Humanities & Social Sciences

"Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less of a support than a means of purification and redemption. Continuously reformed by the left and right in politics, the contemporary welfare state attempts to transform the unemployed into active jobseekers, punishing non-compliance. Drawing on ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment: Jobcentres resemble purgatory where the unemployed attempt to redeem themselves, jobseeking is a form of pilgrimage in hope of salvation, and the economy appears as providence, whereby trials and tribulations test each individual. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of modern economic life. Chapters 1 and 3 are available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence."

This open access book focuses on the linear selection index (LSI) theory and its statistical properties. It addresses the single-stage LSI theory by assuming that economic weights are fixed and known - or fixed, but unknown - to predict the net genetic merit in the phenotypic, marker and genomic context. Further, it shows how to combine the LSI theory with the independent culling method to develop the multistage selection index theory. The final two chapters present simulation results and SAS and R codes, respectively, to estimate the parameters and make selections using some of the LSIs described. It is essential reading for plant quantitative geneticists, but is also a valuable resource for animal breeders.

This open access book is a new survey of theatre practices in Ireland from 1957 to the present. Part I: Histories, situates the theatrical activity of twentieth and twenty-first century Ireland within its social and political contexts, identifies key practitioners, landmark productions, institutions, festivals, and seminal revivals. Part II: Theories, offers five key theoretical frameworks - nation, language, body, space and interculturalism - to examine contemporary Irish theatre practices. Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance ultimately offers a more extensive story of contemporary Irish theatre documenting the diversity of practices and contributors that have populated the contemporary Irish theatre landscape since 1957.

Before new interventions can be used in disease control programmes, it is essential that they are carefully evaluated in “field trials”, which may be complex and expensive undertakings. Descriptions of the detailed procedures and methods used in trials that have been conducted in the past have generally not been published. As a consequence, those planning such trials have few guidelines available and little access to previously accumulated knowledge. In this book the practical issues of trial design and conduct are discussed fully and in sufficient detail for the text to be used as a “toolbox” by field investigators. The toolbox has now been extensively tested through use of the first two editions and this third edition is a comprehensive revision, incorporating the many developments that have taken place with respect to trials since 1996 and involving more than 30 contributors. Most of the chapters have been extensively revised and 7 new chapters have been added.

La traduction française du portrait national propose un aperçu d'ensemble du paysage de la formation continue en Suisse. Il paraît en allemand dans sa quatrième édition entièrement révisée. Avec la présente édition, il paraît également pour la première fois en français. Un accent particulier est mis sur les changements apportés par la loi suisse sur la formation continue (WeBiG), entrée en vigueur en 2017. Un résumé historique sur le développement de la formation des adultes en Suisse ainsi qu'un chapitre sur les tendances et les perspectives de la formation continue en Suisse complètent l'offre d'informations. La vaste partie "services" constitue une bonne base pour des recherches supplémentaires. Le portrait de pays est publié dans la série du même nom de l'Institut allemand pour la formation des adultes - Leibniz-Institut für lebenslanges Lernen (DIE). Les volumes de la série informent sur les structures et les développements de la formation continue dans le pays présenté et créent une base informative pour les acteurs de la science, de la pratique et de l'administration.

Die Konflikte um das Großprojekt »Stuttgart 21« verdeutlichen exemplarisch, wie Protestbewegungen das postdemokratische Zusammenspiel von Staat und Wirtschaft herausfordern. Bürgerbeteiligung und Kostentransparenz sind seither nahezu obligatorisch, dabei hat die Bewegung gegen »S21« ihr eigentliches Ziel, das Bahn- und Immobilienprojekt zu stoppen, verfehlt, trotz scheinbar positiver Ausgangslage. Anhand von Schlüsselereignissen im Konflikt um das Großprojekt rekonstruiert Julia von Staden die Dynamiken und Diskurse dieser sozialen Bewegung. Diese Untersuchung stellt in ihrer Art eine Neuheit in der Protest- und Bewegungsforschung dar und ist gleichzeitig ein Lehrstück für andere soziale Bewegungen.

In the 1950s, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, and a handful of other young artists based in New York’s Greenwich Village set out to challenge the practices and principles of professionalized dance. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of choreographers Anna Halprin, Robert Dunn, and Merce Cunningham, as well as composer John Cage, they were determined to change what dance is and can be. In One Thing Follows Another, a boundary-crossing collection of ten experimental-poetic essays, poets Valerie Witte and Sarah Rosenthal explore the work of dancer-choreographers Rainer and Forti, both at various inflection points throughout their careers and in this particular moment. Through a combination of chance operations and intentional artistic choices that push the authors to unexpected places — including the zoo, the dance studio, the street corner — and via innovative forms and techniques, such as collage, erasure, and their own artistic inventions, they deconstruct the essay form to examine what they as poets, each with their own highly charged relationships to dance, can contribute to the conversation about these pivotal figures in postmodern performance art.

Starting from a historiographical analysis that highlights the rising, between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, of a strongly innovative glance at sculptural materials dating from the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the paper focuses on the revival of these artefacts in the Contemporary Age. They were often discovered and recovered during restorations, sometimes quite invasive, involving Late Antique and Early Medieval religious buildings in an attempt to bring back to life their hypothetical “original moment”. This process led sometimes to complete reconstructions of liturgical enclosures, ambos, canopies and altars. In other cases, these items were enhanced through a cultured reuse, sometimes in private contexts (villas or noble chapels), or they even became part of new liturgical furnishings, in which they were reassembled with a function that was often different from the original one, a practice that still continues throughout the 20th century. These reuses/revisitations of Early Medieval sculpture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries represent interesting and refined clues to understanding an aspect, perhaps minor but not marginal, of the reworking of the Early Medieval past in contemporary times.

This study reconstructs the term and concept of “home,” from its traceable origins until the early twentieth century.Literature, here, has acted as a continuous point of reference for the German discursive fields of religion, law, pedagogy, and ethnology: as a medium for the affirmation, confusion, and passing on of social ideas, as well as a site where discourse is constructed and the semantics of home readjusted.

The book shows that apprenticeship company networks in Switzerland have an increased integration potential for foreign students and weaker learners at school because they improve their chances of finding job training and prevent apprenticeship contract cancellations. The reasons for this lie in the different way in which selection and training are organised compared with individual in-company training: features specific to the network, such as rotation and shared supervision, increase learners' capabilities and act as institutional conversion factors.

This open access bookA Cultural History of Chemistry in Antiquity covers the period from 3000 BCE to 600 CE, ranging across the civilizations of the Mediterranean and Near East. Over this long period, chemical artisans, recipes, and ideas were exchanged between Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. The flowering of alchemy in the Middle and Early Modern Ages had its roots in the chemical arts of antiquity. This study presents the first synthesis of this epoch, examining the centrality of intense exchange and interconnectivity to the discovery and development of sources, techniques, materials, and instruments. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Marco Beretta is Professor of History of Science at the University of Bologna, Italy. Volume 1 in the Cultural History of Chemistry set. General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA. The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

The surfactants are among the materials that have a significant importance in everyday life of human. The rapid growth in science and technology has opened new horizons in a very wide range, in which the surfactants play a major and vital role. Hence, the increasing number of applications as well as arising environmental issues has made this relatively old topic still a hot research theme. In the first section of this book, some of the applications of surfactants in various fields such as biology and petroleum industry, as well as their environmental effects, are described. In Section 2 some experimental techniques used for characterization of the surfactants have been discussed.

This open access handbook brings together the latest research from a wide range of internationally influential scholars to analyze educational policy research from international, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. By effectively breaking through the boundaries between countries and disciplines, it presents new theories, techniques and methods for contemporary education policy, and illustrates the educational policies and educational reform practices that various countries have introduced to meet the challenges of continuous change. Based on an analysis of the nature of education policy and education reform, this volume focuses on education reform and the concept of education quality. Adopting a historical and comparative perspective, it examines the dialectical relationship between education policy and education reform in various countries, assesses theoretical and practical issues in the process of moving from regulation to multiple governance in contemporary education administration, and explores the impact of globalization on national education reform and the interdependence between countries. In addition, it presents studies addressing educational policy research methodology from multiple perspectives. Highlighting the changes in national education macro policies, this volume comprehensively reveals the complex relationship between contemporary education reform and social change, and explores the links between contemporary social, political and economic systems and educational policy research and practice, offering a holistic portrait of macro trends in contemporary education reform. ; Brings together in a single volume a collection of international scholars from multiple disciplines Pushes the boundaries of education policy studies through its insightful analyses Equips readers to handle the complexities of policy research by employing critical thinking

The sestina is a form in which words repeat regularly, intricately, appearing and reappearing in new contexts with new meanings. Sam Lohmann’s Unless As Stone Is emerged from a few years of living with Dante’s sestina, “Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra.” He allowed the text to appear in its own new — if irregularly scheduled — contexts. New translations, new scenery, new meanings; new phrases entered the poem (from García Lorca, from Sappho, from strangers and from loved ones) and found their own patterns. What resulted is a serial poem in seven movements, incorporating several strategies of reincorporation. “Quandunque i colli fanno più nera ombra” — “All our oddity operates / on changing verity.”

Banking on Milk takes the reader on a journey through the everyday life of donor human milk banking across the United Kingdom (UK) and beyond, asking questions such as the following: Why do people decide to donate? How do parents of recipients hear about human milk? How does milk donation impact on lifestyle choices? Chapters record the practical everyday reality of work in a milk bank by drawing on extensive ethnographic observations and sensitive interview data from donors, mothers of recipients and the staff of four different milk banks from across the UK, and visits to milk banks across Europe and North America. It discusses the ongoing pressures to do with supply, demand and distribution. An empirically informed ""ethnography of the contemporary"", where both biosociality and biopower abound, this book includes an exploration of how milk banks evolved from registering wet nurses with hospitals, showing how a regulatory culture of medical authority began to quantify and organize human milk as a commodity. This book is a valuable read for all those with an interest in breastfeeding or organ and tissue donation from a range of fields, including midwifery, sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and public health.