Humanities & Social Sciences

In 2007, 144 UN member states voted to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US were the only members to vote against it. Each eventually changed its position. This book explains why and examines what the Declaration could mean for sovereignty, citizenship and democracy in liberal societies such as these. It takes Canadian Chief Justice Lamer's remark that 'we are all here to stay’ to mean that indigenous peoples are ‘here to stay’ as indigenous. The book examines indigenous and state critiques of the Declaration but argues that, ultimately, it is an instrument of significant transformative potential showing how state sovereignty need not be a power that is exercised over and above indigenous peoples. Nor is it reasonably a power that displaces indigenous nations’ authority over their own affairs. The Declaration shows how and why, and this book argues that in doing so, it supports more inclusive ways of thinking about how citizenship and democracy may work better. The book draws on the Declaration to imagine what non-colonial political relationships could look like in liberal societies.

This open access book provides insights from Indigenous higher degree research (HDR) students on supervision practices in an Australian context. It examines findings from qualitative studies conducted with Indigenous HDR students from different academic disciplines, enrolled higher education institutions across Australia, and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. Six types of data and their thematic analyses are presented, to understand the needs and experiences of both Indigenous HDR students and supervisors of Indigenous HDR students. This book also unpacks assumptions and commonly held beliefs about Indigenous HDR students, and shares what Indigenous HDRs report they need to experience success in higher education. It reports the experiences of supervisors of Indigenous HDR students, and explore further opportunities which enhance the higher education experiences of Indigenous HDR students. This book also suggests how successful relationships between Indigenous HDR students, and their supervisors may be fostered, and aims to be a useful resource for Indigenous peoples wishing to pursue higher education, and HDR supervisors in countries with Indigenous populations.

The book presents different perspectives of analysis and new models of experience, reconfirming the importance assigned to the wellbeing and human-centered approach in the contemporary spatial design disciplinary debate. The focus on “engaging spaces” is due to the increase of participatory experiences in the design strategies supporting designers who want create tailor made environment to feel people more conscious of the great value of social relations. The title of the book anticipates the aim to explore the transformation process which we are living, both in private and in public spaces, underlining the central role of design to define new qualities of connections to live together in relation with the space around us. The volume is divided into two parts described below. The first, “Social design for engaging spaces”, explores private and public space case studies introducing new hybrid dimensions through the social engagement in “living communities” and reports participatory design approaches in the transformation processes of shared common spaces, such as schools, intended as incubators of social practices. The second, “Experience design for engaging spaces”, describes more in-depth the experience of human beings in relation to physical and emotional aspects of space, focusing on the quality of the built environment that deeply affects people’s wellbeing, social interaction, and cohesion, and investigating ephemeral practices and projects to experience design through a conscious sensorial approach. The pandemic and the return to a “post-pandemic new normal” have led us to further reflect on the spatial processes of transformation and hybridization and their shared use in both the private and public spheres, exploring the importance of participatory and engaging strategies in the different phases of the design process with the aim to increase social awareness. Being back to the physical perception of spaces has confirmed the importance of evaluating the project’s sensorial aspects with a new awareness. This novel attitude leads to rediscovering the values of measurable space in the constant confrontation with the virtual perspective that triumphed during the pandemic, introducing the “time” factor in the design discipline even with a broader complexity than before.

The volume, dedicated to the 44th International Conference of the Italian Union for Drawing, investigates the theme of ‘Transitions’, which particularly effectively represents our time and the current condition of the discipline of Drawing. The term, beyond its generic meaning of an intermediate stage in a process in which a condition changes from one state to another, has always been used in various fields, from music to geophysics. In fact, the disciplines of drawing have always been confronted with themes and issues relating to transitions from one condition to another. The history of representation tells us of transformations, even epochal ones, relating to ‘drawing’, with all that such transitions entail: suffice it to think of the evolution of forms of representation, of instrumental apparatuses, of the mutability of supports, of the analogical-digital transition underway, of the new modes of communication on platforms, of the hypertrophic offer of images also on the net that confirms Guy Debord’s intuitions relating to the new spectacularisation of society. Similarly, representation triggers transitions in the prefiguration and communication of design, the anticipation and foreshadowing of future events.The challenges posed by the digital pose open questions whose scope can only be glimpsed, such as the relationship between drawing and the act of modelling, and the construction of new paradigms of visual language and communication. ‘Transitions’, almost implicitly, points to possible futures, the evolution of technique and the search for new modes of expression; at the same time, however, it can suggest silences and reflections in a process of connection between history, theory, criticism and construction.

This collective volume celebrates that 75 years ago the foundation was laid for the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The contributions to this volume exemplify the evolution of the academic disciplines of anthropology and development studies at Radboud University in the course of its history. Radboud University itself celebrates its centenary in the year 2023. Originally this university was established for the emancipation of the Catholic population in the Netherlands. Emancipation continues to be a distinctive feature of the university’s policy, also of the scholarship as it is conducted in the department of anthropology and development studies. As emancipation and engagement are key concepts in the disciplines of anthropology and development studies at Radboud University, former and current staff members focus their contributions to this anniversary volume on the various meanings of the concepts of emancipation and engagement in their academic practices. They reflect on changes in the meaning of engaged scholarship in their own work, especially in relation to emancipatory issues. The outcome is a rich variety of contributions centering on the shifting tension between engagement and scholarship in the disciplines of anthropology and development studies. Thus, they not only exemplify the evolution of these academic disciplines at Radboud University, but also offer a topical and innovative perspective on a highly dynamic field.

This book is the second of two volumes on deaf multiliteracies based on research with deaf children and adults in India, Uganda and Ghana. Multiliteracies include not only reading and writing but also skills in sign language, drawing, acting, digitally mediated communication, and other modes. The book covers a variety of themes including learner engagement, classroom practice, capacity building, and education systems. Authors discuss aspects of learning such as the sequencing of different multiliteracies skills in the classroom, a gamified approach to English grammar, a sign-bilingual online environment, and the influence of visual materials on learners' participation. Capacity building with young deaf professionals and a comparative discussion of deaf education systems in three countries also feature in the volume. The book is of interest to both researchers and practitioners. In addition to four research chapters, it features four 'innovation sketches'. These are reports of innovative practices that have arisen in the context of the research, and they are particularly relevant for practitioners with an interest in methodologies.

Wo Wissensdifferenzen sich vervielfältigen, entstehen neue Herausforderungen der Vermittlung. Wie ermöglicht Vermittlung einerseits Verständigung und wie werden andererseits Differenzen konturiert und geordnet? Die Beiträger*innen beleuchten hierzu ein breites Spektrum an Vermittlungsverhältnissen – von der Wissensweitergabe über die Aushandlung divergierender Wissensansprüche bis hin zu Fällen, in denen die Notwendigkeit der Aufrechterhaltung von Differenz betont wird. Der Band bietet somit einen differenzierten Einblick in aktuelle Konstellationen von Wissensdifferenzen und Varianten der Problematisierung ihrer Vermittelbarkeit.

South Australia is a small economy that faces a fundamental need to re-shape its approach to innovation. The manufacturing sector, as the backbone of the state’s economy, has and will continue to change in its nature and form. This necessitates a re-think about how innovation happens and how the respective actors within an economy interact and engage with each other. In effect, innovation relies on intersections between people, knowledge, information sharing, ideas, financial and other resources. Innovation happens through regional social and economic system dynamics; innovation relies on a system view of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be taken as a study of the entrepreneur and new business creation. However, this conception of entrepreneurship misses the critical link to economic outcomes; the ebb and flow of social and economic fortunes that are underpinned by the actions, reactions and engagement of individuals in a specific social and economic system that brings about innovation and change. In this book the authors are exploring how the linkages within the system can be conceptualised and made transparent.

The author proposes a classification of the mechanisms of citizenship in "popolo" regimes, placing them against the background of belonging to the civic body without participation, the result of the rigidification of the political and social system in the first decades of the 14th century. The contribution investigates what the definition of all the cives was according to what emerges from the lists prepared by the municipalities, how they were evaluated on the basis of the estimates and land registers, how they could negotiate their status, and how the exclusion mechanisms adopted worked .

If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or 1930s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia L. Mickenberg uncovers in American Girls in Red Russia, there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though more were just intrigued by the “Soviet experiment.” But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, some by the mundane realities, others by horrifying truths. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia as they sought models for a revolutionary new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Soviet women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare. Even women from Soviet national minorities—many recently unveiled—became public figures, as African American and Jewish women noted. Yet as Mickenberg’s collective biography shows, Russia turned out to be as much a grim commune as a utopia of freedom, replete with economic, social, and sexual inequities. American Girls in Red Russia recounts the experiences of women who saved starving children from the Russian famine, worked on rural communes in Siberia, wrote for Moscow or New York newspapers, or performed on Soviet stages. Mickenberg finally tells these forgotten stories, full of hope and grave disappointments.

This book is an integrated examination of Japanese politics in the first two decades of the 21st century, as viewed from the perspective of ""anxiety over governance."" By empirically highlighting the social-environmental, political environmental, and sociocultural changes that have underlined the long-term political participation and voting behavior of Japanese citizens, the book provides deep insight into how modern democracies function and are perceived in post-industrial societies and reveals the specific processes by which Japanese politics have changed. Additionally, the book provides an analysis of the decline in social capital, the shrinking variety of political parties, and the intermingling of Asian values with liberal democratic values. By examining anxiety over governance, the chapters explore the links between anxiety and Japanese political behavior, revealing that, despite the high regard for democratic politics, Japanese citizens generally experienced a high level of anxiety and negative evaluation of the government, including countermeasures against COVID-19. Featuring surveys of Japanese political behavior over a period of more than 40 years, this book will be valuable reading for students and scholars of Japanese Politics, Political Behavior, and Psychology. The introduction, chapter 4 and chapter 5 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

The 14th volume of the “Historical-Critical Edition of Arthur Schnitzler’s Early Works” – edited by Konstanze Fliedl since 2010 – presents Schnitzler's novella “Der Witwer” and the one-act play “Die Gefährtin,” which Schnitzler developed from the novella. The entire corpus of material is genetically reconstructed; the manuscripts are reproduced as facsimiles and provided with diplomatic transcriptions. Furthermore, the volume includes reading texts with a critical apparatus, detailed descriptions of the genesis, premieres, and the printing history based on additional sources and testimonies, and a commentary.

These contributions offer fundamental insights into how literary works address and reconceptualize issues of nationalism, groupism, belonging and denationalization in selected European contexts. Various critical perspectives are employed here to highlight modern social and political processes as registered and, to a certain extent, also fashioned by contemporary literary discourses. ‘Reimagined communities’ emerge from literary redescriptions of existing or imaginary sociopolitical configurations in several European states or regions. All the contributions share a heightened sensitivity to the individual as enmeshed in oppressive geopolitical circumstances. Thereby, literary expressions of how individuality is constrained by social pressures may offer inspiring blueprints for emancipation.

In Zeiten vielschichtiger Krisen stellt der beschleunigte soziale Wandel Spaniens zwischen 2011 und 2016 ein Paradebeispiel für polarisierte Gesellschaften dar. Die Platzbesetzungen der Indignados (der »Empörten«) und die ihnen folgenden Entwicklungen in Zivilgesellschaft und Politik veränderten das Land grundlegend. Mit Diskursanalysen, Interviews, Ethnographien und einer historischen Einbettung rekonstruiert Conrad Lluis in einer umfassenden empirischen Studie die politischen Umbrüche Spaniens. Parallel dazu entfaltet er im Dialog mit der Empirie eine Hegemonietheorie, die Laclau und Mouffe weiterdenkt, und ebnet damit den Weg für eine postfundamentalistische Sozialtheorie.

Innerhalb einer prägenden Kultur der Digitalität wird die Frage in der Wissenschaft, was als »Digital Humanities« zu bezeichnen ist, immer komplexer. Aus philosophischer, medienwissenschaftlicher, soziologischer, historischer und literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive erkunden die Beiträger*innen das Verhältnis von digitalen und »traditionellen« Geisteswissenschaften. Sie fragen nach methodischen Unterschieden und den verschiedenen zugrundeliegenden Heuristiken, aber auch nach Ähnlichkeiten und Mischungsverhältnissen. Im Zentrum steht neben einer praxeologischen Musterung gegenwärtiger Arbeitsweisen und ihrer diskursiven Voraussetzungen die Untersuchung einiger theoretisch-methodischer Probleme, die aktuell wieder virulent werden.