This book explores how states in political transition use stamps to promote a new visual nationalism. Stamps as products of the state and provide small pieces of information about a state’s heritage, culture, economies and place in the world. These depictions change over time, reflecting political and cultural changes and developments. The volume explores the transition times in more than a dozen countries from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. Specifically addressed are the stamp topics, issues and themes in the years before and after such major changes occurred, for example, from a European colony to political independence or from a dictatorship to democracy. The authors compare the personalities, histories, and cultural representations "before" the transition period and how the state used the "after" event to define or redefine its place on the world political map. The final three chapters consider international themes on many stamp issues, one being stamps with Disney cartoon characters, another on "themeless" Forever stamps, and the third on states celebrating women and their accomplishments. This volume has wide interdisciplinary relevance and should prove of particular interest to those studying geopolitics, political transition, visual nationalism, soft power and visual representations of decolonializing.

This book addresses LGBTQ issues in relation to among others law and policy, mobility and migration, children and family, social well-being and identity, visible and invisible landscapes, teaching and instruction, parades, arts and cartography and mapping. A variety of research methods are used to explore identities, communities, networks and landscapes, all which can be used in subsequent research and classroom instruction and disciplinary and interdisciplinary levels. This extensive book stimulates future pioneering research ventures in rural and urban settings about existing and proposed LGBTQ policies, individual and group mapping, visible and invisible spaces, and the construction of public and private spaces. Through the methodologies and rich bibliographies, this book provides a rich source for future comparative research of scholars working in social work, NGOs and public policy, and community networking and development.

Almost all successful nation-state projects have been associated with a particular political institution prior to independence - the segment-state. This text clarifies this link through narrative evidence from Central Eurasia, a rigorous theory, and extensive statistical tests.

Revealing how the quest for independence and challenges of democratization created a contest between nationalists and Europeanists, two powerful forces in domestic politics, after the collapse of communism, Fisher sheds light on the nationalism and post-communist transitions.

The Arctic is 5.5 million square miles and has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, yet it is still a frontier of development. But who owns the Arctic? This book charts the history of performances of sovereignty over the Arctic in the policy and visual representations of the US, Canada and Russia. Focusing on narratives of the effective occupation of territory found in postage stamps, it offers a novel analysis of Arctic sovereignty. Issues such as climate change, plastics pollution and resource development continue to impact the future of this space centred around the North Pole. Who is responsible for the region? This book examines how countries have absorbed Arctic territory into their national consciousness, examining the choice of, and use of, symbols and images in postage stamps. It looks at the story of how these countries have represented their Arctic frontiers and territorial peripheries. The book argues that the performance of policy in these regions has caused relative sovereignty to become a reality. It provides an intriguing account of how these countries have, in their distinctive ways, established, legitimised and reinforced their political authority in these regions. This book will appeal to Geographers and is recommended supplementary reading for students in political history and regional studies of the North.