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The title of this chapter, “We're Losing the Fight against Nuclear Proliferation” is a quote from the keynote address of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Workshop on “Policy Implications of Managing or Preventing Proliferation” that was held at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University in Houston, November 9–11, 2007. Dagobert L. Brito and I helped organize this conference on the 25th anniversary of the 1982 conference on “Strategies for Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Economic and Political Issues” held at Tulane University, which we had organized and that was published in a book with that title in 1983 edited by Dagobert L. Brito, Michael D. Intriligator, and Adele E. Wick (1983). My belief is that this observation of Secretary Baker was correct in 2007 and is even more correct today, although many government officials and policy analysts have not yet appreciated the truth of his observation.

How do you get people – particularly young people – to engage with social and political issues? Activists and academics alike have been plagued by this question for some time, and answers to it have ranged from greater organizational involvement to framing. Another possibility is meeting youth where they are at; that is, connecting youth’s existing interests in popular culture with broader social problems and issues. A group that is doing just that is the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), a story-fueled nonprofit organization that turns fans into heroes. In this chapter, we trace the development of the Harry Potter fan community, the stories’ resonance with fans, and how the HPA has drawn on the community and the story for mobilization. We argue that the HPA leverages culture in two ways that are relevant for social movements and political communication scholars. The HPA is able to tap into the fan community for bloc recruitment using its ties and connections to media – in this case, the fictional story – as a point of mobilization. Additionally, the HPA is able to bloc recruit from mass society – a process they refer to as “cultural acupuncture” – by strategically connecting the story with social justice issues when cultural attention is at its peak. We conclude with a discussion of the HPA’s impact on its members and how bloc recruitment and cultural acupuncture may be relevant for other fan communities.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of using qualitative research methods, such as ethnography, in community analysis within the library and information science (LIS) community.

The authors review the LIS literature on community analysis up to May 2004, critique a representative case study and compare its results to what emerged from the research carried out in rural Romania summer of 2004. Students and faculty from Emporia State University and Ball State University in May 2004 gathered qualitative data on the rural information infrastructure and the information needs and of residents in the Romanian community of Lunca Ilvei. The research team used ethnographic methods to collect data and found this method to be effective in the analysis and understanding of the community's information behavior.

Community analysis in LIS has relied primarily on quantitative methods. While quantitative methods can give the researcher some information about a given community, these methods cannot always produce community sensitive and appropriate statements. Ethnography can produce this kind of data which can be used to assess and plan library services.

The argument rests on a single village study. However, the paper's review of the literature and its analysis of a key example of community analysis strengthen the argument.

As libraries strive to serve communities and remain relevant to their users research methodologies, like ethnography, that are effective in revealing information needs, wants, behaviors, and fulfillment need be accepted as legitimate and distributed throughout the library community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in the economies along the “Belt & Road” Initiative (BRI afterward). China works on to advance the agenda of the BRI both at home and abroad. The BRI is set up to promote connectivity in five key areas: policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, financial cooperation and people-to-people contacts.

The existing literature is inconclusive with regards to the motives, patterns and determinants of the Chinese OFDI. The authors are, therefore, motivated to undertake this study to shed some new light on the influencing factors of the Chinese OFDI. The authors have made a unique data set that consists of China and its 64 partnering countries of the BRI over a time period of 12 years spanning from 2004 to 2015. This time period is chosen on the chief consideration of data availability. The authors have a balanced panel, and applied the gravity model in line with the theoretical arguments and econometric developments.

The paper assumes that China’s OFDI along the BRI was a function of gross domestic product (GDP), income per capita, distance and WTO. The findings showed that GDP, per capita income and distance were the key determinants of the OFDI. China’s entry into the WTO did not strongly affect the OFDI. China maintained a tradition of historical relationships along the BRI economies. After all, China is relocating its investment resources in line with the consideration of its partnering countries’ economic size, cross-border distance and per capita income.

This study is the first of its kinds to analyze the determinants of OFDI by means of gravity model. The authors have covered all the countries along the BRI. Hence, this paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the literature, both from a scientific and a policy perspective.