Open Access Books

To trace the loss of plausibility of the Christian faith in the West during the 21st century, a mere examination of historical shifts in ideas is insufficient. Rather, a deeper understanding of the complex figurational dynamics of the somatonarrative constitution of the human being and its role in the generation of world access is necessary. This work represents an attempt to systematize the contributions of Charles Taylor, Wilhelm Schapp, Paul Ricoeur, Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Fuchs, and others with regard to the aforementioned figurational dynamics, while more closely interlinking individual themes from these prior works. Dimensions such as corporeality, narratives, language, habitus, sociality, practices, imagination, liturgicality, and ascetic techniques are related hermeneutically and phenomenologically to one another, in order to both address the question of the underlying causes of the shifts in plausibility and to render the findings productive for the question of the possibility of Christian existence in the 21st century.

Four Years in Izumi takes an in-depth and critical approach to understanding Japanese village life through analysis of the diary of Kujō Masamoto, the former chancellor of the imperial court who resided briefly in one of his provincial estates from 1501 to 1504. For a high ranking courtier to travel to the countryside and manage a family estate was unheard of during the era of Sengoku , the “country at war.” The diary Masamoto kept offers a remarkably rich and vivid portrait of village Japan, which has seen no significant study in English-language scholarship. Through extensive examination of the diary and close and critical reading of it and complementary sources, Lee Butler provides a window into the inner workings of late-medieval village life that challenges typical portrayals of the period. In Four Years in Izumi , we see the complexity of relations between commoners and elites in action. We also see the ways in which an estate functioned in practice at the heart of the medieval economy and local social structure.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a particular story about the United States’ role in the long history of world civilization was constructed in public spaces, through public art and popular histories. This narrative posited that civilization and its benefits – science, law, writing, art and architecture – began in Egypt and Mesopotamia before passing ever further westward, towards a triumphant culmination on the American continent. Early Civilization and the American Modern explores how this teleological story answered anxieties about the United States’ unique role in the long march of progress. Eva Miller focuses on important figures who collaborated on the creation of a visual, progressive narrative in key institutions, world’s fairs and popular media: Orientalist and public intellectual James Henry Breasted, astronomer George Ellery Hale, architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and decorative artists Lee Lawrie and Hildreth Meière. At a time when new information about the ancient Middle East was emerging through archaeological excavation, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia appeared simultaneously old and new. This same period was crucial to the development of public space and civic life across the United States, as a shared sense of historical consciousness was actively pursued by politicians, philanthropists, intellectuals, architects and artists.

The Last Mile explores the gaps and dichotomy between drafted policies and their implementation, and the last mile challenges which often make public services inaccessible to the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. It provides an in-depth overview of the dynamics between communities, research and consultation and the implementation of policies for development. Rich in empirical data and case studies from different government programmes and reports, this book examines the implementation of government service programmes for poverty reduction, women’s empowerment, and income generation for the poor, among others, from a people’s perspective. It highlights the need for policies and institutions to align their methods to community needs. Offering guidelines for redesigning as well as solutions to counter challenges related to lack of trust and effective communication, human resource management, capacity development, redressal mechanisms, and facilitating the last mile connection, the author delineates effective ways for integrating new technologies in policy implementation. The book also addresses legacy issues in institutions and re-orienting policy for better governance, transparency, and building trust. Part of the Innovations, Practice and the Future of Public Policy in India series, this book, by a senior practitioner, will be an essential resource for students and researchers of development studies, sociology, public policy and governance, economics, and South Asian studies. This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The »return of great power competition« between (among others) the US, China, Russia and the EU is a major topic in contemporary public debate. But why do we think of world politics in terms of »competition«? Which information and which rules enable states and other actors in world politics to »compete« with one another? Which competitive strategies do they pursue in the complex environment of modern world politics? This cutting-edge edited collection discusses these questions from a unique interdisciplinary perspective. It offers a fresh account of competition in world politics, looking beyond its military dimensions to questions of economics, technology and prestige.

The book describes the development of innovative silicon sensors known as ultra-fast silicon detectors for use in the space-time tracking of charge particles. The first comprehensive collection of information on the topic, otherwise currently scattered in existing literature, this book presents a comprehensive introduction to the development of ultra-fast silicon detectors with the latest technology and applications from the field. It will be an ideal reference for graduate and postgraduates studying high energy and particle physics and engineering, in addition to researchers in the area. Key features Authored by a team of subject area specialists, whose research group first invented ultra-fast silicon detectors The first book on the topic to explain the details of the design of silicon sensors for 4-dimensional tracking Presents state-of-the-art results, and prospects for further performance evolutions The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/e/9780367646295 , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This open access book unveils the history of defending Australia’s natural environment and examines the subject’s legal and political contexts from the birth of the nation in 1901 until the advent of the so-called modern era of environmental regulation in the late 1960s. It rejects the mythology that Australia lacked environmental law before the late 1960s in revealing how many of today’s environmental laws, from pollution control to nature conservation, emerged from precedents or events much earlier in the 20th century. This history however reveals a discrepancy between lawmakers’ greater efficacy to exploit rather than protect the environment, a discrepancy that grew as nature’s backlash intensified in a rapidly degrading continent colonised to build the Australian nation. In exploring these dynamics, the book offers a rich tapestry of case studies illustrated with historic photographs that show the origins of Australia’s environmental laws and how they borrowed from international precedents or furnished lessons for other nations. Through its multi-disciplinary enquiry, the book offers scholars and students of environmental law, legal history and the environmental humanities a unique story about the failures and successes in the making of environmental law. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Critically Capitalist presents an ethnography of South Korea’s asset seekers, including amateur stock investors, real estate enthusiasts, and money coaches, to demonstrate how financialized asset capitalism is sustained. As they hunt for profit margins, rent, and dividends, they simultaneously critique capitalism and posit their pursuit of assets as a form of resistance. Bohyeong Kim theorizes this new spirit of capitalism in South Korea as “critical capitalism,” arguing that it reflects the popular discontent with both national development and financial neoliberalism. As a paradoxical critique and legitimation, Bohyeong Kim argues that critical capitalism valorizes the capitalist economy not through a triumphant narrative, but by highlighting the emotional wounds, destroyed communities, and oppressive tactics of modern capitalism. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography and in-depth interviews with a broad community of aspiring millionaires, Critically Capitalist illuminates how contemporary capitalism thrives by channeling discontent into financial and real estate markets, which in turn has cemented critical capitalism as the cultural and affective backbone of South Korea’s economy.

Public administration; Sociology

Die wirkungsreflexive Ausstellungsanalyse untersucht Ausstellungen anhand des komplexen Zusammenspiels ihrer einzelnen Elemente. Durch eine anwendungserprobte Anleitung entsteht Schritt für Schritt ein umfassendes Bild davon, wie die Ausstellung als Gesamtwerk funktioniert. Eine theoretische Basis, die auf den Ausstellungsverständnissen der Cultural Turns aufbaut, fundiert die Analyseergebnisse, während die methodische Reflexion der eigenen Wahrnehmung diese Ergebnisse intersubjektiv nachvollziehbar macht. Die wirkungsreflexive Ausstellungsanalyse erweitert das fachwissenschaftliche Methodenrepertoire, bringt den Diskurs über Ausstellungen voran und macht kritisches Analysieren auch für Anwendungsfelder außerhalb der Wissenschaft zugänglich.

Edited by Martin Biddle with a catalogue of the known coins of the mint by Yvonne Harvey, this volume records and illustrates the minting of silver pennies in Winchester between the reigns of Alfred the Great and Henry III, a period of three and a half centuries. At the Mint, which was situated in the area of the High Street to the east of where the city’s cross now stands, at least 24 million silver pennies (possibly as many as 50 million) were struck. Five and a half thousand survive in museums and collections all over the world. These have been sought out and photographed (some 3200 coins in 6400 images detailing both sides), and minutely catalogued by Yvonne Harvey for this volume. During the period from late in the reign of Alfred to the time of Henry III, dies for striking the coins were produced centrally under royal authority in the most sophisticated system of monetary control at the time in the western world. In this first account of a major English mint to have been made in forty years, a team of leading authorities have studied and analysed the use the Winchester moneyers made of the dies, and together with the size, weight, and the surviving number of coins from each pair of dies, have produced a detailed account of the varying fortunes of the mint over this period. Their results are critical for the economic history of England and the changing status of Winchester over this long period, and provide the richest available source for the history of the name of the city and the personal names of its citizens in the later Anglo-Saxon period.

Family firms and closed companies are the most widespread form of business organization in Germany and Spain. As a field of comparative research, however, they have long been neglected. This volume puts them in the legal limelight. Eleven contributions explore typical legal problems with which courts, legal scholars and practitioners struggle in this area. These include majority/minority conflicts over retention of profits, executive compensation and other related party transactions. Particular attention is also paid to shareholder agreements which often contain a second layer of regulation in addition to the articles of association.

This current chapter reports an initially singular case of a PD patient in Germany who could not be treated with conventional PD medication and whose quality of life had deteriorated dramatically after diagnosis, including long episodes of psychoses. Following therapy with an Ayurvedic (botanical) preparation from the beans of Mucuna pruriens (MP) – the patient´s fate was improved substantially at the time. This compelling, and – rather by fortune – well-documented case was pivotal to spreading the experience with MP within the European network of PD patients, mostly by word of mouth. The PD patient community and neurologists were supported by available online information around the medicinal plant, MP, and the bean´s active components, as well as an initial clinical study followed by a second one in 2004. Based on this first evidence, some neurologists were willing to support their patients with MP-based complementary therapy. As far as the authors are aware, from approximately 1997 until to date such cases were treated predominantly in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and The Netherlands. Clinical experience is mainly based on the feedback from patients and volunteers pushing to understand the added value of MP and prompting the availability of a safe and effective natural medicinal product that can be prescribed to PD patients. Their findings constitute the basis of this chapter.

During the early nineteenth century, the harp was transformed into a sophisticated instrument that became as popular as the piano. This was largely the result of the harp's intensive technical, musical and visual upgrading, which gradually led to the transition from the single- to the double-action pedal harp. A major figure in this process was Sébastien Erard (1752-1831), a tireless inventor and prolific manufacturer of harps and pianos operating branches in Paris and London. With the introduction in 1811 of the so-called 'Grecian' model, the first commercially built double-action harp, the Erard firm managed to establish the harp not only as a novel, state-of-the-art instrument, but also as a powerful symbol of luxury, wealth and status. Drawing upon a wide variety of primary sources, including surviving instruments, archival documents and iconographical evidence, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the development, production and consumption of the Erard Grecian harp in Regency England. The innovative approaches employed by the Erard firm in the manufacture and marketing of harps are measured against competitors but also against the work of leading entrepreneurs in related trades, ranging from the mechanical devices and precision tools of James Watt, Henry Maudslay or Jacques Holtzapffel, through the ornamental pottery of Josiah Wedgwood, to the clocks and watches of George Prior or Abraham-Louis Breguet. In addition, the book examines the omnipresent role of the harp in the education, art, fashion and literature of the Regency era, discussing how the image and perception of the instrument were shaped by groundbreaking advances, such as the Industrial Revolution, Neoclassicism, and the Napoleonic Wars.

The field of democracy studies is more constricted than it needs to be, as researchers, for all their insights, continue to study only fragments of democracy in isolation from each other. Seeking change, The Sciences of the Democracies proposes a groundbreaking means for holistic study, drawing on five sources of knowledge that will provide better understanding of democracy, or rather, of ‘the democracies’. These are: individual people, groups of people, non-textual media, texts, and non-humans. This book details how the inclusion of these five sources across temporal, spatial, cultural, linguistic, and species contexts leads to the discovery of democratic practices and institutions hitherto unknown or unfamiliar to the conventional ‘Western’ perception. It promises to generate a new class of democratic theorist - the ‘Fourth Theorist’, who theorizes from thousands of multimedial democracy concepts - and it has the potential for generating better-founded, less arbitrary, more inclusive democratic theories. In doing so, the book considers the philosophical, institutional, educational, and methodological difficulties of the scientific understandings and undertakings it proposes. The book is a choral work of many collaborating authors. Their ambition is to offer a touchstone text for government and public officials, citizens, residents and visitors, researchers, practitioners, and philanthropists (big and small) participating in what is a vibrant global discussion on how to study and practice democracy equitably.