Open Access Books

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2018 was the year of the 'earthly dog'. In the middle of the long, hot, and feverish dog days of the summer of 2018, some workers at Shenzhen Jasic Technology took their chances and attempted to form an independent union. While this action was met by the harshest repression, it also led to extraordinary demonstrations of solidarity from small groups of radical students from all over the country, which in turn were immediately and severely suppressed. China’s year of the dog was also imbued with the spirit of another canine, Cerberus—the three-headed hound of Hades—with the ravenous advance of the surveillance state and the increasing securitisation of Chinese society, starting from the northwestern region of Xinjiang. This Yearbook traces these latest developments in Chinese society through a collection of 50 original essays on labour, civil society, and human rights in China and beyond, penned by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world.

This book explores the rapidly changing seaweed industry in Indonesia, the largest global producer of carrageenan-bearing seaweeds. Seaweed production in Indonesia has grown exponentially over the last twenty years, and rural communities across the country have embraced this new livelihood activity. This book begins with an examination of the global carrageenan seaweed industry, from the global market for carrageenan in processed foods, to the national and regional contexts in Indonesia across which it is farmed, processed, and traded. It then explores the ways that rural communities have reshaped their lives around seaweed production, with chapters on agrarian transformations, negotiations over access to sea space, farmer decision-making in presence of environmental, social and economic constraints, the role of women and casual labourers in the industry, and the marketing of seaweed through social networks. Based on a multi-disciplinary research initiative, this book demonstrates the interrelatedness of environmental, social and economic dynamics on seaweed production, processing and trade, and argues for key policy interventions to support the sustainable development of the industry in the context of climate change. It also provides a lens for understanding and improving the broader processes of sustainable rural development in a rapidly globalising and commercialising world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of aquaculture, food systems, agricultural economics, rural studies and sustainable development.

This Reprint, “Preaching in Multicultural Contexts”, explores the challenges and possibilities of Christian preaching in diverse cultural, racial, and generational settings. Building on relational, ethical, historical, and performative perspectives, the essays in this Special Issue highlight preaching as a dialogical and transformative act that fosters communal imagination, empathy, and ethical reflection. Contributors examine prophetic and playful preaching, intergenerational dialogue, postcolonial perspectives, and the construction of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities within congregations. Practical strategies are provided for preachers, worship leaders, and faith communities to engage their congregations meaningfully, bridging cultural and generational divides while nurturing solidarity and inclusion. This Reprint emphasizes the role of preaching as both a scholarly and pastoral practice, offering insights for contemporary ministry and intercultural engagement.

Die vorliegende Arbeit widmet sich der Informationsintegration in maschinell übersetzten, mehrsprachigen Textchats am Beispiel des Skype Translators im Sprachenpaar Katalanisch-Deutsch. Der Untersuchung von Textchats dieser Konfiguration wurde sich bislang nur wenig zugewendet. Deshalb wird der zunächst grundlegend explorativ ausgerichteten Forschungsfrage nachgegangen, wie Personen eine maschinell übersetzte Textchat-Kommunikation wahrnehmen, wenn sie nicht der Sprache des Gegenübers mächtig sind. Damit einher geht auch die Untersuchung der Informationsextraktion und -verarbeitung zwischen Nachrichten, die in der eigenen Sprache verfasst wurden, und der Ausgabe der Maschinellen Übersetzung.

"Writing is thinking on paper." – This practical handbook guides you through the writing process from A to Z, from the development of first ideas on paper (critical thinking) to the final text. Students, teachers and professionals will find instructions, examples and checklists to strengthen their rhetorical expression and persuasive power in academic, professional and everyday contexts. Whether for creative or therapeutic writing, preparing for debates, drafting academic articles or writing with artificial intelligence, this guide is suitable for all types of texts as well as for self-study and teaching. The volume offers a century of literature and knowledge on writing, made easily accessible for learners of all educational levels. With contributions by Marcel Herrmann | Barbara Schmugge | Christian Bucher | Martin Bettschart This Title is also Available as Open Access.

Argentina’s Billiken was the world’s longest-running children’s magazine, publishing 5144 issues over one hundred years. It educated and entertained generations of schoolchildren and came to occupy a central role in Argentine cultural life. This volume offers the first academic history of the whole lifespan of Billiken as a print magazine, through to its transition into a digital brand. As an editorial project founded at the time of the massification of print culture, Billiken was in the business of creating future citizens. From its transnational and literary beginnings, Billiken quickly became organised around the school year, offering valuable extra-curricular material aligned to the patriotic drivers of state schooling. Billiken told the story of the Argentine nation, cyclically and repeatedly, gaining such momentum that it became part of the nation’s story itself. This volume adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to take account of the many different facets of Billiken’s content born from a combination of ideological, commercial, political and cultural drivers. This history of Billiken examines the changes, contradictions and continuities in the magazine over time as it responded to political events, adapted to new commercial realities, and made use of technological advances. It explores how Billiken magazine not only reflected society, but shaped it through its influence on childhoods, children’s culture and education, and provides an alternative window onto the history and politics of a tumultuous hundred years for Argentina.

This introduction just aims to be a fast foreword to the special topic now turned into an e-book. The Editorial "Decision-Making Experiments under a Philosophical Analysis: Human Choice as a Challenge for Neuroscience" alongside with my opinion article "Neurophilosophical considerations on decision making: Pushing-up the frontiers without disregarding their foundations" play the real role of considering in more details the articles and the whole purpose of this e-book. What I must highlight in this foreword is that our intention with such a project was to deepen into the very foundations of our current paradigms in decision neuroscience and to philosophically moot its foundations and repercussions. Normal Science (a term coined by Philosopher Thomas Kuhn) works under a research consensus among a scientific community: A shared paradigm, consolidated methods, widespread convictions. Pragmatically, winning formulas must be kept, although, not at any cost. What differentiates a gifted and revolutionary scientist from a more bureaucratic colleague is the capacity and willingness of constantly reevaluating, depurating and refining his/her own paradigm. That is best strategy to avoid that a paradigm itself would gradually come under challenge. In my view, some achievements, in this sense, were brought about in our project. The e-book will be inspiring and informative for both neuroscientists that are concerned with the very foundations of their works and for philosophers that are not blind to empirical evidence. Kant once said: “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. Paraphrasing Kant we could say: Philosophy without science is empty, science without philosophy is blind.

The first Conference on Art, Education and Sociocultural Action was held at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Malaga in December 2024 under the slogan Desordenar lo ordenado (Disordering the Orderly). This proposal was launched with the aim of addressing the intersections between art, in its continuous reformulation, the tendencies within education that promote a critical pedagogy and the responsibility of a cultural management that assumes a commitment to society through action. From the frictions between these three areas, we wanted to review the artistic practices of the present in order to project with greater force and coherence the possible practices of the future. To do so, we started from an a priori question that was as ambitious as it was naive: Can art change its world? And we spoke of a world of its own, of the possibility of influencing and transforming the environment in which creative proposals are born and develop, taking into account the contextual nature of culture.

Bien avant le plateau ultraviolent du XXIe siècle, meurtres, viols, tortures et autres inhumanités envahissent les répertoires dramatiques de la première modernité européenne, saisissant d’effroi des spectateurs confrontés à l’inouï. Dans le contexte des guerres de religion, ces scènes de violence, qu’elles soient narrées à la manière sénéquéenne ou directement montrées sur le plateau, participent d’une véritable esthétique de la sidération : elles suspendent la compréhension immédiate et transforment le choc en expérience sensible.Les travaux réunis dans ce volume prolongent les recherches de Christian Biet sur la « sidération des sensations » et en explorent les héritages dans les spectacles contemporains. Six spécialistes des littératures anglaise, française et espagnole des XVIe et XVIIe siècles sondent les ressorts esthétiques, moraux et psychologiques du théâtre de la sidération dans une perspective à la fois comparatiste et diachronique, en dialogue avec les pratiques de deux artistes de la scène contemporaine.

As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.

This book examines the foundations of Morocco’s approach to green energy and environmental sustainability politics and, through the approach of autocracy research, offers a new perspective on the country’s environmental turn during the reign of King Mohammed VI. International accolades have rained on the Moroccan regime for its transition toward green energy and environmental sustainability politics. Green mega projects, such as the Noor Ouarzazate solar plants and Morocco’s vast wind farms, contributed considerably to its reputation as a modern green kingdom. Within the nascent field of political ecology of the MENA region, the book examines the correlation between environmental sustainability politics and autocratic power. It proposes that the Moroccan regime strategically instrumentalizes this policy field to bolster regime resilience through legitimation strategies directed both at domestic and foreign audiences, as well as cooptive practices aimed at generating support among national as well as foreign elites. Inevitably, the book returns to the Western Sahara conflict and the role environmental sustainability politics play in Morocco’s attempt at its annexation. This book is perfect for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars alike. It speaks to a broad academic readership interested in modern Morocco and the Maghreb, as well as political and environmental 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.

After an accident or severe illness, it may be difficult or even impossible to return to work due to a long absence from work or lasting impairments. In this case, vocational rehabilitation takes place in addition to health-related rehabilitation. There is some evidence in the literature that vocational rehabilitation contributes to increasing the profitability of companies. However, this phenomenon has not yet been comprehensively empirically researched. Therefore, this dissertation analyses and operationalise, from a holistic management perspective, the direct and indirect impacts of vocational rehabilitation on business. Besides, an explanatory model is provided for the optimal implementation of vocational rehabilitation and to realise the emerging potential. A commitment to vocational rehabilitation does not directly but indirectly influence business performance. The direct impact of vocational rehabilitation is mainly at the operational level, which interacts with the normative level. The business performance benefits are realised primarily at the strategic level. This phenomenon is also reflected in the insight that vocational rehabilitation has a leverage effect on the existing resources and competencies. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between the level of vocational rehabilitation integration, the maturity of the company culture and the increasing contribution to business performance.

This Open access book is a collection of interviews published by China News Service, a Beijing-based news agency, in its “West-East Talk” column. It has been divided into five sections: “Mutual Learning Among Civilizations,” “Hot Issues,” “About China,” “Sino-U.S. Relations” and “Cultural Collision”. The interviews are with more than 50 eminent scholars, scientists, politicians, authors, etc., from different parts of the world as well as China, who have an association with China and see the real China beyond the stereotypes. Besides current global issues, the book also covers Chinese culture, history as well as China-U.S. relations, described as one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world today. The book aims to build a platform for dialogue among different civilizations and appreciate the “harmony within diversity” of different cultures, especially of the East and West. We hope it will foster tolerance and rationality, dispelling the misconceptions about China in particular.

“Cultural Studies – Inter-Multi-Trans-Pan-Anti-In-Disciplinary Studies” is an edited academic book, which collects 20 chapters selected from the communications presented to the III Congress of RNEC – National Network in Cultural Studies, organized by the Center for Intercultural Studies (CEI) at ISCAP, Polytechnic of Porto, on the 11th and 12th of July 2024. The Congress brought together 75 participants of different nationalities, from 19 national and foreign institutions and research centers. The III RNEC Congress promoted the recognition of this community built around Cultural Studies and enhanced dialogues and collaborations on articulate and dense teaching and research, in the light of interdisciplinarity, in an affirmation of the constant irreverence, relevance and vitality of the area. Thinking about and practicing Cultural Studies as an inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-disciplinary area does not mean following a vague and undefined path, in a random, arid anti-/in-discipline, alien to the contexts that condition contemporary academia. Quite the contrary, the Cultural Studies discussed in this volume challenge disciplinary boundaries that do nothing more than perpetuate power hierarchies and reproduce ideologically oriented discourses about the vulnerability of Social Sciences and Humanities. These anachronistic disciplinary boundaries contaminate Cultural Studies’ capacity for intellectual, political and social intervention. For this reason, the anti- and in-disciplinary intervention of Cultural Studies itself becomes an academic project oriented towards the defense of a contemporary and inclusive academy, aware of the changes required by decolonization, by feminisms, by all identities located somewhere in the inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-spectrum. In this sense, the Cultural Studies that we intend to discuss throughout this volume are inter-, multi-, trans- and pan-disciplinary in order to be anti-enclosed in the face of intellectual and in-disciplinary confinements in the face of hegemonic powers, honoring the legacy of Cultural Studies. Cultural Centers at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) Birmingham and Stuart Hall.

The aim of this monograph is an attempt to examine the relationship between collective memory and oral texts. The material basis for this presentation consists of folklore oral texts, both prosaic and poetic, different as regards their genres (fairy tales, fables, recollections, traditions, legends, proverbs, and songs) as well as texts that are fragments of spontaneous interviews. The monograph consists of five main parts devoted to the following themes: theoretical considerations, the relation between memory and language, text memory, genre memory, and the relation between memory and the folk artistic style.