Humanities & Social Sciences

When people discuss politics, they often mention the promises politicians make during election campaigns. Promises raise hopes that positive policy changes are possible, but people are generally skeptical of these promises. Party Mandates and Democracy reveals the extent to and conditions under which governments fulfill party promises during election campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom a majority of pledges—sometimes a large majority—are acted upon in most countries, most of the time. The fulfillment of parties’ election pledges is an essential part of the democratic process. This book is the first major, genuinely comparative study of promises across a broad range of countries and elections, including the United States, Canada, nine Western European countries, and Bulgaria. The book thus adds to the body of literature on the variety of outcomes stemming from alternative democratic institutions.

This open access book examines global plastic pollution, an issue that has become a critical societal challenge with implications for environmental and public health. This volume provides a comprehensive, holistic analysis on the plastic cycle and its subsequent effects on biota, food security, and human exposure. Importantly, global environmental change and its associated, systems-level processes, including atmospheric deposition, ecosystem complexity, UV exposure, wind patterns, water stratification, ocean circulation, etc., are all important direct and indirect factors governing the fate, transport and biotic and abiotic processing of plastic particles across ecosystem types. Furthermore, the distribution of plastic in the ocean is not independent of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, since much of the plastic in marine ecosystems originates from land and should therefore be evaluated in the context of the larger plastic cycle. Changes in species size, distribution, habitat, and food web complexity, due to global environmental change, will likely alter trophic transfer dynamics and the ecological effects of nano- and microplastics. The fate and transport dynamics of plastic particles are influenced by their size, form, shape, polymer type, additives, and overall ecosystem conditions. In addition to the risks that plastics pose to the total environment, the potential impacts on human health and exposure routes, including seafood consumption, and air and drinking water need to be assessed in a comprehensive and quantitative manner. Here I present a holistic and interdisciplinary book volume designed to advance the understanding of plastic cycling in the environment with an emphasis on sources, fate and transport, ecotoxicology, climate change effects, food security, microbiology, sustainability, human exposure and public policy.

»Parabasis« – dieser kaum noch geläufige Begriff bezeichnet einen eigentümlichen Moment der Alten Attischen Komödie, in dem die Handlung pausiert und der Chor das Publikum direkt anspricht. Aus dem Drama der Neuzeit schien die Parabasis weitgehend verschwunden. Die Kunsttheorien, die sich dem Paradigma der Repräsentation unterstellten, verurteilten sie als unnatürlich, störend und kunstfremd. Christian Kirchmeier zeigt dagegen erstmals, wie sich die Parabasis gegen diesen Ausschluss behauptete und sich dabei sogar zu einem wesentlichen Moment moderner Kunst entwickelte. Ausgangspunkt des Buches ist die Kernfrage jeder ästhetischen Theorie nach dem Verhältnis von Literatur und Wirklichkeit. Seit Aristoteles’ Tragödienschrift wurde diese Frage immer wieder mit dem Begriff der Mimesis beantwortet – angelehnt an das Modell der Nachahmung oder Darstellung von Wirklichkeit auf der Theaterbühne. Der maßgebliche Einfluss der Tragödientheorie auf die Ästhetik hat jedoch den Blick darauf versperrt, dass die Komödie mit der Parabasis über ein ästhetisches Verfahren verfügte, das einen nicht-mimetischen Bezug auf Wirklichkeit möglich machte. Statt Wirklichkeit nachahmend abzubilden, fallen die Schauspielerinnen und Schauspieler aus ihren Rollen, wenden sich direkt an das Publikum und adressieren es als politische Instanz. Christian Kirchmeier analysiert die verschiedenen Formen, Funktionen und Probleme der Parabasis im Zeitalter der Repräsentation: von der Durchbrechung der unsichtbaren ›vierten Wand‹ und dem Typus der Lustigen Figur über das metatheatrale Spiel-im-Spiel und die romantische Ironie bis hin zu Hegels berüchtigter These vom Ende der Kunst. Mit seinem Buch stellt er ein Konzept der Parabasis in Aussicht, das die Kunst der Gegenwart, ihren Wirklichkeitsbezug und ihren politischen Anspruch auf eine neue Weise erfasst.

Die Berliner Schule gilt als die wichtigste Strömung im deutschen Kino seit den 1970er Jahren. Gleichzeitig kann sie als wesentlicher Teil der globalen New-Wave-Filme verstanden werden, die an den traditionellen Rändern des Weltkinos angesiedelt sind. In 15 Essays setzen die Beiträger*innen des Bandes die Berliner Schule mit Beispielen des globalen Kinos in Verbindung - von Europa über Südostasien und den Nahen Osten bis hin zu Süd- und Nordamerika - und laden dazu ein, sie als zentralen Aspekt des Nachwende-Kinos in einem transnationalen Licht zu betrachten. Damit liefern sie zum ersten Mal eine systematische Untersuchung dieser Gattung und stellen sie als eine der wichtigsten Entwicklungen des gegenwärtigen Arthouse-Kinos heraus.

This book examines property rights, settlement structure and social organization in Norway’s Østlandet in the Iron age (500 BC–AD 1050). Inspired by ethnographical and anthropological studies, a model of a stateless, agrarian and hierarchical society with socially based rights to land is presented. In this model, where there are no territorially embedded rights, society is better represented as a heterarchy or anarchy than as a hierarchy. Power in society was shared between the honoured warrior, the powerless leader and perhaps also the productive farmer. This model differs from that presented by standard Norwegian research, where the retrogressive method is combined with a belief in the stability and continuity of the farm. A critical study of Norwegian research history is therefore an essential part of this book. This study has also been able to make use of new and extensive settlement evidence gained from machine-stripping of topsoil from large areas in the past thirty years; this has shed new light on the issues discussed in the book related to building practices and the settlement pattern.

Attribute-based person retrieval searches for persons using textual descriptions of their visual appearance. This thesis presents a deep learning approach for such retrieval in video surveillance and smart city scenarios. It introduces methods for attribute recognition in images and videos, the UPAR dataset, specialized evaluation metrics, and an end-to-end pipeline from camera video to search results.

This report is a result of a questionnaire and subsequent collation of data, which outlines the current status of wood modification across Europe in terms of national inventories and groups that have reported current activity in the respective research areas covered in this report.

Nimble Tongues is a collection of essays that continues Steven G. Kellman's work in the fertile field of translingualism, focusing on the phenomenon of switching languages. A series of investigations and reflections rather than a single thesis, the collection is perhaps more akin in its aims—if not accomplishment—to George Steiner’s Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution or Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality. Topics covered include the significance of translingualism; translation and its challenges; immigrant memoirs; the autobiographies that Ariel Dorfman wrote in English and Spanish, respectively; the only feature film ever made in Esperanto; Francesca Marciano, an Italian who writes in English; Jhumpa Lahiri, who has abandoned English for Italian; Ilan Stavans, a prominent translingual author and scholar; Hugo Hamilton, a writer who grew up torn among Irish, German, and English; Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, a Mexican who writes in English; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a multilingual text.

Even though ozone has been applied for a long time for disinfection and oxidation in water treatment, there is lack of critical information related to transformation of organic compounds. This has become more important in recent years, because there is considerable concern about the formation of potentially harmful degradation products as well as oxidation products from the reaction with the matrix components. In recent years, a wealth of information on the products that are formed has accumulated, and substantial progress in understanding mechanistic details of ozone reactions in aqueous solution has been made. Based on the latter, this may allow us to predict the products of as yet not studied systems and assist in evaluating toxic potentials in case certain classes are known to show such effects. Keeping this in mind, Chemistry of Ozone in Water and Wastewater Treatment: From Basic Principles to Applications discusses mechanistic details of ozone reactions as much as they are known to date and applies them to the large body of studies on micropollutant degradation (such as pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors) that is already available. Extensively quoting the literature and updating the available compilation of ozone rate constants gives the reader a text at hand on which his research can be based. Moreover, those that are responsible for planning or operation of ozonation steps in drinking water and wastewater treatment plants will find salient information in a compact form that otherwise is quite disperse. A critical compilation of rate constants for the various classes of compounds is given in each chapter, including all the recent publications. This is a very useful source of information for researchers and practitioners who need kinetic information on emerging contaminants. Furthermore, each chapter contains a large selection of examples of reaction mechanisms for the transformation of micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fuel additives, solvents, taste and odor compounds, cyanotoxins.

Digitale Technologien und Methoden haben in den vergangenen Jahren immer mehr Einfluss auf die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung gewonnen. Dies gilt nicht minder fur das achtzehnte Jahrhundert: In allen einschlagigen Fachbereichen werden seit Jahren Texte, Bilder und Metadaten digital generiert, verarbeitet, analysiert und prasentiert. Ergebnis ist eine bisher nie dagewesene Konfrontation mit quantifizierenden Methoden auch in qualitativ arbeitenden Disziplinen sowie die Notwendigkeit einer Auseinandersetzung mit nationalen und globalen Datenstandards. Diese Standards entscheiden uber die Interoperabilitat - gewissermassen die internationale Anschlussfahigkeit - der Daten und somit uber die Nachhaltigkeit der eigenen Forschung. Die Osterreichische Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts widmet ihr 34. Jahrbuch 2019 dem Thema der digitalen Forschung zum 18. Jahrhundert in Zentraleuropa. Die einzelnen vorgestellten Beitrage sind nicht nur Projektberichte, sondern referieren die Ergebnisse digital durchgefuhrter Forschungsarbeit. Sie eroffnen ein Panorama der moglichen methodischen Zugange, von den Bildwissenschaften uber Netzwerkanalyse und -darstellung hin zu digitaler Edition, Korpuslinguistik und digitaler Sprachwissenschaft sowie der Vernetzung von Forschungsdaten mit den Daten von Kulturerbe-Institutionen.

This book begins with a simple observation: none of South Africa’s presidents since Nelson Mandela have held any ministerial portfolios. This is in contrast to the nine men who ruled the country during its Union and Apartheid eras (1910-1994), from Louis Botha to F.W. de Klerk. They had all had previously served in cabinet, in as many as 6 portfolios each, sometimes with more than one ministry under their control. Crucially, many often took up ministerial positions during their own premierships and presidencies, thereby leading from the front. This is the key difference in state performance between the pre-democratic and democratic periods, the book argues. It explains the shortcomings of the post-1994 order, despite the evident potential, legitimacy and aspirations attached to it. In this book, Ndzendze systematically argues and empirically demonstrates that the only method to close this gap is by (re)initiating double roles for sitting presidents in all future administrations: those who head the cabinet should be both ministers and presidents at the same time. This would be constitutional, feasible and guarantee transparency towards presidential performance. Bhaso Ndzendze is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg. He is also Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Humanities, and was previously Head of Department for Politics and International Relations at the same institution. His NRF-rated research focus area is sovereignty, and has seen scientific publications on executive power, territorial disputes, interstate wars, military technology and international trade. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand and a postgraduate diploma in Law from the University of Johannesburg. Ndzendze is also a member of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and has a regular column in the Daily Maverick.

This volume examines Russia’s war on Ukraine. Scholars who have lived through the Russian invasion or who have conducted ethnographic research in the region for decades provide timely analysis of a war that will leave a lasting mark on the twenty-first century. Using the concept of dispossession, this volume showcases some of the novel ways violence operates in the Russian-Ukrainian war and the multiple means by which civilians, within the conflict zone and beyond, have become active participants in the war effort. Anthropological perspectives on war provide on-the-ground insight, historically informed analysis, and theoretical engagement to depict the experiences of dispossession by war and the motivations that drive the responses of the dispossessed. Such perspectives humanize the victims even as they depict the very inhumanity of war. Dispossession is geared towards upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and the general reader who seeks to have a deeper understanding of the Russian-Ukrainian war as it continues to impact geopolitics more broadly.

Wer nimmt warum, wie oft und wie lang an Weiterbildung teil und wer nicht? Welche Weiterbildungsangebote sind gefragt? Wie ist die Zielgruppe der "Bildungskonsumenten" strukturiert? Für die deutsche Ausgabe des Adult Education Survey (AES) wurden zwischen April 2009 und Juni 2010 über 7.000 Personen von geschulten Interviewern über ihre Weiterbildungsteilnahme befragt. Der Band analysiert und kommentiert diese erhobenen Daten zum Weiterbildungsverhalten und zur Struktur des Weiterbildungsmarktes. Weitere Themen sind Motive, Kosten und Nutzen der Weiterbildung und die Frage nach den verschiedenen Formen des Lernens Erwachsener. Zusammengenommen ergeben die berichteten Weiterbildungsaktivitäten ein umfassendes Bild des deutschen Weiterbildungsbereichs.

Why do so few institutions in the legal sector have professional records managers or archivists on their staff? This book is the culmination of a three year project by experienced archivist and records managers on private sector legal records at risk in England at Wales. It summarises the work of the Legal Records at Risk (LRAR) project and its predecessors, diagnoses the problems of preservation of archives in the legal sector in England and Wales and outlines a national strategy for such records.

Norway has a tradition in promoting Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Corporate social responsibility (CSR). This book consists of case studies of how social responsibility is institutionalized in Norwegian research, innovation and business, and theoretical contributions towards understanding these processes. It identifies strengths and potentialities, but also the gaps between intentions and achievements and the major challenges.