Since the 1980s, scholars have made the case for examining 19th-century culture, particularly literary output, through the lens of economics. Bivona and Tromp have collected contributions that push New Economic Criticism in new directions.Spanning the Americas, India, England, and Scotland, this volume adopts a global view of the cultural effects of economics and exchange. Contributors use the …
The aim of this book is to document for the first time the dimensions and requirements of effective integrated groundwater management (IGM). Groundwater management is a formidable challenge, one that remains one of humanity’s foremost priorities. It has become a largely non-renewable resource that is overexploited in many parts of the world. In the 21st century, the issue moves from how to si…
This Special Issue of Religions brings together a talented group of international scholars who have studied and written on the Hindu tradition. The topic of religious experience is much debated in the field of Religious Studies, and here, we present studies of the Hindu religious experience explored from a variety of regions and perspectives. Our intention is to show that the religious experien…
This open access book offers a selection of research papers and case studies presented at the 3rd international conference “Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions”, held in December 2019 in Bolzano, Italy, and explores the concept of smart and sustainable planning, including top contributions from academics, policy makers, consultants and other professionals. Innovation pr…
Since the growth of social media, human communication has become much more visual. This book presents a scholarly analysis of the images people post on a regular basis to Facebook. By including hundreds of examples, readers can see for themselves the differences between postings from a village north of London, and those from a small town in Trinidad. Why do women respond so differently to becom…
Due to computers' ability to combine different semiotic modes, texts are no longer exclusively comprised of static images and mute words. How have digital media changed the way we write and read? What methods of textual and data analysis have emerged? How do we rescue digital artifacts from obsolescence? And how can digital media be used or taught inside classrooms? These and other questions ar…
This open access book begins with an algorithm–a set of IF…THEN rules used in the development of a new, ethical, video surveillance architecture for transport hubs. Readers are invited to follow the algorithm over three years, charting its everyday life. Questions of ethics, transparency, accountability and market value must be grasped by the algorithm in a series of ever more demanding for…
Tracing historical and cultural factors which gave rise to the Nordic Education Model, this volume explores why Northern European education policy has become an international benchmark for schooling. The text explains the historical connection between a Nordic ideal of democracy and schooling, and indicates how values of equality, welfare, justice, and individualism might be successfully int…
The globalization and digitalization of cultural markets presents formidable challenges for local cinema and storytelling. The essays in this collection address some of these challenges from the perspective of a critical political economy of local cinema. Inspiring these contributions is the effort of supporting local cinema as a form of valuable storytelling that is at risk of market-driven ex…
Geospatial information plays an important role in managing location dependent pandemic situations across different communities and domains. Geospatial information and technologies are particularly critical to strengthening urban and rural resilience, where economic, agricultural, and various social sectors all intersect. Examining the United Nations' SDGs from a geospatial lens will ensure that…
Nettle’s book presents the results of five years of comparative ethnographic fieldwork in two different neighbourhoods of the same British city, Newcastle upon Tyne. The neighbourhoods are only a few kilometres apart, yet whilst one is relatively affluent, the other is amongst the most economically deprived in the UK. Tyneside Neighbourhoods uses multiple research methods to explore social re…
Tracing historical and cultural factors which gave rise to the Nordic Education Model, this volume explores why Northern European education policy has become an international benchmark for schooling. The text explains the historical connection between a Nordic ideal of democracy and schooling, and indicates how values of equality, welfare, justice, and individualism might be successfully int…
Tracing historical and cultural factors which gave rise to the Nordic Education Model, this volume explores why Northern European education policy has become an international benchmark for schooling. The text explains the historical connection between a Nordic ideal of democracy and schooling, and indicates how values of equality, welfare, justice, and individualism might be successfully int…
This ground-breaking collection of essays examines the scope and consequences of digital vigilantism – a phenomenon emerging on a global scale, which sees digital audiences using social platforms to shape social and political life. Longstanding forms of moral scrutiny and justice seeking are disseminated through our contemporary media landscape, and researchers are increasingly recognising th…
Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social med…
Perspectives and research on play for children with disabilities. Collected Papers. This book includes eight chapters reflecting various approaches towards the theme of play for children with disabilities that characterised the work of the members of the COST Action TD1309 “LUDI–Play for Children with Disabilities”: barriers and facilitators to play, guidelines on accessibility and usabil…
'Trolls for Trump', virtual rape, fake news - social media discourse, including forms of virtual and real violence, has become a formidable, yet elusive, political force. What characterizes online vitriol? How do we understand the narratives generated, and also address their real-world - even life-and-death - impact? How can hatred, bullying, and dehumanization on social media platforms be addr…
Arts Education institutions and programs create an excellent framework for personality development: learning knowledge, learning skills and learning life. Their attainment requires education to be a holistic concept of advancement that includes aesthetic practice and involvement with the arts. It challenges them to use their actions to think about the meaning of life, in as much as everyone can…
"Music is a mobile art. When people move to faraway places, whether by choice or by force, they bring their music along. Music creates a meaningful point of contact for individuals and for groups; it can encourage curiosity and foster understanding; and it can preserve a sense of identity and comfort in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. As music crosses cultural, linguistic, and political b…
This open access book details the relationship between the artist and their created works, using tools such as information technology, computer environments, and interactive devices, for a range of information sources and application domains. This has produced new kinds of created works which can be viewed, explored, and interacted with, either as an installation or via a virtual environment s…
This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geograph…
There are not many books about how people get younger. It doesn’t happen very often. But Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland documents a radical change in the experience of ageing. Based on two ethnographies, one within Dublin and the other from the Dublin region, the book shows that people, rather than seeing themselves as old, focus on crafting a new life in retirement. Our research particip…
Forms of Life and Subjectivity: Rethinking Sartre’s Philosophy explores the fundamental question of why we act as we do. Informed by an ontological and phenomenological approach, and building mainly, but not exclusively, on the thought of Sartre, Daniel Rueda Garrido considers the concept of a "form of life” as a term that bridges the gap between subjective identity and communities. This…
What can we learn about the development of public interaction in e-democracy from a drama delivered by mobile headphones to an audience standing around a shopping center in a Stockholm suburb? In democratic societies there is widespread acknowledgment of the need to incorporate citizens’ input in decision-making processes in more or less structured ways. But participatory decision making is …
In a world where new technologies are being developed at a dizzying pace, how can we best approach oral genres that represent heritage? Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores the idea of sharing as a model to construct and disseminate the knowledge of literary heritage with the people who are represented by and in it. Expert contributors interweave sociologica…
Writing and publishing scientific papers is the core business of researchers, but is often experienced as difficult and frustrating. This book provides clear and concise key information on 12 major aspects of the process, from how to get started to dealing with reviewers’ comments. We describe each aspect structured into background information (‘‘What you should know’’), concrete advi…
The public is generally enthusiastic about the latest science and technology, but sometimes research threatens the physical safety or ethical norms of society. When this happens, scientists and engineers can find themselves unprepared in the midst of an intense science policy debate. In the absence of convincing evidence, technological optimists and skeptics struggle to build consensus. In thes…
This book integrates insights from dialogic theory and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to extend our understandings of engagement in medical research articles, going beyond notions of the role of verbal dialogue to encompass mathematical and visual semiotics and consider text not just as language but as multisemiosis. The volume begins by outlining the engagement framework and offering a …
This open access book focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It also explores claims that a distinctly “westward-looking orientation” in their design produced housing estates that were superior in design to those produced elsewhere in the Soviet Union (between 1944 and 1991, Estonia was…
Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those…
"This book offers the first comprehensive study of the many interfaces shaping the relationship between comics and videogames. It combines in-depth conceptual reflection with a rich selection of paradigmatic case studies from contemporary media culture. The editors have gathered a distinguished group of international scholars working at the interstices of comics studies and game studies to expl…
Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these d…
This open access book examines the significance of gay neighborhoods (or ‘gayborhoods’) from critical periods of formation during the gay liberation and freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to proven durability through the HIV/AIDS pandemic during the 1980s and 1990s, to a mature plateau since 2000. The book provides a framework for contemplating the future form and function of gay nei…
How and why did the African elite turn from loyal intermediaries into opponents of the colonial state? This book wants to help better understand the dramatic political and cultural processes of decolonization in the Belgian Congo. Focusing on the making of a bourgeois African elite, the book deals with the social identity and cultural self-representations, the daily life and political activism …
This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of …
Daily activity sees data constantly flowing through cameras, the internet, satellites, radio frequencies, sensors, private appliances, cars, smartphones, tablets and the like. Among all the tools currently used, mobile devices, especially mobile phones, smartphones and tablets, are the most widespread, with their use becoming prevalent in everyday life within both developed and developing count…
This open access book provides an introduction to multimodality and the role of multimodal texts in today’s education. Presenting a comprehensive framework for analysing and working with multimodal texts in disciplinary education, it serves as a tool for researchers and teachers alike. The second part of the book focuses on sample analyses of a variety of educational texts for different age g…
Carbon is one of the most important elements of our planet, and ninety percent of it resides inside Earth's interior. This book summarizes ten years of research by scientists involved in the Deep Carbon Observatory, a global community of 1200 scientists. It is a comprehensive guide to carbon inside Earth, including its quantities, movements, forms, origins, changes over time, and impact on plan…
This open access book discusses and analyses competing views and social implications of gestational surrogacy, which is making inroads as an option for parenthood as well as a work opportunity for women. It provides a rich account of transnational mobilizations for the abolition and regulation of surrogacy, with focus on United States, Italy and Mexico. The author critically assesses the core n…
Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit a…
The »return of great power competition« between (among others) the US, China, Russia and the EU is a major topic in contemporary public debate. But why do we think of world politics in terms of »competition«? Which information and which rules enable states and other actors in world politics to »compete« with one another? Which competitive strategies do they pursue in the complex environme…
As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral registers including derivate “languages” and “dialects,” Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Moreover, due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual activity, and religion, they are often regarded as cultural markers…
This book seeks to narrow two gaps: first, between the widespread use of case studies and their frequently 'loose' methodological moorings; and second, between the scholarly community advancing methodological frontiers in case study research and the users of case studies in development policy and practice. It draws on the contributors' collective experience at this nexus, but the underlying iss…
The public is generally enthusiastic about the latest science and technology, but sometimes research threatens the physical safety or ethical norms of society. When this happens, scientists and engineers can find themselves unprepared in the midst of an intense science policy debate. In the absence of convincing evidence, technological optimists and skeptics struggle to build consensus. In thes…
This Open-Access-book examines the phenomenon of discrimination using a descriptive approach. Discrimination is omnipresent, whether it is people who discriminate against other people or, more recently, also machines that discriminate against people. The first part of the analysis employs decision theory on discrimination, leading to two fundamental subtypes: taste-based discrimination and stat…
This book focuses on the interplay between concepts of nation, language, and individual as well as collective identities. Because literary communication happens within different kinds of power structures - linguistic, economic, political -, it often results in fascinating forms of hybridity. And though hybridity may be either foregrounded or regarded as compromise, it is a fascinating lens thro…
The Linguistics of Newswriting focuses on text production in journalistic media as both a socially relevant field of language use and as a strategic field of applied linguistics. The book discusses and paves the way for scientific projects in the emerging field of linguistics of newswriting. From empirical micro and theoretical macro perspectives, strategies and practices of research developm…
Recent research has demonstrated that, in the Roman, Late Antique, Early Islamic and Medieval worlds, glass was traded over long distances, from the Eastern Mediterranean, mainly Egypt and Israel, to Northern Africa, the Western Mediterranean and Northern Europe. Things that Travelled, a collaboration between the UCL Early Glass Technology Research Network, the Association for the History of Gl…
This open access book examines different aspects of smart cities, including technology, urban development, sustainable development, finance, and privacy and data protection. It also covers a wide range of jurisdictions in Asia-Pacific: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The book consists of two main parts. The first part includes general chapters that conceptualiz…
This open access book examines different aspects of smart cities, including technology, urban development, sustainable development, finance, and privacy and data protection. It also covers a wide range of jurisdictions in Asia-Pacific: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The book consists of two main parts. The first part includes general chapters that conceptualiz…