Palgrave Macmillan
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The book investigates the dispersed emergence of the new visual regime associated with nineteenth-century pre-cinematic spectacles in the literary imagination of the previous centuries. Its comparative angle ranges from the Medieval and Baroque period to the visual and stylistic experimentations of the Romantic age, in the prose of Anne Radcliffe, the experiments of Friedrich Schlegel, and in Wordsworth's Prelude. The book examines the cultural traces of the transformation of perception and representation in art, architecture, literature, and print culture, providing an indispensable background to any discussion of nineteenth-century culture at large and its striving for a figurative model of realism. Understanding the origins of nineteenth-century mimesis through an unacknowledged genealogy of visual practices helps also to redefine novel theory and points to the centrality of the new definition of `historicism' irradiating from Jena Romanticism for the structuring of modern cultural studies.
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Mobile Professional Voluntarism and International Development
James Ackers-Johnson; Helen Louise Ackers
- Palgrave macmillan
- 26 December 2016
- 9781137558336
This book is open access under a CC BY license.
This book explores the impact that professional volunteers have on the low resource countries they choose to spend time in. Whilst individual volunteering may be of immediate benefit to individual patients, this intervention may have detrimental effects on local health systems; distorting labour markets, accentuating dependencies and creating opportunities for corruption. Improved volunteer deployment may avoid these risks and present opportunities for sustainable systems change. The empirical research presented in this book stems from a specific volunteering intervention funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust and focused on improving maternal and newborn health in Uganda. However, important opportunities exist for policy transfer to other contexts. -
This book argues that that the rise of great firms - those with sustainable high return on invested capital (ROIC) - will lay the foundation for China's successful economic transformation. Drawn from the author's research on corporate finance and the Chinese economy, the author maintains that being big could be easy but means little for corporate China, especially in the context of China's transition from an investment-led economy to an efficiency-driven one. The work discusses both internal and external impediments that lead to lack of great companies in China and suggests institutional conditions which foster the rise of great companies in China, including, reversing the government's obsession with GDP, reforming the financial system, and promoting entrepreneurship. Policy makers, investors, corporate executives, and MBA students and scholars will appreciate case studies of Huawei, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and Lenovo, among others, that illustrate the endeavors made by Chinese entrepreneurs at the grassroots level and highlight what makes successful companies in China.
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Living with Disfigurement in Early Medieval Europe
Patricia Skinner
- Palgrave macmillan
- 21 December 2016
- 9781137544391
This book is open access under a CC-BY 4.0 license. This book examines social and medical responses to the disfigured face in early medieval Europe, arguing that the study of head and facial injuries can offer a new contribution to the history of early medieval medicine and culture, as well as exploring the language of violence and social interactions. Despite the prevalence of warfare and conflict in early medieval society, and a veritable industry of medieval historians studying it, there has in fact been very little attention paid to the subject of head wounds and facial damage in the course of war and/or punitive justice. The impact of acquired disfigurement -for the individual, and for her or his family and community-is barely registered, and only recently has there been any attempt to explore the question of how damaged tissue and bone might be treated medically or surgically. In the wake of new work on disability and the emotions in the medieval period, this study documents how acquired disfigurement is recorded across different geographical and chronological contexts in the period.
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Regime Dynamics in EU's Eastern Neighbourhood
Sergiu Buscaneanu
- Palgrave macmillan
- 4 January 2017
- 9781137563262
This book examines the effectiveness and consistency of EU democracy promotion in its Eastern neighbourhood between 1991 and 2014. It concludes that the EU's democratization role in this region was, not surprisingly, weak within this time period. However, this weak role only took shape under four domestic and transnational conditions: (a) a higher cost-benefit balance of rule transfer, (b) a lower structural difficulty a given country would need to overcome on its way towards a democratic regime, (c) increased levels of authority distribution across branches of power, and (d) a higher extent of democratic diffusion resulting from regional interactions. In those countries where these domestic and transnational conditions were present, as in Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, the EU's democratizing influence was in causal terms only the tip of the iceberg. Most variation in regime dynamics remains to be explained by domestic and transnational contexts.
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This book examines the queer film festival and opens the discussion on social enterprises and sustainable lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) organisations. With over 220 events worldwide and some of the bigger budgets exceeding $1 million, the queer film festival has grown to become a staple event in all cosmopolitan cities' arts calendars. While activism was instrumental in establishing these festivals, the pink dollar has been a deciding factor in its financial sustainability. Pretty gay boys with chiselled abs are a staple feature, rather than underground experimental faire. Community arts events, such as these, are now a creative industry. While clearly having a social purpose, they must also concern themselves with the bottom line. For all the contradictory elements of its organisational growth, this conflict makes the queer film festival an integral site for analysis. This book takes a multidisciplinary approach in examining the queer film festival as a representative snapshot of the current state of queer cinema and community based film festivals. The book looks at queer film festivals in San Francisco, Hong Kong and Melbourne to argue for the importance of these institutions remaining as community events.
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This book is open access under a CC BY license and charts the rise and fall of various self-harming behaviours in twentieth-century Britain. It puts self-cutting and overdosing into historical perspective, linking them to the huge changes that occur in mental and physical healthcare, social work and wider politics.
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Sensing Absence: How to See What Isn't There in the Study of Science and Security
Brian Rappert
- Palgrave macmillan
- 16 November 2015
- 9781137592613
Chapter 1 of this book is open access under a CC BY license.
This is a chapter from Absence in Science, Security and Policy edited by Brian Rappert and Brian Balmer. This chapter is available open access under a CC BY license. Part reflection on the forthcoming chapters, part analysis of academic literature, and part programmatic agenda setting, this introduction chapter forwards the importance of questioning taken for granted assumptions in sensing what is absent as a concern. It undertakes this through initially examining what it means to characterize concern as absent or present in the first place. While absence and presence are often treated as binary opposites, it will be argued this distinction is difficult to sustain and unhelp for analysis. On the back of an appreciation of the inter-relation of absence and presence, this chapter then reviews the literature in sociology, ethics, STS and elsewhere relevant to the themes of the volume. A goal is to outline the methodological and epistemological possibilities and problematics of studying what is missing. By way of then proposing what is required, and to set the stage for the other chapters in Part 1, this chapter ends by asking how autostereograms provide a metaphor for viewing that can guide the study of absence. -
Empress Adelheid and Countess Matilda
Penelope Nash
- Palgrave macmillan
- 15 February 2017
- 9781137585141
This book compares two successful, elite women, Empress Adelheid (931 999) and Countess Matilda (1046 1115), for their relative ability to retain their wealth and power. Both owned extensive property in and exercised power across overlapping geographical regions, at either end of a century that proved formative for the rise of a more organized society. The comparison between these two women informs and transforms the debate about the change in opportunities for women to access wealth and power. It is particularly revealing because the general changes of the eleventh century brought about a reversal in women's relative ability to access wealth and power: examining the reasons for the women's successes will highlight the commonplaces as well as the extraordinary. Drawing on a considerable number of primary sources for the two women, the book presents their lives in different ways, tempered by the expectations of the audience in the different periods in which they wrote. By examining the chroniclers of the lives of Adelheid and Matilda and how they presented the two women to the contemporary audience, this book will show in what high esteem both women were held. Such esteem extended beyond what might be reasonably expected, challenging conventional beliefs for gender historians and medieval scholars.
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Brazil is the most populous economy in Latin America today with the second highest GDP among the emerging BRIC economies, after China , and the second per capita GDP among the BRIC economies after Russia . The objective of the proposed book is to provide a thorough historical, statistical, and institutional description of the Brazilian economy along with a most recent account of what is presently going on in Brazil and the type of economy from which Brazil is emerging. The topics addressed in this book will increase the reader's awareness of the institutional economic and cultural forces that shape the dynamism of the Brazilian economy today and will continue to do so for the years to come.
Some of the questions that this book will address are: How did the Brazilian economy evolve into what it is today? How does the Brazilian economy affect the developing and industrialized countries and why should the present state of the Brazilian economy be of any interest or concern to the rest of the world? How is the Brazilian banking sector evolving and what role do private banks and finance play in this change? How do the demographic changes in Brazil interact with capital accumulation and influence sustainable socio-economic growth? What accounts for consumption inequalities among Brazil's population? What processes are responsible for the current distribution of income in Brazil? How is the recent economic crisis of industrialized countries expected to affect Brazil's economic stability and long term growth? How are the policy makers in Brazil dealing with international and domestic economic challenges? Those who study multinational enterprises and the future of their direct investment in Brazil will learn about the existing types of government intervention which will continue to play an important role in the future economic growth of the country. They will also gain some understanding of Brazilian antitrust policy and the international implications of Brazil's transition into an emerging world economic power. -
Examines the evolution of the modern Afghan state in the shadow of Britain's imperial presence in South Asia during the first half of the nineteenth century, and challenges the staid assumptions that the Afghans were little more than pawns in a larger Anglo-Russian imperial rivalry known as the 'Great Game'.
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Offering a major new interpretation of the transformation of political thought and practice in colonial India, The Domination of Strangers traces the origins of modern ideas about the state and Indian civil society to the practical interaction between the British and their south Asian subjects.
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Toward Assimilation and Citizenship
E. Morawska; C. Joppke
- Palgrave macmillan
- 17 December 2002
- 9780230554795
This book surveys a new trend in immigration studies, which one could characterize as a turn away from multicultural and postnational perspectives, toward a renewed emphasis on assimilation and citizenship. Looking both at state policies and migrant practices, the contributions to this volume argue that (1) citizenship has remained the dominant membership principle in liberal nation-states, (2) multiculturalism policies are everywhere in retreat, and (3) contemporary migrants are simultaneously assimilating and transnationalizing.
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Each year thousands of people die from bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Alternative drugs are urgently needed. A surprising ray of hope from the past are viruses that kill bacteria, but not us. Award-winning science journalist Thomas Häusler investigates how these long-forgotten cures may help sick people today.
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Religions, Nations, and Transnationalism in Multiple Modernities
Patrick Michel; Bryan S. Turner; Adam Possamai
- Palgrave macmillan
- 20 April 2017
- 9781137580115
This edited book explores the impact of globalisation on the relationship between religion and politics, religion and nation, religion and nationalism, and the impact that transnationalism has on religious groups. In a post-Westphalian and transnational world, with increased international communication and transportation, a plethora of new religious recompositions religions now take part in a network society that cuts across borders. This collection, through its analysis of historical and contemporary case studies, explores the growth of both national and transnational religious movements and their dealings with the various versions of modernity that they encounter. It considers trends of religious revitalisation and secularisation, and processes of nationalism and transnationalism through the prism of the theory of multiple modernities, acknowledging both its pluralist world view but also the argument that its definition of modernity is often so inclusive as to lose coherence. Providing a cutting edge take on 21st century religion and globalization, this volume is a key read for all scholars of religion, secularisation and transnationalism.
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In 1922 Barnes Wallis FRS, who later invented the transatlantic airship and the bouncing bomb immortalized in the movie The Dam Busters, fell in love for the first and last time - aged 35. The object of his affection, Molly Bloxam, was 17 and setting off to study science at University College London. Her father decreed that the two could correspond only if Barnes taught Molly mathematics in his letters.
Mathematics with Love presents, for the first time, the result of this curious diktat: a series of witty, tender and totally accessible introductions to calculus, trigonometry and electrostatic induction that remarkably, wooed and won the girl. Deftly narrated by Barnes and Molly's daughter Mary, Mathematics with Love is an evocative tale of a twenties courtship, a surprising insight into the early life of an engineering genius - and a great way to learn a little mathematics.
