foundations, including any foundation for discourse or ability. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s theory of primary differentiation and Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of ethical relationality, Encountering Ability finds implications of music, theology, and cursing in the signification of ability, and also examines various literary texts, including works by Amiri Baraka and Marguerite Duras.

Accompanying CD-ROM includes 600 figures, tables and color plates from the book Plants in action which can be used for the production of color transparencies or for projections in lectures.

This novel approach to philosophy of science asserts that experimentation is at the center of science and explains the experimental process through an analogy with theatrical performance. Attacking positivist and Kantian varieties of philosophy of science in which experimentation takes a backseat to theory, Robert R. Crease develops his conception of the centrality of experimentation via an argumentative analogy with theatrical performances. To establish his program, Crease draws on three nonpositivist strands of recent philosophy: Husserl's phenomenology to clarify the notion of invariance, Dewey's pragmatism to make needed revisions in our idea of productive inquiry, and Heidegger's hermeneutics to formulate a concept of interpretation appropriate to the cultural and historical "lifeworld" in which members of a scientific community think and act.

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.