Humanities & Social Sciences

The digital PDF of the Afterword of this title are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The word ‘precarity’ is widely used when discussing work and employment, social conditions and lived experiences, and social classes. There is not, however, a consensus on the precise meaning of the term or how it should best be used to explore social changes. Bringing together an international group of thinkers from a diverse range of fields, this book offers a distinctive and critical perspective approach to an important topic.

Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions is a transdiciplinary essay collection that explores the physical, conceptual, and political possibilities materialized by “solarity”— a form of relation to the sun and its elemental force upon planetary life. The authors propose that a different set of questions becomes possible when the material specificities of solar become the compass for thought, prompting us to uncover our relationship to the sun. How does solarity materialize in the bodies and lives of humans and non-humans now and in the future? What can we learn if we no longer take the sun for granted? How do we continue to persist on a planet that is so intimately bound up in a state of love, fear, and dependence on this primary source of all living energy? Each of the essays in Solarities take solar radiation as an interpretive lens that takes multiple forms, often transforming as it does so. Solarities draws inspiration from Black ecologies, Indigenous philosophy, feminist science & technology studies, and more-than-human discussions in the human sciences, recognizing the phenomenological and ontological openings they make available. The authors understand solarity as an energy source (channeled through photovoltaic cells, for example), but the essays gathered here focus on the lives that solarity creates or impedes. The experimental task is to find how solarities work their way into materials and processes across our work, seeking out the particular influences of solarity in making being(s). These relations are core to thinking the elemental conditions of solarity, since it is through particular forms of focalizing the sun that life is sustained, or made to wither, across the planet. In these ways, the elemental condition of solarity is at once hyper-particular and also shared across organic and inorganic bodies, conditioned by physical form and material composition. Throughout the collection, the authors explore how solarity appears or recedes from view when we concentrate our attentions on it, surfacing the existential omnipresence of the sun to open new thought possibilities, inspire new actions, and refract new dimensions of socionatural encounter.

This volume takes stock of the ways in which the regimes of artistic creation and production intersect, lending special attention to emergent discourses and work models of producing and managing theatre, dance, and performance – through the lenses of creative producers. This book suggests that social protection failures, longstanding institutional shortcomings, and the dilemmas of social and environmental sustainability are pushing arts management and production modi operandi towards a review of its expansionist assumptions and managerial hyper-productivist processes. By documenting singular ‘counter-management’ experiences in Portugal, Belgium, France, and Brazil, this study makes a strong claim for a reassessment of the role of producers and art managers as reflective practitioners and as pivotal elements towards more sustainable artistic practices. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies, policymakers, and cultural professionals.

Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music by Steven Jan is a comprehensive account of the relationships between evolutionary theory and music. Examining the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ that drives biological and musical-cultural evolution, the book provides a distinctive commentary on how musicality and music can shed light on our understanding of Darwin’s famous theory, and vice-versa. Comprised of seven chapters, with several musical examples, figures and definitions of terms, this original and accessible book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the relationships between music and evolutionary thought. Jan guides the reader through key evolutionary ideas and the development of human musicality, before exploring cultural evolution, evolutionary ideas in musical scholarship, animal vocalisations, music generated through technology, and the nature of consciousness as an evolutionary phenomenon. A unique examination of how evolutionary thought intersects with music, Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music is essential to our understanding of how and why music arose in our species and why it is such a significant presence in our lives.

The turtle (kame) is of great importance in East Asian culture and it is seen as a supernatural creature. In Japanese literature, we can find examples of the turtle in works dating back to the Nara period, such as Tangokuni fudoki and Nihonshoki. Just like the crane, the turtle is a symbol of longevity. However, from the Kamakura period a new and unique interpretation of the turtle as the “singing/crying turtle” makes its appearance. Of this topos, known as kame naku, we can find only very few examples in literature until the Meiji era and the most known are the waka anthologies Shinsen waka rokujō and Fuboku wakashō, and Kyokutei Bakin’s kigo collection Haikai saijiki shiorigusa. However, from the beginning of the modern age, kame naku has been used by many poets as a kigo connected to spring and its frequency has hugely increased. After the war, it began to appear not only in poetry but also in novels and essays. The best known examples of this being Mishima Yukio’s short novel Chūsei, Uchida Hyakken’s essay Kame naku ya, Kawakami Hiromi’s work Oboreru. Using kame naku as a keyword, in this paper we will analyze the attitudes and approaches of modern and contemporary poets and novelists toward the topos.

Paranormale Erfahrungen wie Hellsehen, Telepathie, Geisterkontakte, Nahtodeserlebnisse und Präkognition sind seit alters bekannt und dokumentiert. In prämodernen, »traditionellen« Kulturen bildeten sie eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Das Buch geht den gängigsten Phänomenen nach und versucht auf ethnologischer Grundlage, kombiniert mit parapsychologischen und neueren naturwissenschaftlichen (physikalischen) Erkenntnissen, eine Erklärung dafür zu geben. Der Essay eröffnet durch seine interdisziplinäre Fundierung und seinen Materialreichtum faszinierende Einsichten in ein zugleich altes wie auch aktuelles Thema und regt zum Nach- und Weiterdenken über den »sechsten Sinn« an.

Wird über Krankheit von Migranten und Migrantinnen gesprochen, so werden schnell Kategorisierungen von Kulturdifferenz und Fremdheitserfahrung herangezogen. Um kulturalistische und verallgemeinernde Objektivierungen zu überwinden, werden in der Studie anhand biographisch narrativer Interviews seelische, körperliche und sozialweltliche Phänomene im Kontext von Migrationserfahrungen untersucht. Als »medizinische Fälle« diagnostizierte türkische Menschen wurden gebeten, ihre Lebensgeschichte zu erzählen. Diese biographischen Alltagserzählungen mit ihren Interpretationen der Migrationserfahrungen und des Krankwerdens in Deutschland stehen im Zentrum der Studie. Die eigene Lebenspraxis wird als biographische Arbeit bei der Balancierung lebens- und familiengeschichtlicher Erfahrungen und von gesellschaftlichen Anforderungen gewürdigt. Folgenden Fragen geht die Studie nach: In welche lebensgeschichtliche und gesellschaftliche Konstellation sind die Erfahrungen von Krankheit eingebettet? Welche Rolle spielt die individuelle Migrationsgeschichte? Wie sprechen Menschen über ihr eigenes Leben und die Welt und wie wird dieses Sprechen durch die Einflüsse im Herkunfts- sowie im Migrationsland beeinflusst?

Singing the Land: Hebrew Music and Early Zionism in America examines the proliferation and use of popular Hebrew Zionist music amongst American Jewry during the first half of the twentieth century. This music—one part in a greater process of instilling diasporic Zionism in American Jewish communities—represents an early and underexplored means of fostering mainstream American Jewish engagement with the Jewish state and Hebrew national culture as they emerged after Israel declared its independence in 1948. This evolutionary process brought Zionism from being an often-polemical notion in American Judaism at the turn of the twentieth century to a mainstream component of American Jewish life by 1948. Hebrew music ultimately emerged as an important means through which many American Jews physically participated in or ‘performed’ aspects of Zionism and Hebrew national culture from afar. Exploring the history, events, contexts, and tensions that comprised what may be termed the ‘Zionization’ of American Jewry during the first half of the twentieth century, Eli Sperling analyzes primary sources within the historical contexts of Zionist national development and American Jewish life. Singing the Land offers insights into how and why musical frameworks were central to catalyzing American Jewry’s support of the Zionist cause by the 1940s, parallel to firm commitments to their American locale and national identities. The proliferation of this widespread American Jewish-Zionist embrace was achieved through a variety of educational, religious, economic, and political efforts, and Hebrew music was a thread consistent among them all.

Der Massenwohnungsbau war eine Antwort auf den durch Industrialisierung und Urbanisierung verursachten Mangel an Wohnraum in Jugoslawien und prägt bis heute das postjugoslawische urbane Gewebe. Die Sinngebung des Massenwohnungsbaus erfolgt weit über dessen Materialität hinaus. Ausgehend vom Konzept der medialen Arena führt das Buch durch die Diskussionsebenen Baustelle, Wohnung, Siedlung und Bild. Die Studie erzählt eine Kulturgeschichte des jugoslawischen Massenwohnungsbaus entlang von Diskussionen in der Fachöffentlichkeit und in der Populärkultur – von den ersten architektonischen Entwürfen in den 1950ern über die Ausweitung der Massenwohnkultur in den 1960ern und der zunehmenden Kritik in den 1970ern und 1980ern bis hin zur Zerstörung in den Jugoslawienkriegen in den 1990ern und den fiktionalen Umdeutungen in den 2000ern. Zugleich bespricht der Band intrajugoslawische Gemeinsamkeiten und Asymmetrien.

Once upon a time there was a city in a cold place a long way to the north. One day the city started to tell a story about itself. As the chapters unfolded, life in the city changed, and soon it didn’t even seem so cold or far away any more. People listened to the story and realised that the city wasn’t quite what they expected. They started to tell the story to each other about how the city had created a magical unicorn factory... Here’s how Stockholm built a narrative for itself – and backed it up with urban development that was innovative and sustainable.

Drawing on a range of expert contributions, this book explores how the European Green Deal is being deployed in practice and observes how the EU tries to promote the protection of the environment in third countries. This book begins by assessing the state of the art in terms of the key conceptual issues and analyses sectoral initiatives that are particularly relevant for the deployment of the European Green Deal external dimensions. These include the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the EU’s regulatory action in the control of maritime emissions, the 2030 Biodiversity Strategy, the Deforestation Initiative, the Zero Pollution Initiative, the From Farm to Fork Initiative, and the Climate Neutrality and Clean Energy Initiative in the context of the Energy Charter Treaty. Next, the authors deal with horizontal aspects of the European Green Deal that also have external dimensions, such as the Green Deal Diplomacy, the Green Public Procurement, funding measures, initiatives related to corporate sustainability and due diligence, and the implementation and enforcement of EU environmental law. This volume concludes with a cross-cutting analysis, focusing on how the EU can strengthen the impact of its normative power on international environmental governance, while also noting its limitations. Deploying the European Green Deal will be of great interest to students and scholars of international and EU environmental law and environmental policy and governance.

Volume 2 covers knowledge discovery in particle and astroparticle physics. Instruments gather petabytes of data and machine learning is used to process the vast amounts of data and to detect relevant examples efficiently. The physical knowledge is encoded in simulations used to train the machine learning models. The interpretation of the learned models serves to expand the physical knowledge resulting in a cycle of theory enhancement.

This contribution describes some steps of a research, by its nature constantly in progress, which has seen us engaged on several occasions in recent years, namely the collection and sharing of the stories and memories of Tuscan male and female educators. The contribution namely focuses on the intersections with Public History, a discipline or approach to history which is now rapidly consolidating in Italy as well.

The study of early modern cancer is significant for our understanding of the period’s medical theory and practice. In many respects, cancer exemplifies the flexibility of early modern medical thought, which managed to accommodate, seemingly without friction, the notion that cancer was a disease with humoral origins alongside the conviction that the malady was in some sense ontologically independent. Discussions of why cancer spread rapidly through the body, and was difficult, if not impossible, to cure, prompted various medical explanations at the same time that physicians and surgeons joined with non-medical authors in describing the disease as acting in a way that was ‘malignant’ in the fullest sense, purposely ‘fierce’, ‘rebellious’ and intractable.3 Theories seeking to explain why cancer appeared most often in the female breast similarly joined culturally mediated anatomical and humoral theory with recognition of the peculiarities of women’s social, domestic and emotional life-cycles. Moreover, as a morbid disease, cancer generated eclectic and sometimes extreme medical responses, the mixed results of which would prompt many questions over the proper extent of pharmaceutical or surgical intervention.

Esta antología del cine mexicano presenta 31 películas emblemáticas de todas las épocas del cine del país, desde la llamada Época de Oro de los años treinta y cuarenta hasta el cine actual, e incluye tanto obras canónicas de Sergej Eisenstein, Fernando de Fuentes, Alejandro Galindo, Luis Buñuel y Arturo Ripstein como trabajos de realizadores actuales, como Jorge Fons, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jorge Fons, Alfonso Cuarón y Fernando Eimbcke. El objetivo que se ha perseguido es el de ofrecer el desarrollo histórico del cine mexicano durante 80 años, así como también el de dar a conocer la riqueza de los temas y géneros que caracteriza la producción cinematográfica de México. Al panorama que se ofrece aquí han contribuido renombrados especialistas que realizan un detallado análisis con los contextos políticos, sociales, culturales y estéticos que influyen en las respectivas películas que analizan.