Humanities & Social Sciences

Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narra¬tive, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of narrative theory and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, it interrogates the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity. The book’s international group of contributors covers a wide range of primary texts that belong to the literary traditions of Latinx, African American, Native American, Asian American, Jewish American, and Arab American communities. They demonstrate that paying attention to the formal features of these texts changes our under¬standing of narrative theory and that narrative theories can help us to think about their representations of time and space, the narration of trauma and other emotional memories, and the importance of literary (meta)paratexts, genre structures, and author functions.

This international collection discusses how the individualised, reflexive, late modern era has changed the way we experience and act on our emotions. Divided into four sections that include studies ranging across multiple continents and centuries, Emotions in Late Modernity does the following: Demonstrates an increased awareness and experience of emotional complexity in late modernity by challenging the legal emotional/rational divide; positive/negative concepts of emotional valence; sociological/ philosophical/psychological divisions around emotion, morality and gender; and traditional understandings of love and loneliness. Reveals tension between collectivised and individualised-privatised emotions in investigating ‘emotional sharing’ and individualised responsibility for anger crimes in courtrooms; and the generation of emotional energy and achievement emotions in classrooms. Debates the increasing mediation of emotions by contrasting their historical mediation (through texts and bodies) with contemporary digital mediation of emotions in classroom teaching, collective mobilisations (e.g. riots) and film and documentary representations. Demonstrates reflexive micro and macro management of emotions, with examinations of the ‘politics of fear’ around asylum seeking and religious subjects, and collective commitment to climate change mitigation. The first collection to investigate the changing nature of emotional experience in contemporary times, Emotions in Late Modernity will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology of emotions, cultural studies, political science and psychology.

Education for Sustainable Development; Green Growth; Green Jobs; Inclusive Growth; Equity in the Promotion of Economic Growth; Environmental Education; Green Economies

Double-Sided Antler and Bone Combs in Late Roman Britain rs the first detailed study and catalogue of a comb type that represents a new technology introduced into Britain towards the end of the 4th century AD and a major signifier of the late fourth- to fifth-century transition. Their end-plates were worked into a variety of decorative profiles, some clearly zoomorphic. Over time this decorative styling passed from elaborate to rudimentary, adding to the dating evidence for individual combs. As many combs survive only as small fragments, data collection has not been absolute but has concentrated on combs from burials, or with stylistically relevant end-plates, or those providing good dating or contextual evidence, the main aim of the study being to answer questions of typology, chronology and social distribution. A particularly distinctive feature within the assemblage from funerary contexts is the substantial number of these combs from Winchester, which together make up nearly a quarter of the wider British assemblage. It is proposed that a comb workshop was established in the town, and there is some evidence based on style and distribution that points to other workshops in the north and east, but these were not necessarily large and in some cases they appeared to serve only a local community, while Winchester and its hinterland appear to lie at the heart of the comb data.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are widely acknowledged for their contribution to economic growth and development and continue to draw sustained interest from policymakers and academics. Despite their importance, SMEs remain vulnerable to major shocks and rapid technological change, particularly the advancements associated with Industry 4.0 (also referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution). Many SMEs lack the financial and technical capacity to assess, adopt and integrate these emerging technologies effectively. This book addresses these challenges by demonstrating how SMEs can leverage supply chains as a strategic source of resilience, competitive advantage and technological adaptation. It argues that embedding SMEs within the supply chains in which they operate is essential for navigating the complex technology landscape of Industry 4.0. Instead of viewing themselves as passive observers of technological disruption, SMEs should recognise their potential to become active participants – and even leaders – in increasingly digital supply chain ecosystems. The book consists of 10 chapters of original scholarly work, covering themes such as intelligent manufacturing (IM), blockchain technology (BCT), augmented and virtual reality, digital supply chain transformation and SME resilience. It is one of the few works that integrates the often siloed discussions of Industry 4.0, supply chain dynamics and SME development.

Small postal offices, built between the Seventies and Eighties of the twentieth century in Italian urban centres that were not provincial capitals and with a population of less than 1500 inhabitants, were the result of an impressive public building program and a complex research work coordinated by the architect Pierluigi Spadolini. The study was the basis of the first pilot experiment of the application of industrialized processes in a national public building program. The innovative contents of the project involved all phases of the building process: from the contract management process to the architectural study, from the relationship with the construction and production companies to the rationalization of the procedures for the purchase, supply and storage of the elements for future maintenance works. Some of these post offices have been demolished, but many are still in use and are very recognizable in the Italian suburbian context. This book aims to participate in the enhancement of this built heritage, considered as an icon of the transition from a building approach with essentially traditional features to the rare experiments of industrialization of construction processes, also extended to the small peripheral areas of the country, sporadically involved in the processes of modernization of Italian building techniques.

Ebooks are coming of age in education, as this exciting collection commissioned by Jisc demonstrates. Case studies, reflecting ebook success stories across the higher and further education sectors, include: - An innovative app to encourage ebook take-up in a Welsh college. - A partnership between a library and research centre to create open access monographs and midigraphs. - Several examples of creative negotiations with ebook publishers. Insight chapters address hot topics in the ebook universe, including: - The changing world of access to scholarly digital content in the mobile environment. - The challenges faced by the library as online distance learning moves from margin to mainstream. - How ebooks have the potential to meet a wide range of accessibility needs. - Experimentation with ebooks as a shared service. This collection will provide inspiration and guidance to institutions as they develop projects and services to support students and researchers and will be of interest to library practitioners, publishers, ebook vendors, information professionals, teachers, lecturers and students. Jisc, in collaboration with Ubiquity Press, is pleased to be making this publication available open access on a CC-BY licence. (DOI: http://dx.doi.org//10.5334/bal)

Theodor Nöldeke war einer der bekanntesten und einflussreichsten Orientalisten im Kaiserreich und weit darüber hinaus. Seine Haltung zu Nation, Religion und Wissenschaft bot vielen jüdischen Wissenschaftlern die Chance, sich aufgrund ihrer Leistungen einen Platz in der Gelehrtenwelt zu sichern. Die erhaltenen Briefe seiner vor allem jüdischen Korrespondenten geben einen Einblick in deren Lebenswelt, Karrierewege aber auch Herausforderungen und bieten so einen Beitrag zur deutsch-jüdischen Geschichte. Neben bekannten Größen wie Abraham Geiger kommen Gelehrte zu Wort, die z. T. ganz vergessen wurden, wie etwa der Breslauer Professor Siegmund Fraenkel. Neben diesem wissenschaftsgeschichtlich weitestgehend unberücksichtigten Handeln und Wirken Nöldekes für jüdische Gelehrte, wird ein weiterer Aspekt beleuchtet: Sein Auftreten im außerwissenschaftlichen, öffentlichen Rahmen. Wie unterschiedlich dies vor allem außerhalb der Wissenschaftswelt wahrgenommen wurde und wie wichtig es für uns heute ist, beide Seiten zusammenzubringen, zeigt dieses Buch.

Where the last three decades of the 20th century witnessed a China rising on to the global economic stage, the first three decades of the 21st century are almost certain to bring with them the completion of that rise, not only in economic, but also political and geopolitical terms. China’s integration into the global economy has brought one-fifth of the global population into the world trading system, which has increased global market potential and integration to an unprecedented level. The increased scale and depth of international specialisation propelled by an enlarged world market has offered new opportunities to boost world production, trade and consumption; with the potential for increasing the welfare of all the countries involved. However, China’s integration into the global economy has forced a worldwide reallocation of economic activities. This has increased various kinds of friction in China’s trading and political relations with others, as well as generating several globally significant externalities. Finding ways to accommodate China’s rise in a way that ensures the future stability and prosperity of the world economy and polity is probably the most important task facing the world community in the first half of the 21st century. The book delves into these issues to reflect upon the wide range of opportunities and challenges that have emerged in the context of a rising China.

Gambling Debt is a game-changing contribution to the discussion of economic crises and neoliberal financial systems and strategies. Iceland’s 2008 financial collapse was the first case in a series of meltdowns, a warning of danger in the global order. This full-scale anthropology of financialization and the economic crisis broadly discusses this momentous bubble and burst and places it in theoretical, anthropological, and global historical context through descriptions of the complex developments leading to it and the larger social and cultural implications and consequences.

This book provides a thorough revision of the image of the public church under the Dutch Republic after the Peace of Westphalia and before the onset of the 'high Enlightenment'. Traditional church history considers the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a period of decline. Yet this was the high tide of Dutch expansion when Dutch society was extremely rich. In its five universities and its highly literate population internationally acknowledged scholarship, arts and sciences flowered. Did really nothing of all this vitality rub off on the public religion? Rather than the traditional static image of a rather joyless and ossified orthodoxy, an exploration of the interface between the Reformed church and Dutch society at large reveals a religious culture that had much to offer to various audiences, in the sphere of knowledge production as well as in the form of spiritual solace and everything in between.

Research on the Chilean social mobilization of the last decades, the exhaustion of the neoliberal model and the search for alternatives

Modulation: The Parameter-Image offers a new way to understand what images are and how they work. Instead of treating pictures as fixed representations of the world, this book argues that every image is a field of variation—something continuously adjusted, tuned and transformed. From the mechanical instruments of the Renaissance to today’s generative AI, images have always been shaped by certain parameters: brightness and contrast, scale and resolution, signal and noise. Modulation, the art of varying within limits, is the deep logic behind all imaging. Tracing this idea across mechanical, optical, electrical, electronic and algorithmic media, the book shows how images emerge not as single artefacts but as dynamic processes. It links the sliders of photo-editing software to the vanishing points of perspective drawing, the tuning of radio signals and the latent spaces of machine learning. Each chapter demonstrates how cultures of modulation have organised the visible—technically, aesthetically and politically. Drawing on philosophy, media archaeology and art history, this volume reinterprets thinkers such as Gilbert Simondon to propose a theory of the ‘parameter-image’: an image defined by its range of possible variations rather than its fixed form. Written by a scholar whose background bridges philosophy, media theory and visual culture, it offers both conceptual clarity and historical depth. It will appeal to readers in media and cultural studies, art and design, philosophy and aesthetics and anyone interested in how images—past and present—are made to move, vary and think.

First Published in 1980. The dynamism within the American colonies in the fifty years or so before the outbreak of the crisis of the 1760s that was to lead to the Revolution has never been in doubt. The articles written included in this text suggest a number of ways in which the ‘imperial factor’ was of real importance in colonial life and show that there was dynamism on the British side as well as in the colonies.

"There are few linguistic phenomena that have seduced linguists so skillfully as grammatical case has done. Ever since Panini (4th Century BC), case has claimed a central role in linguistic theory and continues to do so today. However, despite centuries worth of research, case has yet to reveal its most important secrets. This book offers breakthrough explanations for the understanding of case through agent-based experiments in cultural language evolution. The experiments demonstrate that case systems may emerge because they have a selective advantage for communication: they reduce the cognitive effort that listeners need for semantic interpretation, while at the same time limiting the cognitive resources required for doing so."