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From their inception, video games quickly became a major new arena of popular entertainment. Beginning with very primitive games, they quickly evolved into interactive animated works, many of which now approach film in terms of their visual excitement. But there are important differences, as Arthur Asa Berger makes clear in this important new work. Films are purely to be viewed, but video involves the player, moving from empathy to immersion, from being spectators to being actively involved in texts. Berger, a renowned scholar of popular culture, explores the cultural significance of the expanding popularity and sophistication of video games and considers the biological and psychoanalytic aspects of this phenomenon. Berger begins by tracing the evolution of video games from simple games like Pong to new, powerfully involving and complex ones like Myst and Half-Life. He notes how this evolution has built the video industry, which includes the hardware (game-playing consoles) and the software (the games themselves), to revenues comparable to the American film industry. Building on this comparison, Berger focuses on action-adventure games which, like film and fiction, tell stories but which also involve culturally important departures in the conventions of narrative. After defining a set of bipolar oppositions between print and electronic narratives, Berger considers the question of whether video games are truly interactive or only superficially so, and whether they have the potential to replace print narratives in the culture at large. A unique dimension of the book is its bio-psycho-social analysis of the video game phenomenon. Berger considers the impact of these games on their players, from physical changes (everything from neurological problems to obesity) to psychological consequences, with reference to violence and sexual attitudes. He takes these questions further by examining three enormously popular games-Myst/Riven, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life-for their attitudes toward power, gender, violence, and guilt. In his conclusion, Berger concentrates on the role of violence in video games and whether they generate a sense of alienation in certain addicted players who become estranged from family and friends. Accessibly written and broad-ranging in approach, Video Games offers a way to interpret a major popular phenomenon.
Cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) is a sacred tree and noble resource from South America. The Mayans and other early civilizations in Central America used cacao beans as tokens, which were subsequently transported to Europe to nurture monarchies and elites. Based on the discovery of cacao’s commercial potential and attributes, new cocoa plantations were established in other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Thus, cocoa has become an important cash crop in Africa, Central and South America, and Asia, where it is a major foreign exchange earner, industrial raw material, support for livelihood, and ecosystem services provision. Based on its global importance, there has been an increased need for the expansion of cultivation to meet the rising demand for cacao beans. Global environmental change, including climate change, variability, and weather extremes, has established new environmental boundaries with implications for area suitability for cocoa production and sustainability. Efforts to unlock the potentials of the established environmental boundaries may be built on the development and adoption of agrotechnological practices and integration of climate resilience for harnessing opportunities and potentials of the new environment, and thus, extension of the frontiers of cacao cultivation to meet the increasing global demand for cocoa beans. This book, “Shifting Frontiers of Theobroma Cacao - Opportunities and Challenges for Production” presents a comprehensive perspective of the interactions of changing environmental conditions, cocoa production, and sustainability. The book illuminates the challenges climate change presents for cocoa production and sustainability. It provides insights into the need for cocoa actors within the cocoa sector to strengthen climate mitigation and resilience building and to come to grips with the realities, magnitude, and inevitable persistence of climate challenges to cocoa production and sustainability.
This book explores how the diverse and fiercely independent peoples of Texas and New Mexico came to think of themselves as members of one particular national community or another in the years leading up to the Mexican-American War. Hispanics, Native Americans, and Anglo Americans made agonizing and crucial identity decisions against the backdrop of two structural transformations taking place in the region during the first half of the 19th century and often pulling in opposite directions.
Drawing on recent studies in the history of technology, this groundbreaking work offers a new view of the Industrial Revolution in America. The author, an authority on the history of business and the economy, sees industrialization as a culturally inspired change.
While in the days of the Cold War models of citizenship were relatively clear-cut around the contrasting projects of reform and revolution, in the last three decades Latin America has become a laboratory for comparative research. The region has witnessed both a renewal of electoral democracy and the diversification of experiments in citizen representation and participation. The implementation of neo-liberal policies has led to countervailing transformations in democratic citizenship and to the rise of populist leaderships, while the crisis of representation has been accompanied by new forms of participation, generating profound transformations. The authors analyze these recent trends, reflected in new forms of populism, inclusion and exclusion, participation and alternative models of democracy, social insecurity and violence, diasporas and transnationalism, the politics of justice and the politics of identity and multiculturalism.
How can healthcare systems be transformed by reimagining their multiple silos to favor processes and practices that are more responsive to local, horizontal initiatives? Altering Frontiers analyzes numerous experiences, using a multidisciplinary approach, paying attention to certain actors, collectives and organizational arrangements. Through this work, levers are identified that promote lasting transformation: recognizing the legitimacy of the practices of many who are often "invisible"; trusting those who know their intervention territory; investing in methodological support; taking advantage of tools and procedures such as instruments for strategic and managerial discussion; and developing the capacity to absorb innovative ideas and experiences that circulate within the environment.
Sustainable Frontiers throws down the gauntlet to business to step up and be the catalyst for a sustainable future. It presents eight keys to unlocking transformational change – through leadership, enterprise, innovation, transparency, engagement, responsibility, integration and future-fitness. Far from being another tame review of corporate social responsibility and sustainable business initiatives, the book dispels the myths of sustainability and challenges us to let go of old systems that are failing to deliver economic, social and environmental transformation. Sustainable Frontiers gets to the heart of why the sustainability and CSR movements have failed in the past and offers a new view of how sustainable business practices can shape-shift to make a genuine difference inside and outside organisations. The book gathers together experiences from across the globe and shows to the reader what can be achieved with the right vision and leadership. Expect to be challenged, engaged and inspired to join the revolution on the sustainable frontier.Making a successful transition to a more sustainable future depends on letting go. Sustainable Frontiers shows how we must find ways to let go of an industrial system that has served us well, but is no longer fit for purpose. How we will need to let go of old styles of leadership and out-dated models of business, high-impact lifestyles and selfish values. How we must learn to let go of cherished ideologies that are causing destruction and beliefs about ways to tackle problems that are failing to resolve crises.If we are to reach sustainable frontiers, it must begin with changing our collective minds - and only then will we change our collective behaviour. How we accomplish such a global mind-shift is the subject of Sustainable Frontiers. And it starts by admitting that those of us at the vanguard of the sustainability revolution also have to change. We will also have to let go of cherished beliefs and strategies that are not working - starting with the way we communicate our vital, life-saving mission.
This edited volume explores the intersection of academic decision making with contemporary, cutting-edge challenges for which no simple solution exists. It moves the issue of decision making outside of the contested arena of stakeholder responsibilities, and presents a series of distinct and uniqe chapters that illustrate how colleges and universities are creating and sustaining dynamic and effective decision-making processes.
There is a new breed of computer simulations, known as 'artificial worlds' or 'would-be worlds', that allows scientists to create artificial versions of real-life phenomena inside their computers. Casti explores how these are being used.