Humanities & Social Sciences

This book endeavours to outline case studies that promote sustainable Local Economic Development (LED) initiatives. It is generally believed that local governments are the foot soldiers of LED. However, this seems to be a myth, as local governments in South Africa and elsewhere have not yet fulfilled this mandate and have been struggling for several years to implement LED initiatives. The distinctive merit of this book lies in the way it combines the South African context with the wider international development context in ways that there is a flow of information and ideas both ways. The book is an essential part of this sequence of ideas development and action at a critical time for strategic action directed at a sustainable future. It showcases case studies and responses to the impacts of globalisation as a bridge between urban/rural and institutional action and reveals avenues for local government leadership in communities, research, student engagement and wider interactions.

Canaletto's Camera explores the ways in which the great Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) made use of the camera obscura - the forerunner of the photographic camera - as an aid to drawing and painting. It surveys Canaletto's contacts with contemporary Venetian and Paduan scientists, in particular Francesco Algarotti who wrote on Newton's philosophy and the camera obscura. Canaletto also relied on many measured drawings of Venetian buildings by his colleague Antonio Visentini, a debt that has not previously been recognised. Steadman proposes that Canaletto used the camera for two purposes: tracing from real scenes, and copying and collaging drawings and engravings by other artists. By analysing camera sketches made by Canaletto in a notebook, he shows how the artist traced views in Venice and then altered the real scenes in his finished drawings and paintings. By using a reconstructed eighteenth-century design of camera obscura, the author and his colleagues have made drawings of views that Canaletto painted in London. Steadman has recreated both a veduta (a real view) and a capriccio (a fantasy) using Canaletto's processes of 'photomontage'. The experiments are detailed in the book, shedding new light on the artist's procedures, and emphasising how weak and permeable the boundary is between the two types of picture. Praise for Canaletto's Camera 'In this enthralling book, Philip Steadman effortlessly bridges art and science. He depicts Canaletto’s Venice not as the city of Casanova and carnival but as a hub of Enlightenment knowledge, exploring the artist’s use of the latest optical instruments through practical experiment and penetrating visual analysis. The results are fascinating and totally convincing.' Deborah Howard, Cambridge University and author of The Architectural History of Venice 'It has always been known that Canaletto used camera obscuras. More than one of his contemporaries wrote as much. What has never been clear is exactly how he did so – until now. This is a fascinating, groundbreaking book which reveals absolutely fresh vistas on the art of the past' Martin Gayford, art critic at The Spectator and author of Venice: City of Pictures

Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for South Asian Muslim audiences has remained hidden in plain view. This book situates manuscript illustrations and album paintings within cultures of devotion and ritual shaped by Islamic intellectual and religious histories. Central to this story are the Mughal siblings, Jahanara Begum and Dara Shikoh, and their Sufi guide Mulla Shah. Through detailed art historical analysis supported by new translations, this study contextualizes artworks made for Indo-Muslim patrons by putting them into direct dialogue with written testimonies.

Over the past three decades, Central and Eastern Europe has experienced rapid economic transformation, accelerated by accession to the European Union and deeper integration into global financial markets. While improved access to credit has supported rising living standards, it has also increased households’ exposure to financial fragility when economic shocks occur. This book investigates the financial fragility of households in the region, offering new insights into how households cope with economic shocks and structural change. Despite shared experience of post-socialist transformation, Central and Eastern European countries display significant economic, social, and institutional diversity. This raises important questions: Do households across the region differ in their levels of financial fragility? Which socio-demographic groups are most vulnerable? What factors shape household resilience to economic shocks? Combining conceptual discussion with comparative empirical analysis, the book examines the determinants and dynamics of household financial fragility across the region. It explores changes in household financial conditions – including consumption patterns, debt dynamics, savings behaviour, and subjective financial well-being – and identifies cross-country differences in vulnerability using comparative and cluster-based approaches. The analysis also discusses how external shocks, including the global financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, have shaped household financial stability. By linking structural transformation, institutional context, and household-level outcomes, the book fills an important gap in the literature and offers new insights into the challenges of strengthening household resilience in the face of economic shocks. This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers, and students in economics, finance, consumer economics, and European studies who seek a deeper understanding of household financial fragility in Central and Eastern Europe.

Infrared (IR) radiation comprises a beam located in the electromagnetic radiation family; it arises from the thermal vibrations of radiation that have longer wavelengths than visible light, but shorter wavelengths than microwave radiation. Its wavelength is between 750 nm and 1 mm. The amount of thermal IR radiation emitted by an object is associated with the temperature of the object, the surface area of the object and the spreading of light. IR-based technologies have been demonstrated as a method of evidence identification in forensic sciences in addition to many daily uses.

During Antwerp's Golden Age, the city replaced Bruges as the primary trading hub of Western Europe. Antwerp transformed from a medium-sized Brabantine town to an unparalleled metropolis in the Low Countries with over 100.000 inhabitants. Although little is known regarding the impact of this transformation on the city's governance, Antwerp serves as an intriguing and exceptional case study. Unlike other trading metropolises such as sixteenth-century Lyon or seventeenth-century Amsterdam, where merchants increasingly occupied positions in the city council, this was not the case in Antwerp. This book ‘Macht in de Metropool’ reconstructs the compositions of Antwerp’s city council between 1400 and 1550. It examines the profile of the different aldermen and mayors and how they evolved over time. Furthermore, the research analyses the real estate investments of this group and their relationship with key groups in society such as the merchants, the nobility, and the central administration.

The Solomon Islands Campaign of World War II has been the subject of many published historical accounts. Most of these accounts present an ‘outsider’ perspective with limited reference to the contribution of indigenous Solomon Islanders as coastwatchers, scouts, carriers and labourers under the Royal Australian Navy and other Allied military units. Where islanders are mentioned, they are represented as ‘loyal’ helpers. The nature of local contributions in the war and their impact on islander perceptions are more complex than has been represented in these outsiders’ perspectives. Islander encounters with white American troops enabled self-awareness of racial relationships and inequality under the colonial administration, which sparked struggles towards recognition and political autonomy that emerged in parts of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate in the postwar period. Exploitation of postwar military infrastructure by the colonial administration laid the foundation for later sociopolitical upheaval experienced by the country. In the aftermath of the 1998 crisis, the supposed unity and pride that prevailed among islanders during the war has been seen as an avenue whereby different ethnic identities can be unified. This national unification process entailed the construction of the ‘Pride of our Nation’ monument that aims to restore the pride and identity of Solomon Islanders.

This volume contains a collection of papers which deal with Romance linguistics from the perspective of discourse and interaction. Some contributions cover areas such as spoken corpora, speech and linguistic description, and phonetic aspects of speech. Others focus on multimodality, pragmatics, and conversation and discourse, and there are also contributions which deal with speech and sociolinguistics, and speech in multilingualism/bilingualism. This volume is multilingual, containing as it does contributions written in English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Information and knowledge were essential tools of early modern Europe’s global ambitions. This volume addresses a key concern that emerged as the competition for geopolitical influence increased: how could information from afar be trusted when there was no obvious strategy for verification? How did notions of doubt develop in relation to intercultural encounters? Who were those in the position to use misinformation in their favour, and how did this affect trust? How, in other words, did distance affect credibility, and which intellectual and epistemological strategies did early modern Europe devise to cope with this problem? The movement of information, and its transformations in the process of gathering, ordering, and disseminating, makes it necessary to employ both a global and a local perspective in order to understand its significance. The rise of print, leading to various new forms of mediation, played a crucial role everywhere, inspiring theories of modernization in which media served as agents of new connections and, eventually, of globalization. Paradoxically, during the entire period between 1500 and 1800, the demise of distance through various strategies of verification coincided with constructions of otherness that emphasized the cultural and geographical difference between Europe and the worlds it encountered. Ten leading scholars of the early modern world address the relationship between distance, information, and credibility from a variety of perspectives. This volume will be an essential companion to those interested in the history of knowledge and early modern encounters, as well as specialists in the history of empire and print culture.

Diversifying the academic faculty remains an elusive goal marked by slow and uneven progress. This book describes an effective model for institutional transformation which is uniquely grounded in group-level processes. Efforts at institutional transformation continue to center individual actors. This is evident in the proliferation of programs that train individuals on implicit bias, search strategies, and other diversity and inclusion-based content as solutions for inequities in academia. Acknowledging the value of these approaches, this book adds a new focus: group-level processes. It unifies research on gender and racial inequity with concepts from social psychological theories of group dynamics to present a model of change centered on professional adult learners, including faculty and academic staff. The book details the implementation of group-level processes based on insights from the learning sciences, higher education leadership, communication studies, and group facilitation to instill norms for a more equitable and inclusive institution. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate the impact of group-level initiatives, the book offers recommendations to enable the application of this model in higher education contexts. This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students studying institutional transformation, academic social justice leadership, and faculty professional development and to those interested in integrating justice and equity into team science, translational research, and other trans-, inter-, and multi-disciplinary fields.

Was ist eine Utopie, wann und wo entstand sie als literarische Gattung, was charakterisiert sie und wie lässt sie sich von verwandten Gattungen abgrenzen? Diese und weitere Fragestellungen sind Thema des vorliegenden Buches. Der Romanist Hinrich Hudde hat es sich hier zur Aufgabe gemacht, die Gattung der literarischen Utopie aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln zu beleuchten und sie in einer umfassenden Betrachtungsweise darzustellen. Ausgehend von der Utopia des Thomas Morus befasst sich der Autor mit der Begriffs-, Gattungs- und Formgeschichte im Spannungsfeld von Utopie und Antiutopie, Raum- und Zeitutopie, grenzt die literarische Utopie von verwandten Gattungen ab, untersucht ihr Verhältnis zu Kunst und Medien, schätzt den Umfang ihres Bestandes und überblickt ihr Vorkommen in verschiedenen Sprachen. Das Verhältnis der Utopie zur geschichtlichen Wirklichkeit wird erörtert, dazu wird die Geschichte der Utopieforschung umrissen und es werden Anregungen für weitere Forschungsfragen vorgebracht. Diese Arbeit, entstand schon in den siebziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts. Die Kinder des Autors entdeckten das Manuskript „in der Schublade“, und beschlossen, es posthum zu veröffentlichen.

Since the turn of the Millennium, world-wide initiatives from the private sector have turned the regulatory environment for food businesses upside down. For the first time in legal literature this book analyses private law initiatives relating to the food chain, often referred to as private (voluntary) standards or schemes. Private standards are used to remedy flaws in legislation in order to reach higher levels of consumer protection than the ones chosen by the EU legislature and to manage risks and liability beyond the traditional limits of food businesses. We see that litigation is no longer solely framed by legislative requirements, but ever more by private standards such as GlobalGAP, BRC, IFS, SQF and ISO. These private standards incorporate public law requirements thus embedding them in contractual relations and exporting them beyond the jurisdiction of public legislators. This book also addresses how private standards play a role in defining specific markets of growing importance. It is noted that organic standards have found an interesting symbioses with public law. Another development on this topic is that food businesses are inspected more often by private auditors than by public inspectors. Effects in terms of receiving or being denied certification far outweigh public law sanctions. In short private law has changed an entire legal infrastructure for the food sector. It emerges as competing with the public law regulatory infrastructure. This book is of interest to all who concern themselves with food law legislation and litigation and the evolving role of private standards on changing the landscape of food chains and innovation.

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295806570 Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant “colony” of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, Justin Jacobs argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a “national empire.” He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia. This riveting narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People’s Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.

Presenting a novel multidimensional framework of citizenship confronting the urgent challenges of populism and nativism. Over the past two decades, debates about diversity, belonging, and feeling at home have intensified significantly. A particularly prominent argument posits that growing diversity threatens societal cohesion, eroding citizens' commitment to ideals such as solidarity and justice. Similarly widespread is the claim that various societal divides—between urban and rural populations, politicians and constituents, cosmopolitans and communitarians—are widening rapidly, leaving many feeling abandoned and disillusioned. As perceptions of deepening divides gain traction, citizenship has become a central site of political struggle. Populist and nativist forces increasingly dictate who counts as a ‘real’ citizen, often undermining democratic principles, the rule of law, and the welfare state. Citizenship—with all its perplexities—is the central focus of this collection. Through case studies and theoretical reflections, essays by well-established international experts explore the tensions and intersections among the political, social, cultural, and academic dimensions of citizenship. From rights and representation to social welfare and public discourse, the contributions question how citizenship is being restricted, reimagined, or reclaimed—and by whom. Engaging with current debates, this volume is essential reading on democracy, justice, and belonging amid populism, nativism, and (perceived) societal fragmentation.

Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments, has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience, whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes discordant account of what mental health law is and what it might be. The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and policy-makers.