This open access book provides an overview of childlessness throughout Europe. It offers a collection of papers written by leading demographers and sociologists that examine contexts, causes, and consequences of childlessness in countries throughout the region. The book features data from all over Europe. It specifically highlights patterns of childlessness in Germany, France, the United Ki…
This book reports on the results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the framework of the APPRAISAL FP7 project to determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach to air quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop air quality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Following a detailed analysis of the role and structu…
This book examines social and medical responses to the disfigured face in early medieval Europe, arguing that the study of head and facial injuries can offer a new contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and culture, as well as exploring the language of violence and social interactions. Despite the prevalence of warfare and conflict in early medieval society, and a veritable indu…
Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to crea…
Academia is standing at a junction in time. Behind lies the community of the curious, ahead the mass and the market. This book joins in a growing stream of works that explore the vicissitudes of present-day European universities in what Bauman coined as liquid times. Here, a number of concerned (engaged) European scholars attempt to defend and brush up academic core values and practices, starti…
Policy-making to address grand challenges faces greater complexity than any previous project of modernization. Future scenarios are haunted by uncertainty and there is real ambivalence as to the values that policy should strive for. In this situation decision-makers look to research and innovation to provide answers and solutions. But neither can the great transitions ahead be planned by scienc…
The European Union is now a key player in making lifelong learning and adult education policy: this is the first book to explore a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives researchers can use to investigate its role. Readership: Educational Researchers and their students
This open access book analyses the domestic politics of African dominant party regimes, most notably African governments’ survival strategies, to explain their variance of opinions and responses towards the reforming policies of the EU. The author discredits the widespread assumption that the growing presence of China in Africa has made the EU’s task of supporting governance reforms difficu…
This collected volume represents the final outcome of the COST Action IS1104 “The EU in the new complex geography of economic systems: models, tools and policy evaluation”. Visualizing the EU as a complex and multi-layered network, the book is organized in three parts, each of them dealing with a different level of analysis: At the macro-level, Part I considers the interactions within la…
This report transfers the Ecological Scarcity Method (ESM) to the EU and its 28 member states. It provides a powerful tool for unbiased environmental assessments in enterprises and surveys the current impacts and the targets published by environmental authorities, specifically the European Environment Agency. ESM assesses environmental impacts of manufacturing sites and production processes. De…
This open access book presents a comparative analysis of intergroup relations and migrant integration at the neighbourhood level in Europe. Featuring a unique collection of portraits of urban relations between the majority population and immigrant minorities, it examines how relations are structured and evolve in different and increasingly diverse local societies. Inside, readers will find a co…
Aristotle’s neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past – arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their “emplotments” (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a f…
The university is one of the oldest institutions in the world. After eight hundred years, it is still going strong where many other institutions have foundered. The university even appears to be flourishing: in the Netherlands for instance, as elsewhere, student numbers continue to rise, the research enjoys a good reputation and Dutch universities’ results are impressive – certainly if one …
This book analyzes issues in human rights law from a variety of perspectives by eminent European and Asian professors of constitutional law, international public law, and European Union law. As a result, their contributions collected here illustrate the phenomenon of cross-fertilization not only in Europe (the EU and its member states and the Council of Europe), but also between Europe and …
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 …
In recent years, European political leaders from Angela Merkel to David Cameron have discarded the term multiculturalism and now express scepticism, critique and even hostility towards multicultural ways of organising their societies. Yet they are unprepared to reverse the diversity existing in their states. These contradictory choices have different political consequences in the 11 European co…
The concepts of cultural diversity and cultural identity are at the forefront of the political debate in many western societies. In Europe, the discussion is stimulated by the political pressures associated with immigration flows, which are increasing in many European countries. The imperatives that current immigration trends impose on European democracies bring to light a number of issues that…
Social Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation – understood as organizations’ capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addres…
This book presents an overall presentation and discussion of developments ever since Islam appeared on the European stage thirteen centuries ago. The events and stories presented increase the understanding of present debates on, and notions of, Islam and Muslims in Europe. This book shows that in the course of thirteen centuries the Muslim as well as Islam have undergone many metamorphoses. The…
This volume explores the production and use of medieval manuscripts that contain classical Latin texts. Six experts in the field address a range of topics related to these manuscripts, including how classical texts were disseminated throughout medieval society, how readers used and interacted with specific texts, and what these books look like from a material standpoint. This collection of essa…
Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450-1550 examines prognostic traditions and late medieval prophetic texts in the first century of printing and their effect on the new medium of print. The many prophetic and prognostic works that followed Europe's earliest known printed book---not the Gutenberg Bible, but the Sibyl's Prophecy, printed by Gutenberg two years earlier and k…
Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? The Complete History of Yugoslavia by Marie-Janine Calic provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive…
Flexicurity is a European policy agenda seeking to increase both flexibility and security in the labour-market. This book argues that it needs a revision: Although flexicurity is set out to change the way Europeans work and live, and even though it is being justified by workers’ needs, flexicurity lacks of a clear and democratically justified vision of society. Flexicurity is confronted here …
This open access collection offers a detailed mapping of recent Nordic literature and its different genres (fiction, poetry, and children’s literature) through the perspective of spatiality. Concentrating on contemporary Nordic literature, the book presents a distinctive view on the spatial turn and widens the understanding of Nordic literature outside of canonized authors. Examining literatu…
This Open Access book offers a novel view on the benefits of a lasting variation between the member states in the EU. In order to bring together thirty very different European states and their citizens, the EU will have to offer more scope for variation. Unlike the existing differentiation by means of opt-outs and deviations, variation is not a concession intended to resolve impasses in negotia…
This book investigates European citizenship after Brexit, in light of the functionalist theory of citizenship. No matter its shape, Brexit will impact significantly on what has been labelled as one of the major achievements of EU integration: Citizenship of the Union. For the first time an automatic and collective lapse of status is observed. It is a form of involuntary loss of citizenship en m…
Michael Bommes (hoogleraar Sociologie en Migratieonderzoek) was een van de meest briljante en originele geleerden in zijn vakgebied. Deze postume bundel bevat een selectie van zijn belangrijkste werk over immigratie en de verzorgingsstaat, de integratie van immigranten, discriminatie, illegale migratie, migrantennetwerken en migratiebeleidsonderzoek. Deze bundel laat zien hoe Bommes' inzichten …
This open access volume provides an understanding of the different aspects of success, school continuity and social mobility among European Roma, including the motives justifying the high rates of school dropout and failure among this group. It offers a critical and reflexive perspective about social reality from a multidisciplinary and transversal point of view, sharing knowledge and practices…
This open access book explores how digital tools and social media technologies can contribute to better participation and involvement of EU citizens in European politics. By analyzing selected representative e-participation projects at the local, national and European governmental levels, it identifies the preconditions, best practices and shortcomings of e-participation practices in connection…
The Scientific Revolution Revisited brings Mikuláš Teich back to the great movement of thought and action that transformed European science and society in the seventeenth century. Drawing on a lifetime of scholarly experience in six penetrating chapters, Teich examines the ways of investigating and understanding nature that matured during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, charting the…
Who thought of Europe as a community before its economic integration in 1957? Dina Gusejnova illustrates how a supranational European mentality was forged from depleted imperial identities. In the revolutions of 1917 to 1920, the power of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Romanoff dynasties over their subjects expired. Even though Germany lost its credit as a world power twice in that century, in …
Europe remains divided between east and west, with differences caused and worsened by uneven economic and political development. Amid these divisions, the environment has become a key battleground. The condition and sustainability of environmental resources are interlinked with systems of governance and power, from local to EU levels. Key challenges in the eastern European region today include …
This open access book discusses financial crisis management and policy in Europe and Latin America, with a special focus on equity and democracy. Based on a three-year research project by the Jean Monnet Network, this volume takes an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, analyzing both the role and impact of the EU and regional organizations in Latin America on crisis management as well as t…
A Cape of Asia collects eighteen of Wesseling’s finest essays on European History, clustered around three concerns: The Wider View, or the historical European perspective on globalization, migration and decolonization; Europe’s Identity, reflecting the shift from Eurocentrism to Americanization and Europe’s acceptance of Japan, China and India as new key players in the global economy; and…
Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue revives the dialogue between the continental European Didaktik tradition and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of curriculum. It highlights important research findings that bridge cultural differences and argues for a mutual exchange and understanding of ideas. Through analyses of shared conditions and cultural differences, the book invites a critical stance …
In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different se…
This open access book discusses several didactic traditions in mathematics education in countries across Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the Czech and Slovakian Republics, and the Scandinavian states. It shows that while they all share common features both in the practice of learning and teaching at school and in research and development, they each have special featur…
Princess Marie Adelheid of Lippe-Biesterfeld was a rebellious young writer who became a fervent Nazi. Heinrich Vogeler was a well-regarded artist who was to join the German Communist Party. Ludwig Roselius was a successful businessman who had made a fortune from his invention of decaffeinated coffee. What was it about the revolutionary climate following World War I that induced three such diffe…
The history of medieval learning has been studied both as a vertical master-student phenomenon, and as part of a broad 'educational environment'. This volume centers on the ways in which cohabiting peers learned and taught one another in a dialectical process - how they acquired knowledge and skills, but also how they developed concepts, beliefs, and adapted their behavior to suit the group: ev…
This collection of essays studies the encounter between allegedly ahistorical concepts of narratology and eighteenth-century literature. It questions whether the general concepts of narratology are as such applicable to historically specific fields, or whether they need further specification. Furthermore, at issue is the question whether the theoretical concepts actually are, despite their appe…
This open access book examines the role of citizens in sustainable energy transitions across Europe. It explores energy problem framing, policy approaches and practical responses to the challenge of securing clean, affordable and sustainable energy for all citizens, focusing on households as the main unit of analysis. The book revolves around ten contributions that each summarise national trend…
This open access book raises crucial questions about the citizenship of the European Union. Is it a new citizenship beyond the nation-state although it is derived from Member State nationality? Who should get it? What rights and duties does it entail? Should EU citizens living in other Member States be able to vote there in national elections? If there are tensions between free movement and soc…
This edited volume offers the first comprehensive historical overview of the Belgian medical field in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its chapters develop narratives that go beyond traditional representations of medicine in national overviews, which have focused mostly on stateprofession interactions. Instead, the chapters bring more complex histories of health, care and citizenship. Th…
This book includes studies of main conflict areas in modern Western societies where religion has been a central element, ranging from popular movements and narratives of opposition to challenges of religious satire and anti-clerical critique. Special attention is given to matters of politics and gender. With this theme, it provides a useful guide to conflict areas in modern European religious h…
This book provides an in-depth study of the management of standards and regulation in sustainable and radical innovation development. It considers the case of micro Combined Heat and Power (mCHP) technology. The developers of this radical innovation in the European heating sector encountered major conflicts when attempting to create or adapt standards when bringing the technology to market. Ut…
Although fragments from music manuscripts have occupied a place of considerable importance since the very early days of modern musicology, a collective, up-to-date, and comprehensive discussion of the various techniques and approaches for their study was lacking. On-line resources have also become increasingly crucial for the identification, study, and textual/musical reconstruction of fragment…
Lancelot “Capability” Brown was one of the most influential landscape designers of the eighteenth-century at a time when Britain was changing radically from an agrarian to an industrial and colonial nation, whilst Europe was periodically convulsed by war and revolution. The extent and nature of his influence are, however, fiercely debated. Brown worked at hundreds of important sites across …
This volume is an indispensable resource for scholars and students of medieval Scandinavia. This polyglot dictionary draws on the vast and vibrant range of vernacular legal terminology found in medieval Scandinavian texts – terminology which yields valuable insights into the quotidian realities of crime and retribution; the processes, application and execution of laws; and the cultural and so…
This open access collection is devoted to an in-depth, qualitative analysis of practices of cross-national solidarity in response to the current political and social crises, from citizens’ initiatives to networks of cooperation among civil society actors. The book analyses existing informal groups at the grassroots, furthering transnational solidarity in three thematic areas: disabili…
By using history and theory of communication as an integrative methodological device, this book reaches out to those properties of totalitarian society which appear to be beyond the grasp of specific disciplines. Furthermore, this functional approach allows to extend the analysis of communicative practices commonly associated with fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, to other locations…