Humanities & Social Sciences

The economic crisis in the wake of the COVID pandemic is putting Cuba's socialism to a severe test. The government in Havana has put a reform of the economy, institutional structure and social policies on the agenda. This volume brings together contributions from leading international experts as well as from the island itself, analysing the economic, political and social challenges facing Cuba today.

Mobility and security are key themes for students of international politics that assume a globalized world. This book brings together research that looks into the political regulation of movement with research that engages the material enablers of and constraints on such movement. The setup of the book explores overlaps between critical security studies and political geography in order to bridge the gap between disciplines that study aspects of global modernity and its politics and practices. The contributions to this book cover a broad range of topics that are bound together by their focus on both the politics and the material underpinnings of movement. The authors engage diverse themes such as internet infrastructure, the circulation of data, discourses of borders and bordering, bureaucracy, and citizenship, thereby identifying common themes of Security/Mobility today.

This book draws a sociological portrait of the age group born in the 1970s in Estonia and discusses its generational features and constructions. This cohort’s coming of age coincided with the social and emotional turmoil of the re-independence movement in the late 1980s and with the transformation of society in the 1990s. This was the first cohort to negotiate its transition to adulthood in the new society, starting some new patterns of socialization, while also sharing some practices and experiences with older cohorts. Based on qualitative interviews as well as an analysis of media discourses and statistical data, the book traces the emergence of a new generation that draws its very own lessons from the past and from the social transformations that influenced life courses and careers. The book provides an intriguing discussion of socialization patterns and generation formation against the backdrop of post-socialist transformation. In addition, it provides a fascinating insight into the mind-set and experiences of a generation in the making, already shaping today’s society and culture.

"Several interdisciplinary studies highlight imperfect information as a possible explanation of skill mismatches, which in turn has implications for unemployment and informality rates. Despite information failures and their consequences, countries like Colombia (where informality and unemployment rates are high) lack a proper labour market information system to identify skill mismatches and employer skill requirements. One reason for this absence is the cost of collecting labour market data. Recently, the potential use of online job portals as a source of labour market information has gained the attention of researchers and policymakers, since these portals can provide quick and relatively low-cost data collection. As such, these portals could be of use for Colombia. However, debates continue about the efficacy of this use, particularly concerning the robustness of the collected data. This book implements a novel mixed-methods approach (such as web scraping, text mining, machine learning, etc.) to investigate to what extent a web-based model of skill mismatches can be developed for Colombia. The main contribution of this book is demonstrating that, with the proper techniques, job portals can be a robust source of labour market information. In doing so, it also contributes to current knowledge by developing a conceptual and methodological approach to identify skills, occupations, and skill mismatches using online job advertisements, which would otherwise be too complex to be collected and analysed via other means. By applying this novel methodology, this study provides new empirical data on the extent and nature of skill mismatches in Colombia for a considerable set of non-agricultural occupations in the urban and formal economy. Moreover, this information can be used as a complement to household surveys to monitor potential skill shortages. Thus, the findings are useful for policymakers, statisticians, and education and training providers, among others."

This open access book addresses the current disillusionment with mass higher education and argues that it is based on a profound misunderstanding of its educational potential. The authors analyse a seven-year longitudinal research project that tracked participants who studied chemistry or chemical engineering from their first year of university until up to three years after they graduated. Drawing on over 700 interviews with students/graduates from two English, two South African and two American universities, the book explores the educational intentions of their degree programmes, what participants wanted to get out of going to university and studying for a degree, how their views of knowledge and the world changed, and what they felt they had gained from going to university. The book argues that the educational potential of higher education lies, not in graduate salaries or employability, but in the ways in which engaging with structured bodies of knowledge changes students’ understanding of the world and what they can do in it. The authors consider the implications of this argument for how the educational role of higher education is understood by students, graduates, universities, and policymakers and how this understanding might be drawn upon to counter the damaging disillusionment with mass higher education that appears to be growing in many countries. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

Grundbildung ist eine wesentliche Voraussetzung zur Teilhabe an gesellschaftlichen Kontexten. Doch häufig haben Menschen mit einem niedrigen Bildungsniveau negative Lernerfahrungen zu Schulzeiten gemacht. Weiterbildungsmöglichkeiten begegnen sie daher mit Skepsis und erleben wenige Zugänge zu den Angeboten. Das Buch zeigt, wie bildungsbenachteiligte Erwachsene einen individuell angemessenen und sie selbst motivierenden Zugang zu Grund- und Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen erhalten können. Die Autoren beschreiben die Gestaltung von Angeboten in regionalen Netzwerken und leiten hieraus Forderungen an die Bildungspolitik ab. Das Buch richtet sich an Verantwortliche und Lehrende in Bildungseinrichtungen, Bildungsberater, Bildungspolitiker sowie weitere pädagogische Fachkräfte. Mit einem Vorwort von Rita Süssmuth.

Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen vor allem sechs Bücher von ehemaligen Angehörigen der SS-Division „Totenkopf“, einem militärischen Großverband der Waffen-SS. Diese Erinnerungswerke, in denen die ehemaligen Mitglieder dieser Division ihre Erlebnisse auf Papier brachten, sind zwischen 2000 und 2016 erschienen und können als Teil der Nachkriegserinnerungsliteratur betrachtet werden. Mit der Veröffentlichung ihrer Memoiren haben die ehemaligen Mitglieder der Waffen-SS dazu beigetragen, Geschichtsbilder zu konstruieren, die das eigene Handeln sowie die Waffen-SS apologetisch und verklärend darstellen. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht diese Memoiren im Hinblick auf Erinnerungskonstruktionen, apologetische oder wahrheitsgemäße Argumentationen. Dabei werden die Schilderungen über den KZ-Wachdienst, die Ausbildung zum SS-Soldaten sowie die Kampfeinsätze bis 1942 kritisch analysiert und auf Konstruktionsmuster geprüft. In einem zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden dann die verschiedenen Rahmen- und Distributionsbedingungen der Erinnerungsliteratur näher beleuchtet. Hier stehen die Verlage, die die Memoiren der ehemaligen Mitglieder der Waffen-SS veröffentlicht haben, im Zentrum. Neben der generellen Nähe zum rechten politischen Spektrum sind die Herausgeber auch im Kontext rechtsradikaler und neonazistischer Netzwerke zu verorten.

Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities. The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive.

In diesem Open-Access-Buch wird die mediale Fremddarstellung weiblicher Führungskräfte analysiert und mit der Selbstbeschreibung von Top-Managerinnen verglichen. Wie stellen Nachrichten- und Wirtschaftsmedien weibliche Führungskräfte dar? Und wie sehen Top-Managerinnen sich selbst? Mit Hilfe von Medienanalyse und qualitativen Interviews ermittelt die Studie, inwieweit das öffentliche Bild das Selbstverständnis von Managerinnen beeinflusst. Mit ihren Ergebnissen leistet die Arbeit einen produktiven Beitrag zum Verständnis der Lebenswirklichkeit weiblicher Führungskräfte in Deutschland. Vor dem Hintergrund des Fachkräftemangels und des Diskurses um Diversität und Gendergerechtigkeit ist das Buch nicht nur wissenschaftlich, sondern auch wirtschaftlich und gesellschaftliche relevant und aktuell. Darüber hinaus bietet es Denkanstöße und konkrete Handlungsempfehlungen – sowohl für Entscheider*innen aus der Wirtschaft als auch für Journalist*innen und Medienschaffende und nicht zuletzt für weibliche Führungskräfte selbst.

It is an unusual book in many respects. It is a specific study based on original and in most cases unedited sources, but it can also be read as a general introduction. It crosses boundaries between different fields of learning and traditionally accepted time periods of history. Even if it is essentially a book on medieval man, it stretches far beyond the middle ages as conventionally understood. The final chapter traces the slow disappearance of the medieval mentality until the early nineteenth century.

This volume describes the ideational effort required to design and implement a training-course model for "Experts in proximity violence". The Pilot project design has envisaged a framework where the concepts referring to broad reflections on the topic have be related to the professional skills to be trained. Proximity violence concerns multiple forms of gender-based violence which conceal, in turn, more subtle, intimate and viscous forms of dependence. The course was based on modules and availed itself of a "mixed" methodology, where theoretical lectures were interwoven with experiential workshops.

This special issue resulted from the invitation made to selected authors to contribute with an overview of a specific subject of their choice, and is based on a collection of papers chosen to exemplify some of the interests, uses and views of the epidemiology across different areas of research and practice. Rather than the comprehensiveness and coherence of a conventional textbook, readers will find a set of independent chapters, each of them of a great interest in their own specialized areas within epidemiology. Taken together, they illustrate the contrast between the attempt to extend the limits of applicability of epidemiological research, and the 'regular' scientific activity in this field or an applied epidemiology. Epidemiologists with different levels of expertise and interests will be able to find informative and inspiring readings among the chapters of this book.

Le mostre giovanili dell’Opera Bevilacqua La Masa hanno lasciato un’impronta indelebile sull’immagine stessa di Venezia come luogo della modernità, e quindi come sede del rinnovamento promosso da artisti che si sono riconosciuti e hanno operato non in gruppi predefiniti, ma comunque con un senso identitario generazionale, cresciuti in uno spazio intermedio tra Accademia di Belle Arti e Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, tra autodidattismo e apprendimento di nuovi linguaggi grazie a viaggi all’estero verso Parigi, Vienna, Monaco. La mostra di Ca’ Pesaro del 1913 è una delle più significative.

The cultural and scientific significance of animal magnetism as performance. The long nineteenth century bears the mark of Anton Mesmer. In a burgeoning media landscape, and in an emerging entertainment culture that fashioned growing numbers of people into audiences, the performative qualities of Mesmer’s magnetic healing techniques came to define magnetism’s cultural power. Shaped by many performers, magnetism flowed into other practices – mentalist, somnambulist, spiritist, hypnotist, mystical, magical and medical. Examining mesmerism as a socially and theatrically embedded phenomenon, Performing Magnetism shows that it was not merely a medical or pseudoscientific practice but a performative and culturally situated one. Drawing on new case studies from Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, the book offers a transnational perspective on nineteenth-century epistemologies and explores how magnetic practices intersected with science, art, popular entertainment, and engagement with the occult. Its interdisciplinary scope will engage readers interested in the cultural history of performance, media, and knowledge.

The Resonance of Unseen Things offers an ethnographic meditation on the “uncanny” persistence and cultural freight of conspiracy theory. The project is a reading of conspiracy theory as an index of a certain strain of late 20th-century American despondency and malaise, especially as understood by people experiencing downward social mobility. Written by a cultural anthropologist with a literary background, this deeply interdisciplinary book focuses on the enduring American preoccupation with captivity in a rapidly transforming world. Captivity is a trope that appears in both ordinary and fantastic iterations here, and Susan Lepselter shows how multiple troubled histories—of race, class, gender, and power—become compressed into stories of uncanny memory. “We really don’t have anything like this in terms of a focused, sympathetic, open-minded ethnographic study of UFO experiencers. . . . The author’s semiotic approach to the paranormal is immensely productive, positive, and, above all, resonant with what actually happens in history.” —Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion, Rice University “Lepselter relates a weave of intimate alien sensibilities in out-off-the-way places which are surprisingly, profoundly, close to home. Readers can expect to share her experience of contact with complex logics of feeling, and to do so in a contemporary America they may have thought they understood.” —Debbora Battaglia, Mount Holyoke College “An original and beautifully written study of contemporary American cultural poetics. . . . The book convincingly brings into relief the anxieties of those at the margins of American economic and civic life, their perceptions of state power, and the narrative continuities that bond them to histories of violence and expansion in the American West.” —Deirdre de la Cruz, University of Michigan