This open access book explores China's unique path to modernization, highlighting its journey from ancient civilization to modern society. It examines China's efforts from the mid-19th century's internal and external struggles to its contemporary economic achievements. The book covers historical, social, and economic aspects, emphasizing the balance between autonomous development and global int…
This open access book is a compilation of advances in sweetpotato genomics, which have been used to improve our understanding of the evolution of sweetpotato, increase our knowledge of crop growth and development, and provided critical information required for genomic-assisted breeding in sweetpotato. Sweetpotato is a critical food staple for millions of people in the developing world that has…
This open access book focuses on the geopolitical competition in the South China Sea, an area with highly concentrated choke points in the Indo-Pacific, presenting ideas and recommendations to manage this competition and foster cooperation to maintain a peaceful and stable environment and promote sustainable governance of the South China Sea and of the Indo-Pacific in a broader sense. The inc…
Québec’s engagement with the United States is the most significant and consequential point of interaction amongst all its international activities. This new, edited book volume seeks to explore the many ways in which Quebec engages with the United States, including political exchange, border issues, trade, business and investment, transportation, immigration, cultural links and identity, th…
This open access book outlines how the digital platforms that mediate so many aspects of commercial and personal life have begun to transform everyday family existence. It presents theory and research methods to enable students and scholars to investigate the changes that platformization has brought to the routines and interactions of family life including intergenerational communication, inter…
This open access book is designed to enhance ocean literacy through diverse research, educational and interdisciplinary approaches. It focuses on a number of critical themes, including: an exploration of positionality, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging one’s own perspective in ocean-related research and advocacy; the nuances of trans-cross and interdisciplinarity in ocean studies, a…
This open access book explains why southern European countries with significant Muslim communities have experienced few religiously inspired violent attacks – or have avoided the kind of securitised response to such attacks seen in many other Western states. The authors provide a unique contribution to the literature on violent extremism – which has traditionally focused on countries such a…
This open access book provides detailed information on informal credit markets in Africa and how various legal systems affect these markets. Laws that impose strict formalism exclude many people from the financial system. The lessons learned from the informal credit markets in Ethiopia and South Africa indicate that pluralism offers better opportunities for people to access affordable and susta…
This open access book addresses a question fundamental to the histories of empire and Africa: at the point of the colonial encounter, how was knowledge made? How did different communities, with little or no prior contact, construct meaning about one another? Amidst huge changes in the politics and economics of a continent, on the cusp of almost complete colonization at the hands of European pow…