Alexander Smith – författare

In this wide-ranging survey of contemporary race relations in the United States, Smith and O'Connell provide a thorough re-examination of our situation. They begin by assessing the part played by status struggles and anxieties in intergroup relations. For the black middle classes, they assert, the benefits of social-economic advancement and rising expectations combine with status frustration and anxiety to create a sense of estrangement from whites and what are typically referred to as white institutions. They then look at the role social scientists have played in both analyzing and contributing to race problems. In their examination of racial stereotypes, Smith and O'Connell show how whites typically construct stereotypes in such a way that they can respond to blacks as concrete individuals, rather than as members of an abstract, all-embracing racial category. In their examination of the Quota Revolution they demonstrate that affirmative action predictably fails to raise average black income; nor does it promote racial respect and cooperation. Finally, they assert that if status anxiety plays an increasingly important role in intergroup struggles as group power relations are increasingly characterized by social and political parity, then there are rather strict limits to what social reform can accomplish.Racism, Smith and O'Connell contend, has less to do with current social conditions in black America than is usually supposed. More indirect forces such as technological innovation, global interdependence, immigration, misguided welfare policies, and certain kinds of cultural values post far more serious threats to the incomes and employment opportunities of less affluent black Americans than do the remaining traces of white racism. This thought-provoking book is must-reading for scholars and researchers in the fields of public policy and contemporary race relations.

They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths.

Key Features:

The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry.

The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before.

Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century.

The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.

They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. 1 is the first in a three-volume set that provides an in-depth analysis of the creation and evolution of the video game industry. Beginning with the advent of computers in the mid-20th century, Alexander Smith’s text comprehensively highlights and examines individuals, companies, and market forces that have shaped the development of the video game industry around the world. Volume one, places an emphasis on the emerging ideas, concepts, and games developed from the commencement of the budding video game art form in the 1950s and 1960s through the first commercial activity in the 1970s and early 1980s. They Create Worlds aims to build a new foundation upon which future scholars and the video game industry itself can chart new paths.

Key Features:

The most in-depth examination of the video game industry ever written, They Create Worlds charts the technological breakthroughs, design decisions, and market forces in the United States, Europe, and East Asia that birthed a $100 billion industry.

The books derive their information from rare primary sources such as little-studied trade publications, personal papers collections, and oral history interviews with designers and executives, many of whom have never told their stories before.

Spread over three volumes, They Create Worlds focuses on the creative designers, shrewd marketers, and innovative companies that have shaped video games from their earliest days as a novelty attraction to their current status as the most important entertainment medium of the 21st Century.

The books examine the formation of the video game industry in a clear narrative style that will make them useful as teaching aids in classes on the history of game design and economics, but they are not being written specifically as instructional books and can be enjoyed by anyone with a passion for video game history.

This highly readable book is a unique, ethnographic study of devolution and Scottish politics as well as Party political activism more generally. It explores how Conservative Party activists who had opposed devolution and the movement for a Scottish Parliament during the 1990s attempted to mobilise politically following their annihilation at the 1997 General Election. It draws on fieldwork conducted in Dumfries and Galloway - a former stronghold for the Scottish Tories - to describe how senior Conservatives worked from the assumption that they had endured their own ‘crisis’ in representation. The material consequences of this crisis included losses of financial and other resources, legitimacy and local knowledge for the Scottish Conservatives. This book ethnographically describes the processes, practices and relationships that Tory Party activists sought to enact during the 2003 Scottish and local Government elections. Its central argument is that, having asserted that the difficulties they faced constituted problems of knowledge, Conservative activists cast to the geographical and institutional margins of Scotland became ‘banal’ activists. Believing themselves to be lacking in the data and information necessary for successful mobilisation during Parliamentary elections, local Tory Party strategists attempted to address their knowledge ‘crisis’ by burying themselves in paperwork and petty bureaucracy. Such practices have often escaped scholarly attention because they appear everyday and mundane and are therefore less noticeable.

This highly readable book, is a unique, ethnographic study of devolution and Scottish politics as well as party political activism more generally. Available in paperback for the first time, it explores how Conservative Party activists who had opposed devolution and the movement for a Scottish Parliament during the 1990s attempted to mobilise politically following their annihilation at the 1997 General Election. It draws on fieldwork conducted in Dumfries and Galloway – a former stronghold for the Scottish Tories – to describe how senior Conservatives worked from the assumption that they had endured their own ‘crisis’ in representation. The material consequences of this crisis included losses of financial and other resources, legitimacy and local knowledge for the Scottish Conservatives. This book ethnographically describes the processes, practices and relationships that Tory Party activists sought to enact during the 2003 Scottish and local government elections. Its central argument is that, having asserted that the difficulties they faced constituted problems of knowledge, Conservative activists cast to the geographical and institutional margins of Scotland became ‘banal’ activists. Believing themselves to be lacking in the data and information necessary for successful mobilisation during Parliamentary elections, local Tory Party strategists attempted to address their knowledge ‘crisis’ by burying themselves in paperwork and petty bureaucracy.

This is a dictionary of Nafsan, the language spoken in Vanuatu in the south of Efate Island in the villages of Erakor, Pango, and Eratap. Nafsan is one of 130 distinct languages spoken in Vanuatu. Over several decades, linguist Nicholas Thieberger worked in close collaboration with the Erakor community to record this unique language and to refine its written presentation. The resulting publication offers insight into the diversity of meanings available to speakers of Nafsan, providing some 3,400 senses for Nafsan words and an English-Nafsan finderlist. In addition, the book gives an overview of the Nafsan sound system, provides a list of existing literature on the language dating back to early missionary translations, and includes maps of Efate locating nearly 200 place names. Readers will also find South Efate cultural knowledge embedded in the explanations of the Nafsan words and their usages. A welcome companion to Thieberger's A Grammar of South Efate (2006), this book complements and significantly augments other multimedia resources made available online by the author.

Oxford Archaeology (OA) undertook a series of archaeological investigations on land around Kings Meadow Lane, Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, from 1993 to 2003. This work revealed occupation from the Mesolithic through to the medieval period, including part of a substantial Roman roadside settlement and shrine. This volume deals with the Roman remains, in addition to excavated early prehistoric and Iron Age activity in the local area. The important early to mid Saxon settlement and the medieval remains have been published elsewhere (Hardy et al. 2007). The earliest occupation is represented by an extensive redeposited flint assemblage attesting to significant (probably early) Mesolithic activity at the site. Sparse Neolithic occupation was indicated by two pits and a scatter of tools. A late Neolithic/early Bronze Age ring ditch surrounding a probable cremation burial was found to the east of the Roman settlement, while a second cremation burial, within an inverted early Bronze Age Collared Urn, was found in the far western part of the site. A middle to late Iron Age settlement was located c 370 m north-east of the Roman settlement, and consisted of a series of enclosures with associated ring gullies and other settlement features. The excavated part of the Roman settlement was established in the earlier 2nd century, with evidence for circular buildings, wells and a small cemetery. The settlement was bounded to the west by a ditch delimiting the eastern side of a north-south road. The layout of the settlement changed significantly during the late 2nd to 3rd century, with a series of mostly rectangular buildings aligned upon the eastern side of the north-south road. A gravel ‘pavement’ was constructed along the whole length of the roadside frontage of the settlement, while on the western side of the road, a monumental shrine complex was constructed. During the late 3rd to early 4th century the settlement expanded to the north, although the shrine to the west of the road fell into disuse at this time. The religious focus may have shifted to a small ‘temple’ at the northern periphery of the settlement. The settlement (or at least the excavated part of it) was abandoned during the second half of the 4th century, with the buildings being subjected to stone robbing, a process that continued into the post-Roman period. At the time of the Saxon reoccupation of the site (mid 5th century onwards), many of the late Roman boundary ditches still existed as remnant earthwork hollows.

The gravel terraces of the river Thames have revealed a wealth of archaeological information about the evolution of the landscape of the region, the development of the settlement pattern, and past human occupation. Much of this has come to light in the course of gravel quarrying, which has been so extensive that the Thames Valley now provides one of the richest resources of archaeological data in the country. This volume provides an up to date overview of the archaeological evidence from the valley for the late Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods, broadly speaking the first millennium AD. The area studied in detail comprises the Upper Thames Valley, from the source of the river to the Goring Gap, and the Middle Thames Valley, from the Goring Gap to the start of the tidal zone at Teddington Lock. A summary of evidence for the character of the river and the vegetation and environment of its floodplain is followed by a detailed account of the evolving settlement pattern as currently understood from archaeological evidence. The authors then consider what archaeology can reveal about the late Iron Age, Roman and Anglo-Saxon populations of the valley, and their changing lifestyles, culture, identities and beliefs. This is followed by a review of the evidence for production, trade, transport and communication, and the archaeology of power and politics. The volume concludes with a discussion of the state of knowledge today and its limitations, and emerging themes and problem areas for future research.

This print and digital coursebook is organised around the concepts and topics of the new Business Management syllabus. The case-studies and topics are set in accessible international contexts. The coursebook follows the IB Diploma ATL principles, developing higher-order thinking skills and conceptual understanding. The coursebook is focussed on a successful learner journey with clear learning objectives, integrated TOK links, reflection opportunities, self-evaluation checklists, projects, and exam-style questions and support. There are also scaffolded activities to help students develop into confident, independent learners with support, stretch and challenge activities. The resource is written in a clear, accessible style.