Humanities & Social Sciences

Cultural and natural heritage are central to ‘Europe’ and ‘the European project’. They were bound up in the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where they were used to justify differences over which border conflicts were fought. Later, the idea of a ‘common European heritage’ provided a rationale for the development of the European Union. Now, the emergence of ‘new’ populist nationalisms shows how the imagined past continues to play a role in cultural and social governance, while a series of interlinked social and ecological crises are changing the ways that heritage operates. New discourses and ontologies are emerging to reconfigure heritage for the circumstances of the present and the uncertainties of the future. Taking the current role of heritage in Europe as its starting point, Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe presents a number of case studies that explore key themes in this transformation. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to consider, variously, the role of heritage and museums in the migration and climate ‘emergencies’; approaches to urban heritage conservation and practices of curating cities; digital and digitised heritage; the use of heritage as a therapeutic resource; and critical approaches to heritage and its management. Taken together, the chapters explore the multiple ontologies through which cultural and natural heritage have actively intervened in redrawing the futures of Europe and the world. Praise for Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe 'Filled with many fascinating and diverse chapters, this book vividly demonstrates the dynamism and breadth of critical heritage study of, in, and entangled with Europe today' Sharon Macdonald, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 'Far from being restrictive, let alone chauvinistic, the multiscalar European focus of this book confirms the breadth and relevance of current critical heritage studies. With contributions addressing such topical issues as climate emergencies, urban landscapes, cultural industries, new media and identity politics – be they written by established scholars or by emerging researchers – it is ""Europe"" with all its shared grounds and recurrent divergences that comes into sharper relief. From this vantage point, readers of this compelling book will be better positioned for reflecting on and eventually influencing and challenging our heritage futures.' Nathan Schlanger, Professor of Archaeology, École nationale des chartes, Paris. 'This book addresses European heritage realities and futures through new voices, paradigms, and methods. It is a collage of tensions – practically a representation of Europe itself – through which to comprehend contemporary intersections of time, place, things, and meaning. It contributes to new vistas in heritage studies: the offer of design and imagination as methods; reckonings with data and climate change as seemingly uncontrollable actors; and the ongoing negotiation of ""criticality"" in the making of our responsibilities for the past in the present' Christopher Whitehead, Professor of Museology, Newcastle University.

How did people organize their settlements in later prehistoric societies? How do architecture, spatial organization, land divisions, and landscape use relate to different modes of social organization? The papers in this book contribute to a greater understanding of the complexity and dynamics of settlement and landscape organization in the Nordic countries from the Late Bronze Age to the Renaissance. Among the topics addressed is the notion of the wandering settlements as the standard settlement pattern across southern Scandinavia in the last millennium BC. This idea is nuanced by in-depth regional studies. Up-to-date methodological and theoretical insights are employed to shed light on over-arching patterns of demography and the interaction between humans and the natural world, as well as on technological adaptation and innovation. Contributions to the book explore the nature of the relationships between settlements: both symmetrical relationships, between neighbouring farmsteads, and asymmetrical relationships, between farmsteads representing different levels in a social hierarchy. Spatial and temporal relations between communities of the living and the dead are also discussed. This book provides a comprehensive update on current research and methodologies in settlement archaeology in the Nordic countries. It is intended for students, archaeologists, and the interested reader working with settlements, landscape use, and social organization.

This paper focuses on studying the agricultural credit system and its impact on social mobility and economic changes in Catalonia, especially in the Empordà area, during the late 18th century. It analyzes how indebtedness was closely linked to agricultural activity and the economic development of that period. The use of credit is described, and the reasons for incurring debts are investigated, as well as the consequences on different social strata. Emphasis is placed on consignative census as the main form of indebtedness, and their impact on the economic and social configuration of the region is explored. The article provides a detailed view of how agricultural credit shaped the social and economic dynamics of Catalonia during that historical period.

Adopting a transnational perspective, this book takes a look at the art history of production, transport and logistics with its heterogenous actors, objects, institutions, and their interwoven stories. The production of art goes along with complex infrastructures that are often unseen and associated with political and ecological challenges. To what extent is mobility already taken into account in the production of art? What role do customs regulations, political border restrictions, and sustainability play? This publication focuses on contexts, networks, material flows and the conditions of production and distribution within the arts of the 20th and 21st century. Contribution to the growing field of infrastructural studies in art history from a transnational perspective Art history of production, transport and logistics Mapping the technical, political, and economic conditions of the cultural field

Japan’s Failed Revolution: Koizumi and the Politics of Economic Reform asks why, despite all the high expectations, the Japanese public’s desire for economic reform, and leadership of a majority coalition in a parliamentary democracy, the reformer Prime Minister Koizumi has not achieved the economic reforms expected of him since he surprisingly attained power over a year ago. To unravel this ‘puzzle’, Aurelia George Mulgan eschews the simplicities of both cultural and rational choice explanations and systematically tests the propositions in the comparative literature on ‘failed reform’. The result is one of the best books ever written about contemporary Japanese politics. It explains how, despite British-style parliamentary institutions, Japan’s very ‘un-Westminster’ traditional policymaking process involving the ruling party and the bureaucracy’s structure and linkage has stymied and will probably continue to stymie even a sincere and active Prime Minister’s best reform intentions. This book should be read by all political scientists, journalists, economists, and students interested in contemporary Japan. Ellis S. Krauss Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies University of California, San Diego. The author takes a scalpel to dissect Japan’s dysfunctional political system. She shows with wonderful clarity and depth of knowledge why the Koizumi reforms are not succeeding, and why revolutionary political change is needed as a precondition for economic recovery. The book should be required reading for anyone involved with contemporary Japan. J.A.A. Stockwin University of Oxford.

How do people tell of experiences, things and events that mean a lot to them and are unforgettable? Eight Nordic folklorists here examine personal experience stories and the way they are narrated in an attempt to gain an understanding of the people behind them and to reveal how these people handle their history, their lives and their cultural memory. All the articles are based on interviews and narrator-researcher collaboration. The stories tell about birth, sickness and miraculous cures, intergenerational relations, war, and matters not normally talked about. The analyses complement one another and the work may be used as a university course book.

This book is the outcome of an original and interdisciplinary undertaking by the Academy of Young Scholars and Artists based in Wrocław, Poland. One of the fundamental objectives of the Academy is to improve and foster communication between outstanding representatives of various fields of science, the humanities and art. In this regard to close the gap between the sciences, humanities and the arts and replace it with a unifying yet diverse vision of human cognition – a group of over 50 scholars and artists were asked to present their perspectives on the concepts of “complexity” and “simplicity” in the form of articles or artworks that made reference to their specific disciplines. Hence, the material presented in this compilation may serve as an interdisciplinary source of inspiration for a wide variety of readers. The choice of the main theme – complexity, simplicity, and the various kinds of thought-provoking dialectics unfolding between these – was motivated by a comprehensive and ongoing debate observable in the area of the methodology of the sciences as well as in various spheres of art. Contributors are: Ewa Błaszczak, Krzysztof Boczkowski, Małgorzata Cebrat, Jarosław Drapała, Marcin Drąg, Magda Dubińska-Magiera, Adrian Foltyn, Dorota Frydecka, Łukasz Huculak, Jakub Jernajczyk, Urszula Komarnicka, Katarzyna Kopecka-Piech, Marek Krajewski, Piotr Kruk, Artur Krężel, Marta Migocka-Patrzałek, Magdalena Rowińska-Żyrek, Bartłomiej Skowron, Karol Striżyk, Magdalena Witkowicz, Roland Zarzycki, Justyna Ziółkowska and Katarzyna Zoń. Contributing artists are: Justyna Baśnik, Paweł Baśnik, Tomasz Dobiszewski, Zuzanna Dyrda, Karolina Freino, Wiesław Gołuch, Mariusz Gorzelak, Jarosław Grulkowski, Marek Grzyb, Magda Grzybowska, Łukasz Huculak, Piotr Jędrzejewski, Jakub Jernajczyk, Antonina Joszczuk-Brzozowska, Ivan Juarez, Piotr Kmita, Michał Knychaus, Mirosław Kociński, Anna Kołodziejczyk, Marzena Krzemińska-Baluch, Agnieszka Leśniak-Banasiak, Ula Lucińska, Beata Mak-Sobota, Karina Marusińska, Marcin Mierzicki, Kamil Moskowczenko, Joanna Opalska-Brzecka, Bożena Sacharczuk, Artur Skowroński, Eugeniusz Smoliński, Dominika Sobolewska, Karolina Szymanowska, Anna Trojanowska, Justyna Żak

Online-Rezensionen zu künstlerischen Artefakten können Bildungsprozesse anstoßen. Sowohl in der produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit einem Werk als auch in der Aufbereitung dieser Erfahrung in einem rezensiven Text und für ein spezifisches Publikum liegt ein hohes Potenzial hinsichtlich der kulturellen Teilhabe und Überwindung von Bildungsbarrieren. Aber welche Prozesse, Inhalte und Kontexte spielen dabei eine Rolle? Dieser Frage widmete sich das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt Rez@Kultur, dessen Ergebnisse hier erstmals umfassend dargestellt werden. Ergänzt werden die Befunde um Anschlussperspektiven und Kommentare aus Forschung und Praxis.

Those convicted of homicide were hanged on the public gallows before being dissected under the Murder Act in Georgian England. Yet, from 1752, whether criminals actually died on the hanging tree or in the dissection room remained a medical mystery in early modern society. Dissecting the Criminal Corpse takes issue with the historical cliché of corpses dangling from the hangman’s rope in crime studies. Some convicted murderers did survive execution in early modern England. Establishing medical death in the heart-lungs-brain was a physical enigma. Criminals had large bull-necks, strong willpowers, and hearty survival instincts. Extreme hypothermia often disguised coma in a prisoner hanged in the winter cold. The youngest and fittest were capable of reviving on the dissection table. Many died under the lancet. Capital legislation disguised a complex medical choreography that surgeons staged. They broke the Hippocratic Oath by executing the Dangerous Dead across England from 1752 until 1832.

"The book investigates how the United Nations, governments and aid agencies mobilise and instrumentalise migration policies and programmes through a discourse of safe migration. Since the early 2000s, numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies and governments have warmed to the concept of safe migration, often within a context of anti-trafficking interventions. Yet, both the policy-enthusiasm for safety, as well as how safe migration comes into being through policies and programs remain unexplored. Based on six years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mekong region, this is the first book that traces the emergence of safe migration, why certain aid actors gravitate towards the concept, as well as how safe migration policies and programmes unfold through aid agencies and government bodies. The book argues that safe migration is best understood as brokered safety. Although safe migration policy interventions attempt to formalize pre-emptive and protective measures to enhance labour migrants’ well-being, the book shows through vivid ethnographic details how formal migration assistance in itself depends on - and produces – informal, mediated practices. The book offers unprecedented insights into what safe migration policies look like in practice. It is an innovate contribution to contemporary theorizing of contemporary forms of migration governance and will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and human geographers working within the fields of Migration studies, Development Studies as well as Southeast Asian and Global Studies. "

Soziale Medien bilden im zunehmenden Maß einen Ort der Austragung und diskursiven Verarbeitung gesellschaftlicher und politischer Konflikte. Extrem rechte und salafistisch-dschihadistische Akteur*innen nehmen an diesen Auseinandersetzungen teil und nutzen sie als Plattform zur Propaganda. Der Band widmet sich der Frage, wie sich Mobilisierungs- und Radikalisierungsprozesse in sozialen Medien entfalten und unter welchen Bedingungen sie zu Gewalthandlungen in der realen Welt führen können.; Social media are increasingly becoming a space where social and political conflicts are carried out and discursively processed. Extreme right and Salafist/Jihadist actors participate in these conflicts and use them as a platform for propaganda. This volume is devoted to the question of how processes of mobilization and radicalization unfold in social media and under what conditions they can lead to violent acts in the real world.

This Open Access book examines children’s participation in dialectical reciprocity with place-based institutional practices by presenting empirical research from Australia, Brazil, China, Poland, Norway and Wales. Underpinned by cultural-historical theory, the analysis reveals how outdoors and nature form unique conditions for children's play, formal and informal learning and cultural formation. The analysis also surfaces how inequalities exist in societies and communities, which often limit and constrain families' and children's access to and participation in outdoor spaces and nature. The findings highlight how institutional practices are shaped by pedagogical content, teachers' training, institutional regulations and societal perceptions of nature, children and suitable, sustainable education for young children. Due to crises, such as climate change and the recent pandemic, specific focus on the outdoors and nature in cultural formation is timely for the cultural-historical theoretical tradition. In doing so, the book provides empirical and theoretical support for policy makers, researchers, educators and families to enhance, increase and sustain outdoor and nature education.

Experimental Affinities in Music brings together diverse artistic, musicological, historical, and philosophical essays, enhancing a broad discourse on artistic experimentation, and exploring various experimental attitudes in music composed between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. The golden thread running through the different chapters is the quest for inherently experimental musical practices, a quest pursued from interrogating, descriptive, or challenging perspectives, and always in relation to concrete music examples. Experimental is taken as an adventurous compositional, interpretive, or performative attitude that can cut across different ages and styles. Affinities suggest connectors and connections, convergences, contiguities, and adjacencies that are found in and through a diversity of approaches and topics. The texts share a common genesis: the lectures of the International Orpheus Academies for Music and Theory convened by Luk Vaes (2011) and Paulo de Assis (2012, 2013). The affinities found in this volume include essays by Lydia Goehr, Felix Diergarten, Mark Lindley, Martin Kirnbauer, Edward Wickham, Lawrence Kramer, Hermann Danuser, and Thomas Christensen, as well as interviews with pianist Leon Fleisher, with pianist-composer Frederic Rzewski, and with composer Helmut Lachenmann. (publishing partner ‘Orpheus Institute’)

Dieses Open-Access-Buch dokumentiert die Entwicklung des personenzentrierten Bedarfserfassungsinstrumentes „IBUT-CMA“ auf Grundlage der ICF. Ziel war es, die Bedarfe praxisnah zu erfassen, eine direkte, leistungsgerechte, monetäre Abbildung der Hilfen zu erreichen, die Mitwirkungsmöglichkeit und Teilhabe der Betroffenen am Erfassungsprozess zu verbessern und eine klare Kommunikationsstruktur zwischen Kostenträger und Leistungserbringer zu schaffen. Weitere neben dem Instrument vorgestellte Ergebnisse sind: die Definition des Begriffes „Teilhabe“ als dynamisches Modell, die Darstellung der Kausalkette der Bedarfserfassung sowie die Formulierung von Merkmalen arbeitsähnlicher Tätigkeiten. Mit dem Modell der Beeinträchtigung und Förderung der Teilhabe für CMA (MBFT) wird u.a. verdeutlicht, wie tagesstrukturierende Maßnahmen und die Rahmenbedingungen besonderer Wohnformen die personenzentrierte Teilhabe unterstützen können.

Explore the comprehensive examination of stress and burnout in public service with this edited volume, compiled by Dr. Leonard Bright, featuring contributions from esteemed scholars worldwide. This book investigates the underlying causes, repercussions, and mitigation strategies associated with stress in highly demanding and critical professions. The chapters in this book comprise thorough literature reviews that provide extensive overviews of stress and burnout, present empirical research studies that scrutinize how work-related factors influence perceived stress and furnish public servants with easy, actionable exercises and insights to bolster their resilience and well-being in stressful public service occupations. This book is an invaluable resource for public service professionals, researchers, and educators interested in improving their understanding of the art and science of mitigating stress in public service workplaces.