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  Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice

  Chad Raphael, Martha Matsuoka, and Ana Isabel Baptista

  Community-engaged research (CER) advances environmental justice by centering the local knowledge and concerns of frontline communities in the research agenda, creating equitable and mutually beneficial relationships between these communities and professional researchers, and co-producing actionable data that can influence policies and practices. This Special Issue welcomed empirical and conceptual articles on environmental justice that employ any CER approach, including participatory action research, community-based participatory research, citizen science and community science, and Indigenous-led and decolonial research. This research involved collaborations with community organizations and advocates by academic and other professional researchers, and/or government agencies. The editors were especially interested in CER that recognizes the intersectional roots of environmental injustices in colonialism, racism, economic exploitation and patriarchy, and that can inform policy and practical responses to urgent issues of environmental justice. For open-access, full-text versions of all articles in the issue, see https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/4RMVUHAVCB

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  Eight Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics

  Karen Lebacqz and Matthew J. Gaudet

  There may be no more urgent cry than that for justice--and no more frequent accusation than that of injustice. But what is meant when these terms are used? Since its initial publication nearly forty years ago, Karen Lebacqz's Six Theories of Justice has been the go-to guide for answering this question. But today, the matters upon which it touches are even more acute.

  Eight Theories of Justice offers a major update and expansion of the earlier text. Together with coauthor Matthew J. Gaudet, Lebacqz presents the major alternative views of justice, including John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism, the contract system of John Rawls, the entitlement views of Robert Nozick, and the communitarian ideas of Michael Sandel. These political and philosophical accounts of justice are supplemented with analysis of major theological approaches: Pope Francis and Catholic social teaching, Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian realism, the Black liberation theology of James Cone, and Katie Cannon's womanist ethics. Each chapter introduces the major elements of each theory, presents the best critiques of each theory, and offers an assessment of their value for living justly in the modern world.

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  Everyday Democracy: Liberals, Conservatives, and Their Routine Political Lives

  Jeffrey M. Berry, James M. Glaser, and Deborah J. Schildkraut

  How the everyday habits and attitudes of ordinary liberals and conservatives shape the health of American democracy.

  In Everyday Democracy, Jeffrey M. Berry, James M. Glaser, and Deborah J. Schildkraut study Americans’ views of several manifestations of “everyday democracy,” which they define as the attitudes, behaviors, and processes that people experience in daily life and their routine considerations of politics and community. Examples include engaging in dialogue with political opponents and giving politicians license to compromise. Ordinary political moments like these constitute much of politics, and they can lay the foundation that shapes if, when, and how crisis moments unfold.

  Paying particular attention to the role of ideology in shaping how Americans emulate daily democratic ideals, this book considers such questions as: How do liberals and conservatives support different aspects of democratic practice, and are there ideological asymmetries between the two groups? If and when asymmetries emerge, what factors might explain them? The authors consider what their findings mean for the health of American democracy broadly.

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  La Sfera / The Globe: Cosmology, Science, and Geography in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean

  Gregorio Dati, Carrie E. Benes, Laura Ingallinella, Laura K. Morreale, Caterina Agostini, Winston E. Black, Elena Brizio, and Monica Keane

  OF ALL THE MISCONCEPTIONS about the Middle Ages, one of the most persistent and erroneous is the claim that people before Christopher Columbus thought the world was flat - a myth popularized in the 1820s by the American novelist Washington Irving. In fact, Europeans had known the world was round since the days of the ancient Greeks, and famous fifteenth-century explorers like Columbus and Prince Henry the Navigator were building on a centuries-long tradition of intercontinental travel and cultural exchange. The study of cosmology and natural philosophy in the Middle Ages always assumed that the Earth was round, as we see in La Sfera ("The Globe") by Gregorio (Goro) Dati (1362-1436). This early-fifteenth-century treatise in poetic form introduced readers to the cosmos, the natural world, and the geography of the Mediterranean. La Sfera summarized Europeans' sense of the world and its geography in the period before Columbus, particularly in those last few decades when middle-class Italians like Dati dominated the global economy.

  SEVEN AUTHORS examine the multiple intellectual and literary genres that influenced Dati's La Sfera, including the mapping traditions on which Dati drew for his itinerary and illustrations, the medieval science behind its cosmology, geography, and explanations of the natural world, and the traditions of composition in the Italian vernacular that were especially popular in fifteenth-century Florence. To understand how La Sfera was received by Dati's contemporaries, they also review the many surviving manuscripts of the text - each one handwritten and unique in its witness to Dati's work - and the patterns that emerge among them. The authors explain the editorial choices that produced this edition and translation, based on the linguistic particularities of Dati's Italian and their own policies of editorial practice and translation.

  THIS EDITION of Dati's La Sfera was undertaken by a team of scholars who collaborated over several years to establish a base text of the poem in Italian and render it into English. In this volume they combine their academic disciplines and specialties, among them history, the history of science, literary history, textual criticism, and paleography.

  THIS VOLUME presents the text of Dati's La Sfera, a parallel English translation, and an array of images from the manuscript tradition to demonstrate how its diagrams and maps enhance the reader's understanding of the text. Each image appears alongside the text that it would normally accompany in the manuscripts. This illustrated edition is therefore the opposite of a facsimile. It offers readers a sense of the diversity of the corpus by reproducing images from different codices. By using this method, the authors hope to give readers a clear understanding of Dati's holistic approach to fifteenth-century poetry, science, art, commerce, and cartography.

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  Music, Muscle, and Masterful Arts: Black and Indigenous Performers of the Circus Age

  Sakina M. Hughes

  Before the heyday of the Chitlin Circuit and the Harlem Renaissance, African American performing artists and creative entrepreneurs—sometimes called Black Bohemians—seized their limited freedoms and gained both fame and fortune with their work in a white-dominated marketplace. These Black performers plied their trade in circuses, blues tents, and Wild West Shows with Native Americans. The era’s traveling entertainments often promoted the “disappearing Indian” myth and promoted racial hierarchies with Black and Native people at the bottom. But in a racial economy rooted in settler-colonialism and legacies of enslavement, Black and Indigenous performers found that otherness could be a job qualification. Whether as artists or manual laborers, these workers rejected marginalization by traveling the world, making a solid living off their talents, and building platforms for political and social critique. Eventually, America’s popular entertainment industry could not survive without Black and Native Americans’ creative labor. As audiences came to eagerly anticipate their genius, these performers paved the way for greater social, economic, and cultural autonomy.
  
  Sakina M. Hughes provides a conceptually rich work revealing memorable individuals—laborers, artists, and entrepreneurs—who, faced with danger and discrimination, created surprising opportunities to showcase their talents and gain fame, wealth, and mobility.

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  Reading Nature: The Evolution of American Nature Writing

  John S. Farnsworth

  Reading Nature highlights the ten books that most influenced the scope and direction of literary natural history in the United States. It explores how American nature writing came to focus on the deep observation of wild landscapes and how the genre evolved over 163 years, beginning with the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in 1854. The volume also examines Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain (1903), John Burroughs’s Ways of Nature (1905), Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949), Rachel Carson’s The Sea around Us (1951), Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire (1968), Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge (1991), Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), and J. Drew Lanham’s The Home Place (2016). This book features a series of close readings exploring how these authors transformed popular understanding of the natural world.

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  Senderos fronterizos

  Francisco Jimenez

  After Panchito and his family had been living in the United States for many years as immigrants, they were discovered by the border patrol and deported back to Mexico when he was 14. In this sequel to Cardboard Boxes, Francisco Jiménez recounts this and other challenges he experienced in his youth. He takes a chronological journey through various significant episodes of this period: school, dances, friends, work, his family, and finally, the hope and challenge of being able to attend university. In this sense, he reflects the blossoming of a young migrant in a hostile land, yet one full of dreams.

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  The AI-centered Enterprise: Reshaping Organizations with Context Aware AI

  Ram Bala, Natarajan Balasubramanian, and Amit Joshi

  The explosion of generative AI has sparked a wave of case studies showing how quickly and profoundly it is transforming businesses. Yet most of these use cases still apply the technology to enhancing existing systems. This book makes the case for why business leaders must revisit the fundamentals of generative AI and look beyond short-term, tactical gains. Tools like ChatGPT mark just the beginning of Context Aware AI—systems that grasp both the content and intent of unstructured human input. Drawing on real-world examples and academic research, we demonstrate how Context Aware AI can enhance organizational interactions, unlock new forms of collaboration, and usher in the era of the AI-Centered Enterprise. By augmenting baseline Large Language Models (LLMs) with techniques like prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), knowledge graphs, and notably agentic systems, organizations can build customized tools that adapt to individual users’ thinking patterns and the collaborative workflows they are a part of. We present a practical framework—the 3Cs: Calibrate, Clarify, Channelize, to help leaders navigate this radical shift across multiple levels of organizations.

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  The house that fire built: poems

  Kirk Glaser

  A house a family inherits that fills their nights and days with nightmare visions and haunting events. A house that burns to the ground and leaves them spinning in mysteries. The House That Fire Built tells the story of the poet and his wife seeking healing and insight as they struggle to protect themselves and their young daughter against menacing assaults from the human and supernatural worlds. Even when an arsonist is discovered, the criminal’s story only peels back greater mysteries about the forces circling the house. This house and arsonist possessed by what? And why? Is it hungry ghosts circling the death of a domineering father who died in the house? A secret loss buried by the former owners? Wounds going back to this land taken from the first peoples of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains? What in themselves led them to step into this world? As the couple is pulled deeper into the disturbing and sometimes violent mysteries of this house, their resilience and sense of reality pushed to the limits, they slowly come to see how the forces of destruction may also be a kind of salvation.

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  Write Long and Beautiful Letters: The Vallejos' Californio Correspondence, 1846–1888

  Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz

  The experiences of Mexicans who were living in California when it was annexed by the United States is a crucial element of the history of the American Southwest. These Californios, as they called themselves, made California diverse and multicultural from the moment it became part of the United States.
  
  The Vallejos of Sonoma were one of the most prominent of these Californio families. This volume explores the experiences of this family, using more than 180 letters that Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Francisca Benicia Carrillo de Vallejo exchanged with each other and their children between 1846 and 1888.
  
  This correspondence offers an intimate glimpse of the ways in which this family, and many Californio families from a variety of social and economic backgrounds, struggled to adapt to the political, social, and cultural changes that accompanied American annexation. They often found themselves unwelcome strangers in the land in which they had been born. They faced changing and at times conflicting demands on their public and private lives. In the face of a hostile legal system, they struggled to maintain ownership of their property, to raise their children in an environment they did not entirely understand, and to help each other maintain their dignity and social authority in a world they had not chosen.
  
  These letters demonstrate how the Vallejos and families like them, frequently ridiculed by the Anglos who entered California, nonetheless refused to be defined by these newcomers. Describing the creative manner of their resistance, these letters document a crucial aspect of the history of the Latino experience in California and in the greater American Southwest during the second half of the 19th century—with repercussions and relevance reaching into the present era.
  

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  Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE–300 CE

  Jeremiah Coogan, Candida R. Moss, and Joseph A. Howley

  This volume interrogates the intersections between writing and enslavement around the Roman Mediterranean. Drawing upon methods developed in studies of book history and Atlantic slavery, the essays demonstrate the myriad ways that the material and intellectual contributions of literary workers were vital to the composition, editing, copying, circulation, reading, and preservation of Roman texts. The volume exposes the way that power dynamics erase and denigrate enslaved contributions; the manner in which language barriers, travel, gender difference, and disability created dependence on enslaved workers; the prominent role of enslaved workers in practical work like bookkeeping, basic education, and divination; the unseen labor of enslaved collators, note-keepers, editors, and curators; and the influence and representation of enslaved workers and work in literature, letters, and rhetoric.

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  A Black Theology of the American Empire

  Karl W. Lampley

  This book understands, interprets, and critiques the theology of the American Empire that undergirds and bolsters U.S. foreign policy and global engagement in the contemporary world order. It is particularly in conversation with African American experience, American presidential history, black religious and political thought, as well as black theological perspectives. The book makes a constructive theological statement and declaration on the American Empire in opposition and resistance to racism and white supremacy in U.S. origins and historical development. Finally it proposes a way forward for twenty-first century black theology in response to the foundational theology of James Cone. This publication is important, not only for scholars interested in black religious thought, but also those seeking critical reflection on the omnipresence of racial inequality and social injustice in the American Empire.

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  African Women’s Liberating Philosophies, Theologies, and Ethics

  Beatrice Okyere-Manu and Léocadie Lushombo

  This volume explores the ethical and philosophical paradigms presented by most of the influential Matriarchs of the Circle of African Women Theologians. It critically evaluates the effectiveness of their ethical and philosophical theories, models, and frameworks in pursuing justice and liberation for women in Africa and globally. The authors address critical questions: How have African women theologians reimagined existing ethical paradigms? What original ethical and philosophical ideas have they generated? How have their ethical frameworks influenced the theologies and interpretations they have developed? What purposes do their ethical and philosophical paradigms serve? How do these renderings intersect with various social categories, including gender, race, class, sexuality, capitalism, and colonialism? What liberating frameworks do they propose?

  The volume further explores the dialogue between distinct African contexts and universal experiences and values. It explores how universal themes such as humanity, human dignity, rights, justice, motherhood, and more can coexist with communal African concepts and themes. It contemplates how embracing African approaches engages these themes more globally, bringing together particular African contexts of women and the universal ethical, philosophical, and theological theories, models, and frameworks to advance the cause of justice and liberation for African women and women worldwide into the future.

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  Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management: 18Th International Conference, AAIM 2024, Virtual Event, September 21-23, 2024, Proceedings. Part II

  Smita Ghosh and Zhao Zhang

  This two-volume set LNCS 15179-15180 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management, AAIM 2024, which took place virtually during September 21-23, 2024.
  The 45 full papers presented in these two volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 76 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections:
  Part I: Optimization and applications; submodularity, management and others,
  Part II: Graphs and networks; quantum and others.

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  America's Psychological Now: Enlivening the Social and Collective Unconscious in a Time of Urgency

  Mardy Ireland and Teri Quatman

  This book explores the causes behind Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election and asks how a psychoanalytic understanding of the social unconscious can help us plot a new direction for the future in US politics and beyond.

  It first describes the social/psychological threads that are the now of American culture. Seeds of hope are discovered through an in-depth examination of the American idea of excess as represented by Trump, its archetypal figure. Essential psychoanalytic ideas such as, the fundamental human condition of living with both individual and social unconscious, the psychic feminine principal, the notion of psychic valence and more are illustrated as psychic integrations necessary for America to move towards a redemptive positive social change. This book combines feminist exploration with playful illustrative imagery and mythic story—aiming to awaken minds across generations.

  America’s Psychological Now is key reading for psychoanalysis, psychologists, political theorists, and anyone wishing to understand better how the social and political systems could be changed for the future.

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  Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture 2025 Fundamentals

  Elise Moss

  Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture 2025 Fundamentals is an introductory guide designed specifically for those who are new to AutoCAD Architecture 2025. It provides a detailed exploration of the software's key features such as the Styles Browser, Styles Manager, Layer Manager, Design Center, and key architectural elements such as Structural Members, Doors, Windows, Walls and Roofs.

  The book employs an instructional approach, progressing with each chapter to gradually build your knowledge and proficiency. The practical, step-by-step lessons walk you through the complete process of creating an architectural project, from the initial site and framing plans to the completion of a standard three-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-story residence.

  Two building projects are detailed within this guide - an Imperial unit-based two-story Tahoe log cabin, and a metric unit-based one-story medical clinic. The aim of these projects is to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the software, enabling you to create a standard model and customize the interface to suit your specific needs.

  In addition to core features and functionalities, the book provides a deep dive into the toolbars, dialog boxes, and commands of AutoCAD Architecture 2025.

  Designed with an educational perspective, the book incorporates quizzes and practice exams to reinforce learning, and also includes suggestions for additional assignments. This guide serves as an essential resource for anyone seeking to master the fundamentals of AutoCAD Architecture 2025.

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  A Wealth of Well-Being: A Holistic Approach To Behavioral Finance

  Meir Statman

  Unravel the complex relationship between finances and life well-being

  In A Wealth of Well-Being: A Holistic Approach to Behavioral Finance, Professor Meir Statman, established thought leader in behavioral finance, explores how life well-being, the overarching aim of individuals in the third generation of behavioral finance, is underpinned by financial well-being, and how life well-being extends beyond financial well-being to family, friendship, religion, health, work, and education.

  Combining recent scientific findings by scholars in finance, economics, law, medicine, psychology, and sociology with real-life stories at the intersection of finances and life, this book allows readers to clearly see how finances are intertwined with life well-being. In this book, readers will learn:

  • How dating, marriage, widowhood, and divorce are all affected by finances and affect them
  • Why the relationship between parents, grandparents, children, and friends changes as finances fluctuate
  • How finances affect choices of education, such as colleges, and how these choices vary across different cultures around the world

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  Becoming an Expert Caregiver: How Structural Flaws Shape Autism Carework and Community

  Cara A. Chiaraluce

  “The hardest thing is dealing with the rest of the world. And we kind of accommodate our lives around that. But the rest of the world doesn’t.” These poignant words were spoken by Charlotte, a mother and primary caregiver of a five-year-old autistic boy, and her words reference the structural arrangements of our world that shape autism carework today. This book features the voices of fifty primary caregivers of autistic and neurodivergent children who illuminate the process through which laywomen become expert caregivers to provide the best care for their children. Expert caregiving captures an intensification of traditional family carework – meeting dependents’ financial, emotional, and physical needs – that transcends the walls of one’s private home and family and challenges the strict boundaries between many worlds: lay and professional, family and work, private and public, medical and social, and individual and society. The process of becoming an expert caregiver spotlights several interesting paradoxes in sociological literature, particularly regarding gender, family, and medicalization, and often forgotten structural flaws in “the rest of the world.”

  Throughout the chapters in this book, the expert caregiver is one person who faces unbelievably daunting tasks of filling or reforming persistent institutional gaps, primarily in education and health care, and subverting ableist cultural norms. Without institutional support, answers to their questions, or pragmatic avenues to access resources, lay caregivers become the experts. Their trials and tribulations, especially when navigating the boundaries of professional/lay and private/public worlds, illuminate a type of carework that is increasingly relevant to a growing number of young families caring for neurodivergent, disabled, medically fragile, and/or chronically ill children. These stories offer a vivid picture of the often invisible complex challenges and structural forces that drive individuals to become expert caregivers in the first place.

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  Can You Be a Catholic and a Feminist?

  Julie Hanlon Rubio

  An eminent theologian addresses an enduring--but newly urgent--question
  
  Is it possible to be both a faithful Catholic and an avowed feminist? Earlier generations of feminists first formulated answers to this question in the 1970s. Their views are still broadly held, but with increasing tentativeness and a growing sense of their inadequacy. Even now, Catholic women and men still say, "It's my Church and I'm not leaving," "Change will only happen if people like me stay and fight," and "The Church's work for social justice is more important than the issues that concern me as a feminist." Yet in a post-#MeToo, #ChurchToo moment, when the Church seems disconnected from struggles for racial justice and LGBTQ inclusion, those answers sound increasingly insufficient. Today, tensions between Catholicism and feminism are more visible and ties to Catholic communities are increasingly weak. Can Catholic feminism survive?
  
  Julie Hanlon Rubio argues that it can. But if it is going to do so, it is necessary to rethink how women and men who experience the pull of feminism and Catholicism can credibly claim both identities. In Can You Be a Catholic and a Feminist? Rubio argues that Catholic feminist identity is only tenable if we frankly acknowledge tensions between Catholicism and feminism, bring forward shared concerns, and embrace the future with ambiguity and creativity. Rubio explores the potential for synergy and dialogue between Catholics and feminists through various lenses, including sexual violence, gender theory, pregnancy and pre-natal loss, work-life balance, relationships and family life, spirituality, conscience, and what it means to be human. This book gives those who struggle to balance Catholicism and feminism a credible path to authentic belonging.

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  Christian Perspectives on Transforming Interreligious Encounter: Essays in Honor of Leo D. Lefebure

  Peter C. Phan and Anh Q. Tran

  Christian Perspectives on Transforming Interreligious Encounter underscores the urgency of interreligious dialogue for contemporary society, aiming to foster interfaith understanding, justice, and peace. The initial section focuses on novel approaches to engaging with the religious Other through non-Christian sacred texts. Contributors explore the Jewish-Christian relationship, offer Christian interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian scriptures, and discuss the Qurʾān's potential to refine Christian theology. The dangers of comparative theology are warned against, and alternative perspectives, such as Asian liberation theology, are proposed for situating religion critically, as well as share the insights on Christian engagement with Zen practice. The second part explores the transformation of key Christian doctrines through interreligious encounters. Contributors delve into topics such as the conditions for faith and divine revelation, formulating a Christology in dialogue with Asian traditions, and understanding the Spirit as a source of questioning. They investigate the communitarian dimension of religious faith, discuss the Catholic Church's stance on interreligious dialogue, examine the role of biblical hermeneutics in decolonizing theology, and reflect on the existential threat of ecological destruction. The third part pays tribute to Leo Lefebure, emphasizing his impact on Catholic theology and comparative theology, and concludes with Lefebure's epilogue, providing him with the last word.

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  Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations

  Artificial Intelligence Research Group of the Vatican Center for Digital Culture, Matthew J. Gaudet, Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, Jordan J. Wales, Nathan Colaner, Jeremiah Coogan, Mariele Courtois, Brian Cutter, David E. DeCosse, Justin Charles Gable, Brian Patrick Green, James Kintz, Cory Andrew Labrecque, Catherine Moon, Anselm Ramelow, John P. Slattery, Margarita Vega, Luis G. Vera, Andrea Vicini, and Warren von Eschenbach

  What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, this book investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI.

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  Exemplars, Imitation, and Character Formation: A Philosophical, Psychological, and Christian Inquiry.

  Eric T. Yang

  This volume examines the role and relevance of exemplars and the practice of imitation in character development and formation. While the role of exemplars and imitation in spiritual and moral formation has been an integral part of many religious and wisdom traditions, in recent times there has been limited theological and philosophical investigation into it and a dearth of interdisciplinary discussion. The book brings together relevant research and insights from leading experts within philosophy, psychology, and theology, with a slight emphasis on Christian approaches to exemplars and imitation, especially given the reflection on these themes throughout the history of the Christian intellectual and mystical tradition. Many of the contributions display an interdisciplinary approach into these issues; hence, this volume will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, theologians, and others who work in moral psychology and character formation.

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  Exploring Extended Realities Metaphysical, Psychological, and Ethical Challenges

  Andrew Kissel and Erick Jose Ramirez

  This volume highlights interdisciplinary research on the ethical, metaphysical, and experimental dimensions of extended reality technologies, including virtual and augmented realities. It explores themes connected to the nature of virtual objects, the value of virtual experiences and relationships, experimental ethics, moral psychology in the metaverse, and game/simulation design.

  Extended reality (XR) refers to a family of technologies aiming to augment (AR) or virtually replace (VR) human experience. The chapters in this volume represent cutting-edge research on XR experiences from a wide range of approaches including philosophy, psychology, Africana studies, and cognitive sciences. They are organized around three guiding questions. Part 1, “What is Extended Reality?”, contains a series of chapters examining metaphysical questions about virtual objects, actions, and worlds. Part 2, “Is There an Ethics for Extended Realities?”, includes chapters that address ethical questions that arise within XR experiences. Finally, Part 3, “What Can We Do with Extended Realities?”, features chapters from a diverse group of social scientists on the potential uses of XR as an investigative and educational tool, including its strengths and pitfalls.

  Exploring Extended Realities will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of technology, metaphysics, moral psychology, applied ethics, and game studies.

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  Fairness in Search Systems

  Yi Fang, Ashudeep Singh, and Zhiqiang Tao

  Search engines play a crucial role in organizing and delivering information to billions of users worldwide. However, these systems often reflect and amplify existing societal biases and stereotypes through their search results and rankings. This concern has prompted researchers to investigate methods for measuring and reducing algorithmic bias, with the goal of developing more equitable search systems. This monograph presents a comprehensive taxonomy of fairness in search systems and surveys the current research landscape. We systematically examine how bias manifests across key search components, including query interpretation and processing, document representation and indexing, result ranking algorithms, and system evaluation metrics. By critically analyzing the existing literature, we identify persistent challenges and promising research directions in the pursuit of fairer search systems. Our aim is to provide a foundation for future work in this rapidly evolving field while highlighting opportunities to create more inclusive and equitable information retrieval technologies.

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  Geo Spaces of Communication Research

  Laura Robinson, Katia Moles, Sonia Virginia Moreira, and Jeremy Schulz

  Sponsored by the Brazil-U.S. Colloquium on Communication Studies of the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in Communication and the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this volume of Studies in Media and Communications is entitled Geo Spaces of Communication Research.

  The volume brings together scholars from across the Americas to address the complex evolution of political and policy media spaces as they are studied from a range of perspectives. The volume probes how media and digital tech are transforming how individuals, groups, and societies communicate within and across social worlds, as well as how emergent methodologies are evolving to keep pace with these phenomena.

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  Ground Truths: Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice

  Chad Raphael and Martha Matsuoka

  Ground Truths shows how community-engaged research contributes to environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities by centering local knowledge, building truth from the ground up, producing data that can influence decisions, and transforming researchers’ relationships to communities for equity and mutual benefit.

  The book outlines the main steps in conducting community-engaged research, evaluates the major research methods used, and addresses institutional barriers to this kind of scholarship in academia. A critical synthesis of research in many fields, Ground Truths provides an original framework for aligning community-engaged research and environmental justice, and applies the framework in chapters on public health, urban planning, conservation, law and policy, community economic development, and food justice and sovereignty.

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  Health Behavior Change: Proven Strategies for a Longer and Healthier Life (First Edition)

  Thomas G. Plante

  Behavior is hard to change, especially when habits are well-ingrained into our daily lives and lifestyle. Yet, many people are desperate to change their behaviors, especially when it comes to health-related habits that can contribute to significant health problems.
  
  Health Behavior Change: Proven Strategies for a Longer and Healthier Life presents readers with a wide variety of evidence-based best practices in cognitive behavioral therapy that can help individuals change their health behaviors for good. The simple and straightforward workbook features a collection of questions and exercises that inspire thoughtful reflection and action. Dedicated sections of the workbook tackle individual behaviors—including diet, exercise, alcohol, smoking, sleep, and more—allowing readers to focus on topics that are of interest to them. Principles and tools for health behavior change are outlined in each chapter, providing readers with the tools they need to initiate long-term behavioral transformation.
  
  Based on Thomas G. Plante’s experiences teaching health psychology to college students for over 30 years and treating clinical patients struggling with health behavior efforts for over 40 years, Health Behavior Change is an ideal resource for anyone interested in improving their health and well-being through evidence-based best practices. The workbook is also a useful tool for clinicians treating patients who wish to make behavioral-based health changes in their lives.

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  Lawyers as Leaders: Why it Matters and What it Takes

  Donald J. Polden and Barry Z. Posner

  This book provides a method of approach for lawyers to develop leadership skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Its comprehensive treatment of leadership in the legal world will inspire lawyers to rise to the heights of leadership, whether they are asked to leave or aspire to do so.