As climate change makes the Arctic a region of key political interest, so questions of sovereignty are once more drawing international attention. The promise of new sources of mineral wealth and energy, and of new transportation routes, has seen countries expand their sovereignty claims. Increasingly, interested parties from both within and beyond the region, including states, indigenous groups, corporate organizations, and NGOs and are pursuing their visions for the Arctic. What form of p...

Managing the Infosphere examines the global world of communications as a mobile space that overlaps uneasily with the world of sovereign, territorial nation-states. Drawing on their expertise in geography, political science, international relations, and communication studies, the authors investigate specific policy problems encountered when international organizations, corporations, and individual users try to "manage" a space that simultaneously contradicts and supports e...

At the root of our understanding of territory is the concept of terra—land—a surface of fixed points with stable features that can be calculated, categorised, and controlled. But what of the many spaces on Earth that defy this simplistic characterisation: Oceans in which ‘places’ are continuously re-formed? Air that can never be fully contained? Watercourses that obtain their value by transcending boundaries?This book examines the politics of these spaces to shed light on the chall...

Invisible as the seas and oceans may be for so many of us, life as we know it is almost always connected to, and constituted by, activities and occurrences that take place in, on and under our oceans. The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space provides a first port of call for scholars engaging in the ‘oceanic turn’ in the social sciences, offering a comprehensive summary of existing trends in making sense of our water worlds, alongside new, agenda-setting insights into the relationshi...

For millennia, tales of lost civilizations have captivated humanity, and foremost among them is the legend of Atlantis. In this guide to Atlantis and other lost lands, readers will learn to sort through fact and fiction, learning about the historical origins of lost-city legends, the lessons they teach us, archaeological digs for the truth, and—perhaps closest to home—their place in popular culture. The main focus is on the tale of Atlantis, with sidebars that highlight similarly “lost” my...

Investigating the material imprint of water on thought itselfWater Logics examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge th...

The rapid expansion of the Internet has fueled the emergence of electronic government at all levels in Canada. E-government's first decade featured online service underpinned by a technically secure infrastructure. This service-security nexus entails internal governance reforms aimed at realizing more customer-centric delivery via integration and coordination across departments and agencies. Yet, as online networking has become more pervasive and public demands for participation rise, pres...

International peace parks—transnational conservation areas established and managed by two or more countries—have become a popular way of protecting biodiversity while promoting international cooperation and regional development. In Transforming the Frontier, Bram Büscher shows how cross-border conservation neatly reflects the neoliberal political economy in which it developed.Based on extensive research in southern Africa with the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservat...

This book examines the social impact of intellectual property laws. It addresses issues and trends relating to health, food security, education, new technologies, preservation of bio-cultural heritage and contemporary challenges in promoting the arts. It explores how intellectual property frameworks could be better calibrated to meet socio-economic needs in countries at different stages of development, with local contexts and culture in mind. A resource for policy-makers, stakeholders, non...

We have been living and working in the information society for decades, yet still we struggle to understand and keep up in the face of its constant flux and vast scope. In this unique interdisciplinary text, three scholars at the forefront of this dynamic field provide a clear conceptual framework and interpretation of the global information society. They explain the three pillars of the information society—technology, knowledge, and mobility—and the global information society as a whole, ...

The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or su...

Internet Studies has been one of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding interdisciplinary fields to emerge over the last decade. The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies has been designed to provide a valuable resource for academics and students in this area, bringing together leading scholarly perspectives on how the Internet has been studied and how the research agenda should be pursued in the future. The Handbook aims to focus on Internet Studies as an emerging field, e...