In the late 1800s and early 1900s, colonial powers clashed over much of Central and East Asia: Great Britain and Germany fought over New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Fiji, and Samoa; France and Great Britain competed over control of continental Southwest Asia; and the United States annexed the Philippines and Hawaii. Meanwhile, the possible disintegration of China and Japan’s growing nationalism added new dimensions to the rivalries. Surveying these and other international developments in the Pacific basin during the three decades preceding World War I, Kees van Dijk traces the emergence of superpowers during the colonial race and analyzes their conduct as they struggled for territory. Extensive in scope, Pacific Strife is a fascinating look at a volatile moment in history.

Thomas Wijck’s painted alchemical laboratories were celebrated in his day as "artful" and "ingenious." They fell into obscurity along withtheir subject, as alchemy came to be viewed as an occult art or a fool’s errand. But these unusual pictures challenge our understanding of early modern alchemy-and of the deeper relationship between chemical workshops and the artists who represented them. The work of artists, like the work of alchemists, contained intellectual-creative and manual-material aspects. Both alchemists and artists claimed a special status owing to their creative powers. Wijck’s formation of an artistic and professional identity around alchemical themes reveals his desire to explore this curious territory, and ultimately to demonstrate art’s superior claims to knowledge and mastery over nature. This book explores one artist’s transformation of alchemy and its materials into a reputation for virtuosity-and what his work can teach us about the experimental early modern world.

This book presents four case studies that interrogate how German fifteenth-century painted triptychs engage with, and ultimately blur various boundaries. Some of the boundaries are internal to the triptych format, for example, transgressed frames between narratives scenes on triptychs’ interiors, or interconnections between imagery on triptychs’ interiors and exteriors. Other blurred boundaries are regional ones between the Netherlands and Cologne; metaphysical ones between heaven and earth; and artistic distinctions between the media of painting and sculpture. The book’s case studies, which shed new light on Conrad von Soest, Stefan Lochner, and the Master of the St. Bartholomew Altarpiece, illuminate the importance of German fifteenth-century painting, while providing a fresh assessment of relations between German triptychs and their more famous Netherlandish counterparts—and demonstrating the value of probing Medialität, the implications of format and medium for generating meaning. The book’s coda assesses the triptych in the age of Dürer.

The Dutch Republic was a cultural powerhouse in the modern era, producing lasting masterpieces in painting and publishing, and in the process transforming those fields from modest trades to booming industries. This book asks the question of how such a small nation could become such a major player in those fields. Claartje Rasterhoff shows how industrial organisations played a role in shaping patterns of growth and innovations. As early modern Dutch cultural industries were concentrated geographically, highly networked, and institutionally embedded, they were able to reduce uncertainty in the marketplace and stimulate the commercial and creative potential of painters and publishers-though those successes eventually came up against the limits of a saturated domestic market and an aversion to risk on the part of producers that ultimately brought an end to the boom.

This is the first monograph on the subject to be published in English. It comprises 130 full-colour plates of shaman gods. Supported by two introductory chapters ‘Reflections on Shaman God Paintings and Shamanism’ by Kim Tae-gon, and ‘The Shaman God Paintings as an Icon and Its Artistic Qualities’ by Bak Yong-suk, both distinguished authorities in the study of Korean Shamanism, The Paintings of Korean Shaman Gods offers a very accessible introduction to understanding Korean shamanism and its art. The Paintings of Korean Shaman Gods broad appeal will be welcomed by both specialists and generalists in the fields of Asian Studies, Art History and Cultural and Religious Studies.

This book examines the role of the papacy and the crusade in the religious life of the late twelfth through late thirteenth centuries and beyond. Throughout the book, the contributors ask several important questions. Was Innocent III more theologian than lawyer-pope and how did his personal experience of earlier crusade campaigns inform his own vigorous promotion of the crusades? How did the outlook and policy of Honorius III differ from that of Innocent III in crucial areas including the promotion of multiple crusades (including the Fifth Crusade and the crusade of William of Montferrat) and how were both pope’s mindsets manifested in writings associated with them? What kind of men did Honorius III and Innocent III select to promote their plans for reform and crusade? How did the laity make their own mark on the crusade through participation in the peace movements which were so crucial to the stability in Europe essential for enabling crusaders to fulfill their vows abroad and through joining in the liturgical processions and prayers deemed essential for divine favor at home and abroad? Further essays explore the commemoration of crusade campaigns through the deliberate construction of physical and literary paths of remembrance. Yet while the enemy was often constructed in a deliberately polarizing fashion, did confessional differences really determine the way in which Latin crusaders and theirdescendants interacted with the Muslim world or did a more pragmatic position of ‘rough tolerance’ shape mundane activities including trade agreements and treaties?

Japan is widely regarded as having a unique culture and a strong national identity. Paradoxically, however, many basic elements of Japanese culture are not originally Japanese. Since the beginning of its history, Japan has been one of the world’s major importers of foreign cultures. Its culture was thoroughly "hybrid" long before that word became fashionable in contemporary global studies. But this does not mean that Japan’s culture lacks originality. The Japanese have always made strikingly original contributions, even improvements, to whatever they imported. Even more significantly, the "hybridity" of their culture produced ongoing tensions that served as a kind of creative dynamo for Japanese writers, artists, and intellectuals. This book explores the fundamental creative tension between the native and the foreign in many areas of Japanese culture, from politics and religion to art and literature – a tension also often interpreted as between tradition and modernity.

Faced with budget problems and an aging population, European governments in recent years have begun reconsidering the structure and extent of the welfare state. Guarantees and directives have given way to responsibilities and choice. This volume analyzes the effect of this change on the citizens of Germany, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. It traces the emergence of new discourses around social movements for greater independence, power, and control, and the way these discourses serve to reframe the struggle at hand. Making use of ethnographic research and policy analysis, the authors analyze the cultural transition, tensions, and trajectory of this call toward active citizenship.

One of the main challenges in labour relations in Europe is the ongoing decentralisation of collective bargaining from national and sectoral levels to company levels. Decentralisation might be an answer to business needs in competitiveness and organisational flexibility. However, it risks erosion of collective bargaining structures, more inequality in employment conditions and fragmentation in trade unions’ powers. Based on recent qualitative research, this book shows high varieties across European countries and economic sectors in degrees, forms and impacts of decentralisation. The authors explore, in interdisciplinary and multi-level perspectives, continuity and change in regulating and practicing collective bargaining in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. In cross-country comparisons, company case studies in manufacturing and retail show the divergent effects of national regimes and social partners’ power resources on trade unions’ strategies and influence in company bargaining.

Pathways to Contemporary Islam: New Trends in Critical Engagement highlights that the current tensions in Islam and the Muslim world are the result of historical dynamics as opposed to an alleged incompatibility between religious tradition and modernity. The emphasis on pathways indicates that critical engagement and contestation have always been intrinsic to the history of Islam. The aim of the book is to elaborate the contemporary pathways and analyse the trends that contest the Islamic intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion and politics, and the individual and collective practice of religion. The collection of essays analyses the current efforts of critical re-engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition and underlines the historical diversity of Islamic orthodoxies that led to the establishment of various pathways in the practice and role of religion in Muslim societies.

The six Frigate Panters were all built in the USA with MDAP funds. They were designed to escort slow coastal convoys in the Channel and North Sea areas and were operated as a single squadron by the Royal Netherlands Navy. They proved useful in a number of peacetime tasks, especially fishery protection, and some retained this role in the North Sea until the mid-1980s.

This volume presents a batch of incisive new essays on the relationship between Roman imperial power and ideology and Christian and Jewish life and thought within the empire. Employing diverse methodologies that include historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and social historical studies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on a question that is crucial for our understanding not only of the late Roman Empire, but also of the growth and change of Christianity and Judaism in the imperial period.

Performative Images draws upon the work of video artists and activists in France between the 1970s and the early 2020s and focuses on significant practices with technology. Video art and video activism are analysed together in the book to revaluate key concepts in media studies and foreground a performative approach to the theory of image technology. The book engages works in visual culture, performance studies, digital studies, critical race theory, and feminist methodologies to account for the changes brought about by video technology in social and psychic life. Performative Images is about art and activists’ engagement in video technology—an engagement that unsettles the hegemonic narrative of dominant media, as well as the apparently politically neutral dimension of communication technology. In this book, the author explores how video-image technology shapes our psychic and social environments from an art historiographical perspective. We know media technology is dramatically shaping our political and epistemological landscape: this book foregrounds the emergence of performative video images as a key factor in the revaluation of culture and politics.

Performing Brains on Screen deals with film enactments and representations of the belief that human beings are essentially their brains, a belief that embodies one of the most influential modern ways of understanding the human. Films have performed brains in two chief ways: by turning physical brains into protagonists, as in the “brain movies” of the 1950, which show terrestrial or extra-terrestrial disembodied brains carrying out their evil intentions; or by giving brains that remain unseen inside someone’s head an explicitly major role, as in brain transplantation films or their successors since the 1980s, in which brain contents are transferred and manipulated by means of information technology. Through an analysis of filmic genres and particular movies, Performing Brains on Screen documents this neglected filmic universe, and demonstrates how the cinema has functioned as a cultural space where a core notion of the contemporary world has been rehearsed and problematized.

What goes into the ideological sustenance of an illiberal capitalist democracy? While much of the critical discussion of the media in authoritarian contexts focus on state power, the emphasis on strong states tend to perpetuate misnomers about the media as mere tools of the state and sustain myths about their absolute power. Turning to the lived everyday of media producers in Singapore, I pose a series of questions that explore what it takes to perpetuate authoritarian resilience in the mass media. How, in what terms and through what means, does a politically stable illiberal Asian state like Singapore formulate its dominant imaginary of social order? What are the television production practices that perform and instantiate the social imaginary, and who are the audiences that are conjured and performed in the process? What are the roles played by imagined audiences in sustaining authoritarian resilience in the media? If, as I will argue in the book, audiences function as the central problematic that engenders anxieties and self-policing amongst producers, can the audience become a surrogate for the authoritarian state?

Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects presents institutions, individuals and networks who have ensured experimental films and Expanded Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s are not consigned to oblivion. Through a comparison of recent international case studies from festivals, museums, and gallery spaces, the book analyzes their new contexts, and describes the affective reception of those events. The study asks: what is the relationship between an aesthetic experience and memory at the point where film archives, cinema, and exhibition practices intersect? What can we learn from re-screenings, re-enactments, and found footage works, that are using archival material? How does the affective experience of the images, sounds and music resonate today? Performing Moving Images: Access, Archive and Affects proposes a theoretical framework from the perspective of the performative practice of programming, curating, and reconstructing, bringing in insights from original interviews with cultural agents together with an interdisciplinary academic discourse.

Temporary urbanism has become an established marker of city making after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The book offers a critical exploration of its emergence and establishment as a seductive discourse and as an entangled field of urban practice encompassing architecture, visual and performative arts, urban regeneration and planning. Drawing on seven years of semi-ethnographic research in London, it explores the politics of temporariness at time of austerity from a situated analysis of neighbourhood transformation and wider cultural and economic shifts. Through a sympathetic, longitudinal engagement with projects and practitioners, the book tests the power of aesthetic and cultural interventions and highlights tensions between the promise of practices of dissenting vacant space re-appropriation, and their practical foreclosure. Against the normalisation of ephemerality, it develops a critique of temporary urbanism as a glamorisation of the anticipatory politics of precarity, transforming subjectivities and imaginaries of urban action.

Film criticism is in crisis. Dwelling on the many film journalists made redundant at newspapers, magazines, and other 'old media' in past years, commentators have voiced existential questions about the purpose and worth of the profession in the age of WordPress blogospheres and proclaimed the 'death of the critic'. Bemoaning the current anarchy of internet amateurs and the lack of authoritative critics, many journalists and academics claim that in the digital age, cultural commentary has become dumbed down and fragmented into niche markets. Mattias Freu, arguing against these claims, examines the history of film critical discourse in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States . He demonstrates that since its origins, film criticism has always found itself in crisis: the need to show critical authority and the anxieties over challenges to that authority have been longstanding concerns.

Site-specific installations are created for specific locations and are usually intended as temporary artworks. The Perpetuation of Site-Specific Installation Artworks in Museums: Staging Contemporary Art shows that these artworks consist of more than a singular manifestation and that their lifespan is often extended. In this book, Tatja Scholte offers an in-depth account of the artistic production of the last forty years. With a wealth of case studies the author illuminates the diversity of site-specific art in both form and content, as well as in the conservation strategies applied. A conceptual framework is provided for scholars and museum professionals to better understand how site-specific installations gain new meanings during successive stages of their biographies and may become agents for change in professional routines.

The history of European videogames has been so far overshadowed by the global impact of the Japanese and North American industries. However, European game development studios have played a major role in videogame history, and prominent videogames in popular culture, such as Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Alone in the Dark were made in Europe. This book proposes an exploration of European videogames, including both analyses of transnational aspects of European production and close readings of national specificities. It offers a kaleidoscope of European videogame culture, focusing on the analysis of European works and creators but also addressing contextual aspects and placing videogames within a wider sociocultural and philosophical ground. The aim of this collective work is to contribute to the creation of a, so far, almost non-existent yet necessary academic endeavour: a story of the works, authors, styles and cultures of the European videogame.

The rapid developments of new communication technologies have facilitated the popularization of digital games, which has translated into an exponential growth of the game industry in the last decades. The ubiquitous presence of digital games has resulted in an expansion of the applications of these games from mere entertainment purposes to a great variety of serious purposes. In this edited volume, we narrow the scope of attention by focusing on what game theorist Ian Bogost has called "persuasive games", that is, gaming practices that combine the dissemination of information with attempts to engage players in particular attitudes and behaviors. This volume offers a multifaceted reflection on persuasive gaming, that is, on the process of these particular games being played by players. The purpose is to better understand when and how digital games can be used for persuasion, by further exploring persuasive games and some other kinds of persuasive playful interaction as well. The book critically integrates what has been accomplished in separate research traditions to offer a multidisciplinary approach to understanding persuasive gaming that is closely linked to developments in the industry by including the exploration of relevant case studies.

The volume presents a wide-ranging investigation of the ways in which Petrarch’s legacy informed the relationship between visual and literary portraits in sixteenth-century Italy. Petrarch’s vast literary production influenced the intellectual framework in which new models of representation and self-representation developed during the Renaissance. His two sonnets on Laura’s portrait by Simone Martini and his ambivalent fascination with the illusionary power of portraiture in his Latin texts — such as the Secretum, the Familiares and De remediis utriusque fortune — constituted the theoretical reference for artists and writers alike. In a century dominated by the rhetorical comparison between art and literature (ut pictura poësis) and by the paragone debate, the interplay between Petrarch’s oeuvre, Petrarchism and portraiture shaped the discourse on the relationship between the sitters’ physical image and their inner life. The volume brings together diverse interdisciplinary contributions that explore the subject through a rich body of literary and visual sources.

This book is a new history of early modern gender, told through the lyric poetry of Renaissance Italy. In the evolution of Western gender roles, the Italian Renaissance was a watershed moment, when a confluence of cultural developments disrupted centuries of Aristotelian, binary thinking. Men and women living through this upheaval exploited Petrarchism’s capacity for subjective expression and experimentation - as well as its status as the most accessible of genres - in order to imagine new gendered possibilities in realms such as marriage, war, and religion. One of the first studies to examine writing by early modern Italian men and women together, it is also a revolutionary testament to poetry’s work in the world. These poets’ works challenge the traditional boundaries drawn around lyric’s utility. They show us how poems could be sites of resistance against the pervading social order - how they are texts capable not only of recording social history, but also of shaping it.

Social media platforms have been pivotal in redefining the conduct of contemporary society. Amid the proliferation of a range of new and ubiquitous online platforms, YouTube, a video-based platform, remains a key driver in the democratisation of creative, playful, vernacular, intimate, as well as political expressions. As a critical node of contemporary communication and digital cultures, its steady uptake and appropriation in a social media-savvy nation such as the Philippines requires a critical examination of its role in the continued reconstruction of identities, communities, and broader social institutions. This book closely analyses the diverse content and practices of amateur Filipino YouTubers, exposing and problematising the dynamics of brokering the contested aspirational logics of beauty and selfhood, interracial relationships, world-class labour, and progressive governance in a digital sphere. Ultimately, Philippine Digital Cultures: Brokerage Dynamics on YouTube offers a fresh, compelling, and nuanced account of YouTube as an important site for the mediation of culture, economy, and politics in Philippine postcolonial modernity amid rapid economic globalisation and digitalisation.

The essays in this volume examine, from a historical perspective, how contested notions of modernity, civilization, and being governed were envisioned through photography in early twentieth-century Indonesia, a period when the Dutch colonial regime was implementing a liberal reform program known as the Ethical Policy. The contributors reveal how the camera evoked diverse, often contradictory modes of envisioning an ethically governed colony, one in which the very concepts of modernity and civilization were subject to dispute.

The Pictorial Art of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, and Media investigates El Greco’s pictorial art as foundational to the globalising trends manifested in the visual culture of early modernity. It also exposes the figurative, semantic, and allegorical senses that El Greco created to challenge an Italian Renaissance-centered discourse. Even though he was guided by the unprecedented burgeoning of devotional art in the post-Tridentine decades and by the expressive possibilities of earlier religious artifacts, especially those inherited from the apostolic past, the author demonstrates that El Greco forged his own independent trajectory. While his paintings have been studied in relation to the Italian and Spanish school traditions, his pictorial art in a global Mediterranean context continues to receive scant attention. Taking a global perspective as its focus, the book sheds new light on El Greco’s highly original contribution to early Mediterranean and multi-institutional configurations of the Christian faith in Byzantium, Venice, Rome, Toledo, and Madrid.

Combining strikingly new scholarship by art historians, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this interdisciplinary volume illuminates trade ties within East Asia, and from East Asia outwards, in the years 1550 to 1800. While not encyclopedic, the selected topics greatly advance our sense of this trade picture. Throughout the book, multi-part trade structures are excavated; the presence of European powers within the Asian trade nexus features as part of this narrative. Visual goods are highlighted, including lacquerwares, paintings, prints, musical instruments, textiles, ivory sculptures, unfired ceramic portrait figurines, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and SoutheastAsian ceramic vessels. These essays underscore the significance of Asian industries producing multiples, and the rhetorical charge of these goods, shifting in meaning as they move. Everyday commodities are treated as well; for example, the trans-Pacific trade in contraband mercury, used in silver refinement, is spelled out in detail. Building reverberations between merchant networks, trade goods, and the look of the objects themselves, this richly-illustrated book brings to light the Asian trade engine powering the early modern visual cultures of East and Southeast Asia, the American colonies, and Europe.

In a modern global historical context, scholars have often regarded piracy as an essentially European concept which was inappropriately applied by the expanding European powers to the rest of the world, mainly for the purpose of furthering colonial forms of domination in the economic, political, military, legal and cultural spheres. By contrast, this edited volume highlights the relevance of both European and non-European understandings of piracy to the development of global maritime security and freedom of navigation. It explores the significance of ‘legal posturing’ on the part of those accused of piracy, as well as the existence of non-European laws and regulations regarding piracy and related forms of maritime violence in the early modern era. The authors in this volume highlight cases from various parts of the early-modern world, thereby explaining piracy as a global phenomenon.

In his book 'Higher Education in 2040 - A Global Approach' (2017) Bert van der Zwaan developed a thought-provoking vision of the university of the future, based on a thorough discussion of current trends and on a large number of conversations with leaders in higher education worldwide. This book, 'Places of Engagement', offer reflections on themes discussed by Van der Zwaan, written by twenty of his peers and other opinion leaders from around the world. The book was written in honour of Bert van der Zwaan at the occasion of his departure as Vice-Chancellor of Utrecht University. With contributions by John Sexton, José van Dijck, Karl Dittrich, Dilly Fung, Michael Crow and many others.

The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world.

The Platform Company will help you tackle your organization's key strategic challenges with out-of-the box concepts based on solid principles from game theory and ecology. Building blocks are introduced in an easy-to-read story of an executive on safari and translated into practical steps and methods. The book addresses the key challenges confronting any organization, such as branding, sales channels, innovation, supply chain, strategy formation, leadership, and purpose.

Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass media“as well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social and political structures, but from other players with different goals and interests. Through a careful treatment of these situations, this volume offers a new way to approach the role of social protest in national and international politics.

In recent decades, what could be considered a gamification of the world has occurred, as the ties between games and activism, games and war, and games and the city grow ever stronger. In this book, Anne-Marie Schleiner explores a concept she calls 'ludic mutation', a transformative process in which the player, who is expected to engage in the preprogramed interactions of the game and accept its imposed subjective constraints, seizes back some of the power otherwise lost to the game itself. Crucially, this power grab is also relevant beyond the game because players then see the external world as material to be reconfigured, an approach with important ramifications for everything from social activism to contemporary warfare.

In the last decade, digital media technologies and developments have given rise to exciting new forms of ludic, or playful, engagements of citizens in cultural and societal issues. From the Occupy movement to playful city-making to the gameful designs of the Obama 2008 and Trump 2016 presidential campaigns, and the rise of citizen science and ecological games, this book shows how play is a key theoretical, methodological, and practical principle for comprehending such new forms of civic engagement in a mediatized culture.The Playful Citizen explores how and through what media we are becoming more playful as citizens and how this manifests itself in our ways of doing, living, and thinking. We offer a pluralistic answer to such questions by bringing together scholars from different fields such as game and play studies, social sciences, and media and culture studies.

In this edited volume, eighteen scholars examine the increasing role of digital media technologies in identity constructionthrough play. Going beyond computer games, this interdisciplinary collection argues that present-day play and games are not only appropriate metaphors for capturing postmodern human identities, but are in fact the means by which people create their identity. From discussions of World of Warcraft and Foursquare to digital cartographies, the combined essays form a groundbreaking volume that features the most recent insights in play and game studies, media research, and identity studies.

Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book The Stages of the Organic and Man, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in English, not only setting it in context with such familiar figures as Bergson, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty, but also showing Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and sciences.

Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz explores the poetic thinking of these master filmmakers, expressed in several of their key films. It examines theoretical ideas, including Maori anthropology of the gift and Sufi philosophy of the image, to conceive film as abundant gift. Elaborating on how this gift may be received, this book imagines film as our indispensable mentor - a wild mentor who teaches us how to think with moving images by learning to perceive evanescent forms that simply appear and disappear.

Medieval states are widely assumed to have lacked police forces. Yet in the Italian city-republics, soldiers patrolled the streets daily in search of lawbreakers. Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326 is the first book to examine the emergence of urban policing in medieval Italy and its impact on city life.Focusing on Bologna in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Gregory Roberts shows how police forces gave teeth to the communes' many statutes through a range of patrol activities. Whether seeking outlaws in the countryside or nighttime serenaders in the streets, urban police forces pursued lawbreakers energetically and effectively. They charged hundreds of individuals each year with arms-bearing, gambling, and curfew violations, convicting many of them in the process. Roberts draws on a trove of unpublished evidence from judicial archives, rich with witness testimony, to paint a vivid picture of policing in daily life and the capacity of urban governments to coerce.Breaking new ground in the study of violence, justice, and state formation in the Middle Ages, Police Power in the Italian Communes sheds fresh light on the question of how ostensibly modern institutions emerge from premodern social orders.

In contrast with other works on the history of language learning and teaching, this book is innovative in assigning a much more important role to practice and to the reciprocal relationship of policies and practice (rather than investigating top.down processes from policies to practice). The 14 contributions highlight various contexts of language education in the 20th century, combining inside.out (‘emic’) perspectives, drawing on teachers’/learners’ experience within the classroom, and outside.in (‘etic’) perspectives, looking at external factors such as the curriculum or education policies and considering how teachers and learners respond to these. Each chapter starts from one perspective, yet at the same time takes into account the reciprocal effects between the two directions of movement (inside.out / outside.in). This volume asks, how has the practice of language learning and teaching been influenced by policies and context – and vice versa?

Tapping into a combination of court documents, urban statutes, material artefacts, health guides and treatises, *Policing the Urban Environment in Premodern Europe* offers a unique perspective on how premodern public authorities tried to create a clean, healthy environment. Overturning many preconceptions about medieval dirt and squalor, it presents the most outstanding recent scholarship on how public health norms were enforced in the judicial, religious and socio-cultural sphere before the advent of modern medicine and the nation-state, crossing geographical and linguistic boundaries and engaging with factors such as spiritual purity, civic pride and good neighbourliness.

Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, this volume offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.

Leading historians of the French, Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine and Neapolitan revolutions bridge the gap between the historiographies of the so-called 'Sister' Republics. They explore political culture as a set of discourses or political practices. Parliamentary practices, the comparability of 'universal' political concepts, late-eighteenth century Republicanism, the relationship between press and politics, and the interaction between the Sister Republics and France are studied from a comparative, transnational perspective.

Politics is about conflict, struggle, decision-making, power and influence. But not every conflict and not every situation in which power is exercised is widely regarded as politics. A football coach who decides to leave a player on the bench because he has given him a bit of lip, is exerting power, and there is conflict here, too. However, few people would consider this a political issue. The same applies to a mother who quarrels with her adolescent daughter about going to a house party, a schoolteacher who gives a student detention, and so on. But if we were to limit our understanding of politics to official decisions that are taken by governments, in parliaments or on municipal councils, we would fail to recognise the political meaning of trade unions, lobbyists, protest groups, corporations and other more-or-less organised groups that influence collective decision-making.

This study investigates the relationship between literature and politics during Mongolia's early revolutionary period. Between the 1921 socialist revolution and the first Writers' Congress, held in April 1948, the literary community constituted a key resource in the formation and implementation of policy. At the same time, debates within the party, discontent among the population, and questions of religion and tradition led to personal and ideological conflict among the intelligentsia and, in many cases, to trials and executions. Using primary texts, many of them translated into English for the first time, Simon Wickhamsmith shows the role played by the literary arts - poetry, fiction and drama - in the complex development of the "new society," helping to bring Mongolia's nomadic herding population into the utopia of equality, industrial progress and social well-being promised by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party.

By focusing on the politics of disability as a pillar of Czechoslovak identity, The Politics of Disability in Interwar and Socialist Czechoslovakia: Segregating in the Name of the Nation reflects upon the vicissitudes of nation building over the twentieth century that led to extreme forms of institutional violence against minorities, mainly the Roma, such as forced sterilization. The authors trace the intersectionality of ethnicity and disability, which proliferated across diverse realms of public life, positioning the continuities and ruptures of interrogating propaganda and racial science during the interwar and post-war periods as establishing and reinforcing the border between a healthy Czech majority and a disabled Roma minority. The book critically revises this border that remains observable but unapproachable until it operates as a part of constructing the authenticity of a nation.

Disinformation and so-called fake news are contemporary phenomena with rich histories. Disinformation, or the willful introduction of false information for the purposes of causing harm, recalls infamous foreign interference operations in national media systems. Outcries over fake news, or dubious stories with the trappings of news, have coincided with the introduction of new media technologies that disrupt the publication, distribution and consumption of news -- from the so-called rumour-mongering broadsheets centuries ago to the blogosphere recently. Designating a news organization as fake, or der Lügenpresse, has a darker history, associated with authoritarian regimes or populist bombast diminishing the reputation of 'elite media' and the value of inconvenient truths. In a series of empirical studies, using digital methods and data journalism, the authors inquire into the extent to which social media have enabled the penetration of foreign disinformation operations, the widespread publication and spread of dubious content as well as extreme commentators with considerable followings attacking mainstream media as fake.

Over the last decades, some non-OECD countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, India and China have been rapidly industrializing. While this has had positive effects on economic growth, it has also caused pollution with severe effects on the natural environment, human health, and global climate change. In response to the new pollution threat, most of the industrializing economies have installed pollution prevention and control regulations, and implementing institutions. In practice, however, the regulations often fail to achieve the desired results. Violations of the law remain pervasive, and enforcement reactions against violations of the law are often ineffective. This Research and Policy Note explains why the regulation of pollution in these countries is so difficult, by looking at several aspects of pollution regulation frameworks, for instance the obstacles to effective law enforcement, effective enforcement strategies in creating compliance in industrializing economies, and the role of local communities, markets and politics.

Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of worship like churches, mosques or temples. Lars de Wildt interviews developers and players of games such as Assassin’s Creed to find out how and why the Pop Theology of Videogames is so appealing to modern audiences. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book argues that developers of videogames and their players engage in a ‘Pop Theology’ through which laymen reconsider traditional questions of religion by playing with them. Games allow us to play with religious questions and identities in the same way that children play at being a soldier, or choose to ‘play house.’ This requires a radical rethinking of religious questions as no longer just questions of belief or disbelief; but as truths to be tried on, compared, and discarded at will.

This book offers a unique overview on the career and work on Benedict XII, the third pope of Avignon. Benedict XII (ca. 1334-1342) was a key figure of the Avignon papal court, renowned for rooting out heretics and distinguishing himself as a refined theologian. During his reign, he faced the most significant religious and political challenges in the era of the Avignon papacy: theological quarrels, divisions and schisms within the Church, conflicts between European sovereigns, and the growth of Turkish power in the East. In spite of its diminished political influence, the papacy, which had recently moved to France, emerged as an institution committed to the defense and expansion of the Catholic faith in Europe and the East. Benedict made significant contributions to the definition of doctrine, the assessment of pontifical power in Western Europe, and the expansion of Catholicism in the East: in all these different contexts he distinguished himself as a true guardian of orthodoxy.

Elected pope in the wake of a rebellion, Eugenius III came to power as a relative unknown during a time of crisis. This book examines the controversial developments in papal justice and theological debate during his pontificate, his treatment of Cistercian monasteries, his relationships with France, Spain, and Rome, his work in the papal states, and the crusades. It offers a new view of an under-appreciated pope and the place of the church in a rapidly changing European society.

As Cardinal Hugo and as pope, Gregory was one of the dominant figures in the history of the papacy of the High Middle Ages. Coming to prominence under Pope Innocent III, Hugo played an important political role, particularly as legate on various occasions, as well as being a major promoter of the new religious orders. As pope, his battle with Emperor Frederick II is one of medieval history’s most absorbing conflicts. But he also acted as peacemaker, promoter of the Crusades, instigator of mission for the sake of conversion, refomer of the Curia, patron of arts and liturgy, and as a passionate advocate of Church reform. His decretal collection, the Liber Extra, was the most influential of the Middle Ages. A full examination of Gregory’s pontificate is very long overdue. The current volume brings together a team of international scholars, each of them expert in dealing with a particular aspect of the pontificate, and provides what will be a collection of studies of lasting scholarly value on a central figure of the medieval papacy.

When Paul III was elected in 1534, hopes arose across Christendom that this pope would at last reform and reunite the Church. During his fifteen-year reign, though, Paul's engagement with reform was complex and contentious. A work of cultural history, this book explores how cultural narratives of honour and tradition, including how honour played out in politics, significantly constrained Pope Paul and his chosen reformers in framing strategies for change. Indeed, the reformers' programme would have undermined the culture of honour and weakened Rome's capacity to ward off current threats of invasion. The study makes a provocative case that Paul called the Council of Trent to contain reform rather than promote it. Nevertheless, Paul and the Council did sow seeds of reform that eventually became central to the Counter-Reformation. This book thus sheds new light on a pope whose relationship to reform has long been regarded as an enigma.

From the 1920s on, popular music in Southeast Asia was a mass-audience phenomenon that drew new connections between indigenous musical styles and contemporary genres from elsewhere to create new, hybrid forms. This book presents a cultural history of modern Southeast Asia from the vantage point of popular music, considering not just singers and musicians but their fans as well, showing how the music was intrinsically bound up with modern life and the societal changes that came with it. Reaching new audiences across national borders, popular music of the period helped push social change, and at times served as a medium for expressions of social or political discontent.

A late medieval Icelandic romance about the ‘maiden-king’ of France, Nítí¿a saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nítí¿a saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga’s strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nítí¿a saga’s manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nítí¿a saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders’ ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nítí¿a saga.

The visual legacy of early modern cardinals constitutes a vast and extremely rich body of artworks, many of superb quality, in a variety of media, often by well-known artists and skilled craftsmen. Yet cardinal portraits have primarily been analysed within biographical studies of the represented individual, in relation to the artists who created them, or within the broader genre of portraiture. No more profound investigation of these as a specific category of object has ever been attempted. This volume addresses questions surrounding the production, collection, and status of the cardinal portrait, covering diverse geographies and varied media. Examining the development of cardinals’ imagery in terms of their multi-layered identities, this volume considers portraits of 'princes of the Church' as a specific cultural phenomenon reflecting cardinals’ unique social and political position.

The Portuguese Restoration of 1640 ended the dynastic union of Portugal and Spain. This book pioneers in reconstructing the global image discourse related to the event by bringing together visualizations from three decades and four continents. These include paintings, engravings, a statue, coins, emblems, miniatures, a miraculous crosier and other regalia, buildings, textiles, a castrum doloris, drawings, and ivory statues. Situated within the academic field of visual studies, the book interrogates the role of images and depictions before, during, and after the overthrow and how they functioned within the intercontinental communication processes in the Portuguese Empire. The results challenge the conventional notion of center and periphery and reveal unforeseen entanglements as well as an unexpected agency of imagery from the remotest regions under Portuguese control. The book breaks new ground in linking the field of early modern political iconography with transcultural art history and visual studies.

Post-cinema designates a new way of making films. It is time to ask whether this novelty is complete or relative and to evaluate to what extent it represents a unitary or diversified current. The book proposes to integrate the post-cinema question within the post-art question in order to study the new ways of making filmic images. The issue will be considered at three levels: the impression of post-art on "regular" films; the "relocation" (Casetti) of the same films that can be seen using devices of all kinds in conditions more or less removed from the dispositif of the theater; the integration of cinema into contemporary art in all kinds of forms of creation and exhibition, parallel to the integration of contemporary art in "regular" cinema.

Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability explores a geopolitically situated set of cultures negotiating unique relationships to colonial history. Singaporean, Malaysian, and Indonesian identities are discussed through a variety of commercial films, art cinema, and experimental work. The book discovers instances of postcoloniality that manifest stylistically through Singapore’s preoccupations with space, the importance of sound to Malay culture, and the Indonesian investment in genre.

This book is about postcolonial memory in the Netherlands. This term refers to conflicts in contemporary society about how the colonial past should be remembered. The question is often: who has the right or ability to tell their stories and who do not? In other words: who has a voice, and who is silenced? As such, these conflicts represent a wider tendency in cultural theory and activism to use voice as a metaphor for empowerment and silence as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying powerlessness. And yet, there are voices that do not liberate us from, but rather subject us to power. Meanwhile, silence can be powerful: it can protect, disrupt and reconfigure. Throughout this book, it will become clear how voice and silence function not as each other’s opposites, but as each other’s continuation, and that postcolonial memory is articulated through the interplay of meaningful voices and meaningful silences.

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen.

During the 1950s, companies aiming for international markets demanded new theories and methods of communication. Ideas regarding cybernetics, systems analysis, new accounting practices, and budgetary principles as well as theories of information, communication, marketing, public relations, and organization were discussed at conferences, seminars, and courses, and in articles and books. At the same time, new technologies changed corporate communication, from a loose-leaf accounting system to mechanical and electronic business machines, from written texts and oral presentations to slide shows, audio tapes, films, television, and flannelgraphs. By looking at a vast array of objects and relations related to uses of media technologies in Swedish industry from the end of World War II to the breakthrough of television, this book shows what happened in the glitches between mass communication and interaction, and how Swedish postwar industry worked to disrupt established understandings of communication.

Poussin’s Women: Sex and Gender in the Artist’s Works examines the paintings and drawings of the well-known seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) from a gender studies perspective, focusing on a critical analysis of his representations of women. The book’s thematic chapters investigate Poussin’s women in their roles as predators, as lustful or the objects of lust, as lovers, killers, victims, heroines, or models of virtue. Poussin’s paintings reflect issues of gender within his social situation as he consciously or unconsciously articulated its conflicts and assumptions. A gender studies approach brings to light new critical insights that illuminate how the artist represented women, both positively and negatively, within the framework in his seventeenth-century culture. This book covers the artist’s works from Classical mythology, Roman history, Tasso, and the Bible. It serves as a good overview of Poussin as an artist, discussing the latest research and including new interpretations of his major works.

The Power of Religious Societies in Shaping Early Modern Society and Identities studies the value system of the French Catholic community the Filles de la Charité, or the Daughters of Charity, in the first half of the seventeenth century. An analysis of the activities aimed at edifying morality in the different strata of society revealed a Christian anthropology with strong links to medieval traditions. The book argues that this was an important survival strategy for the Company with a disconcerting religious identity: the non-cloistered lifestyle of its members engaged in charity work had been made unlawful in the Council of Trent. Moreover, the directors Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul also had to find ways to curtail internal resistance as the sisters rebelled in quest of a more contemplative and enclosed vocation.

Quantum Physics is the solid basis of most of our understanding of nature and has been the driver of many technological advances. The trilogy Power of the Invisible: The Quintessence of Reality gives a coherent account of this huge domain of knowledge, which is linked to some fifty Nobel prizes and is one of the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century. This quantum story follows three lines in parallel: a pictorial, an explanatory and a mathematical one.

The volume collects a series of contributions that help reconstruct the recent history of the Nath tradition, highlighting important moments of self.reinterpretation in the sampradaya’s interaction with different social milieus. The leitmotif tying together the selection of articles is the authors’ explorations of the overlap between religious authority and political power. For example, in which ways do the Naths’ hagiographical claim of possessing yogic charisma (often construed as supernatural powers, siddhis) translate into mundane expressions of socio.political power? And how does it morph into the authority to reinterpret and recreate particular traditions? The articles approach different aspects of the recent history of the Nath sampradaya, spanning from stories of yogis guiding kings in the petty principalities of the eighteenth century to gurus who sought prominence in the transnational environments of the twentieth century; examining some Nath lineages and institutions under the British Raj, in the history of Nepal, and in contemporary India.

We tend to think of ourselves as living in a time when nations, for the most part, obey the rule of law - and where they certainly don't engage in the violent grabs for territory that have characterised so much of human history. But as Rob de Wijk shows in this book, power politics very much remains a force on the international scene. Offering analyses of such actions as Putin's annexation of the Crimea and China's attempts to claim large parts of the South China Sea, de Wijk explains why power politics never truly went away-and why, as the West's position weakens, it's likely to play a bigger and bigger role on the global stage in the coming years.

Both democratic legitimacy and the separation of powers as concepts have very much evolved alongside the state and over the last decades the state has been giving up ground to other power holders, particularly international (and even supranational) actors. This brings up the question of whether the combination of these concepts is still viable outside a traditional state context, and if so, in what form? This is the central question the current volume seeks to answer. In 2013 Christoph Möllers published his impressive monograph, The Three Branches; A Comparative Model of Separation of Powers. This inspirational book led to the idea to pitch it against both the agenda of us as researchers of the Institute of Public Law at Leiden Law School (resulting from a 2012 conference) and our own insights, as well as that of fellow travellers in the field.

The Netherlands have a long and important tradition in scholarly philology. For instance in the early days of Leiden University 'philology', or the critical examination of classical texts, was regarded as a 'cutting-edge science'. This field of scholarship had far reaching implications on disciplines such as theology, chronology, astronomy, history, law and other demarcated bodies of knowledge identified as a separate science. Regardless of the exact field of inquiry, philologists as protectors and teachers of the written heritage always played a pivotal role in the formation of the cultural repertoire of the educated public. As men of learning and high esteem, philologists also exerted influence outside the cultural sphere, especially in politics and religion. The ever-changing composition of the philological frame of reference made no difference in this respect. But in the nineteenth century, the practice of philology was passing a crucial phase of change. In both its object of study and in its methods, several fundamental modifications occurred. Texts in the vernacular and national philologies attracted more and more attention of the public, and 'neo-philology' succeeded in taking over the central position traditionally occupied by classical philology. Subfields such as 'linguistics', 'edition technique' and 'history' grew into new, more-or-less independent (sub-)disciplines, whereas scientific methods such as stemmatology and comparative approaches were introduced in the humanities. This redesigned the landscape of philology radically. New boundaries became apparent and existing ones were questioned or drawn sharper. At the time, philology underwent an accelerated process of differentiation and professionalization. Philology demarcated its own more or less independent sphere, with a specific authority. The establishment of a branch of 'national philology' can be regarded as an example of discipline formation in the humanities. This fascinating process of change and the search for new boundaries in Dutch philology is highlighted in this book The Practice of Philology in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century, the first book on this topic in the English language.

The cry for decolonization has echoed throughout the museum world. Although perhaps most audibly heard in the case of ethnographic museums, many different types of museums have felt the need to engage in decolonial practices. Amidst those who have argued that an institution as deeply colonial as the museum cannot truly be decolonized, museum staff and museologists have been approaching the issue from different angles to practice decoloniality in any way they can. This book collects a wide range of practices from museums whose audiences, often highly diverse, come together in sometimes contentious conversations about pasts and futures. Although there are no easy or uniform answers as to how best to deal with colonial pasts, this collection of practices functions as an accessible toolkit from which museum staff can choose in order to experiment with and implement methods according to their own needs and situations. The practices are divided thematically and include, among others, methods for decentering, improving transparency, and increasing inclusivity.

In the medieval period, the monarch was seen as the embodiment of the community of his kingdom, the body politic. And while we've long since shed that view, it nonetheless continues to influence our understanding of contemporary politics. This book offers thirteen case studies from premodern and contemporary Europe that demonstrate the process through which political corporations-bodies politic-were and continue to be constructed and challenged. Drawing on history, archaeology, literary criticism, and art history, the contributors survey a wide geographical and chronological spectrum to offer a panoramic view of these dynamic political entities.

This important and first-of-its-kind collection addresses the emerging challenges in the field of media art preservation and exhibition, providing an outline for the training of professionals in this field. Since the emergence of time-based media such as film, video and digital technology, artists have used them to experiment with their potential. The resulting artworks, with their basis in rapidly developing technologies that cross over into other domains such as broadcasting and social media, have challenged the traditional infrastructures for the collection, preservation and exhibition of art. Addressing these challenges, the authors provide a historical and theoretical survey of the field, and introduce students to the challenges and difficulties of preserving and exhibiting media art through a series of first-hand case studies. Situated at the threshold between archival practices and film and media theory, it also makes a strong contribution to the growing literature on archive theory and archival practices.

The first textbook based upon International Standards on Auditing (ISAs), this fully revised and updated fourth edition presents a structured approach to auditing principles using ISAs as its basis. The International Standards on Auditing are now widely regarded as the global benchmark for auditing standards and as such an important audit quality indicator. This book describes the developments and practical use of all ISAs, as well as significant national standards in different countries. The new edition has been updated in line with International Standards and presents a truly International perspective. The book provides students with a real-world perspective as close to current auditing practice and thinking as possible.

The significance of the media and communications revolution occasioned by printmaking was profound. Less a part of the standard narrative of printmaking’s significance is recognition of the frequency with which the widespread dissemination of printed works also occurred beyond the borders of Europe and consideration of the impact of this broader movement of printed objects. Within a decade of the invention of the printing press, European prints began to move globally. Over the course of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, numerous prints produced in Europe traveled to areas as varied as Turkey, India, Persia, Ethiopia, China, Japan and the Americas, where they were taken by missionaries, artists, travelers, merchants and diplomats. This collection of essays explores the transmission of knowledge, both written and visual, between Europe and the rest of the world by means of prints in the early modern period.

“This book offers an account of the life of Shibusawa Eiichi, who may be considered the first ‘internationalist’ in modern Japan, written by his great grandson Masahide and published in 1970 under the title, Taiheiyo ni kakeru hashi (Building Bridges Over the Pacific). Japan had a tortuous relationship with internationalism between 1840, when Shibusawa was born, and 1931, the year the nation invaded Manchuria and when he passed away. The key to understanding Shibusawa’s thoughts against the background of this history, the author shows, lies in the concept of ‘people’s diplomacy,’ namely an approach to international relations through non-governmental connections. Such connections entail more transnational than international relations. In that sense, Shibusawa was more a transnationalist than an internationalist thinker. Internationalism presupposes the prior existence of sovereign states among which they cooperate to establish a peaceful order. The best examples are the League of Nations and the United Nations. Transnationalism, in contrast, goes beyond the framework of sovereign nations and promotes connections among individuals and non-governmental organizations. It could be called “globalism” in the sense that transnationalism aims at building bridges across the globe apart from independent nation-states. In that sense Shibusawa was a pioneering globalist. It was only in the 1990s that expressions like globalism and globalization came to be widely used. This was more than sixty years after Shibusawa Eiichi’s death, which suggests how pioneering his thoughts were.” [Akira Iriye]

In the early modern period, both legal and illegal maritime predation was a common occurrence, but the expansion of European maritime empires exacerbated existing and created new problems of piracy across the globe. This collection of original case studies addresses these early modern problems in three sections: first, states’ attempts to exercise jurisdiction over seafarers and their actions; second, the multiple predatory marine practices considered ‘piracy’; and finally, the many representations made about piracy by states or the seafarers themselves. Across nine chapters covering regions including southeast Asia, the Atlantic archipelago, the North African states, and the Caribbean Sea, the complexities of defining and criminalizing maritime predation is explored, raising questions surrounding subjecthood, interpolity law, and the impacts of colonization on the legal and social construction of ocean, port, and coastal spaces. Seeking the meanings and motivations behind piracy, this book reveals that while European states attempted to fashion piracy into a global and homogenous phenomenon, it was largely a local and often idiosyncratic issue.

As any devoted theatregoer will attest, watching a performance is a unique experience, as the social setting, rules, and standards of theatre often combine to create a feeling of liberation from the everyday world. This book explores the phenomenon of theatre as simultaneously distinct from and yet connected to society as a whole. Combining theoretical reflections with materials from European case studies, the authors offer intriguing new methods for the sociological study of theatre while contributing equally to theatre and performance studies.

Processing Compound Verbs in Persian is the first monograph investigating how Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon, through which it can be inferred how they are stored, organized, and accessed. The study examines Persian compound verbs in light of psycholinguistic theories on poly-morphemic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates.

To dismantle negative stereotypes of fans, this book offers a media ethnography of the digital culture, conventions, and urban spacesassociated with fandoms, arguing that fandom is an area of productive, creative, and subversive value. By examining the fandoms ofSherlock, Glee, Firefly, and other popular television-based franchises, the author appeals to fans and scholars alike in her empirically grounded methodology and insightful analysis of production hierarchies, gender, sexuality, play, and affect.

Over the past decade, public services have come under increasing pressure to perform like private-sector organisations. This study demonstrates that professionals have much leeway in coping with changes caused by IT developments, distributed knowledge and more demanding public which have all created new pressures on public services. The authors conclude that rather than demanding more autonomy and space, public service professionals need renewed and workable professional standards.

Prometheus was punished by the supreme god Zeus for giving to mankind the Olympic fire with which they learned to think and feel. He was chained to a cliff in the Caucasus, where, to make matters worse, he was visited daily by an eagle who ate part of his liver. At night, however, his liver grew back. We now know that the liver can regenerate, but were the ancient Greeks aware of this quality? The myth of Prometheus has been a source of inspiration for many visual artists over the centuries. In this book, the medical history of the liver is traced through the ages through an examination of historical texts on the organ’s functions and properties, parallel to the art movements in which the fascinating iconography of Prometheus is reviewed. The book offers a surprising interplay of art and medicine, placing emphasis on the unique morphology of the liver.

There is growing awareness about how social media circulate extreme viewpoints and turn up the temperature of public debate. Posts that exhibit agitation garner disproportionate engagement. Within this clamour, fringe sources and viewpoints are mainstreaming, and mainstream media are marginalized. This book takes up the mainstreaming of the fringe and the marginalization of the mainstream. In a cross-platform analysis of Google Web Search, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, 4chan and TikTok, we found that hyperpartisan web operators, alternative influencers and ambivalent commentators are in ascendency. The book can be read as a form of platform criticism. It puts on display the current state of information online, noting how social media platforms have taken on the mantle of accidental authorities, privileging their own on-platform performers and at the same time adjudicating between claims of what is considered acceptable discourse.

The prestigious Praemium Erasmianum 2009 was awarded to Benjamin Ferencz and Antonio Cassese, who embody the history of international criminal law from Nuremberg to The Hague. The Prosecutor and the Judge is a meeting with these two remarkable men through in depth interviews by Heikelina Verrijn Stuart and Marlise Simons about their work and ideas, about the war crimes trials, human cruelty, the self-interest of states; about remorse in the courtroom, about restitution and compensation for victims and about the strength and the limitations of the international courts.