John Coates – författare

Now shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is a resonant exploration of economic behaviour and its consequences.Shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, this startling and unconventional book from neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates shows us the bankers in their natural environment, revealing how their biochemistry has a lasting and significant impact on our economy.We learn how risk stimulates the most primitive part of the banker’s brain and how making the deals our bank balances depend on provokes an overwhelming fight-or-flight response. Constant swinging between aggression and apprehension impairs their judgment, causing economic upheaval in the wider world. The transformation between each split-second decision is what Coates calls the hour between dog and wolf, and understanding the biology behind bubbles and crashes may be the key to stabilising the markets.

Social work has been late to engage with the environmental movement. Often working with an exclusively social understanding of environment, much of the social work profession has overlooked the importance of environmental issues. However, recently, the impact of and worldwide attention to climate change, a string of natural disasters, and increased understanding of issues around environmental justice has put the environment, sustainability, and well-being in the spotlight.Divided into three parts, this field-defining work explores what environmental social work is, and how it can be put into practice. The first section focuses on theory, discussing ecological and social justice, as well as sustainability, spirituality and human rights. The second section comprises case studies of evolving environmental social work practice. The case studies derive from a range of areas from urban gardens and community organizing to practice with those affected by climate change. The final section – relevant to students and lecturers – looks at learning about environmental issues in social work.Environmental Social Work provides an integrated theoretical and practical overview of why and how social work might respond to environmental factors affecting the societies and people they work with at international, national, local and individual levels.

Social work has been late to engage with the environmental movement. Often working with an exclusively social understanding of environment, much of the social work profession has overlooked the importance of environmental issues. However, recently, the impact of and worldwide attention to climate change, a string of natural disasters, and increased understanding of issues around environmental justice has put the environment, sustainability, and well-being in the spotlight.Divided into three parts, this field-defining work explores what environmental social work is, and how it can be put into practice. The first section focuses on theory, discussing ecological and social justice, as well as sustainability, spirituality and human rights. The second section comprises case studies of evolving environmental social work practice. The case studies derive from a range of areas from urban gardens and community organizing to practice with those affected by climate change. The final section – relevant to students and lecturers – looks at learning about environmental issues in social work.Environmental Social Work provides an integrated theoretical and practical overview of why and how social work might respond to environmental factors affecting the societies and people they work with at international, national, local and individual levels.

The Claims of Common Sense investigates the importance of ideas developed by Cambridge philosophers between the World Wars for the social sciences concerning common sense, vague concepts and ordinary language. John Coates examines the thought of Moore, Ramsey, Wittgenstein and Keynes, and traces their common drift away from early beliefs about the need for precise concepts and a canonical notation in analysis. He argues that Keynes borrowed from Wittgenstein and Ramsey their reappraisal of vague concepts, and developed the novel argument that when analysing something as complex as social reality, theory might be simplified by using concepts which lack sharp boundaries. Coates then contrasts this conclusion with the view shared by two contemporary philosophical paradigms - formal semantics and Continental post-structuralism - that the vagueness of ordinary language inevitably leads to interpretive indeterminacy. Developing a link between Cambridge philosophy and work on complexity, vague predicates and fuzzy logic, he argues that Wittgenstein's and Keynes's ideas on the economy of ordinary language present a mediating route for the social sciences between these philosophical paradigms.

The Claims of Common Sense investigates the importance of ideas developed by Cambridge philosophers between the World Wars for the social sciences concerning common sense, vague concepts and ordinary language. John Coates examines the thought of Moore, Ramsey, Wittgenstein and Keynes, and traces their common drift away from early beliefs about the need for precise concepts and a canonical notation in analysis. He argues that Keynes borrowed from Wittgenstein and Ramsey their reappraisal of vague concepts, and developed the novel argument that when analysing something as complex as social reality, theory might be simplified by using concepts which lack sharp boundaries. Coates then contrasts this conclusion with the view shared by two contemporary philosophical paradigms - formal semantics and Continental post-structuralism - that the vagueness of ordinary language inevitably leads to interpretive indeterminacy. Developing a link between Cambridge philosophy and work on complexity, vague predicates and fuzzy logic, he argues that Wittgenstein's and Keynes's ideas on the economy of ordinary language present a mediating route for the social sciences between these philosophical paradigms.

How can mainstream Western social work learn from and in turn help advance indigenous practice? This volume brings together prominent international scholars involved in both Western and indigenous social work across the globe - including James Midgley, Linda Briskman, Alean Al-Krenawi and John R. Graham - to discuss some of the most significant global trends and issues relating to indigenous and cross-cultural social work. The contributors identify ways in which indigenization is shaping professional social work practice and education, and examine how social work can better address diversity in international exchanges and cross-cultural issues within and between countries. Key theoretical, methodological and service issues and challenges in the indigenization of social work are reviewed, including the way in which adaptation can lead to more effective practices within indigenous communities and emerging economies, and how adaptation can provide greater insight into cross-cultural understanding and practice.

There are still many arithmetic mysteries surrounding the values of the Riemann zeta function at the odd positive integers greater than one. For example, the matter of their irrationality, let alone transcendence, remains largely unknown. However, by extending ideas of Garland, Borel proved that these values are related to the higher K-theory of the ring of integers. Shortly afterwards, Bloch and Kato proposed a Tamagawa number-type conjecture for these values, and showed that it would follow from a result in motivic cohomology which was unknown at the time. This vital result from motivic cohomology was subsequently proven by Huber, Kings, and Wildeshaus. Bringing together key results from K-theory, motivic cohomology, and Iwasawa theory, this book is the first to give a complete proof, accessible to graduate students, of the Bloch-Kato conjecture for odd positive integers. It includes a new account of the results from motivic cohomology by Huber and Kings.

Number theory currently has at least three different perspectives on non-abelian phenomena: the Langlands programme, non-commutative Iwasawa theory and anabelian geometry. In the second half of 2009, experts from each of these three areas gathered at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge to explain the latest advances in their research and to investigate possible avenues of future investigation and collaboration. For those in attendance, the overwhelming impression was that number theory is going through a tumultuous period of theory-building and experimentation analogous to the late 19th century, when many different special reciprocity laws of abelian class field theory were formulated before knowledge of the Artin-Takagi theory. Non-abelian Fundamental Groups and Iwasawa Theory presents the state of the art in theorems, conjectures and speculations that point the way towards a new synthesis, an as-yet-undiscovered unified theory of non-abelian arithmetic geometry.

Riding on the success of Indigenous Social Work Around the World, this book provides case studies to further scholarship on decolonization, a major analytical and activist paradigm among many of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, including educators, tribal leaders, activists, scholars, politicians, and citizens at the grassroots level. Decolonization seeks to weaken the effects of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Establishing language and cultural programs; honouring land claims, teaching Indigenous history, science, and ways of knowing; self-esteem programs, celebrating ceremonies, restoring traditional parenting approaches, tribal rites of passage, traditional foods, and helping and healing using tribal approaches are central to decolonization. These insights are brought to the arena of international social work still dominated by western-based approaches. Decolonization draws attention to the effects of globalization and the universalization of education, methods of practice, and international ’development’ that fail to embrace and recognize local knowledges and methods. In this volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous social work scholars examine local cultures, beliefs, values, and practices as central to decolonization. Supported by a growing interest in spirituality and ecological awareness in international social work, they interrogate trends, issues, and debates in Indigenous social work theory, practice methods, and education models including a section on Indigenous research approaches. The diversity of perspectives, decolonizing methodologies, and the shared struggle to provide effective professional social work interventions is reflected in the international nature of the subject matter and in the mix of contributors who write from their contexts in different countries and cultures, including Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.

How can mainstream Western social work learn from and in turn help advance indigenous practice? This volume brings together prominent international scholars involved in both Western and indigenous social work across the globe - including James Midgley, Linda Briskman, Alean Al-Krenawi and John R. Graham - to discuss some of the most significant global trends and issues relating to indigenous and cross-cultural social work. The contributors identify ways in which indigenization is shaping professional social work practice and education, and examine how social work can better address diversity in international exchanges and cross-cultural issues within and between countries. Key theoretical, methodological and service issues and challenges in the indigenization of social work are reviewed, including the way in which adaptation can lead to more effective practices within indigenous communities and emerging economies, and how adaptation can provide greater insight into cross-cultural understanding and practice.

Riding on the success of Indigenous Social Work Around the World, this book provides case studies to further scholarship on decolonization, a major analytical and activist paradigm among many of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, including educators, tribal leaders, activists, scholars, politicians, and citizens at the grassroots level. Decolonization seeks to weaken the effects of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Establishing language and cultural programs; honouring land claims, teaching Indigenous history, science, and ways of knowing; self-esteem programs, celebrating ceremonies, restoring traditional parenting approaches, tribal rites of passage, traditional foods, and helping and healing using tribal approaches are central to decolonization. These insights are brought to the arena of international social work still dominated by western-based approaches. Decolonization draws attention to the effects of globalization and the universalization of education, methods of practice, and international ’development’ that fail to embrace and recognize local knowledges and methods. In this volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous social work scholars examine local cultures, beliefs, values, and practices as central to decolonization. Supported by a growing interest in spirituality and ecological awareness in international social work, they interrogate trends, issues, and debates in Indigenous social work theory, practice methods, and education models including a section on Indigenous research approaches. The diversity of perspectives, decolonizing methodologies, and the shared struggle to provide effective professional social work interventions is reflected in the international nature of the subject matter and in the mix of contributors who write from their contexts in different countries and cultures, including Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.

This book is an exploration of the way in which the characters in Rudyard Kipling’s short stories use superior knowledge, which often involves deception and the playing of practical jokes. There was early critical hostility to the stance adopted by Kipling’s characters, that of a superior knowledge acquired by friendship with a small male circle. This book engages with a long-standing critical tradition which treats the jokes as acts of vicarious revenge or symptoms of supposed defects in Kipling’s personality, instead setting his use of the practical joke in the wider social context of his time. In this book Kipling’s writing is examined for what it reveals about a complex, self-conscious but powerful range of values rather than what it is supposed to disguise or conceal. Although he endorsed British colonial rule, Kipling was frank about the slackness, endemic rule-breaking and second-rate nature of British rule in India. He also criticised some of the widespread cultural, religious and moral phenomena of his time, which he thought harmful. Many of his short stories contain an implied but serious criticism of Victorian beliefs, from attitudes to death-beds, and schoolboys to Positivism.

Cyclotomic fields have always occupied a central place in number theory, and the so called "main conjecture" on cyclotomic fields is arguably the deepest and most beautiful theorem known about them. It is also the simplest example of a vast array of subsequent, unproven "main conjectures'' in modern arithmetic geometry involving the arithmetic behaviour of motives over p-adic Lie extensions of number fields. These main conjectures are concerned with what one might loosely call the exact formulae of number theory which conjecturally link the special values of zeta and L-functions to purely arithmetic expressions.Written by two leading workers in the field, this short and elegant book presents in full detail the simplest proof of the "main conjecture'' for cyclotomic fields. Its motivation stems not only from the inherent beauty of the subject, but also from the wider arithmetic interest of these questions. The masterly exposition is intended to be accessible to both graduatestudents and non-experts in Iwasawa theory.

Cyclotomic fields have always occupied a central place in number theory, and the so called "main conjecture" on cyclotomic fields is arguably the deepest and most beautiful theorem known about them. It is also the simplest example of a vast array of subsequent, unproven "main conjectures'' in modern arithmetic geometry involving the arithmetic behaviour of motives over p-adic Lie extensions of number fields. These main conjectures are concerned with what one might loosely call the exact formulae of number theory which conjecturally link the special values of zeta and L-functions to purely arithmetic expressions.Written by two leading workers in the field, this short and elegant book presents in full detail the simplest proof of the "main conjecture'' for cyclotomic fields. Its motivation stems not only from the inherent beauty of the subject, but also from the wider arithmetic interest of these questions. The masterly exposition is intended to be accessible to both graduatestudents and non-experts in Iwasawa theory.

The algebraic techniques developed by Kakde will almost certainly lead eventually to major progress in the study of congruences between automorphic forms and the main conjectures of non-commutative Iwasawa theory for many motives. Non-commutative Iwasawa theory has emerged dramatically over the last decade, culminating in the recent proof of the non-commutative main conjecture for the Tate motive over a totally real p-adic Lie extension of a number field, independently by Ritter and Weiss on the one hand, and Kakde on the other. The initial ideas for giving a precise formulation of the non-commutative main conjecture were discovered by Venjakob, and were then systematically developed  in the subsequent papers by Coates-Fukaya-Kato-Sujatha-Venjakob and Fukaya-Kato. There was also parallel related work in this direction by Burns and Flach on the equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture. Subsequently, Kato discovered an important idea for studying the K_1 groups of non-abelian Iwasawa algebras in terms of the K_1 groups of the abelian quotients of these Iwasawa algebras. Kakde's proof is a beautiful development of these ideas of Kato, combined with an idea of Burns, and essentially reduces the study of the non-abelian main conjectures to abelian ones. The approach of Ritter and Weiss is more classical, and partly inspired by techniques of Frohlich and Taylor. Since many of the ideas in this book should eventually be applicable to other motives, one of its major aims is to provide a self-contained exposition of some of the main general themes underlying these developments. The present volume will be a valuable resource for researchers working in both Iwasawa theory and the theory of automorphic forms.

The algebraic techniques developed by Kakde will almost certainly lead eventually to major progress in the study of congruences between automorphic forms and the main conjectures of non-commutative Iwasawa theory for many motives. Non-commutative Iwasawa theory has emerged dramatically over the last decade, culminating in the recent proof of the non-commutative main conjecture for the Tate motive over a totally real p-adic Lie extension of a number field, independently by Ritter and Weiss on the one hand, and Kakde on the other. The initial ideas for giving a precise formulation of the non-commutative main conjecture were discovered by Venjakob, and were then systematically developed  in the subsequent papers by Coates-Fukaya-Kato-Sujatha-Venjakob and Fukaya-Kato. There was also parallel related work in this direction by Burns and Flach on the equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture. Subsequently, Kato discovered an important idea for studying the K_1 groups of non-abelian Iwasawa algebras in terms of the K_1 groups of the abelian quotients of these Iwasawa algebras. Kakde's proof is a beautiful development of these ideas of Kato, combined with an idea of Burns, and essentially reduces the study of the non-abelian main conjectures to abelian ones. The approach of Ritter and Weiss is more classical, and partly inspired by techniques of Frohlich and Taylor. Since many of the ideas in this book should eventually be applicable to other motives, one of its major aims is to provide a self-contained exposition of some of the main general themes underlying these developments. The present volume will be a valuable resource for researchers working in both Iwasawa theory and the theory of automorphic forms.

The forces behind an economic and political crisis in the makingA “problem of twelve” arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation.The Big Four index funds of Vanguard, State Street, Fidelity, and BlackRock control more than twenty percent of the votes of S&P 500 companies—a concentration of power that’s unprecedented in America. Then there’s the rise of private equity funds such as the Big Four of Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR, which has amassed $2.7 trillion of assets, and are eroding the legitimacy and accountability of American capitalism, not by controlling public companies, but by taking them over entirely, and removing them from public discourse and public scrutiny.This quiet accumulation in the last few decades represents a dramatic transformation in how the American economy operates—a sea change that few of us have noticed and all of us need to consider. Harvard law professor John Coates forcefully calls our attention to what is sure to be one of the major political and economic issues of our time.

Social work, with few exceptions, has neglected to give serious consideration to the consequences of environmental devastation and the changes which a shift toward ecological sustainability will demand. If it is to remain viable, social work must become a positive pro-active force in the creation of a socially just and sustainable community. Coates critiques the assumptions, values and beliefs of the dominant world view which supports most economic and social activity. He reviews and critiques social work’s major theoretical frameworks and introduces and articulates a new world view, which provides a solid theoretical foundation for both social work education and a professional practice.Here is a new vision for social work, which is inclusive and holistic, and replaces the current self-centred and anti-collectivist paradigm with a mutually beneficial community-focused one.

Nick Cardy has been a cartoonist and illustrator for over 50 years. Spanning the Golden Age to the present, Cardy's career began in 1939 with the Eisner/Iger shop, which produced the "Spirit" newspaper supplement, "Plastic Man" comic books and more. Cardy went on to illustrate newspaper strips, including "Tarzan", and enjoyed a 25 year association with DC Comics before moving on to magazine and movie poster illustration. As well as being one of DC Comics' top Batman and Superman cover artists, fans remember that in the 1960s, Nick helped define comics' Silver Age with sequential artwork on "Aquaman", "Teen Titans", and "Bat Lash". The artist's contributions to the comic book industry earned him the prestigious "Ink Pot Award" for Outstanding achievement. Cardy did occasional non-comics illustration work throughout the decades in which he focused primarily on comic books and strips. But in 1975 the artist decided to focus on illustration, particularly movie and television work. Some of the properties he worked on include "Bad News Bears", "Return of the Pink Panther", "Meatballs II", "California Suite", and even "Apocalypse Now". This volume offers an exploration of Cardy's art.