Open Access Books

This book examines the politics of revenue bargaining in Africa in a time when attention to domestic revenue mobilisation has expanded immensely. Measures to increase taxes and other revenues can -but do not always- lead to a process of bargaining, where revenue providers negotiate for some kind of a return. This book offers in-depth analyses of micro-instances of revenue bargaining across five African countries: Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda. All case studies draw on a common theoretical framework combining the fiscal contract theory with the political settlement approach, which enables a systematic exploration into what triggers revenue bargaining; how these processes unfold; and finally, if and when they reach an agreement (whether a fiscal contract or not). From the empirically rich case narratives emerges a story of how power and initial bargaining position influence not only whether bargaining emerges in the first place, but also the processes and their outcomes. Less resourceful taxpayers are in a more difficult position to raise their voice, but in some cases even these groups manage to ally with other civil society groups to protest against tax reforms they perceive as unfair. Indirect taxes such as VAT often trigger protests, and so do sudden changes in tax practices. Revenue providers rarely call for improved services in return for paying tax, which would be expected to nurture the foundation for a fiscal social contract. Instead, revenue providers are more likely to negotiate for tax reductions, implying that governments’ effort to increase revenue is impeded. We do find many instances of state-society reciprocity when ruling elites try to be responsive to revenue providers’ demands. Hence, this book gives insight into the nature and dynamics not only of revenue bargaining but of policy-making in general as well as the implications hereof for state-society reciprocity in Africa.

Using interviews with and academic studies of the careers of internationally-famous music producers and music industry professionals from Småland, Sweden, this open access book studies the history and present state of pop music production and entrepreneurship. An exceptionally high number of established and emerging pop artists and producers from this region of Sweden have had significant success on the international stage. This book describes how the situation for music producers and artists from Småland has changed during the past 50 years or so, starting in the 1970s with the so-called ‘Swedish music wonder’ and ending with the situation contemporary artists and entrepreneurs are facing. The field has changed massively both in terms of technology (from analogue to digital), social production (from individual productions to collective projects), distribution and marketing (from selling concert tickets and LPs to creating “prosuming” fanbases and multipronged careers considering genres, venues and activities). This book will be of interest to students of and professionals in music production; music, economy and media scholars; readers active in creative industries; and fans of (Swedish) pop music.

Medieval authorship is a fragile concept, yet digital approaches offer a path towards clarity. This book examines the work of Jehan de Saint-Quentin, an under-studied author from fourteenth-century France who has been credited with twenty-four poems, but whose name only appears in one of them. This volume expands Jehan’s œuvre through the addition of two new poems, namely Le dit de Guillaume d’Engleterre and Le dit de Robert le Deable . It also identifies echoes of two lost works by the same author in La vie saint Jehan Paulus and Richard sans Peur . Through this case study, the book offers a new model for the field, demonstrating how humanistic approaches and reproducible data can combine in bespoke ways to unlock new insights about medieval literature.

Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Beyond the Nation charts an expansive history of Filipino literature in the U.S., forged within the dual contexts of imperialism and migration, from the early twentieth century into the twenty-first. Martin Joseph Ponce theorizes and enacts a queer diasporic reading practice that attends to the complex crossings of race and nation with gender and sexuality. Tracing the conditions of possibility of Anglophone Filipino literature to U.S. colonialism in the Philippines in the early twentieth century, the book examines how a host of writers from across the century both imagine and address the Philippines and the United States, inventing a variety of artistic lineages and social formations in the process. Beyond the Nation considers a broad array of issues, from early Philippine nationalism, queer modernism, and transnational radicalism, to music-influenced and cross-cultural poetics, gay male engagements with martial law and popular culture, second-generational dynamics, and the relation between reading and revolution. Ponce elucidates not only the internal differences that mark this literary tradition but also the wealth of expressive practices that exceed the terms of colonial complicity, defiant nationalism, or conciliatory assimilation. Moving beyond the nation as both the primary analytical framework and locus of belonging, Ponce proposes that diasporic Filipino literature has much to teach us about alternative ways of imagining erotic relationships and political communities.

The German Linguistic Studies Series is a comprehensive and outstanding forum in its field. It has borne the name of its subject in its title since the foundation of the series in the eighth decade of the last century. The series is comprehensive in the broad spectrum of topics covered (language levels, varieties, communication forms, epochs) in the range of research perspectives (theoretical and empirical studies, fundamental research and applications, interdisciplinarity with psychology, the social sciences etc.) and methodologies (the sole criterion is quality), in the rhythm of research (trends are perceived and also set, achievements are secured) and in the forms of presentation (monographs, textbooks, collected volumes, dictionaries). Professorial theses, outstanding doctoral theses, pioneering research findings from wider contexts, but also the surprising ‛stroke of genius’ set the standards for inclusion in the series. Call for Book Proposals: https://blog.degruyter.com/call-for-book-proposals-reihe-germanistische-linguistik/

The Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell was a nodal figure in the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge. This study of his career sheds light on the Enlightenment, Catholicism, reform in the Habsburg monarchy, and the cultivation of science in the Republic of Letters. Readership: Anyone interested in eighteenth-century Central Europe and Scandinavia, in the production and circulation of knowledge in the Enlightenment, in enlightened absolutism, in Catholicism and the Society of Jesus in the eighteenth century, in the history of astronomy and related subjects, and the history of comparative linguistics and its ideological implications.

The odd and brilliant works of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedenskii were lost to both Russia and the West for some thirty years. It was the misfortune of these writers to be nurtured in a period of literary experiment that was cut off suddenly just as they were starting out. Their first steps, taken under the aegis of an antic literary group called Oberiu, turned out to be the only public testament of their career, and to this day Oberiu remains the touchstone of their notoriety in the West. The connection is unfortunate, because the silence that was forced on the group became paradoxically the silence under which Kharms and Vvedenskii matured as writers. Their later works, masterpieces of black humor with an infusion of the sacred, are firmly rooted in the Russian tradition, and bear comparison with the finest works of the European theater of the absurd.

The study of early modern cancer is significant for our understanding of the period’s medical theory and practice. In many respects, cancer exemplifies the flexibility of early modern medical thought, which managed to accommodate, seemingly without friction, the notion that cancer was a disease with humoral origins alongside the conviction that the malady was in some sense ontologically independent. Discussions of why cancer spread rapidly through the body, and was difficult, if not impossible, to cure, prompted various medical explanations at the same time that physicians and surgeons joined with non-medical authors in describing the disease as acting in a way that was ‘malignant’ in the fullest sense, purposely ‘fierce’, ‘rebellious’ and intractable.3 Theories seeking to explain why cancer appeared most often in the female breast similarly joined culturally mediated anatomical and humoral theory with recognition of the peculiarities of women’s social, domestic and emotional life-cycles. Moreover, as a morbid disease, cancer generated eclectic and sometimes extreme medical responses, the mixed results of which would prompt many questions over the proper extent of pharmaceutical or surgical intervention.

Dass Künstler*innen forschen, ist nichts Neues. Was sich aber sukzessive wandelt, ist der künstlerische Zugang: Die Kunst ist nicht länger (nur) Gegenstand, sondern vor allem auch Mittel zur Erkenntnisgewinnung. Dieser Entwicklung folgend hat die Universität Bern gemeinsam mit der Hochschule der Künste Bern das erste Schweizerische Doktoratsprogramm für Künstler*innen und Gestalter*innen gegründet: Studies in the Arts (SINTA). Die an diesem Projekt beteiligten Beiträger*innen des Bandes liefern hierzu grundsätzliche Erwägungen und Fallbeispiele sowie praktische Anwendungen in Interpretation, Musikrezeption und Design.

Perhaps unexpectedly, English travel writing during the long eighteenth century reveals a discourse of global civility. By bringing together representations of the then already familiar Ottoman Empire and the largely unknown South Pacific, Sascha Klement adopts a uniquely global perspective and demonstrates how cross-cultural encounters were framed by Enlightenment philosophy, global interconnections, and even-handed exchanges across cultural divides. In so doing, this book shows that both travel and travel-writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries were much more complex and multi-layered than reductive Eurocentric histories often suggest.

This book reviews successes and (remaining) challenges in vaccine development for the selected Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) of Leprosy, Leishmaniasis, Meliodoisis and Tuberculosis, which are a continuous burden for millions of people in affected areas worldwide. Written by frontline researchers, the volume deep-dives into different vaccine strategies, provides biotechnological background information and also tackles animal models in NTD therapeutics research. By bringing together state-of-the-art expert knowledge, the book contributes to the aim of ultimately ending the epidemics of neglected tropical diseases, complying with UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, Health and Well-Being. The volume highlights the activities of the research network VALIDATE (VAccine deveLopment for complex Intracellular neglecteD pAThogEns), funded by the Medical Research Council in the UK. The four NTDs discussed in the book were selected as these are in the focus of VALIDATE’s research. The book targets scientists and clinicians working on NTDs, as well as all readers with a background in biomedicine and interest in vaccine development. This is an open access book.

This book examines how sleep and dreams were approached in early Greek thought, highlighting the theories of the Presocratic and Hippocratic writers on both phenomena as more varied, complex, and substantial than is usually credited. It explores how the Presocratic natural philosophers and early Hippocratic medical writers developed theories which drew from wider investigations into physiology and psychology, the natural world and the self, while also engaging with wider literary depictions and established cultural beliefs. Although the focus is predominantly on Presocratic and Hippocratic ideas, this is not exclusive: attention is devoted from the outset to sleep and dreams in Homer and the mythic tradition, as well as to depictions across lyric, drama, and historiography. Sleep and Dreams in Early Greek Thought provides a fascinating study of this topic which will be of interest to students and scholars of ancient medicine and the history of science, Greek philosophy, and classical culture more broadly. It is accessible to students with or without knowledge of the classical languages, and also to anyone with a general interest in the beliefs of the classical world. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This volume reports the first results of the Observatory on the Transformations of the Italian Automotive Ecosystem. The main focus is on the consequences of the technology acceleration following the European legislation that has decreed the end of the sales of the production of endothermic motors in 2035. The Observatory was founded by CAMI - Department of Management of Ca' Foscari University of Venice and Motus-E, the association of industrial operators that promote electric vehicles. It seeks to identify the key variables to assess whether and to what extent the current technological development is shaping the evolution of the automotive ecosystem, and ultimately whether it represents an opportunity or a threat for incumbents. The main objective of the Observatory is to produce and identify scientific evidence on the ecosystem of mobility to be made available to economic, entrepreneurial, political-institutional and scientific networks. The Observatory is based on a database composed of companies belonging to the industrial chain of road mobility (supply chain for cars, motorcycles, micro-mobility, buses, trucks, as well as companies providing engineering services, components and after-market services and infrastructure for electric and similar refuelling and charging). The technological evolution of recent years is affecting the drive-train of vehicles, which will be subject to radical changes starting from the abandonment of internal combustion engine technology. In this scenario it is no longer enough to continue analysing the ‘traditional supply chain’, but a broader analysis is needed that takes into account the entire mobility ecosystem. Electric mobility is, to date, the most mature technology to replace the endothermic engine and will involve: a radical change in the technological base; an expansion of the boundaries of the automotive supply chain involving those of digitalisation and services; the need for complementary asset development.

The develoment of plastic surgery techniques allows for preserving and reconstruction of function after resection of malignant tumors. From split thickness skin grafts to pedicled and free tissue transfer multiple techniques are at hand to restore body integrity. Sufficient soft tissue coverage allows for adjuvant radiation therapy or can cure its sequelae. Nerve, tendon and muscle transfers are used to regain motor function of the extremities. Even large bony defects can be treated by microsurgically transferring fibula, pelvic and femoral bone. In case main vessels need to be resected reconstruction is possible with autologous and artificial grafts. By means of plastic surgery thoracic and abdominal defects can be covered so that foremost unresectable tumors become curable. Unfortunately the knowledge of these techniques is not very popular with oncologic surgeons. Therefore we suggest as a clinical topic the role of reconstructive surgery in the multimodal treatment of oncologic patients. The focus will be on different areas of the body, therefore articels for reconstructional procedures at the head, the extremities, the trunk, the thoracic wall, the breast, and the foot will be invited. Another focus will be the role of reconstructive procedures in the multimodal treatment concept consisting of radiation and chemotherapy as well. By knowing and applying the opportunities of plastic surgery the quality of live of the oncologic patient can be significantly improved.