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This chapter explores the interaction between celebrity culture and contemporary masculinities, introducing the public appearances of actors Timothée Chalamet, Paul Mescal, and Barry Keoghan that are under examination in the following chapters. The chapter sets the context of hegemony, heterosexuality, and masculinity, which will be the basis of the examination that is offered in the following chapters of these books where a showcase of their sartorial choices is presented to analyse whether they challenge traditional norms of gender and masculinity. The present chapter begins by setting a theoretical framework that draws on key theorists like Butler, Foucault, and Gramsci, emphasising the role of hegemony in reinforcing heteronormative standards. The analysis then moves to celebrities with attention to how they through their sartorial choices, particularly at high-visibility events like award shows, engage with and potentially subvert expected masculine norms. Despite being heterosexual men conforming to cisheteronormative societal norms in their personal lives, their public fashion choices serve as a form of cultural commentary that challenges rigid boundaries around male attire and behaviours. Furthermore, the chapter reviews relevant literature on the social construction of gender, the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and the performative nature of gender, drawing on established studies to frame the actors’ public presentations within broader societal and cultural dynamics. This chapter aims to provide a comprehensive overview of how gender norms are maintained and challenged within the sphere of celebrity culture.

This study aims to examine the nexus of the US rebalance strategy to Asia and the US–China rivalry in the South China Sea (SCS) from the perspective of the offensive realism theory.

The study depends on the descriptive approach that deals with the analysis and description of the phenomenon. Also, the study uses the qualitative method to analyze the primary sources concerning the rebalance.

The study has found four results: first, the rebalance strategy to Asia is a comprehensive strategy to contain China’s rise. Second, China’s offensive strategy in the SCS since 2008 has been the main driver of launching the rebalance. Third, offensive realism presents a convenient analysis to understand the rebalance, China’s offensive strategy in the SCS, and the US–China rivalry in the SCS. Forth, SCS is one of the most important venues of the US–China rivalry for global hegemony.

Limited to the period from 2009 to 2016. The Obama Era.

This study highlights the centrality of the SCS in the US–China global rivalry that has not been yet well researched.

This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

Using a decolonial framework for thinking about knowledge, education and internationalisation, this chapter critically unpacks the historical and contemporary complexities in South African higher education, including the colonial roots of higher education and internationalisation, the Eurocentric hegemony and white domination during colonialism and apartheid, and the lack of epistemic decolonisation in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapter shows how the way internationalisation has been practiced by universities since the end of apartheid has contributed to the maintenance of Eurocentric hegemony and coloniality of knowledge. The chapter highlights the need to rethink, reconceptualise and redefine internationalisation, and unpacks a new definition of internationalisation which takes into consideration historical complexities, contemporary realities and challenges, and the need for epistemic transformation and decolonisation in South African higher education. This is in line with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s decolonial ‘quest for relevance’ of education and knowledge to the people, places and regions in which universities operate, while looking outwards at the world and critically engaging with the plurality of worldviews, ideas, knowledges and ways of knowing. Such a quest could allow students to critically interrogate and understand their being and place in the world, as well as their relationships and linkages to others around the globe.

The visible ill-effects of the developmental enterprises in the ex-colonies and the tendency towards technocratic totalitarianism, in many ways, have altered the way modern humans perceived the idea of “progress” and “development” historically since the Cold War. This paper presents a deconstructive-transdisciplinary critique of the pervasive ideology by focusing on three nodal points in the stages of “development”: (1) the rise of technocratic modern science; (2) the making of the Third World; and (3) de-legitimisation of its indigenous knowledge paradigms.

Drawing on the first-hand accounts of the researchers, social scientists, activists and environmentalists, this paper presents an extensive critique of the violence involved in the development enterprises and recommends possible ways to move beyond the developmental hegemony. This paper is a theoretical investigation that adopts an interpretative, pluralistic, transdisciplinary approach, in order to deconstruct the development ideology and analyse the ramifications of the developmental propaganda and practice as they unfolded in the Global South.

This paper highlights the need to decondition the social imaginary from the hegemony of developmentalism and its by-product scientism and “technological rationality” for an inclusive, pluralistic, democratic social order.

The focal area of this work is India in particular and Global South in general. It studies the era between the 1950s and 1980s when the major development enterprises took place and studies the consequences they entailed.

The scope of this paper encompasses every socio-economic, ecological and epistemological domain affected by the detrimental effects of the developmental enterprises in the Global South.

The originality of this work lies in its transdisciplinary approach. The scope of this paper is extensive and covers nearly every domain of human existence that has been affected by the development debacle and technocratic totalitarianism in the post-War era.

Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests.

This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation.

By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic.

The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.

The Pacific Island nation of Fiji, spanning 100s of islands, has been characterised by both geographical and ethnic divisions between, mainly, Indigenous Fijians and Fijians of Indian descent. The latter took shape in quite blatant forms in the island nation's historical tendency towards ethnic politics but has also been enacted across its sporting traditions. Today, while ethnic politics still exists to a degree, encouraged by ethnopolitical entrepreneurs, the reality is more nuanced. Divisions remain not only along the popularised lines of ethnicity but also across hierarchical, class and gender boundaries that have received somewhat less scholarly attention. This nuance is visible in the performance and packaging of Fijian sport and through the meanings that local people attach to it. This chapter, therefore, draws upon the experience of ethnographic fieldwork within and across Fijian subcultures with a focus on rugby and soccer. Inclusive of participant observation and interviews with diverse Fijian sporting stakeholders from differing intersections of local sport and society, the key threads above will be untangled to reveal a more three-dimensional and collective impression of contemporary Fiji.