Epistola publishing house is a family-owned company founded in 2009. We seek to provide quality reading with variety of themes to enrich the lives of young readers. Our books have distinctively educational purpose, inspiring discussion with parents, teachers or other children. In order to provide the best possible reading and achieve quality, we collaborate with renowned domestic and foreign authors.
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Singapore's largest independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction for all ages. Check out our latest catalogue here: July – December 2018 (PDF.)
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This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann's systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault's writings and the dialectics of systems theory. This unique work takes a comparative look at structuralism and post-structuralism's epistemological theory with special reference to scientific reason. It also investigates Luhmann's works in epistemology. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.
— The seminal work reissued — A science and philosophy classic — On the occasion of the author's 80th birthday According to evolutionary epistemology, the fact that we can know the world is neither coincidence nor divine providence, but has a natural explanation. Thinking and cognition are achievements of the human brain. Our cognitive structures fit into our world because they have evolved in adaptation to this world. This fit is not ideal, but it is enough for survival under competition. Gerhard Vollmer was instrumental in developing evolutionary epistemology. In his standard work, he explains the achievements and failures of our cognitive apparatus.
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"Lao Tzu", also known as "moral classics," Taoist classics, according to legend, is the late Spring and Autumn Chu people Lao Ji, all received a total of 81 chapters. Lao Tzu is a speech collection of Lao Tzu's philosophical thoughts, systematically expounding Lao Tzu's outlook on the universe, politics and epistemology. "Tao" is the basic category in which Lao Zi-Zhe does not think. Lao-tzu believes that "Tao" is the origin of the universe. It is independent of anything else and changes constantly and continuously. And "virtue" Is the concrete application of "Tao" in life, social and political life. The English translation of this book is one of the more influential English versions, with some revisions made in the book. The book is accompanied by the silk book Laozi unearthed in the Mawangdui Han Tomb of Changsha in 1972.
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This volume collects and revises the key essays of Gunther Teubner, one of the world's leading sociologists of law. Written over the past twenty years, these essays examine the 'dark side' of functional differentiation and the prospects of societal constitutionalism as a possible remedy. Teubner's claim is that critical accounts of law and society require reformulation in the light of the sophisticated diagnoses of late modernity in the writings of Niklas Luhmann, Jacques Derrida and select examples of modernist literature. Autopoiesis, deconstruction and other post-foundational epistemological and political realities compel us to confront the fact that fundamental democratic concepts such as law and justice can no longer be based on theories of stringent argumentation or analytical philosophy. We must now approach law in terms of contingency and self-subversion rather than in terms of logical consistency and rational coherence.
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The book offers a novel lens to situate Europeanisation as violence - through institutions and technologies of development, cultural heritage, and borders, among others - by bringing South and East within a relational frame. Through four inter-related sections, it foregrounds Europeanisation as infrastructural violence and colonial asymmetries, slow violence and the construction of stratified subalternities, epistemic dispossession, and border epistemologies.
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This book provides a powerful diagnosis of why the global governance of science struggles in the face of emerging powers. Through unpacking critical events in China and India over the past twenty years, it demonstrates that the 'subversiveness' assumed in the two countries' rise in the life sciences reflects many of the regulatory challenges that are shared worldwide. It points to a decolonial imperative for science governance to be responsive and effective in a cosmopolitan world. By highlighting epistemic injustice within contemporary science, the book extends theories of decolonisation.
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The mediated Arctic analyses the multiple relations between geography and cultural production that have long shaped - and are currently transforming - the circumpolar world. It explores how twenty-first-century cultural practitioners imagine and poeticise various elements of Arctic geography, and in doing so negotiate pressing environmental, (geo)political, and social concerns. From the plasmatic force of ice in Disney's Frozen films to the spatial vocabulary of circumpolar Indigenous hip hop, it addresses Arctic geographical imaginaries in a wide range of media, including literature, cinema, comic books, music videos, and cartographic art. The book brings together a plurality of voices from within and outside the circumpolar North, both in terms of the works analysed and in its own collaborative scholarly practice. The book bridges Indigenous and Southern mediations of the Arctic and combines different epistemologies to do justice to these imaginaries in their diversity.
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Bajautopia is a book that aims to reflect on both the struggles and hopes of the Bajau Laut community. Bajautopia is both a manifesto and a provocation. This edited volume contains a collection of inspiring essays to reveal the life and culture of the Bajau Laut. The book brings together a wide range of essay contributors, led by the foremost writers and scholars from the fields of architecture, history, film studies, anthropology, tourism, political science, and urban planning in Malaysia. Considered as a dialogue between scholars/writers from different cultural backgrounds and epistemological contexts, this book explores a diverse range of topics integral to the livelihood of the Bajau Laut.
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This book aims to examine the nature of and resistance to gendered urban violence among Brazilian women in London and in the favelas of Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on the conceptualisation of translocational gendered urban violence framework, it highlights the importance of examining direct forms of gender-based violence across private, public and transnational spheres as interlinked with structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. The book also explores the embodied and spatialised nature of gendered urban violence, explored through artistic engagements and arts-based methods. In developing a translocational feminist tracing methodological and epistemological approach across the social sciences and the arts, the book argues for the importance of a collaborative approach among academic, civil society organisations, artists and creative researchers with a view to engendering empathetic transformation to address gendered urban violence in the long-term.
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Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans' relationship to the environment.
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Saramago's labyrinths is the first book-length study to focus on the relationship between form and the content in Saramago's writing, paying particular attention to Ensaio sobre a Cegueira (Blindness) and Todos os Nomes (All the Names). Atkin provides a close textual analysis of Blindness and All the Names, and suggests that the labyrinth pervades Saramago's work, both in the form of the text, and as a literary and philosophical trope. She makes clear connections between these novels and Saramago's other literary works, and identifies ways in which Saramago causes the reader to return to and consider the philosophical, epistemological and ethical concerns and dilemmas that are recurrent in his literary output. Atkin's jargon-free approach to Saramago's complex ideas, and her thorough understanding of Portuguese history, culture and society, make this an accessible yet challenging guide to Saramago's fiction, for undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars with or without prior knowledge of the Portuguese context. ;
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This new edition examines some of the philosophical and theoretical issues underlying the 'democratic project' which increasingly dominates the fields of comparative development and international relations. The first concern presented here is normative and epistemological: as democracy becomes more widely accepted as the political currency of legitimacy, the more broadly it is defined. But as agreement decreases regarding the definition of democracy, the less we are able to evaluate how it is working, or indeed whether it is working at all. The second issue is causal: what are the claims being made regarding how best to secure a democratic system in developing states? To what extent do our beliefs and expectations of how political relations ought to be governed distort our understanding of how democratic societies do in fact emerge; and, conversely, to what extent does our understanding of how democracy manifests itself temper our conception of what it ought to be? The volume will be of interest to those in international development studies, as well as political theorists with an interest in applied ethics. ;
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The field of social research is characterized by its broad scope and interdisciplinary nature, encompassing the examination of human behaviour, societies, and various facets of social existence; however, it is influenced by numerous factors, including technological advancements. It is therefore no surprise that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly become a driving force, bringing about substantial transformations within the field. The use of AI-assisted tools and programmes for the collection, analysis, and interpretation of both quantitative and qualitative data is increasing at a remarkable pace. The implications of utilizing these applications are significant and noteworthy. While these technologies present numerous opportunities, it is important to acknowledge the accompanying dilemmas and risks associated with this form of technological advancement. With a focus on AI's research implications, this book explores various considerations and examples across different disciplines of social research. It highlights the considerable promise AI holds for revolutionizing the discipline while also guiding readers in contemplating the potential drawbacks and various concerns. By doing so, researchers can optimize the capabilities of AI and promote its responsible, reliable, and beneficial application in enhancing and advancing social research.
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Tensions in the struggle for sexual minority rights in Europe, newly available in paperback, is the first queer and poststructuralist reading of political rights concepts in the specific European transnational context. In the last thirty years Europe has seen the rise of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movements fighting nationally and transnationally for participation rights in society. In addition academic theorists have increasingly paid attention to the epistemological and ontological roles gender and sexuality play in modern politics. However, in the political process of arguing for rights the centrality of those roles is mostly hidden from view in official institutional and movement discourses. This book investigates the conceptual themes of lesbian, gay and transgender rights and lobby politics in Europe and their open and hidden relations to binary and hierarchical orders of dominance. It contributes to an understanding of the conditions upon which politics of inclusion, participation, social justice and equality rest and why struggles for sexual minority rights have been so difficult and slow. It illuminates how the paradigms of political discourse constitute, consolidate and contest the meaning and cultural significance of gender and sexuality on modern, democratic, capitalist European societies. ;
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African modernity is the result of original combinations that involve a figurative dimension. Hidden beneath the overt forms of domination, there is an ongoing, subtle war of signs. These symbolic conflicts manifest themselves in the stage of modernity as a means of creating ordinary social bonds. The competitive construction of this public space begins from the early moments of African incorporation into European imaginaries, with military campaigns serving as the realization of this soon-to-be colonizing imagination. Photographic space becomes a part of this silent process of inventing and/or subverting identities, contributing to the marking of social evolution. The photographs are studied here not to showcase exotic postures of indigenous people, characterized as clumsy and innocent, which underlie a certain primitivist aesthetics, but to facilitate a distancing that allows for the observation of the internal dynamics of contemporary African societies. This approach raises significant epistemological issues that challenge the heuristic function of images, imaginations, and imaginaries. Through the medium of images, this book sheds new light on the distinctions, frictions, and strategies of African modernity, which has been the subject of many misinterpretations.
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