Rossinow revisits the period between the 1880s and the 1940s, when reformers and radicals worked together along a middle path between the revolutionary left and establishment liberalism. He takes the story up to the present, showing how the progressive connection was lost and explaining the consequences that followed.

Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949 offers a panoramic view of reflections on progress in modern China. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the discourses on progress shape Chinese understandings of modernity and its pitfalls. As this in-depth study shows, these discourses play a pivotal role in the fields of politics, society, culture, as well as philosophy, history, and literature. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Chinese ideas of progress, their often highly optimistic implications, but also the criticism of modernity they offered, opened the gateway for reflections on China’s past, its position in the present world, and its future course.

The work of American Baptist missionaries among the Telugu people in India in the nineteenth century came to fruition in 1897, when Telugus established their own indigenous missionary organization, the Telugu Home Missionary Society. Six years later, in 1903, the society took the highly ambitious step of sending one of its own, John Rangiah, to South Africa as a missionary to work among Telugus who'd gone to that country as indentured laborers. Vision in Progress tells the story of Indian Baptists' work in South Africa, work mitigated by the negatives influences of colonialism and racism, manifested by the openly racist South African doctrine of apartheid. It examines the values, missions philosophy, and struggles of John Rangiah and of others--men and women--who have shaped the history of Indian Baptists in South Africa up to this day. In telling this story, the author provides a thorough history of the organization Indian Baptists formed--the Baptist Association of South Africa--and its friction-filled efforts to work alongside other Baptist groups. Informational and inspirational, Vision in Progress serves ultimately as a testimony of people of great faith who were up against tremendous odds.

This book focuses on a critical discussion of the status and prospects of current approaches in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, in particular concerning gravity. It contains a carefully selected cross-section of lectures and discussions at the seventh conference “Progress and Visions in Quantum Theory in View of Gravity” which took place in fall 2018 at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. In contrast to usual proceeding volumes, instead of reporting on the most recent technical results, contributors were asked to discuss visions and new ideas in foundational physics, in particular concerning foundations of quantum field theory. A special focus has been put on the question of which physical principles of quantum (field) theory can be considered fundamental in view of gravity. The book is mainly addressed to mathematicians and physicists who are interested in fundamental questions of mathematical physics. It allows the reader to obtain a broad and up-to-date overview of a fascinating active research area.

Compared to rival ideologies, liberalism has fared rather poorly in modern Iran. This is all the more remarkable given the essentially liberal substance of various social and political struggles – for liberal legality, individual rights and freedoms, and pluralism – in the century-long period since the demise of the Qajar dynasty and the subsequent transformation of the country into a modern nation-state. The deeply felt but largely invisible purchase of liberal political ideas in Iran challenges us to think more expansively about the trajectory of various intellectual developments since the emergence of a movement for reform and constitutionalism in the late nineteenth century. It complicates parsimonious accounts of Shi'ism, secularism, socialism, nationalism, and royalism as defining or representative ideologies of particular eras. Hidden Liberalism offers a critical examination of the reasons behind liberalism's invisible yet influential status, and its attendant ethical quandaries, in Iranian political and intellectual discourses.

Visions of Development examines the Indian state's postcolonial development ideology between Independence in 1947 and the Emergency of 1975-77. Sutoris pioneers a novel methodology for the study of development thought and its cinematic representations, analysing films made by the Films Division of India between 1948 and 1975. By comparing these documentaries to late-colonial films on 'progress', his book highlights continuities with and departures from colonial notions of development in modern India. It is the first scholarly volume to be published on the history of Indian documentary film. Of the approximately 250 documentaries analysed by Peter Sutoris, many of which have never been discussed in the existing literature, most are concerned with economic planning and industrialisation, large dams, family planning, schemes aimed at the integration of tribal peoples (Adivasis) into society, and civic education. Almost all films analysed in this volume are available for free online viewing through the website of the Films Division. Links are provided on the companion website www.visionsofdevelopment.com.

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

This book is a collection of scientific papers published during the last five years, showing a broad spectrum of actual research topics and techniques used to solve challenging problems in the areas of computer vision and image analysis. The book will appeal to researchers, technicians and graduate students.