Humanities & Social Sciences

Beginning with Zhang Qian’s mission during the reign of Emperor Wu, the Han expansion westwards brought new geographical knowledge. Gan Ying’s arrival on the shores of the Persian Gulf in 97 CE established a new and extreme boundary for knowledge of the West: the purpose of his mission was direct contact with the political entity known as Da Qin. Within the historiographical sources where references to Da Qin and the West appear, the toponym Haixi 海西 recurs in the Hou Hanshu 後漢書, the Hou Hanji 後漢紀, and the Weilüe 魏略. This chapter lists the historical sources on Haixi to discuss some related issues and proposes some hypotheses for identifying the place names in these texts, potentially aiding in locating Haixi geographically. Finally, a concluding paragraph addresses a previously neglected source, which appears to support the hypothesis identifying Haixi with Egyptian territory, thereby associating it with a region within the Mediterranean area.

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295748207 At the beginning of the new millennium, the Chinese government launched the Great Opening of the West, a development strategy targeted at remote areas inhabited mainly by indigenous ethnic groups. Intended to modernize infrastructure and halt environmental degradation, its tactics in western China have resulted in the displacement of pastoral Tibetans to urban residence and sedentary livelihoods, causing massive social and economic shifts and uncertainty and eventually leading to signs of discontent in ethnically Tibetan regions. Based on more than a decade of fieldwork, Exile from the Grasslands documents the viewpoints of both the people affected—Tibetan pastoralists in Qinghai Province—and the Chinese officials charged with relocating and settling them in newly constructed housing projects. As China’s international influence expands, the welfare of its ethnic minorities and its handling of environmental issues are receiving close media scrutiny. Jarmila Ptáčkova’s study documents a politically and ecologically significant process that is happening—unlike events in Lhasa or Xinjiang—largely outside the view of the wider world.

Regulating Political Parties provides a novel and valuable contribution to the existing literature on political parties by discussing the various dimensions of party law and regulation, in Europe and other regions of the world. By bringing together international experts from the disciplines of law and political science, this volume addresses from an interdisciplinary and comparative point of view what has long been a notable lacuna in the study of political parties.

Valency; Verb Classes; Argument Alternations

The rise of Artificial Intelligence applications is accelerating the pace and magnitude of the political, securitarian, and ethical challenges we are now struggling to manage in cyberspace and beyond. So far, the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and cyberspace has been investigated mostly in terms of the effects that AI could have on the digital domain, and thus on our societies. What has been explored less is the opposite relationship, namely, how the cyberspace geopolitics can affect AI. Yet, AI applications have so far suffered from growing unrest, disorder, and lack of normative solutions in cyberspace. As such, from algorithm biases, to surveillance and offensive applications, AI could accelerate multiple growing threats and challenges in and through cyberspace. This report by ISPI and The Brookings Institution is an effort to shed light on this less studied, but extremely relevant, relationship.

This Open Access book explains the philosophy, design principles, and community organization of Decidim and provides essential insights into how the platform works. Decidim is the world leading digital infrastructure for participatory democracy, built entirely and collaboratively as free software, and used by more than 500 institutions with over three million users worldwide. The platform allows any organization (government, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood, or cooperative) to support multitudinous processes of participatory democracy. In a context dominated by corporate-owned digital platforms, in the era of increasing social structuring via Artificial Intelligence, Decidim stands as a public or community owned platform for collective human intelligence. Yet, the project is much more than its technological features. Decidim is in itself a crossroad of the various dimensions of the networked society, a detailed practical map of its complexities and conflicts. The authors distinguish three general dimensions of the project: (1) the political - shedding light on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations, (2) the technopolitical - explaining how this technology is democratically designed and managed to produce and protect certain political effects, and (3) the technical - presenting the conditions of production, operation, and success of the project. This book systematically covers those three levels in an academically sound, technologically consistent, and politically innovative manner. Serving as a useful resource and handbook for the use of Decidim, it will not only appeal to students and scholars interested in participatory and digital democracy but also to professionals, policy-makers, and a wider audience interested in learning more about the Decidim platform. This is an open access book.

The discovery of graphene has led to a deluge of international research interest, and this new material in the field of materials science and condensed-matter physics has revealed a cornucopia of new physics and potential applications. This collection gives a roughly review on the recent progress on the synthesis, characterization, properties and applications of graphene, providing useful information for researchers interested in this area.

A scholarly work that explores the intersection of entrepreneurship education, innovation, and student empowerment within the European Union, this book investigates the transition from student to entrepreneur. It provides an in-depth analysis of the theoretical and empirical aspects of entrepreneurship education. With a field approach, including case studies and a quantitative review of university-level entrepreneurship courses across Europe, it offers a robust framework for fostering entrepreneurial skills and understanding how entrepreneurship education fosters innovation within the EU. It explores key factors driving student entrepreneurship, offering insights into the development of essential competencies such as soft skills, technical knowledge, and interpersonal abilities. Through practical applications, the book bridges the gap between education, research, and practice, providing practical recommendations for enhancing entrepreneurship education across Europe. Targeted towards academics, postgraduate students, and practitioners interested in entrepreneurship, edutech, and educational dynamics, it is particularly relevant to scholars in entrepreneurship education and innovation, offering valuable insights into how to empower students and foster entrepreneurial ecosystems in the EU.

In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would trust the police more and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seems to offer relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory. A procedural justice model of policing is likely to be only loosely coupled with police practice, despite the best intentions, and improvements in procedural justice on the part of police are unlikely to result in corresponding improvements in citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice.

Honorable Mention, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Getting Ahead tells the compelling stories of Latin-American immigrant women living in public housing in two Boston-area neighborhoods. Silvia Domínguez argues that these immigrant women parlay social ties that provide support and leverage to develop networks and achieve social positioning to get ahead. Through a rich ethnographic account and in-depth interviews, the strong voices of these women demonstrate how they successfully negotiate the world and achieve social mobility through their own individual agency, skillfully navigating both constraints and opportunities. Domínguez makes it clear that many immigrant women are able to develop the social support needed for a rich social life, and leverage ties that open options for them to develop their social and human capital. However, she also shows that factors such as neighborhood and domestic violence and the unavailability of social services leave many women without the ability to strategize towards social mobility. Ultimately, Domínguez makes important local and international policy recommendations on issue ranging from public housing to world labor visas, demonstrating how policy can help to improve the lives of these and other low-income people.

The seductiveness of touristed landscapes is simultaneously local and global, as travelled places are formed and reworked by the activities of diverse, mobile people, in their desires to experience situated, sensuous qualities of difference. Cartier and Lew’s interesting and informative book explores contemporary issues in travel and tourism and human geography, and the complex cultural, political, and economic activities at stake in touristed landscapes as a result of globalization. This book assesses travel and tourism as simultaneously cultural and economic processes, through ideas about place seduction and the formation of landscapes. Throughout, examples are given from urban and environmental touristed landscapes, from major world cities to tropical islands, and chapter contributions include: an analysis of the representational character of landscape and the built environment historic constructions of place seduction the importance of class, racial, and gender dimensions of place how mobility and the seduction of place orient identity formation the environmental impacts of tourism economies. Broad in scope, this book is ideal for social scientists and humanists who are interested in contemporary debates about place studies, mobility, and the located realities of globalization.

"In May 2014 the 8th European elections take place. 751 Members of Parliament form 28 different countries are directly elected for a five-year term form an electorate of 383 Mio citizens. The European Parliament is a dynamic, truly supranational and since Lisbon a more and more powerful actor. It negotiates on eye-level with the Council of Ministers, holds the European Commission effectively accountable, represents the aggregated interests, ideas and concerns of the Union’s citizens, and supervises the development of the EU together with the national parliaments. As a global player the European Parliament deals with members of parliaments of third countries, negotiates international agreements and watches over the protection of human rights and democracy. The authors – MEPs, officials, stakeholders and experts - gibe a deep practical and academic insight into all functions of the European Parliament. The different articles take into account the specific conditions of the EU’s only directly legitimized institution. For academics and practitioners alike, Dialer, Neisser and Lichtenberger offer a superb ""guide"" for any serious understanding of the world's only elected transnational parliament." Authors: Doris Dialer, Eva Lichtenberger, Heinrich Neisser, Jerzy Buzek, Wolfgang Hiller, Elmar Brok, Flooh Perlot, Eva Zeglovits, Peter Plaikner, Herbert Reul, Albert Deß, Alexander Alvaro, Vanessa Aulehla, Olaf Münichsdorfer, Heike Merten, Othmar Karas, Jürgen Mittag, Julia Krüger, Christa Prets, Margarethe Richter, Michael Gahler, Gerrit F. Schlomach, Stefan Pfi tzner, Erika Mann, Oliver Rolofs, Stefan Schennach, Thomas Mann, Marco Reuter,

Along the shores of southeastern Arabia, traditional marine knowledge is fading as languages and ecosystems come under increasing pressure. This second volume of Harvesting the Sea in Southeastern Arabia brings together marine species terminology and associated knowledge in the five coastal Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) and the Kumzari language of the Musandam Peninsula in eastern Arabia. The materials, collected by the authors in periods between the 1970s and the present, are a testament to communities’ longstanding intimacy with the sea and their resilient livelihoods in the face of often difficult conditions. Over 2000 marine species names are inventoried, featuring many bony fish and cartilaginous fish, but also including mammals, reptiles, invertebrates, and plants. Terms for fish at various life stages and vocabulary associated with marine species are also provided. The lists are organised in the format of a comparative lexicon, where individual species are compared across the six languages, and as an annotated alphabetical lexicon with a searchable companion file, presenting additional insights collected over the course of fieldwork. Along with its relevance for communities where this knowledge is being lost as species die out and livelihoods change, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in learning from the languages, cultures, and ecosystems of Arabia.

This work was commissioned by the Organising Committee for the Eighty Years of the University of Florence. The volume collects the programs of all the events organised during the academic year 2003-2004. For each category of events - honorary degrees, conferences, other events and the awarding of the Salomone d’oro - the programs are shown, followed by a brief summary of the event.

The work ‘Intorno a Boccaccio/Boccaccio e dintorni 2016’ is the outcome of the international seminar held in Certaldo on September 16, 2017, promoted by the ENGB National Association (Ente Nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio) and now in its third edition. The seminar, which is now held on an annual basis, has the main purpose of giving visibility to young scholars, allowing them to present new and ongoing researches. Alongside philological and critical contributions related to Decameron and its Fortleben, this work is characterized by the attention it pays to other works by Boccaccio (Filostrato, Rime, De mulieribus claris, Epistole, Trattatello), examined under the aspect of textual tradition, rhetorical figures and lexicon.