Humanities & Social Sciences

An unprecedented ascent: from the thirteenth child of a poor Jewish emigration agent to the "sovereign of seafaring" and "friend" of the emperor. No wonder that Albert Ballin was one of the most outstanding figures of the Wilhelmine Empire. From the very beginning, he caused a stir at the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, or Hapag for short. Under the leadership of their manager Ballin, the latter became the world's largest shipping company. From 1907 until his tragic death on November 9,1918, Ballin was a member of the board of trustees of the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung and had a special impact here as well. This biography traces the extraordinary life of this man. [German edition]

History of Science and Technology, Intellectual History, Medieval History, Religious History, Social and Cultural History, World/International History

The Margins of Late Medieval London is a powerful study of medieval London’s urban fringe. Seeking to unpack the complexity of urban life in the medieval age, this volume offers a detailed and novel approach to understanding London beyond its institutional structures. Using a combination of experimental digital, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the volume casts new light on urban life at the level of the neighbourhood and considers the differences in economy, society and sociability which existed in different areas of a vibrant premodern city. It focuses on the dynamism and mobility that shaped city life, integrating the experiences of London’s poor and migrant communities and how they found their place within urban life. It describes how people found themselves marginalized in the city, and the strategies they would employ to mitigate that precarious position.

This volume questions the hinges of modern statehood, through the reconstruction of the institutional story of subalpine companies. During the chronological period examined (1717-1853), the companies characterised the administrative structure of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Born as an original solution, part of a still complex and polycentric system of public powers, the companies - and with them the whole Savoy bureaucratic structure - were confronted with the progressive affirmation of the new categories of a 'closed', monadic, vertical state. The long path was marked by sharp accelerations (the revolution, the Napoleonic occupation, the affirmation of constitutionalism), but was also pervaded by strong affirmations of legal spontaneity.

This book focuses on the role of popular music in the rise of populism in Europe, centring on the music-related processes of sociocultural normalisation and the increasing prevalence of populist discourses in contemporary society. In its innovative combination of approaches drawing from (ethno)musicology, sociology, and political science, as well as media and cultural studies, this book develops a culture-oriented approach to populism. Based on shared research questions, an original theoretical framework and a combination of innovative methodologies that pay attention to the specific socio-historical contexts, taking into account musical material as well as processes of reception, the five chapters in this volume offer detailed analyses of the nexus of popular music and populism in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Sweden and Germany. All of these countries have seen a marked increase in populist parties and discourses over the last years, as well as significant interactions between populism and popular music. This book will be essential reading for those investigating popular music as a crucial aspect in the study of populism as a cultural phenomenon in Europe. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

socialising tourism; social tourism; ecological justice; social justice; values; ethics

Australia has one of the largest inventories of rock art in the world with pictographs and petroglyphs found almost anywhere that has suitable rock surfaces – in rock shelters and caves, on boulders and rock platforms. First Nations people have been marking these places with figurative imagery, abstract designs, stencils and prints for tens of thousands of years, often engaging with earlier rock markings. The art reflects and expresses changing experiences within landscapes over time, spirituality, history, law and lore, as well as relationships between individuals and groups of people, plants, animals, land and Ancestral Beings that are said to have created the world, including some rock art. Since the late 1700s, people arriving in Australia have been fascinated with the rock art they encountered, with detailed studies commencing in the late 1800s. Through the 1900s an impressive body of research on Australian rock art was undertaken, with dedicated academic study using archaeological methods employed since the late 1940s. Since then, Australian rock art has been researched from various perspectives, including that of Traditional Owners, custodians and other community members. Through the 1900s, there was also growing interest in Australian rock art from researchers across the globe, leading many to visit or migrate to Australia to undertake rock art research. In this volume, the varied histories of Australian rock art research from different parts of the country are explored not only in terms of key researchers, developments and changes over time, but also the crucial role of First Nations people themselves in investigations of this key component of their living heritage.

A fresh anthropological look at a central but neglected topic: the profound changes in rural life throughout Western Europe today. As locals leave for jobs in cities they are replaced by neo-hippies, lifestyle-seekers, eco-activists, and labour migrants from beyond the EU. With detailed ethnographic examples, contributors analyse new modes of living rurally and emerging forms of social organisation. As incomers’ dreams come up against residents’ realities, they detail the clashes and the cooperations between old and new residents. They make us rethink the rural/urban divide, investigate regionalists’ politicisation of rural life and heritage, and reveal how locals use EU monies to prop up or challenge existing hierarchies. They expose the consequences of and reactions to grand EU-restructuring policies, which at times threaten to turn the countryside into a manicured playground for escapee urbanites. This book will appeal to anyone seriously interested in the realities of rural life.

"Fact and Fiction explores the intersection between literature and the sciences, focusing on German and British culture between the eighteenth century and today. Observing that it was in the eighteenth century that the divide between science and literature as disciplines first began to be defined, the contributors to this collection probe how authors from that time onwards have assessed and affected the relationship between literary and scientific cultures. Fact and Fiction’s twelve essays cover a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics and chemistry to medicine and anthropology, and a variety of literary texts, such as Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Botanic Garden, George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and Goethe’s Elective Affinities. The collection will appeal to scholars of literature and of the history of science, and to those interested in the connections between the two." This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

Educational assessment is important. But in the twenty-first century it is easy to feel that schooling and other phases of education are shaped entirely by certain assessments, and that assessment is only about exam results. The idea that test grades can accurately describe the aims and outcomes of education is unfair and reductive. Yet it is a pervasive and persuasive discourse. This book is about such discourses - the stories we tell each other - and how they impact public trust and confidence in educational assessment. It explains the roots and nature of assessment discourses, and proposes a restructuring of the debates in order to rebuild public confidence. It aims to challenge dominant assessment discourses and demands a more nuanced, informed debate about what happens in and beyond schools, and how this influences public thinking. Questioning the status quo needs buy-in from policymakers, teachers, parents and students, and from the broader public: from journalists, you, me, our friends and our children. Using examples from international settings to explore the nature of trust in assessment discourses, Rebuilding Public Confidence in Educational Assessment shows how these discourses can be reframed so that all aspects of the assessment system - policymaking, school planning, home practice with students - can be undertaken with confidence.

I saggi raccolti nel presente volume affrontano un tema centrale della tradizione ebraica: il sogno, e in secondo luogo il surreale. Per quanto concerne lo studio dei testi, i contributi spaziano lungo un arco temporale assai ampio, dalla Bibbia alla poesia moderna, prendendo in esame una vasta gamma di argomenti; nell’ambito delle arti visive, attraverso epoche e media diversi, ci si muove dagli affreschi della sinagoga di Dura Europos fino alla pittura del Novecento, senza dimenticare il cinema. Estremamente variegato è il panorama linguistico offerto dai documenti considerati, che all’ebraico nelle sue varie fasi affianca i Jewish Languages e le lingue non specificamente giudaiche adottate nei secoli dagli ebrei della Diaspora.

Bank Regulation, Risk Management, and Compliance is a concise yet comprehensive treatment of the primary areas of US banking regulation – micro-prudential, macroprudential, financial consumer protection, and AML/CFT regulation – and their associated risk management and compliance systems. The book’s focus is the US, but its prolific use of standards published by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and frequent comparisons with UK and EU versions of US regulation offer a broad perspective on global bank regulation and expectations for internal governance. The book establishes a conceptual framework that helps readers to understand bank regulators’ expectations for the risk management and compliance functions. Informed by the author’s experience at a major credit rating agency in helping to design and implement a ratings compliance system, it explains how the banking business model, through credit extension and credit intermediation, creates the principal risks that regulation is designed to mitigate: credit, interest rate, market, and operational risk, and, more broadly, systemic risk. The book covers, in a single volume, the four areas of bank regulation and supervision and the associated regulatory expectations and firms’ governance systems. Readers desiring to study the subject in a unified manner have needed to separately consult specialized treatments of their areas of interest, resulting in a fragmented grasp of the subject matter. Banking regulation has a cohesive unity due in large part to national authorities’ agreement to follow global standards and to the homogenizing effects of the integrated global financial markets. The book is designed for legal, risk, and compliance banking professionals; students in law, business, and other finance-related graduate programs; and finance professionals generally who want a reference book on bank regulation, risk management, and compliance. It can serve both as a primer for entry-level finance professionals and as a reference guide for seasoned risk and compliance officials, senior management, and regulators and other policymakers. Although the book’s focus is bank regulation, its coverage of corporate governance, risk management, compliance, and management of conflicts of interest in financial institutions has broad application in other financial services sectors.

Three players bring their avatars to the same in-game location to start a quest together. As they arrive, the gnome bounces on the spot and waves. The elf throws back her head in laughter before dancing with a provocative hip sway. The human salutes smartly and bows. Each of these gestures communicates information about the avatars themselves and about the interaction choices of the players controlling them. An avatar’s movement includes a range of motions, from programmed gaits and postures to the ways in which the avatar moves in and through virtual space as guided by the player. Gestures are a subset of this movement -- a specific kind of motion that encodes personal, social, and cultural information. Gestures can be decoded by others who share an understanding of the relevant codes, communicating information about intentions, emotions, and responses to events and to other people. Gesture and movement can play a key role in avatar-mediated relationships—both in interactions with other players and in information exchanges between players and their own avatars. The importance of these conveyances may be intensified in immersive gaming as an avatar’s digital body becomes more closely aligned with a player’s physical body, with the potential for influences on the player’s embodied experience.

JOHN GRIDER joined the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State as a Research Fellow in November 2015. He recently completed this captivating project, which investigates the complex interplay between gender, class and race sourced from the narratives of men who found themselves working in the transforming Pacific maritime industry during the mid-nineteenth century.

Climate Change; Energy Efficiency; Remote Sensing; Photogrammetry; Physics