Humanities & Social Sciences

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.

Benjamin Leigh Smith discovered and named dozens of islands in the Arctic but published no account of his pioneering explorations. He refused public accolades and sent stand-ins to deliver the results of his work to scientific societies. Yet, the Royal Geographic Society's Sir Clements R. Markham referred to him as a polar explorer of the first rank. Traveling to the Arctic islands that Leigh Smith explored and crisscrossing England to uncover unpublished journals, diaries, and photographs, archaeologist and writer P. J. Capelotti details Leigh Smith's five major Arctic expeditions and places them within the context of the great polar explorations in the nineteenth century.

This book exploits a trove of original documents that have survived on the auctions organized by the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam in the first half of the 17th century. For the first time, the names of some 2000 buyers of works of art at auction in the 29 extant notebooks of the Chamber have been systematically analyzed. On the basis of archival research, data have been assembled on the occupation of these buyers (most of whom were merchants), their origin (Southern Netherlands, Holland, and other), their religion, their year of birth, their date of marriage, the taxes they paid and other indicators of their wealth. Buyers were found to cluster in groups, not only by extended family but by occupation, religion (Remonstrants, Counter-Remonstrants) and avocation (amateurs of tulips and of porcelain, members of Chambers of Rhetoricians, and so forth). The subjects of the works of art they bought and the artists to which they were attributed (only the most important were attributed) are also analyzed. In the second part of the book on "Selected Buyers", three chapters are devoted to art dealers who bought at auction and four to buyers who had special connections with artists, including principally Rembrandt. To forge a link between the cultural milieu of Amsterdam in this period and the buying public, two chapters are given over to buyers who were either poets themselves or were connected with contemporary poets. As a whole, the book offers a penetrating insight into the culture of the Amsterdam elite in the 17th century.

In der Untersuchung wird gezeigt, dass die gesetzliche Rentenversicherung trotz ihrer Besonderheiten - v.a. dynamische Rente im Umlageverfahren - grundsätzlich als Versicherung interpretierbar ist; das soll in der Bezeichnung Sozialversicherungsprinzip« zum Ausdruck kommen. Im folgenden wird abgeleitet, welche Leistungen diesem Prinzip widersprechen und ob unter der Voraussetzung einer Zuschussdeckung der entsprechenden Ausgaben eine klare Trennung zwischen den Aufgaben der Rentenversicherung und denen des Staates herbeigeführt werden könnte.

This unique collection of chapters from world experts on person-centered outcome (PCO) measures addresses the following critical questions: Can individual experiences be represented in measurements that do not reduce unique differences to meaningless uniformity? How person-centric are PCO measures? Are PCO measurements capable of delivering the kind of quality assured quantification required for high-stakes decision making? Are PCO measures likely to support improved health care delivery? Have pivotal clinical studies failed to deliver treatments for diseases because of shortcomings in the PCO measures used? Are these shortcomings primarily matters of precision and meaningfulness? Or is the lack of common languages for communicating outcomes also debilitating to quality improvement, research, and the health care economy? Three key issues form an urgent basis for further investigation. First, the numbers generated by PCO measures are increasingly used as the central dependent variables upon which high stakes decisions are made. The rising profile of PCO measures places new demands for higher quality information from scale and test construction, evaluation, selection, and interpretation. Second, PCO measurement science has well-established lessons to be learned from those who have built and established the science over many decades. Finally, the goal in making a PCO measurement is to inform outcome management. As such, it is vitally important that key stakeholders understand that, over the last half century, developments in psychometrics have refocused measurement on illuminating clinically important individual differences in the context of widely reproduced patterns of variation in health and functioning, comparable scale values for quality improvement, and practical explanatory models. This book’s audience includes anyone interested in person-centered care, including healthcare researchers and practitioners, policy makers, pharmaceutical industry representatives, clinicians, patient advocates, and metrologists. This is an open access book.

Die Südosteuropa-Studien werden von der in München ansässigen Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, der wichtigsten Wissenschaftsorganisation der Südosteuropa-Forschung im deutschsprachigen Raum, herausgegeben. Sie dienen der vertieften und interdisziplinären wissenschaftlichen Darstellung wichtiger Themen aus der Südosteuropa-Forschung. Auch Fragen zur aktuellen politischen und sozio-ökonomischen Entwicklung in der Region Südosteuropa werden aufgegriffen. Herausgeber der Einzelbände sind renommierte Repräsentanten der deutschen und internationalen Südosteuropa-Forschung.

In An Overview of the Pre-suppression Society of Jesus in Spain, Patricia W. Manning offers a survey of the Society of Jesus in Spain from its origins in Ignatius of Loyola’s early preaching to the aftereffects of its expulsion. Rather than nurture the nascent order, Loyola’s homeland was often ambivalent. His pre-Jesuit freelance sermonizing prompted investigations. The young Society confronted indifference and interference from the Spanish monarchy and outright opposition from other religious orders. This essay outlines the order’s ministerial and pedagogical activities, its relationship with women and with royal institutions, including the Spanish Inquisition, and Spanish members’ roles in theological debates concerning casuistry, free will, and the immaculate conception. It also considers the impact of Jesuits’ non-religious writings. Readership: Readers interested in the Society of Jesus, textual production by Jesuits, the Society’s ties to women, early modern theological polemics, and early modern Spain, including undergraduate and graduate students.

В монографии демонстрируется возможность изучать современный поэтический язык не только с точки зрения эстетической функции, но и креативной, воздействие которой предполагает создание новых форм и неожиданных сочетаний при передаче разнообразной текстовой информации. Для исследования выбран поуровневый метод описания. На иллюстративных примерах показывается, как креативность проявляет себя на разных уровнях организации текста: фонетико-орфографическом, словообразовательном, лексико-семантическом, грамматическом – и как уровни взаимодействуют друг с другом. На уровне же целого текста важными параметрами становятся субъектная организация и взаимодействие текста с другими текстами.

The Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE), together with other churches, sees it as its duty to speak of God in an understandable, inspiring and encouraging way. This document, the result of a study process lasting several years, was approved by the 9th General Assembly of the CPCE in 2024 and is characterised as a groundbreaking contribution to the understanding of the current way of speaking about God in the CPCE. Following a presentation of the conditions for the discourse on God in European Protestantism, it outlines the basic features of a Trinitarian view of God and God's work, taking particular account of modern criticism of the concept of God's omnipotence. Christian speaking of God includes speaking to God, with God and from God in worship and prayer, which is considered in separate chapters. Finally, different social contexts in which the worth of Christian speaking of God must be proven are shown.

Among the experiments on the quality of living in urban spaces, those aimed at increasing the capacity to adapt and mitigate climate change are of fundamental importance, as they contribute, with adequate measures, to the decarbonization processes and the achievement of full climate neutrality. Faced with climate change, the increase in risks and vulnerabilities to their impacts, the persistence of climate-altering emissions, the growing European energy crisis, important actions by cities are necessary and urgent to become more resilient, responsible, and pro-active in reacting to the sudden and increasingly less controllable transformations resulting from environmental, economic, and social changes. Adaptation and mitigation measures to keep global temperatures within 1.5°C could avoid some of the most devastating impacts of ongoing climate change, but their implementation is well behind the 2015 roadmap : if average temperatures were to reach an increase of 2°C, the ecosystems currently considered vulnerable would significantly increase the probability of extinction, increasing it exponentially with a reaching of 3°C. A serious decarbonization operation of cities and urban districts therefore becomes of fundamental importance. This book shows the results of design experiments, carried out or underway in Northern and Central Europe, deriving from two major research projects carried out, one at a national level (PRIN), the other within a European framework (Green City Network) on projects of urban districts and eco-districts, with a final selection of over forty case studies in Northern and Central Europe, which work on the systematization of the six strategic axes that mark the path towards climate neutrality: energy transition, bioclimatic effectiveness, circularity of resources, functional mix, sustainable mobility, and green and gray CO2 subtraction. Axes that are followed with a planning perspective through the improvements achieved in terms of decarbonization in the context of the adoption of the technological-environmental solutions found, with the aim of defining new inter-scalar, multidisciplinary, responsible, and sustainable development protocols.

"This new book analyses the strategies, usages and wider implications of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding platforms in the culture and communication industries that are reshaping economic, organizational and social logics. Platforms are the object of considerable hype with a growing global presence. Relying on individual contributions coordinated by social media to finance cultural production (and carry out promotional tasks) is a significant shift, especially when supported by morphing public policies, supposedly enhancing cultural diversity and accessibility. The aim of this book is to propose a critical analysis of these phenomena by questioning what follows from decisions to outsource modes of creation and funding to consumers. Drawing on research carried out within the ‘Collab’ programme backed by the French National Research Agency, the book considers how platforms are used to organize cultural labour and/or to control usages, following a logic of suggestion rather than overt injunction. Four key areas are considered: the history of crowdfunding as a system; whose interests crowdfunding may serve; the implications for digital labour and lastly crowdfunding’s interface with globalization and contemporary capitalism. The book concludes with an assessment of claims that crowdfunding can democratize culture."

In this book, prominent architectural historians, who happen to be women, reflect on their practice and the intervention this has made in the discipline. Of particular concern are the ways in which feminine subjectivities have been embodied in the discourses of architectural history. Each of the chapters examines the author’s own position and the disruptive presence of women as both subject and object in the historiography of a specific field of enquiry. The aim is not to replace male lives with female lives, or to write women into the masculinist narratives of architectural history. Instead, this book aims to broaden the discourses of architectural history to explore how the potentially ‘unnatural rule’ of women subverts canonical norms through the empowerment of otherness rather than a process of perceived emasculation. The essays examine the historiographic and socio/cultural implications of the role of women in the narratives and writing of architectural history with particular reference to Western traditions of scholarship on the period 1600–1950. Rather than subscribing to a single position, individual voices critically engage with past and present canonical histories disclosing assumptions, biases, and absences in the architectural historiography of the West. This book is a crucial reflection upon historiographical practice, exploring potential openings that may contribute further transformation of the theory and methods of architectural history. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.

This book consists of a selection of original papers of the leading scientists in the fields of Space and Planetary Physics, Solar and Space Plasma Physics with important contributions to the theory, modeling and experimental techniques of the solar wind exploration. Its purpose is to provide the means for interested readers to become familiar with the current knowledge of the solar wind formation and elemental composition, the interplanetary dynamical evolution and acceleration of the charged plasma particles, and the guiding magnetic field that connects to the magnetospheric field lines and adjusts the effects of the solar wind on Earth. I am convinced that most of the research scientists actively working in these fields will find in this book many new and interesting ideas.

Men, Care and Well-being in Super-aged Japan offers an innovative perspective on social sustainability by examining men’s well-being through their involvement in caring for older family members. Focusing on super-aged Japan, the book provides a valuable way to understand key social challenges relevant to countries on the cusp of an ageing society. In contrast to the predominant focus on men in the workplace, this study shifts attention to men in the family – such as men as sons, sons-in-law, husbands and grandsons – whose roles in care remain understudied. The first part explores men’s care relations in the context of their extended family relations, including the emergence of sons-in-law in care. The second part widens the perspective to include the domain of work and related policies to understand how men reconcile care and work. The third part situates men’s caregiving in the broader societal context, including attention to the author’s novel notion of ‘care literacy’. The structure provides specialists across relevant fields – such as well-being, masculinity, gender relations and care systems – greater flexibility in accessing relevant sections. Further, the design of parts and chapters supports the book's use as teaching material in undergraduate and graduate courses.

Exhibition Ecologies approaches exhibitions as ecological media, shaped by infrastructures, economies, and relations of power. Bringing together art-historical essays and curatorial reflections, this volume explores how exhibitions respond to the climate crisis while showing how ecological narratives intersect with colonial legacies, extractivism, and the rhetorics of legitimation. Case studies - from museum collection displays to contemporary biennials - probe the ecological framing of exhibitions, opening debates on sustainability, decolonial justice, and institutional responsibility. Linking exhibition studies with environmental humanities, this book highlights both the risks of co-option and the transformative potential of exhibitions. With contributions by Hannah Beck-Mannagetta, Indira Béraud, Linn Burchert, Mateo Chacón Pino, Lena Fließbach, Stefanie Hessler, Elisabeth Heyne, Michael Klipphahn-Karge, Juliana Robles de la Pava, Anna Sophie Springer, Julia Tovote, Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro Situates exhibitions within transdisciplinary ecological discourse Links exhibition studies and environmental humanities to reveal the material, social, and political entanglements of exhibition-making