Humanities & Social Sciences

Current design rules for timber joints with dowel-type fasteners require input parameters such as yield moment and withdrawal capacity, which are determined within the European framework of certification testing. Databases containing these data were assembled. A large scatter was observed. Bespoke series may deliver clear trends. If representative data is considered, these clear trends vanish. Globally valid regression equations are conservative leading to incorrect prediction of failure modes.

The Asian Yearbook of International Law is a major refereed publication dedicated to international law issues as seen primarily from an Asian perspective. Readership: Academics and practitioners who deal with international public law in Asia will appreciate this unique, complete resource. The Asian Yearbook of International Law provides insight into Asian views and practices, especially for non-Asian readers, and also promotes the dissemination of knowledge of international law in Asia.

With this volume, the editors Katharina Edtstadler, Sandra Folie, and Gianna Zocco propose an extension of the traditional conception of imagology as a theory and method for studying the cultural construction and literary representation of national, usually European characters. Consisting of an instructive introduction and 21 articles, the book relates this sub-field of comparative literature to contemporary political developments and enriches it with new interdisciplinary, transnational, intersectional, and intermedial perspectives. The contributions offer [1] a reconsideration and update of the field’s methods, genres, and theoretical frames; [2] trans-/post-national, migratory, and marginalized perspectives beyond the European nation-state; [3] insights into geopolitical dichotomies such as Orient/Occident; [4] intersectional approaches considering the entanglements of national images with notions of age, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity/race; [5] investigations of the role of national images in visual narratives and music.

This open access book contributes to thriving debates in academic as well as professional circles about the role of civil society in shrinking civic spaces, rising authoritarianism and right-wing populism, conflicts, fragile states, and most lately, the global COVID-19 pandemic. This is one of the first books to address the implications of changing civic spaces for civil society organizations worldwide. It offers a unique overview of how social movements and civil society groups in very different settings are responding to state-imposed restrictions of basic civic freedoms. The authors are all experts in the field, and their analyses are based on original and onsite research. This unique book also contributes to a better understanding of the conceptualizations and practices of civil society. It is of keen interest to academic scholars, students, civil society practitioners, and policy makers in the field of international development research and civil society action.

From the mountains of South America to the deserts of northern Africa to the islands of south Asia, people have devised myriad ways of moving water to sustain their communities and nourish their crops. Many of these irrigation methods have been used over long periods of time and continue to function in diverse ecological and sociopolitical contexts. This book presents case studies and comparative essays about local institutions for managing water resources. Drawn from around the globe, the cases clearly demonstrate that "indigenous" irrigation is often more sustainable, cost-effective, and flexible than has been generally believed. The contributors discuss a wide range of environments, cultural traditions, and historical contexts in which such systems operate, maintaining a common focus on incentives for cooperation, operational rules, collective-choice arrangements, principles of allocation, and conflict-resolution mechanisms. Canals and Communities can serve as a sourcebook for social scientists and development planners investigating the cultural ecology of irrigated agriculture, the ethnology of cooperative social formations, the politics of collective-resource institutions, and the sociology of rural development. The book also provides examples and generalizations about the cross-cultural characteristics of sustainable water resource management and intensive agriculture. Aside from its theoretical contributions to human ecology and anthropology, the book is of practical importance to development studies. The cases it presents make a convincing argument for perpetuating small-scale irrigation systems as part of the world's repertoire of irrigation knowledge and resources. CONTENTS Introduction The Ethnology of Irrigation: Cross-Cultural Characteristics of Local Water Management, Jonathan B. Mabry Patterns of Cooperation and Conflict in Local Irrigation 1. La Gente es Muy Perra: Conflict and Cooperation over Irrigation Water in Cucurpe, Sonora, Mexico, Thomas E. Sheridan 2. Dhasheeg Agriculture in the Jubba Valley of Somalia, Catherine Besteman 3. The Dry and the Drier: Cooperation and Conflict in Moroccan Irrigation, John R. Welch 4. The Political Ecology of Irrigation in an Andean Peasant Community, Paul H. Gelles Methods and Models for Analyzing Local Irrigation 5. Rapid Rural Appraisal of Arid Land Irrigation: A Moroccan Example, John R. Welch, Jonathan B. Mabry, and Hsain Ilahiane 6. Simulation Modelling of Balinese Irrigation, J. Stephen Lansing 7. Institutional Innovation in Small-Scale Irrigation Networks: A Cape Verdean Case, Mark W. Langworthy and Timothy J. Finan Development Lessons from Local Irrigation 8. Qanats and Rural Societies: Sustainable Agriculture and Irrigation Cultures in Contemporary Iran, Michael E. Bonine 9. The Utility of Tradition in Sri Lankan Bureaucratic Irrigation: The Case of the Kirindi Oya Project, Pamela Stanbury 10. The Relevance of Indigenous Irrigation: A Comparative Analysis of Sustainability, Jonathan B. Mabry and David A. Cleveland Conclusion The Hydraulics of History: Evolutionary Trajectories of Local and Centralized Irrigation, Jonathan B. Mabry

Integrationsprogramme für Neuzuwanderer haben in den vergangenen Jahren in Europa eine starke Expansion erfahren. Die Erwartungen an diese neue politische Maßnahme sind hoch. Wie lässt sich jedoch erklären, dass die Niederlande als ehemaliger Vorreiter in Europa ihr Programm abgeschafft haben? Dieses Buch vergleicht zunächst die Einführung und Ausgestaltung der Programme in den Niederlanden, Frankreich und Deutschland und analysiert dann das Aufkommen alternativer Strategien, die die bisher staatlich verantwortete Integrationsaufgabe in weiten Teilen auf den Zuwanderer übertragen.

Is it possible for a state to exist without a military in an increasingly divided and heavily militarized world? The answer is “yes.” Twenty-one sovereign countries do not maintain standing armies. Many of them are small island states and the majority chose not to create armed forces upon attaining independence. Demilitarization, the act of abolishing an extant army, occurs much more infrequently because it clashes with the interests of powerful organizations, especially the armed forces themselves. Some European mini states scrapped their armies centuries ago. But two Central American countries, Costa Rica and Panama, and two Caribbean Island nations, Dominica and Grenada, dispensed with their militaries after World War II. Armyless states share some important commonalities: (1) The decision to demilitarize or not to have an army always follows a pivotal moment (military coup, foreign invasion, reaching independence) in history; (2) they have bilateral security arrangements and/or an alliance with a regional hegemon; (3) they have not been attacked or invaded; (4) they maintain public safety and border security organizations; (5) they are consolidated democracies; and (6) they are more prosperous and spend more on healthcare, education, and socioeconomic development than their neighbors with armed forces. While States without Armies engages all twenty-one demilitarized states, it focuses on the experiences of Costa Rica, Iceland, Mauritius, Panama, and the Solomon Islands. The book’s ambition is to introduce a general audience to the world of non-militarized states and contribute to the peace studies, small states, and international affairs literatures.

Lebanon hosts the highest number of refugees per capita worldwide and is central to European policies of outsourcing migration management. Hybrid Political Order and the Politics of Uncertainty is the first book to critically and comprehensively explore the parallels between the country’s engagement with the recent Syrian refugee influx and the more protracted Palestinian presence. Drawing on fieldwork, qualitative case-studies, and critical policy analysis, it questions the dominant idea that the haphazardness, inconsistency, and fragmentation of refugee governance are only the result of forced displacement or host state fragility and the related capacity problems. It demonstrates that the endemic ambiguity that determines refugee governance also results from a lack of political will to create coherent and comprehensive rules of engagement to address refugee ‘crises.’ Building on emerging literatures in the fields of critical refugee studies, hybrid governance, and ignorance studies, it proposes an innovative conceptual framework to capture the spatial, temporal, and procedural dimensions of the uncertainty that refugees face and to tease out the strategic components of the reproduction and extension of such informality, liminality, and exceptionalism. In developing the notion of a ‘politics of uncertainty,’ ambiguity is explored as a component of a governmentality that enables the control, exploitation, and expulsion of refugees.

One of the most troubling but least studied features of mass political violence is why mass violence often recurs in the same place over long periods of time. Douglas Kammen explores this pattern in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor, studying East Timor’s tragic past, and focusing on the small district of Maubara. This book combines an archival trail and rich oral interviews to reconstruct the history of the leading families of Maubara from 1712 until 2012.

Andrew Ford here addresses, in a manner both engaging and richly informed, the perennial questions of what poetry is, how it came to be, and what it is for. Focusing on the critical moment in Western literature when the heroic tales of the Greek oral tradition began to be preserved in writing, he examines these questions in the light of Homeric poetry. Through fresh readings of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and referring to other early epics as well, Ford deepens our understanding of what poetry was at a time before written texts, before a developed sense of authorship, and before the existence of institutionalized criticism. Placing what is known about Homer's art in the wider context of Homer's world, Ford traces the effects of the oral tradition upon the development of the epic and addresses such issues as the sources of the poet's inspiration and the generic constraints upon epic composition. After exploring Homer's poetic vocabulary and his fictional and mythical representations of the art of singing, Ford reconstructs an idea of poetry much different from that put forth by previous interpreters. Arguing that Homer grounds his project in religious rather than literary or historical terms, he concludes that archaic poetry claims to give a uniquely transparent and immediate rendering of the past. Homer: The Poetry of the Past will be stimulating and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the traditions of poetry, as well as for students and scholars in the fields of classics, literary theory and literary history, and intellectual history.

Dedicated to housing courtly architectural models, Landgrave Karl founded the so-called Modellhaus at the beginning of the 18th-century, an unusual building which went on to become one of the most admired sights of its time. The collection included, most importantly, a monumental model of the most famous of all the Kassel artworks, namely the statue of Hercules overlooking the extensive Karlsberg gardens. Through recently discovered plans, files, and contemporary travel memoirs, this book retraces the story of this unique building and its collection which lasted almost a century, guiding us through Berlin, Saint Petersburg, and Paris, to reveal the continuing importance of models.

This open access book addresses the discourse that creates, modifies, and reshapes the law, as well as discourse participants. The book focuses on the actors operating in legal regimes and their subtly, bluntly, or even outright aggressive impact on the formation of laws. As the book examines the intersection of domestic, European, international, and even transnational, legal regimes where new law emerges as a product of this discourse, it contributes to the understanding of the mobility of law and contemporary law’s interactive nature. This book provides enlightening examples of diverse legal fields influenced by international, non-domestic actors. It covers a wide range of relevant topics, from financial sanctions to the rights of indigenous peoples, and addresses actors ranging from the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights to disability organizations. By exploring actors, the book stresses their objectives and driving forces behind their efforts to influence law. The book reveals an array of diverging methods used by international actors to influence law. Additionally, the book resonates with Nordic legal tradition and highlights Nordic commitment to rule of law and equality. The authors are members of the Finnish branch of the International Law Association (ILA) and recognized experts in their particular fields and have been afforded freedom to adopt the approach they perceive as best suited to their topic. The book is aimed at a broad range of readers involved in academic research and study; lawyers working in government departments, international organizations, or private practice with an international focus; as well as policy makers and influencers in international organizations, government bodies, and non-governmental organizations.

Wann immer wir mit anderen zusammenkommen, befinden wir uns wie selbstverständlich in Kopräsenz. Aber was genau bedeutet es, »zusammen« zu sein? Erfordert es immer physische Anwesenheit oder ist Kopräsenz auch anders möglich? Angesichts des rasanten Wandels moderner Kommunikationstechnologien räumt Heiko Hausendorf mit einigen Mythen auf und wirft einen Blick auf die Entstehung und die Zukunft von Kopräsenz. Diese ist konstitutiv für die Menschwerdung und bildet bis heute den Nährboden für die Entstehung von Sprache – was die Beschäftigung mit Kopräsenz auch weit über die Linguistik hinaus für alle interessant macht, die sich für soziale Interaktion interessieren.

W National Park lies in the border triangle of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger in West Africa. Established under French colonial rule in 1927, it was designated as the first African transborder biosphere reserve in 2002. Although the Benin part of the reserve was given a participatory management approach in 2002, illegal hunting, logging, transborder mobile herding and cash cropping continue to pose important threats to the reserve. The whole area, especially the buffer zone, is a source of conflicts between the different adjacent communities and between communities and park administration. The book analyses how the surveillance teams operate in this context. It describes encounters between park surveillance staff and local stakeholders in three different arenas: the park’s core area, adjacent villages and public political forums. It shows how, in a setting dominated largely by cash crop production, the abstract idea „national park“ is being translated by park staff and how in the process local meanings of the idea emerge. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research between 2008 and 2010, this book contributes to the current state of research on participatory natural resources management. Moreover, it provides insights into the working of state administration in a context of contradictory policies of conservation and rural development.

Virtually all fiscal measures influence people's health, through their impacts on behaviour, consumption, income and wealth. A narrow subset of fiscal measures, however, can be more directly aimed at improving health by targeting behaviours and risks that are known to be strongly associated with health outcomes. The purpose of this book is to discuss the subject of these measures, which we define as 'health taxes'. The book aims to enumerate key health taxes of interest, explore their positive and negative effects, and how these effects are influenced by the design of these taxes and the context in which they are applied. We ask how and where they can be implemented. Critically, we build an argument throughout the book for why policymakers across government should care about health taxes.