Open Access Books

The notion of annotation is associated in the Humanities and Information Sciences with different concepts that vary in coverage, application and direction of impact, but have conceptual parallels as well. This publication reflects on different practices and associated concepts of annotation, puts them in relation to each other and attempts to systematize their commonalities and divergences in an interdisciplinary perspective.

Vietnam as if… follows five young people who have moved from the countryside to the city. Their dramatic everyday lives illuminate some of the most pressing issues in Vietnam today: ‘The Sticky Rice Seller’ explores gender roles; ‘The Ball Boy’ is all about the struggles of sexual and ethnic minorities; ‘The Professional’ examines relations between rich and poor; ‘The Goalkeeper’ delves into politics and ideology; and ‘The Student’ reflects upon family and faith. The stories also reboot several classics of Vietnamese literature for the twenty-first century, including ‘Floating Dumplings’ by feminist poet Ho Xuan Huong, Vu Trong Phung’s satire of French colonialism Dumb Luck, Nguyen Du’s epic account of fate and sacrifice ‘The Tale of Kieu’, and the proclamations of Ho Chi Minh. These novellas reveal the deepest sentiments of Vietnamese youth as they – like youth everywhere – come of age, fall in love and contest their destiny. In 2011 Kim Huynh returned to Vietnam, having left more than three decades earlier. He had few plans other than to experience as much of his birthplace as possible. That year he came into contact with a wide range of people and took on many trades. Kim drank and dined with government officials, went on pilgrimages with corporate tycoons and marched in the streets against foreign aggression. He sold sticky rice, was a tennis player and also a ball boy, attended all manner of rituals and celebrations, eavesdropped on people in cafés and restaurants, and went back to the classroom as both a student and a teacher. Rich in detail and broad in scope, these tales capture Kim’s experiences and imaginings of Vietnam as if….

In this first part of the INFINITECH book series, which is a series of three books, the principles of the modern economy that make the modern financial sector and FinTech the most disruptive areas in today’s global economy are discussed. INFINITECH envision many opportunities emerging for activating new channels of innovation on the local and global scale while at the same time catapulting opportunities for more disruptive user-centric services. At the same time, INFINITECH is the result of a shared vision from a representative global group of experts, providing a common vision and identifying impacts in the financial and insurance sectors.

Sonic ethnography explores the role of sound-making and listening practices in the formation of local identities in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. The book uses a combination of text, photography and sound recording to investigate soundful cultural performances such as tree rituals, carnivals, pilgrimages, events promoting cultural heritage and more informal musical performances. Its approach demonstrates how in the acoustic domain tradition is made and disrupted, power struggles take place and acoustic communities are momentarily brought together in shared temporality and space. This book underlines how an attention to sound-making, recording and listening practices can bring innovative contributions to the ethnography of an area that has been studied by Italian and foreign scholars since the 1950s. The approaches of the classic anthropological scholarship on the region have become one of the forces at play in a complex field where discourses on a traditional past, politics of heritage and transnational diasporic communities interact. The book’s argument is carried forward not just by textual means, but also through the inclusion of six ‘sound-chapters’, that is, compositions of sound recordings themed so as to interact with the topic of the corresponding textual chapter, and through a large number of colour photographs. Two methodological chapters, respectively about doing research in sound and on photo-ethnography, explain the authors’ approach to field research and to the making of the book.

Au début de l’ère du tourisme de masse, la planète est devenue le terrain de jeux des touristes-consommateurs. Dans ce contexte, quatre livres de voyage relatent les aventures souvent burlesques d’un Mark Twain haut en couleur, qui se présente comme un béotien mais se pique de science et d’art. Ses récits le dévoilent dans ses œuvres, qui transforment le monde en une production esthétique reflétant ses obsessions personnelles. Les lieux funéraires, omniprésents, suscitent un travail introspectif où pointe l’angoisse de la mort. Dans le monde ainsi transmué affleurent çà et là des fragments de l’univers psychique de l’auteur en tant qu’artiste, engagé dans une démarche comparable à celle des peintres de Vanités du xviie siècle, que la persona perpétue sur le mode littéraire. Tourisme et vanité s’appuie sur le fonds prestigieux des archives Mark Twain de l’université de Berkeley et propose de nombreuses traductions inédites. Il délaisse l’aspect biographique des voyages de Samuel Clemens pour se concentrer uniquement sur la production textuelle, notamment dans ses rapports avec l’image.

This volume, the result of ongoing collaborations between Australian and French anthropologists, historians and linguists, explores encounters between Pacific peoples and foreigners during the longue durée of European exploration, colonisation and settlement from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. It deploys the concept of 'encounter' rather than the more common idea of 'first contact' for several reasons. Encounters with Europeans occurred in the context of extensive prior encounters and exchanges between Pacific peoples, manifest in the distribution of languages and objects and in patterns of human settlement and movement. The concept of encounter highlights the mutuality in such meetings of bodies and minds, whereby preconceptions from both sides were brought into confrontation, dialogue, mutual influence and ultimately mutual transformation. It stresses not so much prior visions of 'strangers' or 'others' but the contingencies in events of encounter and how senses other than vision were crucial in shaping reciprocal appraisals. But a stress on mutual meanings and interdependent agencies in such cross-cultural encounters should not occlude the tumultuous misunderstandings, political contests and extreme violence which also characterised Indigenous-European interactions over this period.

How does China pursue science, technology, and innovation (STI)? For decades, Chinese leaders have sought to transform China into a world technology power, and toward this end, they have adopted an amazing array of approaches to STI policy. To illuminate China’s approach, this book focuses on the basic belief systems—or “policy paradigms”—that have driven Chinese policymaking in this domain since 1949. It begins by highlighting two globally influential STI paradigms from the past century, building on and extending recent research in this domain. The book then explores how Chinese leaders have adapted and resisted these paradigms and, in this way, made their country a rebellious follower of foreign ideas. The theoretical framework offers new insights into critical episodes in modern Chinese history, from the formation of China’s scientific establishment in the 1950s to the rise of “innovation-driven development” in the twenty-first century. Combining cutting-edge theoretical analysis with sweeping historical scope, the book offers a unique perspective on China’s rise as a technology power.

Plasticity and dynamism characterize the immune system as a tissue-integrating network with defensive functions. Blood and lymphatic vessel trees constitute the most evident and intuitive physical platform for the development of the net of interactions between immune cells, body tissues and foreign agents. Moreover vessel repair and immune patrolling are intimately linked physiological functions with common evolutionary roots. Not surprisingly variable degrees of vascular inflammation are often detectable in the setting of systemic inflammation and autoimmunity, whereas research in the field of cardiovascular pathology is progressively converging towards the identification of a common inflammatory background. The definition of the role of vascular inflammation in causing, sustaining and/or predicting the development of systemic autoimmunity constitute a challenging, unexplored frontier towards the development of a new generation of treatments and a better patient care.

Dans la période d'extraordinaire effervescence sociale et intellectuelle qu'a été, en Islam, le second siècle de l'Hégire, se détache, quelque peu en marge - et de façon très informelle -, une catégorie particulière de prétendus ""mal-pensants"", étrangement affublés du sobriquet de zanādiqa, pluriel de zindīq. La question des zanādiqa en pays d'Islam avait déjà fait, comme le rappelle Chokr, l'objet d'un certain nombre de travaux, dont notamment - le tout premier - l'article, justement célèbre...

Parmi les chercheurs en linguistique de l’hispanisme français, nombreux sont ceux dont les pratiques relèvent de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler aujourd’hui la linguistique du signifiant. Comment est-on passé, en quelques années d’une linguistique du signe à une linguistique du signifiant ? Dans quelles directions se développent aujourd’hui les recherches menées dans cette optique nouvelle ? Telles sont les questions qu’illustrent les travaux présentés dans cet ouvrage.La langue espagnole – dans une approche parfois comparative – y a fait l’objet de descriptions qui en éclairent la morphologie, la syntaxe et la sémantique (lexicale et grammaticale).

Over the last two decades, satellite gravimetry has become a new remote sensing technique that provides a detailed global picture of the physical structure of the Earth. With the CHAMP, GRACE, GOCE and GRACE Follow-On missions, mass distribution and mass transport in the Earth system can be systematically observed and monitored from space. A wide range of Earth science disciplines benefit from these data, enabling improvements in applied models, providing new insights into Earth system processes (e.g., monitoring the global water cycle, ice sheet and glacier melting or sea-level rise) or establishing new operational services. Long time series of mass transport data are needed to disentangle anthropogenic and natural sources of climate change impacts on the Earth system. In order to secure sustained observations on a long-term basis, space agencies and the Earth science community are currently planning future satellite gravimetry mission concepts to enable higher accuracy and better spatial and temporal resolution. This Special Issue provides examples of recent improvements in gravity observation techniques and data processing and analysis, applications in the fields of hydrology, glaciology and solid Earth based on satellite gravimetry data, as well as concepts of future satellite constellations for monitoring mass transport in the Earth system.

The present work focuses on tyres for passenger cars, especially on its influence on power loss, lateral dynamics, ride comfort and interior noise. The objective of the work is the quantification of conflicts between four selected requirements considering the physical constraints given by the tyre. The method proposed in the present book is based on a set of functional tyre characteristics, a physical tyre model and a procedure for identifying and quantifying the conflicts.

In this book, the authors cover both familiar and unfamiliar themes. One of the principal themes running throughout the book addresses head-on the deficiency in the literature highlighted by Saul Dubow, namely, the question of racism and Smuts’s reluctance to implement ‘native’ policies that may have averted future problems, rather than postpone them. We see throughout, a gap between the rhetoric and policy, and between policy and practice in its implementation. Amongst the familiar themes that are reappraised, are Smuts’s successes and failures in policies and leadership, domestically and internationally. ‘This wide-ranging volume re-evaluates myriad aspects of Smuts’ life, philosophy, political career and legacy. An important and timely book exploring one of South Africa’s most consequential and controversial leaders.’ Luc-Andre Brunet – Contemporary International History, The Open University. The book is a great contribution to South African cultural and social history. With the military element covered in other publications, the editors and authors have focussed on the less well-trodden aspects of Smuts’s history including but not limited to discussions on the atomic bomb, counter-revolution, film, early cabinets, racialism, trusteeship, ‘greatness’, political philosophy, racial segregation, and myth-making. The editors have skilfully continued the longer political discussion, reflecting on the myth and legacy of a prominent South African - Smuts. Antonio Garcia, Stellenbosch University, coauthor of Botha, Smuts and the First World War, co-founder Underground Strategy.

What happens when love unravels one’s knowledge structures? In The Ruins of Solitude, after the birth of a child, Bragg embraces the event of love and examines the resulting disintegration of her supposed authorial subjectivity. Against the pressure to produce and organize knowledge—the pressure of writing a dissertation, for example—Bragg contemplates the poetic modes of thinking and ethics that emerge from her experience of reading continental philosophy while caring for her infant child. Dwelling on what she would have once excluded from her intellectual work—her maternity, the mole on her chest, her palm against another body, her exhaustion at the work of deconstruction—Bragg details a shift in her orientation and method that leads to creative theoretical thought, allowing her to illuminate and interrogate what she names “solitude,” a condition of academic discourse that limits our critical-liberatory projects of transformation. Ultimately, The Ruins of Solitude lets go of authority and mastery, and engages in a poetic and fractured writing style that lets in the relationality of thought. Bragg offers a philosophy of bodies beyond solitude and an intimacy of love and writing that fractures solitude, bringing forward the possibility of selfhood and authorship uncontained by the isolationist, tangible time of the present. Bragg's book also unravels familiar narratives of childcare, considering the parallels between poststructuralist theory and the embodied materiality of relation.

The dissertation deals with perspectives on Religious Education at German comprehensive schools which were created during the 2010s. It searches for conditions and potentials of Religious Education at the referred types of school. It especially focuses on models for Religious Education as a school subject, successful activities regarding ‘Religion and school life’ as well as on characteristics of new comprehensive schools. It combines both questions on Religious Education as a subject and on school development. The empirical study is based on 17 interviews with teachers and school principals at so-called ‘Oberschulen’ and ‘Integrierte Gesamtschulen’, which were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The study provides results to a neglected area of research: many studies on Religious Education or Educational Science look at grammar schools. The study creates starting points for diverse discourses and target groups. It demonstrates that Religious Education makes an important contribution to school education, but that it is time to modify some approaches and activities.