Books published by Springer International Publishing AG

This volume brings together 11 experts from a range of religious backgrounds, to consider how each tradition has interpreted matters of violence and peace in relation to its sacred text. The traditions covered are Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism.The role of religion in conflict, war, and the creation of peaceful settlements has attracted much academic attention, including considerations of the interpretation of violence in sacred texts. This collection breaks new ground by bringing multiple faiths into conversation with one another with specific regard to the handling of violence and peace in sacred texts. This combination of close attention to text and expansive scope of religious inclusion is the first of its kind.

This volume is the first to draw together theoretical reflection, empirical research, and critical reflection on practice occurring at the juncture of critical approaches in leisure studies and event studies within diverse explorations of deviance. It includes chapters on games and gaming; performing queerness; events around being kinkster; drugs and sex, LGBTQ+ events and activism, and goth subculture. These are combined with poetry, personal reflection and artwork, much of which has been created by contributors. The compendium draws on inquiry undertaken by contributors from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines, as well as deviant leisure practitioners/event organisers. It seeks to expand the cultural and academic articulation of deviance into other disciplines and to develop new perspectives on deviant leisure and deviant leisure practice. It speaks to students, researchers, and practitioners working or interested in critical leisure and event studies, queer theory, cultural theory, burlesque/circus studies, media studies, and discourse studies.

This book provides an important overview of how climate-driven natural hazards like river or pluvial floods, droughts, heat waves or forest fires, continue to play a central role across the globe in the 21st century. Urban resilience has become an important term in response to climate change. Resilience describes the ability of a system to absorb shocks and depends on the vulnerability and recovery time of a system. A shock affects a system to the extent that it becomes vulnerable to the event. This book focus examines how private property-owners might implement such measures or improve their individual coping and adaptive capacity to respond to future events. The book looks at the existence of various planning, legal, financial incentives and psychological factors designed to encourage individuals to take an active role in natural hazard risk management and through the presentation of theoretical discussions and empirical cases shows how urban resilience can be achieved. In addition, the book guides the reader through different conceptual frameworks by showing how urban regions are trying to reach urban resilience on privately-owned land. Each chapter focuses on different cultural, socio-economic and political backgrounds to demonstrate how different institutional frameworks have an impact.

Ideas influence people. In particular, extremely well-developed sets of ideas shape individuals, groups, and societies in far-reaching ways. This book establishes these ¿idea systems¿ as an academic concept. Through three intense episodes of manipulation and mayhem connected to idea systems¿Europe¿s witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era ¿revolutions,¿ and the early campaign of the U.S. War on Terror¿this book charts the cognitive and informational matrices that seize control of people¿s mentalities and behaviors across societies. Through these, the author reaches two conclusions. The first, that we are all vulnerable to the dominating influence of our own matrices of ideas and to those woven by others in the social system. The second, that even the most masterful manipulators of idea programs may lose control of the outcomes of programmatic manipulation. Amongst this analysis, sixty-plus central conceptual terminologies are provided for readers to analyze multiform idea systems that exist across space, time, and cultural contexts.This is an open access book.

This book is a reappraisal of Anglican Church redundancy from a cultural perspective. It challenges long-held perceptions about the rationale for church redundancy, particularly secularisation. It argues that redundancy brought to the surface far-reaching social and cultural tensions that remain unresolved to this day, and which the pandemic closure of buildings has reignited.

This open access book explores the ambiguity of East Central Europe during the twentieth century, examining local contexts through a comparative and transnational reworking of theoretical models in postcolonial studies. Since the early modern period, East Central Europe has arguably been an object of imperialism. However, at the same time East Central European states have been seen to be colonial actors, with individuals from the region often associating themselves with colonial discourses in extra-European contexts. Spanning a broad time period until after the Second World War and covering the governance of Communism and its legacies, the book examines how cultural and literary narratives from East Central Europe have created and revised historical knowledge, making use of collective memory to feed into identity models.

This open access book explores the ambiguity of East Central Europe during the twentieth century, examining local contexts through a comparative and transnational reworking of theoretical models in postcolonial studies. Since the early modern period, East Central Europe has arguably been an object of imperialism. However, at the same time East Central European states have been seen to be colonial actors, with individuals from the region often associating themselves with colonial discourses in extra-European contexts. Spanning a broad time period until after the Second World War and covering the governance of Communism and its legacies, the book examines how cultural and literary narratives from East Central Europe have created and revised historical knowledge, making use of collective memory to feed into identity models.

This book, the second of two volumes, explores the impact of Jesús Huerta de Soto and his role in the modern revival of the Austrian School of Economics. Through chapters discussing philosophy and political economy, the nature of capitalism and the foundations of economics are examined in relation to Austrian economics. These ideas and the work of Huerta de Soto are also contextualized within the broader history of economic thought to provide insight into their influence and development.This book highlights and builds upon the intellectual legacy of Jesús Huerta de Soto through its contribution to the Austrian School of Economics. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in Austrian economics, philosophy, and political economy.

This book, the first of two volumes, explores the impact of Jesús Huerta de Soto and his role in the modern revival of the Austrian School of Economics. The chapters focusing on monetary economics, business cycle theory, and entrepreneurship, combine established ideas with novel topics to explore the new directions forged by Huerta de Sotös ideas. This approach presents Huerta de Sotös influence on modern economics. It also outlines his current research paradigm.This book aims to highlight and build upon the intellectual legacy of Jesús Huerta de Soto through its contribution to the Austrian School of Economics. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in monetary policy and Austrian economics.

This book introduces the Multilingual Approach to Diversity in Education (MADE), a framework that provides an extensive, holistic instrument with research-based teacher indicators for teachers, teacher educators, and administrators to deliver optimal education to multilingual learners in a range of contexts. The authors introduce and provide a theoretical and research-based rationale for the MADE, presenting in turn each of its seven indicators, situating them within current research and theory in multilingualism and education, and providing specific examples of classroom applications. This book will be of interest to academics, teacher educators, pre-service and practicing teachers, and graduate students interested in teaching and researching multilingual learners.

This book offers a fresh approach to strategy by examining the idea of Optionality. Optionality is the right, but not the obligation, to take an action. Built on historic military tactics, static engineering principles, and equilibrium-seeking economics, conventional strategic-thinking suffers some weaknesses, principal of which is its inability to deal with conditions of high uncertainty. This book begins by dividing the business landscape into three distinct domains; (1) Fragile, (2) Robust, and (3) Long-shot (FRL), which alert us to the context-specificity of strategy tools, before suggesting that theoretical lenses are required to understand and implement strategy in VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) domains. The authors explore the concept and methodology of Optionality in order to demonstrate how it can be used in conjunction with existing strategy tools in order to achieve competitive success. It will be of great interest to academics and students of strategy and innovation.

In this book, German philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin presents a theory of practical reason that is objectivist, or rather realist, as an alternative to the widespread subjectivism in the theory of rationality. This theory has pragmatic traits that can be read as a constructive counterpart to Nida-Rümelin's critique of consequentialism whilst embedding its conception of rationality in the conceptual framework of decision and game theory.

This open access book challenges the contemporary relevance of the current model of knowledge production. It argues that the full digitisation of society sharply accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic has added extreme complexity to the world, conclusively exposing the inadequacy of our current model of knowledge creation. Addressing many of the different ways in which reality has been transformed by technology ¿ the pervasive adoption of big data, the fetishisation of algorithms and automation, and the digitalisation of education and research ¿ Viola examines how the rigid conceptualisation in disciplines¿ division and competition is complicit of promoting a narrative which has paired computational methods with exactness and neutrality whilst stigmatising consciousness and criticality as carriers of biases and inequality. Taking the humanities as a focal point, the author retraces schisms in the field between the humanities, the digital humanities and critical digital humanities; these are embedded, she argues, within old dichotomies: sciences vs humanities, digital vs non-digital and authentic vs non-authentic. Through the analysis of personal use cases and exploring a variety of applied contexts such as digital heritage practices, digital linguistic injustice, critical digital literacy and critical digital visualisation, the book shows a third way: knowledge creation in the digital.

This book presents a critical rethinking of assumptions that have informed our understanding of women¿s engagement in contact sport, based on an in-depth ethnography with an English rugby team. Looking at the day-to-day concerns of women who play rugby, this work provides a refreshing perspective on different ways of doing femininities in postfeminist times. Women¿s rugby is one of the world¿s fastest growing sports, yet it is also a physical game that is traditionally the preserve of men. Tackling Stereotypes reveals the cultural and symbolic stigma that ¿sticks¿ to women¿s rugby players and the tactics they use to carve out space for themselves and fight for legitimacy. It also argues that players engage in pragmatic politics, informed by their participation, that aims to enact realistic change. Branchu develops a situational sociology that furthers debates in the understanding of gender, belonging, becoming, embodiment, resistance politics, and the sociological study of sport.

Despite its complexity, innovation is often depicted within academic literature as a phenomenon that is innately good and always necessary. This thought-provoking volume presents a more nuanced view ¿ through a number of paired chapters for and against, as well as more general critiques of innovation and several suggested new lines of inquiry, the book will be of interest to all with a broader interest in innovation.

Workplace relationships are critical to how work gets done in organizations. While current research gives rigorous theoretical and empirical insights regarding workplace relationships, or what are often known as social networks, there is only limited details of the practical applications of workplace relations. This edited collection provides readers with cutting edge theoretical and practical insights from the latest research at the intersection between social networks and workplace relationships.This volume has a dual focus. First it examines the outcomes of workplace relationships, such as individual performance and how social network relationships affect attitudes and behaviours. Second, it examines how workplace relationships are formed and their implications with regard to friendship, trust and collegiality.Drawing on innovative research on social networks, the authors examine the importance of workplace relationships across a broad selection of institutional settings. Featuring practical applied examples, this collection brings together insights from leading scholars in a practical and accessible format for academics and students.

This book sheds a new light on the metafictional aspects of futuristic and science fiction novels, at the crossroads of information and media studies, possible worlds theories applied to cognitive narratology, questions related to the criticism of post-humanity, and, more broadly, contemporary French and Francophone literature. It examines the fictional minds of characters and their conceptions of resistance to the anticipated worlds they inhabit, particularly in novels by Pierre Bordage, Marie Darrieussecq, Michel Houellebecq, Amin Maalouf, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Antoine Volodine, and Élisabeth Vonarburg. It also explores how corporal postures serve as a matrix for philosophical quests in novels by Amélie Nothomb, Alain Damasio, and Romain Lucazeau. More specifically, from the fictional readers' points of view, it provides a critical approach to the mythologies of writing, in the wake of the French philosophical tales by authors including Cyrano de Bergerac and Voltaire, to question the traditionally expressed formulations of the mythologies of writing, that is, of the metaphors of the book (the book of life, nature, and the world), to rethink the idea of a humanity within its limits.

This book inaugurates a new phase in kitsch studies. Kitsch, an aesthetic slur of the 19th and the 20th century, is increasingly considered a positive term and at the heart of today¿s society. Eleven distinguished authors from philosophy, cultural studies and the arts discuss a wide range of topics including beauty, fashion, kitsch in the context of mourning, bio-art, visual arts, architecture and political kitsch. In addition, the editors provide a concise theoretical introduction to the volume and the subject. The role of kitsch in contemporary culture and society is innovatively explored and the volume aims not to condemn but to accept and understand why kitsch has become acceptable today.

This book examines community partnership schools in the USA. Authored by academics and practitioners, it provides an overview of how community schools work in practice, provides a historical context of the model, and demonstrates the importance of the university-community connection in their effective running. Above all, the book showcases how community partnership schools are educational equity solutions that provide support services to underserved students, families, and communities. It will appeal to students and scholars of public administration, public policy, public health, and education, as well as practitioners.

Throughout its 65-year history, the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) has sought to facilitate international exchanges and research collaborations among academics and journalists in the field of media and communication. ¿ Created during a time of strong ideological tension following World War II in 1957 and with the support of UNESCO, the contributors to this edited collection highlight how the IAMCR and its members shaped the field of media and communications research. From its beginnings focusing on the mass media, including the press and journalism education, today the Association attracts researchers and practitioners who undertake critical analysis of contemporary media and communications, including online platforms and their governance. Consistent themes throughout the Association¿s history have been its concern with human rights, law, culture and the political economy of the media and communication industries. Not content simply to understand developments in the media and communications field around the world, the Association¿s membership has sought to ¿change the world¿ through its published research and its participation in global, regional, national and local policy debate and practice.This volume is organised in four parts following an introduction authored by editors who are active members of IAMCR. Part I highlights eight prominent scholarly traditions of research which have attracted the interest of scholars from around the world as well as the way the Association has sought to be inclusive of early career scholars. Part II offers seven chapters which bring to light the political struggles of a membership seeking to engage in scholarship across the East ¿ West divide and to contribute to global debates aimed at fostering an inclusive, fair and equitable international information and communication order through engagement with United Nations sponsored initiatives. Part III turns to accounts of the way members from selected countries and regions have contributed to the Association¿s scholarly work. The last part highlights the significant scholarly and institution-building contributions of James Halloran, IAMCR¿s President from 1972 to 1988 and other prominent contributors to the study of culture and the political economy of media and communications

This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this book provides a wide-ranging overview of attempts to ¿quantify¿ the human body at various points. Arguing that medicine and philosophy have been constantly in dialogue with each other, the authors discuss how this provided a strategic opportunity both for medical thought and philosophy to refine and further develop. Given today¿s fascination with the quantification of the body, represented by the growing profusion of self-tracking devices logging one¿s sleep, diet or mood, this collection offers an important and timely contribution to an emerging and interdisciplinary field of study.

This book explores the ¿battles¿ of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise.

This book analyzes how AKP¿s embedded intellectuals operate as media spin doctors, exploring their transformation from passionately engaged intellectuals into apparatchiks. This project adapts a post-Soviet geography approach to the media, intelligentsia, and political discourse as derivative of authoritarian regimes to the Turkish context. It offers a fresh look at the Turkish political and intellectual scene and a comparative study of the populist-authoritarian politics of Turkey. Situated in the literature on the post-Soviet authoritarian regimes and their ways of governing, as well as their manipulation of public opinion, the book analyzes AKP-aligned intellectuals as apparatchiks. Gürp¿nar explores the different constellations of pro-AKP intellectuals vindicating the AKP regime from various angles, including: liberal/progressive intellectuals who initially supported the party for its liberal vistas but continued their support by twisting their progressiverhetoric; Islamist intellectuals blending their Islamism with populism; and national security intellectuals who joined after the AKP came to propagate a national security agenda. The book also provides an overview of the mechanisms of political technology, including the media landscape and its running by the AKP, intellectuals themselves as operators of political technology, and the problem of ¿cultural power.¿ The book will be of interest to those studying comparative authoritarian politics, populism, political communication, and scholars of Middle East and Eastern Europe.

This book provides an historical overview of the formation of sports media in Latin America and its role in the construction of the political history of Latin American sport. The sports press was a privileged observer of the development of modern sports, but it was also a key factor in the making of professional sports in Latin America. Most of the literature on sport in Latin America treats the sports press as an historical source, rarely taking it as an object of study in itself. However, the development of sports in the region is connected to national and state-building processes and the role of media narratives is crucial to understanding how sports participate in those processes. Spanning the globalization of football in the late nineteenth century to the shift promoted by television in the 1970s, the chapters survey the historical development of sports media in Latin America. Representing ten countries, the contributors follow a framework that presents the press not as a passive narrator of the sports phenomenon, but as a social agent of the sports field. This book is of use to those interested in the history of sports and the media, and it will be a good resource for undergraduates taking courses on Sports History, Latin American History, Sports Management, and Journalism and Communication.

This book reflects on time, space and culture in the Game of Thrones universe. It analyses both the novels and the TV series from a multidisciplinary perspective ultimately aimed at highlighting the complexity, eclecticism and diversity that characterises Martin¿s world. The book is divided into three thematic sections. The first section focuses on space¿both the urban and natural environment¿and the interaction between human beings and their surroundings. The second section follows different yet complementary approaches to Game of Thrones from an aesthetic and cultural perspective. The final section addresses the linguistic and translation implications of the Game of Thrones universe, as well as its didactic uses. This book is paired with a second volume that focuses on the characters that populate Martin¿s universe, as well as on one of the ways in which they often interact¿violence and warfare¿from the same multidisciplinary perspective.

This book focuses on the characters that populate the Game of Thrones universe and on one of the most salient features of their interaction: violence and warfare. It analyses these questions from a multidisciplinary perspective that is chiefly based on Classical Studies. The book is divided into two sections. The first section explores Martin¿s characters as the mainstay of both the novels and the TV series, since the author has peopled his universe with three-dimensional intriguing characters that resonate with the reader/audience. The second section is devoted to violence and warfare, both pervasive in the Game of Thrones universe. In particular, the TV series¿ depiction of violence is explicit, going beyond the limits that have seldom been traversed in primetime television i.e. the execution of Ned Stark, the ¿Red Wedding¿ and ¿Battle of the Bastards¿. In the Game of Thrones universe, violence is not only restricted to warfare but is an everyday occurrence, a result of the social and gender inequalities characterising the world created by Martin.