Humanities & Social Sciences

The first edition of Architecture, Power, and National Identity, published in 1992, has become a classic, winning the prestigious Spiro Kostof award for the best book in architecture and urbanism. Lawrence Vale fully has fully updated the book, which focuses on the relationship between the design of national capitals across the world and the formation of national identity in modernity. Tied to this, it explains the role that architecture and planning play in the forceful assertion of state power. The book is truly international in scope, looking at capital cities in the United States, India, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Bangladesh, and Papua New Guinea.

Focusing on significant and cutting-edge preoccupations within children’s literature scholarship, The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature and Culture presents a comprehensive overview of print, digital, and electronic texts for children aged zero to thirteen as forms of world literature participating in a panoply of identity formations. Offering five distinct sections, this volume: Familiarizes students and beginning scholars with key concepts and methodological resources guiding contemporary inquiry into children’s literature Describes the major media formats and genres for texts expressly addressing children Considers the production, distribution, and valuing of children’s books from an assortment of historical and contemporary perspectives, highlighting context as a driver of content Maps how children’s texts have historically presumed and prescribed certain identities on the part of their readers, sometimes addressing readers who share some part of the author’s identity, sometimes seeking to educate the reader about a presumed “other,” and in recent decades increasingly foregrounding identities once lacking visibility and voice Explores the historical evolutions and trans-regional contacts and (inter)connections in the long process of the formation of global children’s literature, highlighting issues such as retranslation, transnationalism, transculturality, and new digital formats for considering cultural crossings and renegotiations in the production of children’s literature Methodically presented and contextualized, this volume is an engaging introduction to this expanding and multifaceted field.

The conclusions of the volume offer a synthetic look at the work with an eye to the future prospects of the studies.

In the past ten years, the concept of education for sustainable development has become one of UNESCO’s key educational initiatives to address current global challenges. However, the attention was mainly devoted to primary and secondary education, and higher education was somewhat neglected. The primary focus on basic education has also diverted academic attention from the research exploring the relationship between higher education and sustainable development. Only recently has the academic discourse on this topic begun to gain ground. On that note, this book is meant to place higher education at the core of the necessary transformations to create awareness of more sustainable practices and policies.

This book is the basis of comparative literature studies of Southeast-Europe from the late medieval period to early 20th century in the near future and compare for the first time the development of genres and periods of fiction, ideological tendencies, themes and motives, reception and influences concerning the literatures of Hungary and Rumania, the South Slavic countries, Albania, Greece and Turkey.

In der Forschung zum Buddhismus im Westen blieben asiatische Migrant*innen lange unbeachtet. So auch die gegenwärtig rund 15.000 thailändischen Heiratsmigrantinnen in der Schweiz, die oft mit existenziellen Problemen, Einsamkeit und sozialer Isolation zu kämpfen haben. Andrea Zimmermann richtet den Fokus auf den Wunsch der Frauen nach einem besseren Leben, auf die Schwierigkeiten, denen sie im Migrationskontext begegnen, und auf die Religiosität als Konstante zur Bewältigung ihres Alltags in der Fremde. Damit legt sie eine Studie zur Migrationsforschung, zu lokalem religiösem Pluralismus und zur Bedeutung von Religion im Leben Einzelner vor, die sich nicht nur an Akademiker*innen, sondern auch an ein breiteres Publikum richtet.

The age of Lothar was of fundamental importance for the evolution of the ruling classes in Italy, both in the Italic kingdom and in the areas not included within it. The essays collected in this book investigate this evolution through the examination of a series of case studies, which highlight the diversity of the various local situations, particularly between the areas of the kingdom itself and the former Byzantine areas. One of the main points examined is that of the timing and importance of the penetration of immigrants from north of the Alps into Italian society, with the consequent exclusion of the Lombards from the most important positions of power. An important theoretical point examined in the book is also the discussion around the concepts of aristocracy and élites, and what meaning they have if applied to the members of the ruling classes in Italy in Lothar’s time.

Among the indigenous languages of the Andean region of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile and northern Argentina, Quechuan and Aymaran have traditionally occupied a dominant position. Both Quechuan and Aymaran are language families of several million speakers each. Quechuan consists of a conglomerate of geo-graphically defined varieties, traditionally referred to as Quechua “dialects”, not-withstanding the fact that mutual intelligibility is often lacking. Present-day Aymaran consists of two distinct languages that are not normally referred to as “dialects”. The absence of a demonstrable genetic relationship between the Quechuan and Aymaran language families, accompanied by a lack of recognizable external gen-etic connections, suggests a long period of independent development, which may hark back to a period of incipient subsistence agriculture roughly dated between8000 and 5000 BP (Torero 2002: 123–124), long before the Andean civilization attained its highest stages of complexity.

Australia’s federal system is in a state of flux and its relevance is being challenged. Dramatic shifts are occurring in the ways in which power and responsibility are shared between governments. Pressure for reform is coming not just from above, but from below, as the needs of local and regional communities – both rural and urban – occupy an increasingly important place on the national stage. How will these competing pressures for centralisation and devolution in the structures of federalism be reconciled? In this volume, experts and policy practitioners from diverse backgrounds canvass this uncertain future to conclude that the future of state, regional and local institutions is not only a vital question of federal governance, but must be addressed in a conscious and concerted way if Australian federalism is to evolve in ways that are sufficiently legitimate, effective, efficient and adaptive.

In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, but crucially by the purposes those beliefs serve. Drawing from classical Nyāya epistemologies, the book asserts that knowledge rationalizes action: if you know something, it is sensible to act on it—and the best way to square this with an anti-sceptical epistemology is to say that knowledge is interest-relative. While versions of this view have been debated, they haven’t gained wide acceptance. The author addresses common objections with a refined formulation and explores how this perspective elucidates the role of knowledge in inquiry, daily life, and the history of thought. Key distinctions include the impact of “long odds” situations on knowledge, the distinctive role knowledge has a starting point for inquiry, and the importance of using non-ideal models in theorising about knowledge. Building on decades of scholarship, the author offers a cohesive theory that integrates and clarifies previous works, demonstrating that not only knowledge but also belief, rational belief, and evidence are interest-relative. This book is essential for those seeking a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between knowledge and practical interests.

Society; Culture

Aspects of Judean Life focuses on Elephantine during the fifth century BCE , developing a comprehensive model of Achaemenid Persian imperial governance in Egypt and situating the Judean colony within that framework. It reconsiders the colony at Elephantine not as a band of foreign mercenaries living private lives but as colonial state dependents embedded within Achaemenid systems of land-for-service taxation and imperial administration. Far from isolated, the Judeans emerge as active participants in—and beneficiaries of—the structures of empire. Part 1 offers a cultural history of Imperial Aramaic scribal practice in the Persian period, drawing on Egyptian and Babylonian evidence alongside Phoenician scribal culture. Part 2 reinterprets the Elephantine Papyri through close philological and historical analysis, resolving long-standing problems concerning ethnic designation, administrative purpose, and community sociology. Part 3 reconstructs the professional networks of Judean temple administrators through analysis of Aramaic ostraca and examines the community’s role in systems of production, rationing, and taxation. By placing Elephantine in dialogue with evidence from the Nile Delta, Babylonia, and other imperial settlements, this study offers a nuanced account of how Persian policies were locally implemented. It will be an indispensable resource for scholars of the ancient Near East, biblical studies, and imperial history.

In this Open Access book Daniel Fuchs analyzes the potential impact of additive manufacturing-related design freedom on vehicle conception. In this context, the term Additive Manufacturing (AM) incorporates the technology field often referred to as 3D-Printing. The motivation for this work is derived from alternative design solutions presented in state-of-the-art AM use cases, in which additional design freedom is leveraged to achieve significant product- and process-related improvements. This book systematically explores the impact of AM-related design freedom on vehicle conception, leveraging novel design potentials from the part to the complete vehicle level.

"The distorted stereotype of the pre-modern elementary school teacher as a poor starving man with deficient educational knowledge is still omnipresent in historical depictions of the Swiss elementary school system. Nevertheless, little is known about the social profile and the lives of elementary school teachers around 1800. From the Elementary School Survey of 1799, known as the Stapfer-Enquête, biographical data of over 2,300 teachers is available, which was analyzed quantitatively and comparatively using the methodological approach of collective biographies in order to explore the social profile, biographical careers and social status of elementary school teachers in the Helvetic Republic. With regard to the social background of teachers at the beginning of the 19th century, the study shows that, contrary to the perceived poverty paradigm, the majority of teachers – female teachers were still the exception – were not recruited from the lowest social strata, but came from small-scale farms and craft milieus of the local middle classes. In addition, regional surveys show that there was no lack of suitable candidates for the school classrooms, and that the teaching profession even represented an attractive communal resource. Furthermore, despite the enormous local disparities, not every teacher was destitute, for many teachers were able to support their families from teaching income alone, as teachers, on average, had more children than those of similar occupational groups. The fact that the teaching profession was not an opportunistic alternative occupation becomes apparent in a comparison of the generationally differentiated career paths. Regardless of their financial situation, the majority of elementary school teachers took up the teaching profession as adolescents or young adults and pursued it in the long term. Upon assumption of the teaching profession, many teachers also changed their professional profile in the sense of a destratification of their gainful activities. Discontinuous professional profiles became more frequent, in that former activities were consciously renounced or replaced by church auxiliary service. The beginning of the professionalization of the teaching profession can thus already be dated in the career paths of teachers before 1800, despite the still missing uniform training structures. The teaching profession itself, along with the frequently practiced connection with church auxiliary service, gave teachers a high intangible social capital in addition to income. This social capital is reflected in above-average marriage rates for teachers. Furthermore, regional sources reveal a high degree of satisfaction with the teachers‘ professional performance, often in harsh contrast to critical individual reports, which simultaneously attest to professional incompetence. In this way, these often-criticized elementary school teachers were the central diffusers of Swiss literacy, which was already largely comprehensive around 1800, putting their performance and the early modern educational system in a brand new light. "

This book is the first account of self-harming behaviour in its proper historical and political context. The rise of self-cutting and overdosing in the 20th century is linked to the sweeping changes in mental and physical health, and wider political context. The welfare state, social work, Second World War, closure of the asylums, even the legalization of suicide, are all implicated in the prominence of self harm in Britain. The rise of 'overdosing as a cry for help' is linked to the integration of mental and physical healthcare, the NHS, and the change in the law on suicide and attempted suicide. The shift from overdosing to self-cutting as the most prominent 'self-damaging' behaviour is also explained, linked to changes in hospital organization and the wider rise of neoliberal politics. Appreciation of history and politics is vital to understanding the psychological concerns over these self-harming behaviours.