Humanities & Social Sciences

This volume takes cue from the idea that the thought of no philosopher can be understood without considering it as the result of a lively dialogue with other thinkers. On this ground, it addresses the ways in which René Descartes’s philosophy evolved and was progressively understood by intellectuals from different contexts and eras, either by considering direct interlocutors of Descartes such as Isaac Beeckman and Elisabeth of Bohemia, thinkers who developed upon his ideas and on particular topics as Nicolas Malebranche or Thomas Willis, those who adapted his overall methodology in developing new systems of knowledge as Johannes Clauberg and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and contemporary thinkers from continental and analytic traditions like Emanuele Severino and Peter Strawson.

Intersectional Lives explores the varied experiences of Chinese Australian females across time and place during the White Australia Policy era (1901-1973). Chinese Australian women’s personal reflections are examined alongside postcolonial feminist readings of official records to illustrate how their everyday lives were influenced by multiple and fluid identities and subject positions including migrant, mother, daughter, wife, student, worker, entrepreneur and cultural custodian. This book provides new ways to conceptualise Chinese females in the diaspora as gendered, classed, culturally varied and racialised individuals with multiple forms of oppression, agency and mobility. It offers a revision of patriarchal understandings of Chinese Australian history and broader understandings of overseas Chinese migrations and settlement experiences. It also demonstrates how historical geography, informed by postcolonial feminist approaches, can facilitate more nuanced understandings of past (and present) times and places that include women’s diverse experiences at the domestic, local, national and international scale. This book will appeal to social and cultural geographers with additional audiences of interest in history and historical geography, ethnic and racial studies, gender studies, diaspora studies, migration studies, and gender and feminist studies. 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.

Teoria e ricerca sull’apprendimento del tedesco L2 (Theory and research on learning German L2) is a technical-scientific manual designed for German language teaching courses in the context of training courses for future teachers. It offers an overview of the main theories and disciplines that deal with L2 language learning and teaching, describes the main research conducted on German L2 focusing on the particular case of guided learning for Italian speakers and, based on the results obtained from the research conducted so far, proposes a reflection focused on didactic. The volume is intended as a starting point for reflection also for teachers of German L2 already working in the schools as well as for researchers and scholars engaged in the study of language learning.

Quality management systems form an integral part of modern corporations. Acknowledging current socio-economic and environmental challenges, quality standards ought to be dynamic and flexible so as to cater for different markets and requirements. This book portrays a collection of international papers addressing current research and practice within the areas of engineering and technology, health and education. Amidst striving for 'zero defects', 'cost-effectiveness' and 'tight financial budgets', quality management systems ought to embrace the creator of them all: humans; as the ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras said, 'Of all money, Man is the measure' «Πάντων χρημάτων Μέτρον Άνθρωπος» (Plato, Theaetetus 166d).

Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Lima 1924 - Milan 2006) and Mario Vargas Llosa (Arequipa, Peru, 1936; Winner of the Nobel prize in 2010) are certainly two 'exemplary Peruvians', as they have both started by digging into the history and social conflicts of their country, before opening up to global culture and reality with an interdisciplinary and intercultural spirit: Vargas Llosa did so using fiction, theatre, non-fiction and journalism; Eielson used poetry, the visual arts, non-fiction and journalism. The volume offers a rich itinerary starting from an interview with Vargas Llosa by José Miguel Oviedo (Florence, 2008), and then goes through individual aspects of the work by the two authors. It is then accompanied by photographic records and a DVD with an elaboration of Eielson's visual works, paintings and poems.

The cultural origins of the British Empire can be traced back to Spain’s earlier experience, which, by the second half of the 16th century, had already established a vast and structured empire in the Americas. Translations from Spanish into English were the main vehicles of cultural exchange between Tudor England and Catholic Spain—its rival—which, throughout the 16th century, served as a key European channel for the dissemination of news from the New World. From an original global history perspective, this essay meticulously retraces concrete examples of English translations that were fundamental to the transmission of not only the stories of the conquistadors, but also of early knowledge of major oceanic routes, exotic plants from newly discovered lands, and Mesoamerican civilizations. Alongside narratives of the exploits of Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, reports of the Spanish imperial model also crossed the Channel. These cultural influences helped transform English society and ultimately facilitated the country’s future colonial endeavors.

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Mit atemberaubender Geschwindigkeit erobern die neuen Technologien auch das Arbeitsfeld Museum: Multimedia in der Ausstellungsgestaltung, CD-ROM, Datenbanken, Netzwerke und das Internet setzen einen neuen Informations- und Kommunikationsstandard. Die Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes setzen sich vor dem Hintergrund ihrer praktischen Erfahrung mit einer Vielzahl von relevanten Fragen zu diesem Thema auseinander und tragen hierdurch dazu bei, dass Mitarbeiter von Museen und anderen Kultur-Einrichtungen die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der digitalen Medien bei ihrer Arbeit in Zukunft realistisch einschätzen können.

The article talks about an experience of design research, aimed at the regeneration of a portion of the waterfront of the city of Livorno, which is now fragmented and in a state of decay and strongly characterized by the presence of the contemporary fish market building. The research proposes a new spatial arrangement through the re-functionalization of the building and the design of all the access systems to the area, driveways, pedestrian and cycle paths, which can allow its proper use by citizens and tourists. The area is transformed from a transit place into a place of rest and meeting.

When we think of kinship, we usually think of ties between people based upon blood or marriage. But we also have other ways—nowadays called ‘performative’—of establishing kinship, or hinting at kinship: many Christians have, in addition to parents, godparents; members of a trade union may refer to each other as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’. Similar performative ties are even more common among the so-called ‘tribal’ peoples that anthropologists have studied and, especially in recent years, they have received considerable attention from scholars in this field. However, these scholars tend to argue that performative kinship in the Tribal World is semantically on a par with kinship established through procreation and marriage. Harold Scheffler, long-time Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, has argued, by contrast, that procreative ties are everywhere semantically central, i.e. focal, that they provide bases from which other kinship ties are extended. Most of the essays in this volume illustrate the validity of Scheffler’s position, though two contest it, and one exemplifies the soundness of a similarly universalistic stance in gender behaviour. This book will be of interest to everyone concerned with current controversy in kinship and gender studies, as well as those who would know what anthropologists have to say about human nature.

The contribution addresses the topic of language education and the relationship with gender- appropriate representation. After an introduction on culture and language, it focuses on the necessary awareness of the speakers with regard to the use of the Italian language, also in didactic contexts. It is the starting point for linguistic change and attention to power relations, which are customary in the communicative sphere. Usage-related examples come primarily from dictionaries, which describe linguistic routines and with them hand down stereotypical and discriminating uses of words. Attention to these traditions, especially in language education, offers the possibility of modifying power relations and the resulting linguistic expressions. For this reason, the contribution not only provides techniques for linguistic and cultural change, but also focuses on the role of Italian textbooks and their relationship to the gender dimension.

This open access book offers unique insights into the key ethical issues faced by practitioners and discussed by ethicists in the field of genomics and incidental findings, with a focus on the Islamic moral tradition. Embark on an enlightening exploration of key ethical challenges in genomics and incidental findings, uniquely tailored to the context of the Muslim Arab world. Following the regional scientific leap in genomic infrastructure, this study provides a timely response to the need for a solid evidence base that pairs scientific research with cutting-edge research in Islamic ethics. A variety of expert perspectives have been incorporated, which produce a holistic overview of the intricate, interwoven systems, including the status quo of genomic research in the Gulf region, related Islamic ethical deliberations, and, finally, the governing jurisdictions and regulations on the ground. This publication stands as a pioneer work for academics interested in various fields, including genomics, bioethics, and Islamic studies. It equally serves as an invaluable guide for practitioners and policy-makers, equipping them to make informed decisions that resonate with the socio-cultural and religio-ethical nuances of the Islamic tradition. Being multidisciplinary in nature, the study is written in such a way that makes it accessible for those without a specialized background in Islamic studies or genomics.

Combining the tools of political, social, cultural, and intellectual history, Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany explores strategies of legitimization developed by advocates of militant resistance to certain manifestations of consumer capitalism. The book contributes to a more sober evaluation of West German protest movements, not just terrorism, as it refrains from emotional and moral judgments, but takes the protesters' approaches seriously, which, regarding consumer society, had a rational core. Political violence is not presented as the result of individual shortcomings, but emerges in relation to major societal changes, i.e., the unprecedented growth of consumption. This new perspective sheds important light on violence and radical protest in post-war Germany, as previous books have failed to examine to what extent these forms of resistance should be regarded as reactions to changing regimes of provision.

The here collected contributions relating to the 46th International Conference of the Representation Disciplines Teachers, organized jointly by Sapienza University of Rome, Roma Tre University, and San Raffaele Roma University, aim to offer the scientific community a reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects related to the concept of èkphrasis, a term that, in the field of representation, concerns descriptive, analogical, and digital activities that generate new knowledge in several areas of application. The Conference aims to place at the center of the discussion an interpretation of the concept of research that, without neglecting an idea of study, protection, and enhancement of environmental and cultural heritage, focuses on the needs of contemporary society and its possible developments, making use of innovative theoretical, methodological, and operational activities, including those characterized by an interdisciplinary approach. According to this interpretation, research can also be seen as a foreshadowing of the definition and testing of experimental proposals aimed at exploring new areas of investigation: this opens up imaginative and utopian perspectives in the relationship between the sciences, the arts, and the disciplines that contribute to common goals, through the experimentation of methods, techniques, and languages for conceiving, prefiguring, designing, and representing.

Traditional dialects have been encroached upon by the increasing mobility of their speakers and by the onslaught of national languages in education and mass media. Typically, older dialects are “leveling” to become more like national languages. This is regrettable when the last articulate traces of a culture are lost, but it also promotes a complex dynamics of interaction as speakers shift from dialect to standard and to intermediate compromises between the two in their forms of speech. Varieties of speech thus live on in modern communities, where they still function to mark provenance, but increasingly cultural and social provenance as opposed to pure geography. They arise at times from the need to function throughout the different groups in society, but they also may have roots in immigrants’ speech, and just as certainly from the ineluctable dynamics of groups wishing to express their identity to themselves and to the world.