Humanities & Social Sciences

Flexicurity is a European policy agenda seeking to increase both flexibility and security in the labour-market. This book argues that it needs a revision: Although flexicurity is set out to change the way Europeans work and live, and even though it is being justified by workers’ needs, flexicurity lacks of a clear and democratically justified vision of society. Flexicurity is confronted here with Amartya Sen’s capability-approach, a paradigm of well-being evaluation. How is flexicurity related to a concept of employment as part of a way of life which people have reason to value? How capability-friendly are established flexicurity-indicators? It is thus shown how the capability-approach can be used in the field of labour-market and social policy.

Schneller, weiter, billiger, mehr – ein Blick auf die Strassen und Schienen der Schweiz scheint zu bestätigen, was offizielle Statistiken seit Jahrzehnten mit eindrücklichen Zahlen belegen: Der Verkehr hat im Verlauf des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts massiv zugenommen. Doch ist dieses Wachstum mit gesteigerter Mobilität gleichzusetzen? Sind wir, wie gerne argumentiert wird, tatsächlich in jeglicher Hinsicht mobiler als früher? Ausgehend von diesen Leitfragen wirft der Autor einen umfassenden Blick auf die Verkehrs- und Mobilitätsgeschichte der letzten hundert Jahre. Das Buch zeigt zunächst auf, wie sich das Verkehrssystem seit 1918 im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft angebots- und nachfrageseitig entwickelt hat. Danach wird die Perspektive stärker auf Fragen der Alltagsmobilität verlagert: Wie lassen sich die alltäglichen Mobilitätsbedürfnisse der Bevölkerung im Zeitverlauf beschreiben? Welche Konstanten und Veränderungen kennzeichnen die Entwicklung? Wie verteilten sich Mobilitätschancen in der Gesellschaft? Der dritte und letzte Teil widmet sich der noch relativ jungen Mobilitätsbiografieforschung. Zwölf Interviews mit Frauen und Männern im Alter zwischen 30 und 85 Jahren zeigen auf, wie sich Mobilität und Verkehr über die Zeit und im intergenerationalen Vergleich entwickelt haben.

This book addresses the major theoretical and practical issues of the forms of citizenship and access to citizenship in different types of polity, and the specification and justification of rights of non-citizen immigrants as well as non-resident citizens. It also addresses the conditions under which norms governing citizenship can legitimately vary. The book discusses the principles of including all affected interests (AAI), all subject to coercion (ASC) and all citizenship stakeholders (ACS). They complement each other because they serve distinct purposes of democratic inclusion. The book proposes that democratic inclusion principles specify a relation between an individual or group that has an inclusion claim and a political community that aims to achieve democratic legitimacy for its political decisions and institutions. It contextualizes the principle of stakeholder inclusion, which provides the best answer to the question of democratic boundaries of membership, by applying it to polities of different types. The book distinguishes state, local and regional polities and argues that they differ in their membership character. It examines how a principle of stakeholder inclusion applies to polities of different types. The book illustrates the difference between consensual and automatic modes of inclusion by considering the contrast between birthright acquisition of citizenship, which is generally automatic, and naturalization, which requires an application.

The story of the primeval cataclysmic flood which wiped out all life on earth, save for one family, is found in different ancient Mesopotamian texts whence it reached the Biblical and Classical literary traditions. The present book systematically collects the earliest attestations of the myth of the Flood, namely all the cuneiform-written Akkadian sources – from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, including Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh –, presenting them in a new synoptic edition and English translation which are accompanied by a detailed philological commentary and an extensive literary discussion. The book also includes a complete glossary of the Akkadian sources.

Our aim in this afterword is to take the position of an informed reader in the social sciences who seeks as we did to discover points of entry into critical failure studies as developed within the Routledge International Handbook of Failure. Because the book ranges across disciplines and subject matter, we find that the introduction provides an ample overview of the chapters and the goals of the work. We have chosen to ask the question: how might a reader navigate this volume and approach its many theories, definitions, and perspectives? To accomplish this, we offer a brief view of two current projects, distinct in their foci, which served as points of entry to this body of work. First, a project on failure narratives among women in the academy, and second, a project which revolves around the coronavirus pandemic and vaccine hesitancy across six nations. In so doing, we hope to show how particular chapters provide surprises, insights, and theoretical frameworks that inform and deepen our understanding of this nascent and rich inquiry into the nature of failure and how it is problematized and challenged.

Migration and minority rights are increasingly at the forefront of global discourse. Minority Memory, Identity, and Reconciliation explores the lives of two often overlooked minority communities: the Greek Orthodox minority in Istanbul, Türkiye, and the Turkish Muslim minority in Western Thrace, Greece. As empires dissolved, the leaders and political elites of new, smaller nations that emerged embarked on population exchanges to increase the ethnic and religious homogeneity of their nation-states. Although these two minority communities differ in religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic terms, they both offer unique perspectives on what happens to people who live on what is perceived as the wrong side of an arbitrarily drawn border. Drawing from the personal stories of members of these two minority communities regarding their struggle with displacement, discrimination, and cultural assimilation, as well as comprehensive historical analysis, this book examines how historical traumas, national policies, and sociopolitical dynamics have influenced contemporary minority memory and identity formation. By incorporating interviews with community leaders, civil society representatives, and state officials, this book offers a rich, multifaceted perspective on the processes of memory and identity formation that underscores the broader implications of these processes for international relations in the region and minority rights. Gül M. Gür pulls together theories of nationalism, collective memory, and narrative practice to highlight the unique process of minority memory work and its role in sustaining minority identity and their advocacy efforts.

This open access book constitutes a transnational and multidisciplinary inquiry of the most pressing challenges faced by young people Not in Employment, nor in Education or Training (NEET) in rural areas across Europe. . Rural NEETs are one of the most invisible segments of the youth population, in spite of the fact that the percentage of NEETs is higher in the countryside, compared to those in suburban and urban areas across the EU and many of the Southern and Eastern European countries. This book identifies and analyses different factors that may contribute to or hamper youth social development and social inclusion. Among them are main individual features of rural NEETs, the quality and characteristics of rural NEETs' informal social networks and support, the singularities of formal and non-formal education in rural areas and how they shape the transition from school to work, the role of employment services in providing adequate institutional support, the importance of policy package designor the role of new paradigms of rural development to uphold vulnerable young people in the European countryside . The contributions offered in this book provide a new model of analysis and comprehension of rural NEETs' personal development and social inclusion. This book therefore establishes the state of the art regarding available knowledge on rural NEETs, and represents an inspirational resource for new research agendas on the subject of vulnerable rural youth in Europe. This book also forms the policy design in areas such as education, employment, and social welfare in rural areas.

Acoustics of Empire articulates what we might call a cultural history of global acoustics in the Age of Empire. Increasingly, music and sound studies have turned their attention to questions of empire and postcolonial thought, raising new questions about the forms and circulation of cultural, technological, and military power as manifest in and through sound. However, most of this scholarship has focused on the twentieth century. Conversely, sound and media studies have made nineteenth-century histories of science and technology a central part of their canonical repertoire, but largely overlooked the ways in which these technological developments emerged from contexts of empire. Examining histories of sound, listening practices, and audiovisual technologies of the Long Nineteenth Century through the lens of geopolitical power, Acoustics of Empire recovers a history of sound that is bound up with, even as it elides, questions of imperial and colonial rule. Bringing together contributions from historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and literary critics, the book emphasizes historical moments in which academic disciplines like musicology and history were created at the same moment and often in connection with global empires.

This book gathers leading economic historians, geographers, and social scientists to focus on the developments in key international financial centres following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and to consider the likely effects of Brexit on these centres. Eleven centres in eight countries are taken into consideration: New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich/Geneva, Hong Kong/Shanghai/Beijing, Tokyo, and Singapore. The book addresses three main issues. The first is the hierarchy of international financial centres, in particular whether Asian financial centres have taken advantage of the crisis in the West. The second is the medium-term effects of the crisis, with respect to the volume of business activity (including employment), and the level of regulation, with concerns regarding the risks of regulatory overkill. And the third is the rise of new technology, known as fintech, possibly the most important change in the decade following the crisis, with questions as to whether it will render financial centres, as we know them, unnecessary for the functioning of the global economy, and which cities are likely to emerge as hubs of new financial technology. Finally, the book discusses the likely effects of Brexit on international financial centres, in particular London, Paris, and Frankfurt. The book takes a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, with a general introduction providing a global overview from a historical perspective, and a general conclusion providing a global overview from a geographical perspective. Its focus on the implications for global financial centres is unique among books about the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.

Dieses Buch wurde mit dem zweiten Preis des Deutschen Studienpreises 2011 der Körber-Stiftung in der Sektion ‘Sozialwissenschaften’ ausgezeichnet. Die meisten Mütter unterbrechen nach der Geburt ihres ersten Kindes ihre Erwerbstätigkeit. Auf der Basis einer humankapitaltheoretisch fundierten Lohnfunktion und mit Daten des Sozio-ökonomischen Panels (SOEP) schätzt die Autorin den Lohneinfluss unterschiedlicher Ausprägungen von Erwerbserfahrung für westdeutsche Frauen und zeigt, dass Mütter – je nach Bildungsniveau und Unterbrechungsmuster – allein bis zum 46. Lebensjahr eine Bruttolohnsumme von bis zu 200 000 Euro verlieren. Im Ergebnis kann die Aufschiebung von Geburten ökonomisch rational sein. Eine Auszeit-Verkürzung senkt die Verluste erheblich. Der berechnete «Career Wage Gap» als Biografie-bedingter Einkommensnachteil von Frau zu Frau trägt dazu bei, geschlechtsspezifische Lohndiskriminierung in Deutschland fundiert zu beziffern.

For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently, architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event and therefore incapable of performing any political role. This handbook explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems – from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change – this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frames cutting-edge contemporary debates and presents studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This Handbook will be of interest to anyone seeking to meaningfully disrupt the reduction of space to an oppressive or neutral backdrop of political realities. Chapters 1 and 23 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Taking South Africa as an important case study of the challenges of structural transformation, the book offers a new micro-meso level framework and evidence linking country-specific and global dynamics of change, with a focus on the current challenges and opportunities faced by middle-income countries. Detailed analyses of industry groupings and interests in South Africa reveal the complex set of interlocking country-specific factors which have hampered structural transformation over several decades, but also the emerging productive areas and opportunities for structural change. The structural transformation trajectory of South Africa presents a unique country case, given its industrial structure, concentration, and highly internationalized economy, as well as the objective of black economic empowerment. The book links these micro-meso dynamics to the global forces driving economic, institutional, and social change. These include digital industrialization, global value-chain consolidation, financialization, and environmental and other sustainability challenges which are reshaping structural transformation dynamics across middle-income countries like South Africa. While these new drivers of change are disrupting existing industries and interests in some areas, in others they are reinforcing existing trends and configurations of power. The book analyses the ways in which both the domestic and global drivers of structural transformation shape—and, in some cases, are shaped by—a country’s political settlement and its evolution. By focusing on the political economy of structural transformation, the book disentangles the specific dynamics underlying the South African experience of the middle-income country conundrum. In so doing, it brings to light the broader challenges faced by similar countries in achieving structural transformation via industrial policies.

"The monograph considers influence over time of Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance in 10 Costa Rican coffee farming communities. In-country perspectives and relevant historic and contemporary literature inform findings. Misaligned intentions to outcomes; different sustainability approaches; and variable influence is observed. There is opportunity to: consider when certifications are most useful; develop locally relevant standards; vertically integrate sourcing chains; consider how complementary mechanisms can be used alongside, or to improve certification approach. Sustainability of coffee as a cash crop, considering influence on biodiversity, and the possible implication of reduced coffee crop density for consumers, the market and farming landscapes, is considered. "

As noted by Pierre Nora (1989, p. 17), ‘no-one knows what the past will be made of next’. While this is indeed so, it is also the case that the past will surely be ‘made’ somehow. In this chapter, we take a look at those makings and the ubiquitous desire to recreate what once was that arguably undergirds almost any heritage practice.

The book provides the first analysis of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause’s system of philosophy and his panentheism in English. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause has bequeathed to us a system of philosophy which is little recognised in contemporary philosophy. This is both surprising and unfortunate, because Krause’s philosophical system has much to offer: Through transcendental reflection on the nature of the human, Krause understands God as the one infinite and unconditioned reality, and the ultimate necessary condition of knowledge. God makes humanity, nature, and reason ultimately comprehensible as the essential categories of the divine Essence. God is thus the single, primary, object of science that is already logically presupposed even before His discovery. Science presupposes theology, and theology is best read as panentheism.