The Boko Haram Insurgence In Nigeria


Book Description

This book focuses on the Boko Haram insurgence in Nigeria, and provides information on the origin and growth of the sect, antecedent and historical factors behind the insurgence, assessing a variety of socio-political drivers. The structure, organization and ideology of the sect are analysed, paying attention to internal splits within the group, as well as external relations with the Nigerian state, and global jihadism. The diverse and wide ranging issues covered in the book makes it valuable for academic researchers, students and policy practitioners both within Africa and beyond.




Insurgency and War in Nigeria


Book Description

Boko Haram is the major threat to the Nigerian state, and has emerged as a destabilizing factor across sub-Saharan Africa. This is now a major focus of global policy-making, as between 2013 and 2014 insurgency-related deaths in Nigeria exceeded those in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book is the first to focus on the military nature of Boko Haram, the reasons for its success in those specific regions of the Chad basin it operates in and a detailed history of the Nigerian army's counter-insurgency – with whom, uniquely, the author has spent research time. The book identifies and analyses the battles and skirmishes on the front line, as well as unearthing a wider explanation for Boko Haram's military success and the causes of the instability in the region.




Boko Haram


Book Description

"Thurston has written the definitive history of Boko Haram. By weaving a complex tapestry of politics and religion, he explains the peculiarity and potency of one of the world's most lethal jihadist insurgencies. A violent and secretive sect that was impenetrable even to experts is now laid bare."--William McCants, author of The ISIS Apocalypse.e.




An American Utopia


Book Description

Controversial manifesto by acclaimed cultural theorist debated by leading writers Fredric Jameson’s pathbreaking essay “An American Utopia” radically questions standard leftist notions of what constitutes an emancipated society. Advocated here are—among other things—universal conscription, the full acknowledgment of envy and resentment as a fundamental challenge to any communist society, and the acceptance that the division between work and leisure cannot be overcome. To create a new world, we must first change the way we envision the world. Jameson’s text is ideally placed to trigger a debate on the alternatives to global capitalism. In addition to Jameson’s essay, the volume includes responses from philosophers and political and cultural analysts, as well as an epilogue from Jameson himself. Many will be appalled at what they will encounter in these pages—there will be blood! But perhaps one has to spill such (ideological) blood to give the Left a chance. Contributing are Kim Stanley Robinson, Jodi Dean, Saroj Giri, Agon Hamza, Kojin Karatani, Frank Ruda, Alberto Toscano, Kathi Weeks, and Slavoj Žižek.




Health in 2015


Book Description

In 2015 the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) come to the end of their term, and a post-2015 agenda, comprising 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), takes their place. This WHO report looks back 15 years at the trends and positive forces during the MDG era and assesses the main challenges that will affect health in the coming 15 years. "Snapshots" on 34 different health topics outline trends, achievements made, reasons for success, challenges and strategic priorities for improving health in the different areas.--




Higher Order Thinking Skills in the Language Classroom: A Concise Guide


Book Description

In this book, we try to provide a practical, down-to-earth guide for those who are involved in language learning and teaching. We hope that this book will be a useful reading for those who would like to incorporate higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)-enhancing techniques in their teaching practice. We set out from the position that, although it is hardly doubtful that it is at the heart of education, critical thinking is in reality often not given its due attention in pedagogy, particularly in language education. This book offers readers some practical advice on how to implement HOTS in their own practice. It has been written to take the reader through each technique with the ultimate goal of promoting HOTS step-by-step. In the introductory chapter, we present an overview of the theory behind HOTS, its definition, its relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy, its two dimensions (critical thinking and reflective thinking), and the ideas of some influential thinkers in this area. The subsequent chapters present six HOTS-enhancing techniques that classroom teachers can draw from, namely graphic organizers, critical discourse analysis, argumentation, emotion regulation and emotional intelligence enhancing techniques, reflective journals, and mindfulness-based strategies. As the book draws on a wide-ranging review of literature with exercises for direct use with language learners, we hope that this provides both theoretical and practical support for the teaching process to help language learners become effective critical thinkers. The compilation of the ideas in this book took us a long time, over a decade. Something that takes such a long time requires much engagement and life experience; so did this book.




The Boko Haram Reader


Book Description

Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. The Boko Haram Reader offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram's leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimisation, radicalization, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa. Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram's insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimize its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa's religious marketplace.




The Little Red Chairs


Book Description

The legendary Edna O'Brien's tale of a mysterious stranger spellbinding an Irish village is 'the kind of masterpiece that reminds you why you read books in the first place' ( Observer). ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES' TOP 100 NOVELS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 'Magnificent' ( Sunday Times) 'Beautiful' ( Financial Times) ' Enthralling' ( Times) 'Extraordinary' ( Independent) ' Astonishing' ( New Yorker) When a man who calls himself a faith healer arrives in a small, west-coast Irish village, the community is soon under the spell of this charismatic stranger from the Balkans. One woman in particular, Fidelma McBride, becomes enthralled in a fatal attraction that leads to unimaginable consequences. 'One of the most interesting and ambitious [books] ever written by an Irish author.' ( Irish Times) 'One of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.' (Sunday Independent)




The Church, Migration, and Global (In)Difference


Book Description

The painful reality faced by refugees and migrants is one of the greatest moral challenges of our time, in turn, becoming a focus of significant scholarship. This volume examines the global phenomenon of migration in its theological, historical, and socio-political dimensions and of how churches and faith communities have responded to the challenges of such mass human movement. The contributions reflect global perspectives with contributions from African, Asian, European, North American, and South American scholars and contexts. The essays are interdisciplinary, at the intersection of religion, anthropology, history, political science, gender and post-colonial studies. The volume brings together a variety of perspectives, inter-related by ecclesiological and theological concerns.




The Political Psychology of the Veil


Book Description

Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a ‘natural’ body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West’s desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women’s bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West’s mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West’s sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is ‘other’ – thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.