Humanities & Social Sciences

As the number of Chinese students learning English increases worldwide, the need for teachers to understand the characteristics and challenges facing this group of learners grows. This is particularly true for those students moving from an English as a Foreign Language context to an English as a Second Language/International Language one where they experience academic, linguistic and sociocultural transitions. Drawing on over 20 years’ experience teaching English courses to Chinese learners, the author aims to highlight key findings to aid understanding, improve teachers’ practice and offer pedagogical recommendations. Using students’ voices, the book covers: how the traditional Chinese culture of learning plays a role; how new learning contexts provide opportunities and empowerment; how learners’ beliefs and strategies are interconnected; how their motivation and identity underscore the power of real and imagined communities, and finally, that affect matters, showing how learners are propelled by the trajectory of their emotions. The book cites from the rich data collected over a five-year period to authenticate the findings and recommendations but also to give voice to this group of learners to challenge the stereotype of the passive "Chinese learner". The essential insights contained within are useful for pre- and in-service teachers of English and researchers interested in language education around the world.

From Supernanny to Gilmore Girls, from Katie Price to Holly Willoughby, a wide range of examples of mothers and motherhood appear on television today. Drawing on questionnaires completed by mothers across the UK, this book sheds new light on the diverse ways in which mothers make sense of popular representations of motherhood on television.

"The English language volume offers a current stock-take of central areas in adult and vocational further education in France. The author Silke Schreiber-Barsch bases her work on various types of data and information. Beginning with historical developments, Schreiber-Barsch covers the topics of political, financial and institutional framework conditions, as well as offer, participation and teaching personnel. In closing, she outlines the current research status in terms of adult education and its role in the third level education system. The regional portrait offers well founded starting point and good orientation for getting to know the French system for adult and vocational further education."

Kurihara Sadako was born in Hiroshima in 1913, and she was there on August 6, 1945. Already a poet before she experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, she used her poetic talents to describe the blast and its aftermath. In 1946, despite the censorship of the American Occupation, she published Kuroi tamago (Black Eggs), poems from before, during, and immediately after the war. This volume includes a translation of Kuroi tamago from the complete edition of 1983. But August 6, 1945, was not the end point of Kurihara’s journey. In the years after Kuroi tamago she has broadened her focus—to Japan as a victimizer rather than victim, to the threat of nuclear war, to antiwar movements around the world, and to inhumanity in its many guises. She treats events in Japan such as politics in Hiroshima, Tokyo’s long-term complicity in American policies, and the decision in 1992 to send Japanese troops on U.N. peacekeeping operations. But she also deals with the Vietnam War, Three Mile Island, Kwangju, Greenham Common, and Tiananmen Square. This volume includes a large selection of these later poems. Kurihara sets us all at ground zero, strips us down to our basic humanity, and shows us the world both as it is and as it could be. Her poems are by turns sorrowful and sarcastic, tender and tough. Several of them are famous in Japan today, but even there, few people appreciate the full force and range of her poetry. And few poets in any country—indeed, few artists of any kind—have displayed comparable dedication, consistency, and insight.

This book aims to present an introduction to numerical modeling of different aspects of large-scale superconducting applications: electromagnetics, thermal, mechanics and thermo-hydraulics. The importance of computational modeling to advance current superconductor research cannot be overlooked, especially given the enormous benefits provided by superconductors in many human endeavours, including energy generation, medical treatments, and future electrical technologies.Aimed at graduate students, researchers and practitioners in different fields of applied superconductivity, this book consists of four chapters. The chapter on electromagnetics provides a review of the state-of-the-art modeling of electromagnetic phenomena in superconductors, emphasising the theoretical aspects of the different numerical formulations. This is followed by a chapter on thermal effects, dedicated to the simulation of thermal stability and quench in superconducting magnets, with specific examples of magnets used in particle accelerators. Then, the chapter on mechanics provides details of the modeling of forces and stresses in cables composed of second-generation high-temperature superconducting wires. Finally, the chapter on thermo-hydraulics focuses on the fundamental thermal-hydraulic aspects involved in the cooling of superconducting magnets, with special reference to the issues related to the forced-flow cooling.

The book examines the transformation of the life-world in the context of the rapidly changing Estonian society. The authors pose three main questions to be discussed throughout the book: What has happened in the Estonian society during the last decade? How to describe the present society? Who shapes the social developments and in which direction? The authors formulate three main theses: (1) the great transformation occurring on the macro level is reflected in the life-world as changes in the temporal and spatial dimensions and the multiplicity of individuals’ social identifications in the context of new opportunities. This brings about social and cultural fragmentation of the society and a clear differentiation and polarisation of mental structures; (2) the inherently conflictual nature of transformation is expressed in socially differentiating self-positioning, dependent on the resources individuals possess for coping with changes, and leading to the re-stratification of the society (re-structuration); (3) the acceleration of social and personal time and the opening of social space, on one hand, and social stratification, on the other hand, perform as mutual amplifiers. The authors conclude that the first wave of transitional controversies between more and less capitalised social groups is receding due to increasing general welfare. At the same time, global technological and cultural changes, migration crises, and increasing violence and terrorism have brought about new controversies and challenges in Estonian society.

The subject Islamic theology, which was founded eleven years ago, was politically expected to train imams who promote integration. The author empirically investigates how students of Islamic theology deal with these expectations. The book shows that the actors' attributions of meaning is interwoven with the state's approach to religion and the academic discipline's approach to Islam. The result is the concept of biographical Islamicity, i.e. a central mode of experience of Muslims in minority contexts. The actors institutionalise the image of a plural Islam. The book provides a sociological contribution to the discussions about religious-secular constellations in the society.

This open access book develops a framework for advancing agroecology transformations focusing on power, politics and governance. It explores the potential of agroecology as a sustainable and socially just alternative to today’s dominant food regime. Agroecology is an ecological approach to farming that addresses climate change and biodiversity loss while contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. Agroecology transformations represent a challenge to the power of corporations in controlling food system and a rejection of the industrial food systems that are at the root of many social and ecological ills. In this book the authors analyse the conditions that enable and disable agroecology’s potential and present six ‘domains of transformation’ where it comes into conflict with the dominant food system. They argue that food sovereignty, community-self organization and a shift to bottom-up governance are critical for the transformation to a socially just and ecologically viable food system. This book will be a valuable resource to researchers, students, policy makers and professionals across multidisciplinary areas including in the fields of food politics, international development, sustainability and resilience.

Why do people come to reject climate science or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, in defiance of the scientific consensus? A popular view explains bad beliefs like these as resulting from a range of biases that together ensure that human beings fall short of being genuinely rational animals. This book presents an alternative account. It argues that bad beliefs arise from genuinely rational processes. We’ve missed the rationality of bad beliefs because we’ve failed to recognize the ubiquity of the higher-order evidence that shapes beliefs, and the rationality of being guided by this evidence. The book argues that attention to higher-order evidence should lead us to rethink both how minds are best changed and the ethics of changing them: we should come to see that nudging—at least usually—changes belief (and behavior) by presenting rational agents with genuine evidence, and is therefore fully respectful of intellectual agency. We needn’t rethink Enlightenment ideals of intellectual autonomy and rationality, but we should reshape them to take account of our deeply social epistemic agency.

This volume outlines a theoretical background on the Maker Culture and emerging scenarios in educational technologies in the post-digital era. It will present some experiences and case studies based on Maker Education and carried out internationally. Then, it will describe a pilot project recently experimented in Italy to integrate the Maker approach into the primary and lower secondary school curriculum.

From 1988 to the present the Institute of Marine Biology and Ecology of Piombino has studied the marine environmental situation of the Gulf of Follonica (Italy), in collaboration with the Universities of Siena, Pisa, Urbino, Sassari, Corte (FR) and the CNR of Pisa. In recent years erosion has drastically changed the sandy beaches mainly as a consequence of the constant retreat of the P. oceanica meadows whose possible causes have been studied. Also in the Gulf of Baratti the methods adopted for the defense of the beach have been inadequate.

This collection brings together an exciting group of established and emerging scholars to consider the history of feminist film theory and new developments in the field and in film culture itself. Opening the field up to urgent questions and covering such topics as new experimental film, the digital image, consumerism, activism, and pornography, Feminisms will be essential reading for scholars of both film and feminism.

The Cinepoetics book series aims at a theoretical and analytical reconceptualization of the discursivity of audiovisual images. The focus is not on the circulation of media representations but on the modes of this circulation: How do audiovisual images as figurations of media experience relate to other audiovisual images? What does it mean to describe different modes of audiovisual experience and recursivity as forms of cinematic thinking? From this perspective, the series’ volumes provide analyses of the aesthetic dimension, historical function and cultural significance of their subjects, making the poetic logic of audiovisual images accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. Please note also the English-language Cinepoetics book series and the series Cinepoetics Essay .

Modernity was characterised by a belief that progress would automatically lead to a better future. Today, that optimism has evaporated. In its place we have global heating, multiple wars, economic austerity and a prevailing sense of malaise. Now the primary concern is to limit the damage and avert the catastrophe. Even if that succeeds, we will still be faced with unprecedented change. We are looking at a future where collective survival will take precedence over individual and collective self-fulfilment. Adaptation will be the guiding principle of society. This is raising momentous questions about our understanding of time, of politics and of ourselves – to which progressive political forces and humanity as a whole are going to have to find answers.

Adopting a data based approach, the study explores Russian intensifying metaphors of COMPLETENESS. A wide range of instantiations of the metaphor of COMPLETENESS is analyzed within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), comprising achievement of a result (soveršennyj idiot), filled container (nabityj durak) and round form (kruglyj otličnik). The contrastive perspective (Russian-English-Italian) provides new insights on the mapping of the source domain of COMPLETENESS onto the target domain of INTENSITY in different languages and cultures.