Open Access Books

Following his celebrated debut collection Super Flat Times, Matthew Derby delivers a disturbing new set of stories that plunges us into a lonely heartland of misfits, outcasts, and would-be assassins who lurk in the shadows, searching for connection and meaning in all the wrong places

The paper examines the case of the acquisition and management of the farm of Larizzate, near Vercelli, by the hospital of Sant'Andrea of Vercelli, in a period going from the twenties of the thirteenth century to the early fifteenth century. A comparison between the data provided by the agrarian pacts and the data made available by the periodical accounts that recorded the trend of the give and take between the owner and the dependent farmers shows the discrepancy between the services due and actually paid by the hospital employees in Larizzate. An analysis of the account books reveals, on the one hand, the great importance of the work carried out by the employees for the hospital to offset the debts accrued by the former towards the latter; on the other hand, the importance of the works for the construction and restoration of the defensive structures with which the farm was equipped. These fortifications were an expression of the lordly power exercised by the institution over the population gravitating around the farm, which can also be seen, albeit in a discontinuous manner, from other sources.

Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that can perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Learning to recognise the entangled nature of our everyday relationships with food can encourage ethical ecological thinking and lay the foundations for more sustainable lifestyles. This book analyses ethnographic data gathered from participants in Alternative Food Networks from farmers’ markets to community gardens, agricultural shows and food redistribution services. Drawing on theoretical insights from political ecology, eco-feminism, ecological humanities, human geography and critical food studies, the author demonstrates the sticky and enduring nature of anthropocentric discourses. Chapters in this book experiment with alternative grammars to support and amplify ecologically attuned practices of human and more-than-human togetherness. In times of increasing climate variability, this book calls for alternative ontologies and world-making practices centred on food which encourage agility and adaptability and are shown to be enacted through playful tinkering guided by an ethic of convivial dignity. This innovative book offers a valuable insight into food networks and sustainability which will be useful core reading for courses focusing on critical food studies, food ecology and environmental studies.

Collaborative robots (cobots) enable human-robot interactions in the workplace without safety fences. An appropriate level of trust by employees is critical to the success of these interactions. Anthropomorphic perceptions and fears of technological replacement affect trust formation. They can be influenced by linguistic framing, as this interdisciplinary empirical study shows.

This open access book takes a fresh look at the nature of the digital travel experience, at a time when more and more people are engaged in online social interaction, games, and other virtual experiences essentially involving online visits to other places. It examines whether these experiences can seem real to the virtual traveller and, if so, under what conditions and on what grounds. The book unpacks philosophical theories relevant to the feeling of being somewhere, emphasising the importance of perception and being-in-the-world. Notions of place are outlined, based on work in tourism studies, human geography, and other applied social fields, with an aim to investigate how and when different experiences of place arise for the traveller and how these relate to telepresence – the sense of being there in another place through digital media. Findings from recent empirical studies of digital travel are presented, including a survey from which the characteristics of “digital travellers” are identified. A review of selected interactive design trends and possibilities leads to the conclusion, which draws these strands together and looks to the future of this topical and expanding field.

Dictionaries of national biography are a long-established and significant genre of biographical and historical writing, existing in many forms across the globe. This book brings together practitioners from around the English‑speaking world to reflect on national biographical dictionary projects' recent cultural journeys, and the challenges presented to them by such developments as the transition to a digital environment, a new alertness to the need to represent diversity, and the rise of transnationalism. Exploring their paths forward, the chapters of this book collectively make a powerful argument for the continued value and importance of large‑scale collaborative biographical dictionary research.

Wie sich in der Trias von Medien, Didaktik und Hochschule spezifische Forschungs- und Arbeitszusammenhänge, methodische Spannungen und Zukunftsimpulse spiegeln, welche Resonanzen daraus für Theorie und Praxis entstehen, erkunden die Beitragenden dieser Festschrift anlässlich Gabi Reinmanns 60. Geburtstag auf je eigene Weise. Etwa: Baut Wissenschaftsdidaktik Brücken in die Zukunft? Wie steht es um forschendes Lernen in der unternehmerischen Hochschule? Warum erscheinen Medien oft nur als Tools, als ob ihre sozio-technischen Einschreibungen kaum Geltung hätten? Entlang solcher Fragen zeigt sich ein geteiltes Interesse an Hochschuldidaktik und -entwicklung sowie an einem kritisch-produktiven Umgang mit technischen Entwicklungen einschließlich Künstlichen Intelligenzen. Die Trias eröffnet einen Resonanzraum, in dem sich gegenwärtige und künftige Formen akademischer Bildung entfalten.

Healthy Ageing in a Digital World offers a holistic approach to understanding the challenges of ageing populations, digital transformation, health development/health equity in the Nordics. The authors explore how citizens in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, aged 75 to 100, use digital technology in their daily lives for health and well-being, and how health professionals in the Nordic context navigate digital solutions in their interactions with older citizens. Examining the differences and similarities between the Nordic countries’ policies and media coverage of older adults and digital health, the chapters cover topics ranging from news media discourses on ageing, to use of digital technology among healthcare professionals, to representation of older populations in government policy. This book will interest scholars and students of digital health as a sub-field of media and communication studies, sociology of health and illness, nursing, gerontology, as well as healthcare professionals working in these areas. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

What is it about social interaction at the workplace that spurs interactional competence development? This book explores the answers to this question by analyzing the development of interactional competence by two Vietnamese hotel staff members, one novice and one experienced, as they interact with international guests in English in Vietnam. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) in a longitudinal design, Nguyen and Malabarba trace the learners’ observable changes in interactional practices in guest-escorting walks over time. In doing so, they uncover the interaction-endogenous impetuses that may have led to these changes and address three fundamental questions in second language acquisition research: what is learned, how it is learned, and why it is learned. In seven chapters, the book offers an illuminating discussion of how competence has been conceptualized in EMCA and a rich analysis of how individuals’ changes in interactional conduct take place locally and longitudinally. With an in-depth discussion of theoretical issues as well as a fine-grained empirical analysis, this book appeals to researchers, students, and practitioners interested in social perspectives on second language learning, longitudinal EMCA, the development of interactional competence at the workplace, and guest-host interaction in hospitality. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For the first time, this book examines the comparative impact of the Obama administration on the NATO and defense policies of European allies. Germany, Poland and Turkey serve as case studies to evaluate American policies vis-à-vis NATO Europe. All three are representative for the Alliance in various ways. Thus, the results of this book offer an outlook for NATO Europe and the Alliance as a whole. Despite the fact that all three countries are highly dependent on American security guarantees in theory and practice, the results of this study reveal different national responses. Indeed, the book demonstrates multi-, bi-, and unilateralization attempts in reaction to US engagement in and vis-à-vis NATO Europe. Hence, a better understanding of current developments within the Alliance as well as the basis for the future debate about the transatlantic organisation are provided. Aylin Matlé works for the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V.; most recently, she worked for the foundation's Israel office in Jerusalem. Previously, Aylin Matlé was a research associate at the chair of international relations and European politics at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

This empirical study examines the importance of dialect and dialect use in Switzerland. Based on interdisciplinary approaches, it explores the extent to which linguistic perception and assessment on the part of laypersons is connected to actual language use. It shows that dialects are constructed by means of discursive processes and reproduced in language use. In this way, it illuminates how speakers create dialects.

This book develops the challenges that history teaching must face as a curricular subject at the beginning of the 21st century. These challenges are related, both to new epistemological approaches in history education, and also to the development of new activities, active-learning methodologies, and historical thinking competencies. In terms of new approaches, this book suggests activities regarding invisible topics such as social and economic impacts in history, inequalities, church and science, gender equality, power and violence, prosecuted by justice, peasantry and the urban world, family and daily life, terror or travelers and their cross-currents. Regarding the activities, the incidence of new technologies in social relations and the effects of globalization is very remarkable for our students. The authors highlight the need for changes in teaching and learning history.

Social and political history of the origins of the Socialist party of Argentina towards the beginning of the century until the enactment of the electoral law Sáenz Peña

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences.

War in the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1600 is a panoramic synthesis of the Iberian Peninsula including the kingdoms of Leon and Castile, Aragon, Portugal, Navarra, al-Andalus and Granada. It offers an extensive chronology, covering the entire medieval period and extending through to the sixteenth century, allowing for a very broad perspective of Iberian history which displays the fixed and variable aspects of war over time. The book is divided kingdom by kingdom to provide students and academics with a better understanding of the military interconnections across medieval and early modern Iberia. The continuities and transformations within Iberian military history are showcased in the majority of chapters through markers to different periods and phases, particularly between the Early and High Middle Ages, and the Late Middle Ages. With a global outlook, coverage of all the most representative military campaigns, sieges and battles between 700 and 1600, and a wide selection of maps and images, War in the Iberian Peninsula is ideal for students and academics of military and Iberian history.