Pollyannas take heart, pessimists take note: Recent studies on achievement and well-being show that optimistic behavior contributes to better physical health, greater resilience in the face of life’s twists and turns, and more satisfying relationships. As psychologist Suzanne Segerstrom reveals, optimists lay groundwork for the success they envision. While the rest of us worry whether our goals are attainable, those who practice optimism try to achieve theirs. Breaking Murphy’s Law shows you simple ways to develop the skills that natural-born optimists use to get what they want from life. Dr. Segerstrom helps you break free from the inertia of cynicism and self-doubt and encourages you to engage the world around you. “Doing optimism”--by getting involved, working hard, and enjoying your achievements--establishes a positive feedback loop that’s both personally transformative and self-perpetuating. This practical book imparts the lesson with a mix of humor and intelligence that will convince even the most hardened cynics that Murphy got it wrong.

In The Written World: Space, Literature, and the Chorological Imagination in Early Modern France, Jeffrey N. Peters argues that geographic space may be understood as a foundational, originating principle of literary creation. By way of an innovative reading of chora, a concept developed by Plato in the Timaeus and often construed by philosophical tradition as “space,” Peters shows that canonical literary works of the French seventeenth century are guided by what he calls a “chorological” approach to artistic invention. The chorological imagination describes the poetic as a cosmological event that gives location to—or, more accurately, in Plato’s terms, receives—the world as an object of thought.

 

In analyses of well-known authors such as Corneille, Molière, Racine, and Madame de Lafayette, Peters demonstrates that the apparent absence of physical space in seventeenth-century literary depiction indicates a subtle engagement with, rather than a rejection of, evolving principles of cosmological understanding. Space is not absent in these works so much as transformed in keeping with contemporaneous developments in early modern natural philosophy. The Written World will appeal to philosophers of literature and literary theorists as well as scholars of early modern Europe and historians of science and geography

Contested Southernness deals with the interaction between language, identity, and borders, using Louisville, Kentucky, located at the northern border of the Southern dialect region, as a case in point these interactions that appear to be neither simple nor straightforward. Through an examination of a variety of production and perception data, Louisvillians are shown to vary in their attitudes toward and production and perception of certain linguistic features in a way that indicates that they experience the border as the coming together of at least two distinct regions, one Southern and one non-Southern, seemingly choosing to align or disalign with different ones randomly. Non-Louisvillians, on the other hand, view the urban center as the other in the largely rural state. Using the example of Louisville, identities at the border are shown to be fluid, complex, and dynamic, where speakers constantly negotiate, contest, and shift between identities, in the active and agentive expression of their amplified awareness of belonging brought about by their position on the border.

This edited collection presents papers relating to the state of the art in Perceptual Dialectology research. The authors take an international view of the field of Perceptual Dialectology, broadly defined, to assess the similarities and contrasts in non-linguists’ perceptions of the dialect landscape. The volume is global in focus, and chapters discuss data gathered in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, and South Korea. The common methods used by many of the contributors means that readers will be able to draw comparisons from the breadth of the volume. The primary focus of this volume is geared toward an examination of dialect perceptions in and of cities, with an additional goal of presenting empirical, theoretical, and methodological advancements in Perceptual Dialectology. Authors’ contributions to the collection examine how the urban setting influences perceptions of linguistic variation and, in the course of examining the connections between place and perceptions, explore several interrelated themes of linguistic variation, including the differences in the perception of rural and urban areas, processes of perception and language change, and the relationship between perception and ‘reality’.

Today the 80-mile-long Moscow Canal is the source of leisure for Muscovites, a conduit for tourists and provides the city with more than 60 percent of its potable water.  Yet the past looms heavy over these quotidian activities:  the canal was built by Gulag inmates at the height of Stalinism and thousands died in the process.  In this wide-ranging book, Cynthia Ruder argues that the construction of the canal physically manifests Stalinist ideology and that the vertical, horizontal, underwater, ideological, artistic and metaphorical spaces created by it resonate with the desire of the state to dominate all space within and outside the Soviet Union.  Ruder draws on theoretical constructs from cultural geography and spatial studies to interpret and contextualize a variety of structural and cultural products dedicated to, and in praise of, this signature Stalinist construction project.  Drawing on an extensive range of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary documentary materials, this is essential reading for all scholars working on the all-pervasive nature of Stalinism and its complex afterlife in Russia today.

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology is an invaluable guide and major reference source for students and scholars alike, introducing its readers to key contemporary perspectives and approaches within the field. Written by an experienced international team of contributors, with an interdisciplinary range of essays, this collection provides a powerful overview of the transformations currently affecting anthropology. The volume both addresses the concerns of the discipline and comments on its construction through texts, classroom interactions, engagements with various publics, and changing relations with other academic subjects. Persuasively demonstrating that a number of key contemporary issues can be usefully analyzed through an anthropological lens, the contributors cover important topics such as globalization, law and politics, collaborative archaeology, economics, religion, citizenship and community, health, and the environment. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology is a fascinating examination of this lively and constantly evolving discipline.

In a democracy power is obtained via competition. Yet, as women gain access to parliaments in record numbers worldwide collaboration appears to be on the rise. This is puzzling: Why, if politicians can secure power via competition, would we ever observe collaboration? Using evidence from 200 interviews with political elites from 19 Argentine provinces, a novel dataset from 23 Argentine chambers over 18 years, and qualitative case studies from across the world, I reexamine traditional notions of competitive democracy by evaluating patterns of collaboration among legislators. In doing so, I tackle three important questions.

 

My first question is: Can democracy be collaborative? I argue that collaborative democracy is not antithetical to competitive democracy. While only the bare majority can secure the power to decide via competition, I explain that all legislators—particularly those who do not have power—can influence the policy-making process through collaboration. Using bill cosponsorship data, which represents the culmination of the collaborative process, I demonstrate that democracy can be collaborative, that out-of-power legislators collaborate more frequently than those in power, and that women collaborate more than men.



This raises a second question: Why are female legislators more inclined to collaborate than their male colleagues? I explain that women collaborate more than men because they face structural barriers that restrict their ability to exert influence on the policy-making process. By collaborating with other women they can overcome structural barriers and attain political power. I show empirically that despite having high levels of descriptive representation as a group and seniority as individuals, women’s marginalization exists across a vast array of legislative power including legislative leadership posts, committee leadership posts, and powerful committee appointments. This marginalization limits women’s political power and motivates collaboration among women.



Finally, this leads to my third question; if women are more collaborative, why do some female legislators collaborate successfully among themselves, while other women fail to do so? Specifically, I tackle the question: When do women collaborate? I argue that despite the benefits of collaboration, patterns of collaboration vary among female legislators because not all women have the same opportunities to work cooperatively. Different legislative contexts either facilitate or constrain women’s collaboration. I show empirically that six key contextual variables that vary both across and within legislative chambers shape policy collaboration. First, I examine women’s numeric representation and partisan pressures; both factors vary largely across legislative chambers. Then I focus on affiliation with the executive party, seniority, legislation targeting women’s issues, and membership in a women’s caucus or committee; each of these factors vary within legislative chambers. Taken together, the answers to these three important questions, contribute to our understanding of democracy by explaining why and when we can expect to observe collaboration in a democracy where power is obtained via competition.



This book uses a rich combination of both qualitative and quantitative data to support my central argument. The primary case analyzed is Argentina, where I compare women’s legislative behavior at the provincial level in order to capture variation in institutional contexts within a single case. As the first country to adopt legislative gender quotas, Argentina is one of the only contexts in the world where women have held a sizable share of seats in the legislature over a long timeline in a large number of chambers. Gender quotas were first adopted in Argentina at the national level in 1991. The following year, quota adoption began to spread rapidly across the provincial legislatures. The figure below charts the adoption of gender quotas across the Argentine provinces.



I draw on qualitative evidence from over 200 interviews with male and female legislators and elite political observers from 19 Argentine provinces. The fieldwork was conducted between 2007 and 2013 during six different trips to Argentina. My quantitative evidence comes from a novel dataset that I developed using archival data from 23 Argentine chambers over an 18-year period. The data includes all cosponsored legislation, committee appointments, and leadership posts for over 7,000 male and female legislators.



I augment my careful analysis of Argentina with a series of qualitative case studies that examine women’s legislative collaboration. This approach, which draws on examples from across the world, allows me to demonstrate the generalizability of the relationships observed in Argentina. Here I can account for more informal types of collaboration that occur in the policy-making process and extend my analysis to other legislative contexts. The depth provided by the Argentine analyses—coupled with the breadth offered by these additional case studies—makes this book the most comprehensive study of collaboration to date.