Bringing together scholars in rhetorical, cultural, and media studies, this collection of new case studies illustrates a modalities approach to the study of publics. These case studies explore the implications of different ways of forming publics, including alternative means of expression, the intersection of politics and consumerism, and online engagement. In doing so, they raise important questions of access, community, and political efficacy.--[book cover].

The history of medieval Jewry presents one inescapable fact: the Jews were a people apart. No matter where or when we find a Jewish community in the Middle Ages, it was an alien enclave within a host society which was sometimes cordial to it and sometimes not. Jews were a foreign element that managed their own communal affairs, creating religions, educational, and charitable institutions, mechanisms for collection and disbursement of taxes to the host government, and various systems for internal governance and the administration of justice. The Jews governed themselves and dispensed justice in so far as possible according to halakhah, their ancient internal legal system. This legal system was the subject of devoted and loving study and careful enhancement over the centuries by skillful interpretation, by mixture of local customs, and by local ordinances, which helped the system keep pace with changing circumstances. Modalities in Medieval Jewish Law includes chapters on punitive modalities, preventive and coercive modalities, and protective modalities, as well as appendixes on "A Plea for Calm," "The Arresting Officer," and "Human Rights and Kavod Habriut" and a comprehensive bibliography. Passamaneck's discussion exposes some of the less exalted or inspiring episodes of medieval Jewish history. Some of what was done, or was proposed to be done, was cruel and inhuman by modern standards. Some of it does not rise to a modern standard of legality, but the medieval world did not run according to our rules, and necessity overrode moral idealism from time to time even among the most sensitive, learned, and pious of our ancestors. The rabbis well understood that they were to pursue justice, but justice was justice for the greater good of the people as a whole, not necessarily for the individual. Doubtless we would not often do as they did. Yet they are by no means to be faulted or derogated for their defense of their standards of public order, safety, and, indeed, decency.

This report has been prepared as one of the deliverables of the Bangladesh Integrated Food Policy Research Program (BIFPRP) implemented by the Ministry of Food, Government of Bangladesh under a World Investment for Modernizing Food Storages Facilities in the country. The key arguments and recommendations drawn up for the report are based on both quantitative and qualitative data. Food and agricultural policies have historically played a crucial role in triggering growth in many developing countries. While there were debates, public procurement and distribution of food are widely accepted as a “second best” solutions for countries characterized by markets and institutional failures. However, Bangladesh has done remarkably well in adjusting to changing realities and the country is now widely recognized for its agricultural policy reforms. But there is still room for further improvement and efficiency gains for which two broad sets of recommendation can be considered: Pricing and procurement targets - Pricing in Bangladesh continues to be based on the average cost of production but with the application of satellite imageries, app-based small area estimation, the procurement price estimates can be improved substantially. Also, the current procurement target determination formula misses out on some key aspects of production, marketing, and macroeconomic parameters. The quota for each upazila is based on total production and milling capacities but it also needs to consider the net surplus to calculate how much could be procured in each Upazilas. Alternative procurement modalities a) The report recommends changing this modality to Delivered to Destination Warehouse (DDW) through the open tendering method and undertaking pilots and learning from experiences to enhance efficiency can be important. b) Linking smallholders to markets through product aggregation has received renewed attention globally. Available data suggests that Bangladesh’s public procurement has thus far not managed to effectively integrate small farmers to its procurement system. To scale up nationally, we believe that more innovation in technology and a new institutional set up will be necessary. c) Implementing Delivered Duty Paid Modality on a pilot basis where the seller assumes all responsibilities and costs for delivering the goods to the named place of destination. d) Piloting Deficiency Payment Method as an effective method to provide both income and price to farmers of a wide range of agricultural commodities. Two key instruments of implementing this method would be Marketing Assistance Loan (MAL) and the Loan Deficiency Payment (LDP), which are tools available to the farmers. A recent report by the NITI Aayog of India also makes a strong case for this procurement modality and we also argue in favor of undertaking this pilot.

In recent decades, genre studies has focused attention on how genres mediate social activities within workplace and academic settings. Genre and the Performance of Publics moves beyond institutional settings to explore public contexts that are less hierarchical, broadening the theory of how genres contribute to the interconnected and dynamic performances of public life. Chapters examine how genres develop within publics and how genres tend to mediate performances in public domains, setting up a discussion between public sphere scholarship and rhetorical genre studies. The volume extends the understanding of genres as not only social ways of organizing texts or mediating relationships within institutions but as dynamic performances themselves. By exploring how genres shape the formation of publics, Genre and the Performance of Publicsbrings rhetoric/composition and public sphere studies into dialogue and enhances the understanding of public genre performances in ways that contribute to research on and teaching of public discourse.

The most comprehensive survey to-date of how different organizations hold persons acting in the public interest to account.

In After the Public Turn, author Frank Farmer argues that counterpublics and the people who make counterpublics—“citizen bricoleurs”—deserve a more prominent role in our scholarship and in our classrooms. Encouraging students to understand and consider resistant or oppositional discourse is a viable route toward mature participation as citizens in a democracy. Farmer examines two very different kinds of publics, cultural and disciplinary, and discusses two counterpublics within those broad categories: zine discourses and certain academic discourses. By juxtaposing these two significantly different kinds of publics, Farmer suggests that each discursive world can be seen, in its own distinct way, as a counterpublic, an oppositional social formation that has a stake in widening or altering public life as we know it. Drawing on major figures in rhetoric and cultural theory, Farmer builds his argument about composition teaching and its relation to the public sphere, leading to a more sophisticated understanding of public life and a deeper sense of what democratic citizenship means for our time.

To understand the profound changes in the modes of public political debate over the past decade, this volume develops a new conception of public spheres as spaces of resonance emerging from the power of language to affect and to ascribe and instill collective emotion. Political discourse is no longer confined to traditional media, but increasingly takes place in fragmented and digital public spheres. At the same time, the modes of political engagement have changed: discourse is said to increasingly rely on strategies of emotionalization and to be deeply affective at its core. This book meticulously shows how public spheres are rooted in the emotional, bodily, and affective dimensions of language, and how language – in its capacity to affect and to be affected – produces those dynamics of affective resonance that characterize contemporary forms of political debate. It brings together scholars from the humanities and social sciences and focuses on two fields of inquiry: publics, politics, and media in Part I, and language and artistic inquiry in Part II. The thirteen chapters provide a balanced composition of theoretical and methodological considerations, focusing on highly illustrative case studies and on different artistic practices. The volume is an indispensable source for researchers and postgraduate students in cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, and political science. It likewise appeals to practitioners seeking to develop an in-depth understanding of affect in contemporary political debate.

Citizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase “rhetorical citizenship” as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but in many ways constitutive of civic engagement. To accomplish this, the book brings together, in a cross-disciplinary effort, contributions by scholars in fields that rarely intersect. For the most part, discussions of citizenship have focused on aspects that are central to the “liberal” tradition of social thought—that is, questions of the freedoms and rights of citizens and groups. This collection gives voice to a “republican” conception of citizenship. Seeing participation and debate as central to being a citizen, this tradition looks back to the Greek city-states and republican Rome. Citizenship, in this sense of the word, is rhetorical citizenship. Rhetoric is thus at the core of being a citizen. Aside from the editors, the contributors are John Adams, Paula Cossart, Jonas Gabrielsen, Jette Barnholdt Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen, Sine Nørholm Just, Ildikó Kaposi, William Keith, Bart van Klink, Marie Lund Klujeff, Manfred Kraus, Oliver W. Lembcke, Berit von der Lippe, James McDonald, Niels Møller Nielsen, Tatiana Tatarchevskiy, Italo Testa, Georgia Warnke, Kristian Wedberg, and Stephen West.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family." The guarantee of good health for its people is therefore every government's aspiration. Public–private partnerships (PPP) in health offer effective and sustainable solutions where the private sector and government can work together to bring long-term benefits to the people. This guidebook offers readers a guide for the development of a PPP in hospital management through six simple, customizable steps. It looks at hospital management as an important component of well-rounded health care systems. Through PPPs in hospital management, people will have increased access to effective, affordable, and compassionate health care services.