Humanities & Social Sciences

Jainism, perhaps more so than any other South Asian tradition, focuses strongly on the ethics of birth, life, and death, with regard to both humans and other living beings. Insistent Life is the first full-length interdisciplinary examination of the foundational principles of bioethics within Jain doctrine and the application of those principles in the contemporary sphere. Brianne Donaldson and Ana Bajželj analyze a diverse range of Jain texts and contemporary sources to identify Jain perspectives on bioethical issues while highlighting the complexity of their personal, professional, and public dimensions. The book also features extensive original data based on an international survey the authors conducted with Jain medical professionals in India and diaspora communities of North America, Europe, and Africa.

Radio signals keep making material, informational, political, and social connections in this world. Exploring these signals architectonically, the contributors engage with the situatedness of radio signal recordings in nature and with knowledge implied in radio communication. Rooted in experimental design and data feminism, the book presents innovative tools for navigating data by spanning media theory, information studies, and feminist new materialism. This offers an intersectional and post-disciplinary approach to computation, classification, and search that is accessible to artists, technologists, and researchers - facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration and deepening the understanding of information technologies.

The edited volume is the result of the “Second International Postgraduate Research Group Sustainable Spatial Development 2008” (DOKONARA), which took place from September 21 to 24 2008 at the University Center Obergurgl, a regional office of the University of Innsbruck. The aim of the gathering was to accelerate not only a constructive dialogue with colleagues and experts of different areas but also the international cooperation and networking within the academic field. All in all, 21 postgraduates from the fields of architecture, ethnology, geography, landscape architecture, social and cultural anthropology and sociology participated at the DOKONARA 2008. - Der vorliegende Sammelband ist das Ergebnis des „Zweiten Internationalen DoktorandInnenkollegs Nachhaltige Raumentwicklung 2008“ (DOKONARA), das vom 21. bis zum 24. September 2008 im Universitätszentrum Obergurgl, einer Außenstelle der Universität Innsbruck, stattgefunden hat. Ziel dieser Veranstaltung war es neben einem konstruktiven Dialog mit KollegInnen und ExpertInnen verschiedenster Fachgebiete vor allem auch die internationale Kooperation und Vernetzung im Wissenschaftsbereich zu forcieren. Insgesamt 21 Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden aus den Bereichen Architektur, Ethnologie, Geographie, Landschaftsarchitektur, Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie und Soziologie nahmen am DOKONARA 2008 teil.

Rural Disease Knowledge examines the ways in which knowledge of rural spaces and environments, on the one hand, and infectious diseases, on the other, have become inter-constituted since the late nineteenth century. With contributions by leading anthropologists and historians of medicine, it examines the epistemic co-constitution of the rural and of infectious diseases. Ranging from Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia to Java, Tanzania, West and South Africa, and Britain, the chapters cover diverse geographies, timelines, and diseases, including plague, brucellosis, leishmaniasis, yaws, yellow fever, nagana, sleeping sickness, and Chagas disease. The book considers how human interactions with infectious diseases have impacted ways of knowing and acting on rural spaces and environments, and in turn how human interactions with rural spaces and environments have impacted ways of knowing and acting against infectious diseases. It reflects on how the rural has been configured as a space of either health or sickness over the centuries and around the globe, the role of rural landscapes in the epistemic emergence of microbiology and tropical medicine, and the interaction with global processes such as European imperialism, the emergence of capitalism, and postcolonial nation-building projects. The studies engage with current debates on decolonizing knowledge and highlight how local disease knowledge has troubled and unsettled hegemonic medical perspectives and created new ways of understanding the relationship between diseases and rural spaces and environments. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of medical anthropology, global health, and the history of medicine.

Transport: general interest

What does it mean to know something? What does it mean to prove something? And how are the two connected? Cara-Julie Kather explores Mathematics as a way of thinking and being in the world. She investigates Mathematics in its conceptual relation to Western understandings of the Rational and the Human , and proposes possibilities of subverting Western Mathematics and of forming different mathematical practices. To engage in decolonial-feminist re-writings of the Rational and the Human requires to re-write mathematical practice too. This study seeks to inspire such practices of re-writing thinking and being – in the realm of the mathematical and beyond.

The present book invites the reader to rethink some questions raised in EU external relations law in the light of recent developments in the case law of the Court of Justice, from the perspective of the constitutional foundations of the Union. The various chapters invite the reader to take a look at the balance between the specific legal regime for EU external action and the constitutional fundamentals of the EU legal order such as: the principles of conferral, loyalty, and institutional balance, as well as the rule of law, democracy, and fundamental rights protection. The accommodation between specificity and fundamental principles is, thus, a transversal constitutional issue.

In this sensitive reading of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Winthrop Wetherbee redefines the nature of Chaucer’s poetic vision. Using as a starting point Chaucer’s profound admiration for the achievement of Dante and the classical poets, Wetherbee sees the Troilus as much more than a courtly treatment of an event in ancient history—it is, he asserts, a major statement about the poetic tradition from which it emerges. Wetherbee demonstrates the evolution of the poet-narrator of the Troilus, who begins as a poet of romance, bound by the characters’ limited worldview, but who in the end becomes a poet capable of realizing the tragic and ultimately the spiritual implications of his story.

Teaching Women’s History: Breaking Barriers and Undoing Male Centrism in K-12 Social Studies challenges and guides K-12 history teachers to incorporate comprehensive and diverse women’s history into every region and era of their history curriculum. Providing a wealth of practical examples, ideas, and lesson plans – all backed by scholarly research – for secondary and middle school classes, this book demonstrates how teachers can weave women’s history into their curriculum today. It breaks down how history is taught currently, how teachers are prepared, and what expectations are set in state standards and textbooks and then shows how teachers can use pedagogical approaches to better incorporate women’s voices into each of these realms. Each chapter explores a major barrier to teaching an inclusive history and how to overcome it, and every chapter ends with an inquiry-based lesson plan on women or using women's sources which stands counter to the way curriculum is traditionally taught, a case in point that tasks readers to realize how women have been integral to every period of history. With expert guidance from an award-winning social studies teacher, this guidebook will be important reading for middle and high school history educators. It will also be beneficial to preservice teachers, particularly within Social Studies Education and Gender Studies. Additional resources for educators are available to view at www.remedialherstory.com.

Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture is the first volume to analyze the myriad conceptualizations of South Asian women’s body issues in film, literature, advertising, and other media. Showing how body image and self-identity are constructed in contemporary neoliberal India, the editors and contributors theorize issues of body image vis-à-vis Indian womanhood while touching upon political, socio-economic, and cultural parameters.Influences from the colonial period through the age of the internet and globalization have reinforced Eurocentric ideals about femininity and womanhood. This long overdue volume addresses the pressures of beautification that Indian women face as they struggle with body acceptance and are often denied pride in their natural bodies.Contributors: Annika Taneja, Anurima Chanda, Aratrika Bose, Kavita Daiya, Ketaki Chowkhani, Nishat Haider, Samrita Sinha, Shailendra Kumar Singh, Shubhra Ray, Sucharita Sarkar, Sukshma Vedere, Swatie, Tanupriya, Turni Chakrabarti, and the editors

Policy recommendations and strategies to support teachers in addressing the violent past. Education plays a vital role in fostering reconciliation and teaching peace in conflict-affected societies. In particular, teaching about the violent past from multiple perspectives helps replace fear and hatred with mutual understanding. While conflict-history education has been explored across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, curricular reforms often overlook teachers—despite their key role in achieving success. Building on insights from education sciences, sociology, political sciences, memory studies and social psychology, this book introduces a novel and interdisciplinary framework to analyse secondary school teachers’ engagement with conflict-history education, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It focuses on three distinct locations—Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—that differ in the intensity of violence experienced and the time elapsed since conflict ended. This practice-oriented book aims at identifying teachers’ needs to feel confident and competent in driving reconciliation in their classrooms and provides actionable policy recommendations and teaching strategies to support them in this essential role.

This book presents hard facts, drawn from extensive research, to highlight our unsustainable consumption of the Earth’s resources and the limitations of the UK’s current management of waste and recycling. Setting out a bleak picture of a world in which we are literally consuming our planet, the book explores the psychological, economic and capitalist drivers behind this behaviour. Controversially, the book examines the drawbacks of the current approach adopted by many local authorities on the kerbside collection of recyclable materials, as well as the UK governments’ strategic approaches to household recycling, including the lack of UK- wide infrastructures for packaging reuse, and for product repair and recycling. It challenges the whole concept of waste, leading to a proposed new strategy for the management of household waste, including a simplified household collection system, the introduction of an incineration tax and the banning of all household waste exports. The author proposes reconceptualising waste as unwanted but valuable material and argues that the responsibility for facilitating reuse, repair and recycling, rests with manufacturers who must start designing with the end in mind. Given the current economic climate, and a dampening of the green agenda within UK politics, the book provides a much- needed call for critical discourse on how, and how much, we consume and sets out clear, practical solutions for change. The book will be of interest to manufacturers, retailers, consumers, local authorities, policy makers, students and professionals looking to reduce our impact on the environment.

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 4.0 license Through a variety of empirical studies, this volume offers fresh insights into the manner in which different forms of communicative action transform urban space. With attention to the methodological questions that arise from the attempt to study such changes empirically, it offers new theoretical foundations for understanding the social construction and reconstruction of spaces through communicative action. Seeing communicative action as the basic element in the social construction of reality and conceptualizing communication not only in terms of the use of language and texts, but as involving any kind of objectification, such as technologies, bodies and non-verbal signs, it considers the roles of both direct and mediatized (or digitized) communication. An examination of the conceptualization of the communicative (re-)construction of spaces and the means by which this change might be empirically investigated, this book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the notion of refiguration as a means by which to understand the transformation of contemporary societies. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, social theorists, and geographers with interests in social construction and urban space.

The volume, dedicated to the 44th International Conference of the Italian Union for Drawing, investigates the theme of ‘Transitions’, which particularly effectively represents our time and the current condition of the discipline of Drawing. The term, beyond its generic meaning of an intermediate stage in a process in which a condition changes from one state to another, has always been used in various fields, from music to geophysics. In fact, the disciplines of drawing have always been confronted with themes and issues relating to transitions from one condition to another. The history of representation tells us of transformations, even epochal ones, relating to ‘drawing’, with all that such transitions entail: suffice it to think of the evolution of forms of representation, of instrumental apparatuses, of the mutability of supports, of the analogical-digital transition underway, of the new modes of communication on platforms, of the hypertrophic offer of images also on the net that confirms Guy Debord’s intuitions relating to the new spectacularisation of society. Similarly, representation triggers transitions in the prefiguration and communication of design, the anticipation and foreshadowing of future events.The challenges posed by the digital pose open questions whose scope can only be glimpsed, such as the relationship between drawing and the act of modelling, and the construction of new paradigms of visual language and communication. ‘Transitions’, almost implicitly, points to possible futures, the evolution of technique and the search for new modes of expression; at the same time, however, it can suggest silences and reflections in a process of connection between history, theory, criticism and construction.

The Baltic Defence College’s “Conference on Russia Papers 2022: A Restless Embrace of the Past?” begs a question. How will Russia’s past shape its present and future, both at home and abroad? This volume’s chapters include a wide range of Russian-related topics organized into four main subject groups. The first of these categories is Russian views, with a focus on tendencies toward militarism, Russian understandings of international order, and the effects of COVID-19 on policy. The following subject is about power dynamics and perceptions, with a focus on Russia’s contingent power structures, Russian narratives, and future projections. The third theme centers on the Baltic region’s connection with Russia, investigating Russia’s influence and information warfare from many angles. Finally, the concluding section examines Russian interests around the world, analyzing the position of Belarus', Russia’s options globally, and the potential of a grand vision of Russian foreign policy. The volume concludes by highlighting the challenges of maintaining dialogue in light of recent trends, particularly in the last half decade and especially in the last several months.