Books published by publisher Lexington Books

For about one hundred years, Pan-Africanism—as a social, cultural, economic, political, and philosophical idea—thrived. Towards the tail-end of the twentieth century, however, it waned. But in more recent times, there has been noticeable resurgence. And as we approach the second decade of the twenty-first century, there are indications of significant transformations vis-à-vis the role and place of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Africanists. Consequently, this book offers a new, further, and better understanding of Pan-Africanism—not just from the traditional, African, and African American points of view, but also from a global perspective. It does so by offering an analysis of its early years in terms of the personalities, ideas, and conferences that shaped it; it also examines many of the factors that brought about its decline—and its eventual rebirth.Contributing to this seminal work are scholars of different but complementary styles and intellect, who deviate from the more traditional or obvious approaches. For instance, one of the chapters explores Pan-Africanism from the geographic perspective, while another examines the role and place of women in the Pan-African movement. There are also voices that advance the conversation from the regional and continental viewpoint—hence chapters that investigate the status of Pan-Africanism in Latin America, in the Caribbean, and Islam and Pan-Africanism in the modern world. Ethnonationalism and xenophobia are also part of the treatise because, increasingly, these injurious phenomena are reemerging in Africa’s landscape and consciousness. In an increasingly interdependent and interrelated world, this book also suggests that Pan-Africanism will undergo a metamorphosis: problems and challenges will be seen and tackled from the globalization and global common perspective. Pan-Africanism in Modern Times goes beyond the historicity of Pan-Africanism and examines the challenges, concerns, and constraints it faces; and also examines it from an inclusive perspective to have a broader understanding of this phenomenon and its future trajectory.

Founded in the early thirteenth century, the Mali Empire stretched from the Atlantic coast of West Africa across the savannah lands to Timbuktu and Gao. Comprised of multiple ethnics groups—the Soninke, the Mandenka, Fula, Sosso, Tuareg, Sonrai, Almoravids—Mali was politically dominated by the Mandenka people who developed a comprehensive, eloquent, and ennobling historical tradition that has garnered international recognition and praise. Combining music, poetry, drama, storytelling, genealogy, history, and philosophy, the Malinke griot or jeli interprets Mali’s history both aesthetically and discursively with the utilitarian objective of maintaining peaceful and ethical social relations within the empire. Far more than a storyteller, the Malinke historian’s broad scope of knowledge enables them to perform multifaceted roles in the society. He/she is a political advisor, ambassador, judicial advisor, cultural and social anthropologist, historian, genealogist, mediator of domestic and national disputes, officiator of rites of passage ceremonies, musician, poet, and teacher. Kuma Malinke Historiography: Sundiata Keita to Almamy Samori Toure examines the philosophy of history and methodology of the Malinke historians through an in-depth analysis of historical oral literature and the griots’ own theories of the art of history. Kai discusses griot accounts of major historical figures, such as Sundiata Keita, Sumanguru Kante, Sogolon Conde, Mansa Musa, Manding Bokari (Abubakr Muhammad II), Biton Koulibaly, Almamy Samori Toure, and their impact on Mali’s history. Significant components of Malinke history that had been kept secret by a general consensus of master griots are exposed for the first time in the English language in this highly informative and insightful text.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a rich work that outlines how humans acquire and apply moral reasoning. It also provides a path to human happiness which emphasizes developing habits of virtue and propriety that direct and control individual ambition. Pride and Profit explores the ways in which Austen’s novels reflect Smith’s ideas. More than this, they provide colorful illustrations of Smith’s ideas on self-command, prudence, benevolence, justice, and impartiality as well as vanity, pride, and greed. Jane Austen channels Adam Smith in her stories and characters, and more importantly, embellishes, refines, and explains Smith. Our understanding of Smith is improved and expanded by reading Jane Austen because she bring his insights to life and adds insights of her own. Bohanon and Vachris show how Smithian perspectives on virtue are depicted in Austen’s novels and how Smith’s and Austen’s perspectives reflect and define the bourgeoisie culture of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution.

The South China Sea has long been regarded as one of the most complex and challenging ocean-related maritime disputes in East Asia. Recently it has become the locus of disputes that have the potential of escalating into serious international conflicts. Historical mistrust, enduring territorial disputes, and competing maritime claims have combined to weaken an at least partially successful regional security structure. Issues of concern include territorial sovereignty; disputed claims to islands, rocks, and reefs; jurisdiction over territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, and the seabed; regional and international rights to use the seas for military purposes; maritime security; rapid economic development; and environmental degradation. The fear is that increasing competition for energy and other resources will exacerbate conflicts and further fuel nationalism and sovereignty issues in the region. The SCS has an integrated ecosystem and is one of the richest seas in the world in terms of marine flora and fauna: coral reefs, mangroves, sea-grass beds, fish, and plants. National economic security can be easily affected by conflicts occurring in major international trade routes like the SCS, or how such an unclear situation might even give rise to environmental challenges in the future. The book creates an understanding as to why this region is important not only to the claimants but to global powers like the United States and India. The book examines current and potential conflicts in the South China Sea, and also evaluates how conflicts have been “managed” to date and suggests as to how they might be better managed in the future.This book concludes with recommendations for improving the situation in the region by ensuring a strong economic relationships, using high-resolution observation satellites, and undertaking joint development, and resource exploration etc.

This biography of Andrew Carnegie emphasizes the economic dimension of his career in industry. It examines his life as a dynamic innovator during the period when the steel industry rapidly expanded and the United States became a major industrial power. Carnegie rose from a poverty-stricken Scottish childhood to a position of international industrial leadership, philanthropy, and peace advocacy, by means of intelligence, entrepreneurship, ambition, tenacity, guile, and ruthless determination. It is shown that Carnegie excelled as an economic actor. His alertness to expected profit opportunities, and success in coping with the uncertainties of the marketplace, made him a major influence on the growth of many of the most important industries of late-nineteenth century United States and world economies. His contribution to the better coordination of the actions of both demanders and suppliers in those industries by managerial, technological, and institutional innovations is emphasized. It is also argued that those profit-seeking actions and innovations occurred in the context of political policies and social institutions that produced a tremendous mal-investment of resources. This mal-investment was a result of protective tariffs, the stimulus and waste of war, and government subsidization of the railroad industry. Carnegie’s role in this massive diversion of resources from other uses to those from which he personally benefitted is also emphasized. Lastly, Carnegie’s actions in giving away the great personal fortune that he accumulated as he built his business empire are examined and their economic implications assessed.

African American Novels in the Black Lives Matter Era: Transgressive Performativity of Black Vulnerability as Praxis in Everyday Life explores the undoing of whiteness by black people, who dissociate from scripts of black criminality through radical performative reiterations of black vulnerability. It studies five novels that challenge the embodied discursive practices of whiteness in interracial social encounters, showing how they use strategic performances of Blackness to enable subversive practices in everyday life, which is constructed and governed by white mechanisms of racialized control. The agency portrayed in these novels opens up alternative spaces of Blackness to impact the social world and effects transformative change as a forceful critique of everyday life. African American Novels in the Black Lives Matter Era shows how these novels reformulate the problem of black vulnerability as a constitutive source of the right to life in their refusal of subjection to vulnerability, enacted by white institutional and individual forms of violence. It positions a white-black-encounter-oriented reading of these “neo-resistance novels” of the Black Lives Matter era as a critique of everyday life in an effort to explore spaces of radical performativity of blackness to make happen social change and transformation.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a rich work that outlines how humans acquire and apply moral reasoning. It also provides a path to human happiness which emphasizes developing habits of virtue and propriety that direct and control individual ambition. Pride and Profit explores the ways in which Austen’s novels reflect Smith’s ideas. More than this, they provide colorful illustrations of Smith’s ideas on self-command, prudence, benevolence, justice, and impartiality as well as vanity, pride, and greed. Jane Austen channels Adam Smith in her stories and characters, and more importantly, embellishes, refines, and explains Smith. Our understanding of Smith is improved and expanded by reading Jane Austen because she bring his insights to life and adds insights of her own. Bohanon and Vachris show how Smithian perspectives on virtue are depicted in Austen’s novels and how Smith’s and Austen’s perspectives reflect and define the bourgeoisie culture of the Enlightenment and industrial revolution.

In this book, James Dunson explores end-of-life ethics including physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and continuous sedation until death. He argues that ethical debates currently ignore the experience of the dying patient in an effort to focus on policy creation, and proposes that the dying experience should instead be prioritized and used to inform policy development. The author makes the case that PAS should be recognized as a legally and morally permissible option for a very particular kind of patient: terminally ill with fewer than six months to live and capable of conscious consent. Since focusing on the patient's experience of this end-of-life dilemma transforms some of the basic concepts we use to engage in the PAS debate, the argument has implications for patient care and the training of medical professionals.

This book explains how race and class intersect in ways that uniquely disadvantage racial minorities. The narrative begins with the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities for blacks were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment if they were “equal” to those reserved for whites. One reaction was the establishment of the NAACP to lead the fight for Civil Rights. After more than two decades of lobbying and public education, a long-range, carefully orchestrated, litigation campaign was launched. Segregation would be challenged with lawsuits insisting that black schools be made physically and otherwise equal to white schools. The lawyers calculated that the resulting burden and expense would ultimately cause segregation to collapse under its own weight.A series of successful “equalization” suits spanning over two decades laid the foundation for the direct challenge in Brown v. Board of Education. That 1954 decision inspired a large-scale, grass roots Civil Rights Movement. A decade of marches, boycotts, and mass protests persuaded Congress to enact the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s.Today, conditions for ethnic minorities are far better than they were a generation ago. However, the story of the nation’s black and brown communities is a tale of two cities; one prosperous, educated and affluent adjacent to another suffering from grinding poverty and a lack of opportunities for advancement. For those able to take advantage of the opportunities created by the Civil Rights revolution, the gains have been dramatic. For those left behind in impoverished communities, the obstacles to advancement are more daunting today than they were a generation ago.

If there is one trend in children’s and YA literature that seems to be enjoying a steady rise in popularity, it is the expansion of the YA dystopian genre. While the genre has been lauded for its potential to expand horizons, promote critical thinking, and foster social awareness and activism, it has also come under scrutiny for its promotion of specific ideologies and its often sensationalist approach to real-world problems. In an examination of six YA dystopian texts spanning more than twenty years of development of the genre, this book explores the way in which posthumanist ideologies in particular are deployed or resisted in these texts as a means of making sense of the specific challenges which young people confront in the twenty-first century.

How does the media influence society? How do media representations of South Asians, as racial and ethnic minorities, perpetuate stereotypes about this group? How do advancements in visual media, from creative storytelling to streaming technology, inform changing dynamics of all non-white media representations in the 21st century? Analyzing audience perceptions of South Asian characters from The Simpsons, Slumdog Millionaire, Harold and Kumar, The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Big Bang Theory, Outsourced, and many others, Bhoomi K. Thakore argues for the importance of understanding these representations as they influence the positioning of South Asians into the 21st century U.S. racial hierarchy. On one hand, increased acceptance of this group into the entertainment fold has informed audience perceptions of these characters as “just like everyone else.” However, these images remain secondary on the U.S. Screen, and are limited in their ability to break out of traditional stereotypes. As a result, a normative and assimilated white American identity is privileged both on the Screen, and in our increasingly multicultural society.

Race and racism have played a divisive and defining role throughout much of America's history. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and Ku Klux Klan terrorism have inflicted deep psychic wounds, social disparities, and economic disadvantages that have diminished the promise of equal rights and opportunities for all. While much progress in race relations has been made in recent years_including the election of Barack Obama as President of the United State_it's clear that our journey to a post-racial era is far from complete. In virtually every measurable category, whether income levels, job opportunities, access to health care, life expectancy, high school diplomas, incarceration rates, do not fare well compared to their white counterparts. The dialogue entitled Race and Reconciliation in America was convened to provide a forum for a long overdue, open, honest, and constructive discussion among people of good will about the need for the American people to truly grasp the depth of past misdeeds, why the legacies of past oppression persist, and how we can achieve a more fair and just society embodied in the American Dream.