People often assume that to give ourselves a fighting chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, we need either inspired political leadership, or a moral revolution in society. Both would be nice to have, but there are more plausible ways to make faster progress. They involve thinking differently. We need science that gives us risk assessment instead of prediction; economics that understands change instead of assuming stability; and diplomacy that focusses on international collaboration instead of unilateral national action.

When we study technology transitions of the past – the shifts from horses to cars, from cesspools to sewers, from traditional farming to intensive agriculture – we can see how they were enabled and accelerated by government policy. Coordinated action by groups of countries could accelerate change even more – through faster innovation, larger economies of scale, and level playing fields where needed. International cooperation of this kind could dramatically accelerate low-carbon transitions in each of the greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors of the global economy. Until now, it has barely been attempted.

The decade of the 1960s provoked a specific interest in Latin America and its literature, largely owing to the impact of the Cuban Revolution and the attention it paid to the struggle in the cultural field. If until that point the continent’s great writers were perceived as isolated figures, the new context after 1959 created the conditions for them to be read as part of a group that was committed to the common duty of putting a new face on Latin American literature. In fact, the so-called Boom cannot be understood without considering the specific political context that acted as its sounding board. An intrinsic part of the atmosphere at the time, then, were heated debates that foregrounded the role of the intellectual in society, intense polemics regarding the limits of freedom of expression under socialism, and fiery conflicts about the status of literature in a revolutionary society. Paradoxically, the very same period was also seen by its protagonists as one of transition toward a new, as yet undefined, stage. If the decade of the 1960s was dominated by left-wing thought and by the idea of the continental revolution, the 1970s meant the withdrawal of the left, and a gradual rise for the right. In its own way – always and naturally tangentially – literature has narrated all those transitions.

The material conditions of the years between 1800 and 1830 rendered Black authors and much of African American literature “out of bounds.” Contributors engage literature by people of African descent outside of slavery’s fetters, or Black cultural producers creating work deemed untoward, or literatures developed outside the covers of bound books. In this period, the idea of Black literature was plagued not only by prohibitions on literacy and circumscription on Black people’s mobility, but also by ambivalence about what in fact would have been acceptable public discourse for people of African descent. This volume explores African American literature that elided the suppression of African American thought by directly confronting the urgencies of the moment, especially themes related to the pursuit and the experience of freedom. Transitions in the social, political, and cultural conditions of the decades in question show themselves in literary production at the turn of the nineteenth century. This volume focuses on transitions in organizational life (section 1), in mobility (section 2), in print circulation (section 3), and in visual culture (section 4).

Chapter 6 covers the post-uprisings period. Whatever the poor harvest in terms of democratic advances nine years later, many Arab states have witnessed an unprecedented wave of changes and reactions (counterrevolutionary moves) similar in importance to the revolutions of the 1950s–1960s. The term revolution (thawra) was first widely used, with the Tocquevillian caveat about the relevance of the state and the power structures of old regimes both for the breakdown and then regime re-formation – and the effect of huge social mobilization should not be assessed only with the notion of a unified outcome (success or failure) at the macro-level in the short term. This chapter shows the tentative deployment of the military's institutional power with different outcomes. Notwithstanding the enduring Tunisian exception and the case of full civil war in Syria, the picture is mixed with reinforced militarism in Egypt, attempts elsewhere in a context of acute threats and boiling regional context, yet with inherent weaknesses and risks of fragmentation.

Chapter 5 focuses on the 2011 uprisings. In the complex interplay of factors involved, armies have played a crucial role, either by keeping cohesive or by disappearing or by fracturing. When the Ben Ali system crumbled, the small Tunisian military revealed itself as the only institution keeping afloat, until other dynamics of civil society took back the upper hand in channeling political transition. The veiled and unspoken power of the armed forces in the Egyptian political system came back to open light and might. The Yemeni model of enduring authoritarian power was severely shaken by the uprising that also unleashed parallel power struggles. The 2011 transition revealed how crucial the Libyan army was, with its specificities, furthermore in a transition eased out by an eight-month civil war and international intervention. The use (and abuse) of the Syrian army was pushed further as it was pulled by the (Bashar al-Assad) regime into heavy-handed repression then full-scale civil war.

More than 67% of current high school completers attend some form of higher education, with the current college population reflecting increased diversity, with greater numbers of first-generation college students and individuals with handicapping conditions. Although transitions are for the most part positive in the emerging adult population, they also bring opportunities and challenges. Identity consolidation, striving for independence, leaving home, self-advocacy, and the ability to engage in prosocial coping become significant issues. The school psychologist can be a vital facilitator in preparing students for this critical transition and building the foundation for successful adulthood for all students, but particularly those with special needs.

The fifth chapter elaborates how and why, in the Western Balkans – and more specifically in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) – pressure imposed by the international community (and the EU in particular) was a given from the very beginning. Following the wars of the 1990s, these countries all formally committed to the Europeanisation process. Each state's entrance into the EU was supposedly conditioned upon, among other things, facing its criminal past of human rights abuses. The main request made to Croatia, Serbia and BiH by the EU was cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY). In the cases of Croatia, Serbia and BiH, the post-conflict institutionalisation of human rights, as defined and enforced by EU bodies and institutions, created several mechanisms, different in their purposes and efficiency, to implement and impact memorialisation processes and practices. Addressing the post-Yugoslav, post-socialist and post-war legacies, together with the Europeanisation process, this chapter discloses the ways in which the memorialisation agenda in the Western Balkans has been shaped, and the tensions between the human rights and nationalist-centred memorialisation processes embedded in this agenda.

The concluding chapter pulls together key elements of a Green vision for global politics. It summarises the basis o a Green alternative in each of the areas covered in the book: security, economy, the state, global governance, development and sustainability. Recognising diversity of views and multiple theories of change, it suggests critical areas where this vision can be taken forward around the renewal of democracy and subsidiarity, by recommoning and economic democracy, by building new alliances and pursuing just transitions. The politics of the twenty-first century are and will be the politics of sustainability. The question for all of us is: whose politics and on whose terms?

The conviction after communism’s overthrow in 1989–1992 that the regions’ countries would rapidly evolve into liberal democracies with reciprocally helpful media systems was unfounded. The expectations that the process of socio-political democratization would unfold in tandem with the professionalization of the media, i.e., the adoption and application of Western-like journalistic ethics and practices, was a highly idealized hope, lacking a realistic assessment of its contextual possibilities. In the aggregate, Western media and journalism models have not taken hold, even if, as pointed out, some individual exceptions to the rule are discernible.