Travelling Facts explores the production and distribution of facts : their life cycles as well as the material networks through which they travel. Acknowledging that facts are fallible and originate primarily in isolated laboratories and field sites, the volume includes discussions about how facts are reassembled into practical knowledge, how they translate locally, and what lessons may be learned from those who attempt to regulate fact production and circulation in the face of the marked acceleration and expansion of digital technologies worldwide.

Although digitalization or smart manufacturing might be considered a driving factor behind Procurement 4.0—the latest conceptualization of how modern companies procure goods and services—it is far too shortsighted to view Procurement 4.0 as simply a digitalized function. In Procurement 4.0, four leading experts on this revolutionary concept offer the first comprehensive framework to identify the interrelated opportunities and challenges it provides.

As the authors show, dynamic, interconnected value chains are key factors of sustainable business success, with procurement managed and steered by strategic purchasers in their new role as value chain managers. This evolving environment will be influenced by a variety of digitalization forces, including Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things, smart data and clouds, Enterprise 2.0, social media, and mobile computing. Integrating all network levels of procurement—from intra-company and inter-company relationships to global connectivity along value chains—and drawing on interviews with corporate heads of BMW, Lufthansa, Maersk, BP, and Allianz, the authors explore four dimensions of procurement that will address the business needs of the future: competing value chains, co-creation, leadership, and digital transformation.

According to mainstream discourse of the Cold War, post-1945 Western Europe was essentially a homogeneous historical space fully integrated into modern industrial society. But as Southern Europe? makes clear, Western European societies were in fact divided by deep political and economic inequalities. While nations in the north embodied consolidated democracies, Spain, Portugal, and Greece were at times all authoritarian regimes. Deeply afflicted with underdevelopment, these countries were cut off from the “economic miracles” other Western European states were experiencing. With its weak democracy, Italy held a contradictory position between the struggles of the Iberian and Greek peninsulas and the progress of its neighbors beyond the Alps.

Now, old inequalities long believed to be things of the past have resurfaced, and a new debt crisis appears to be splitting the continent apart along historic lines. This book raises the important question of whether studying the geopolitics and social history of southern Europe might be a valuable analytical tool for understanding these contemporary financial catastrophes.

Historians discuss the 1970s as an era of deep transformations and even structural rupture in Western societies. For the first time, Cities Contested engages in this debate from the perspective of comparative urban history, examining the struggles in and about urban space at a time when ideas about the “city” and concepts of urban planning were being reconsidered. This book discusses the structural rupture of the time by comparing case studies of Italian and Western German cities, analyzing central issues of urban politics, urban renewal and heritage, and urban protest and social movements. An original contribution to current debates on the transition from industrial modernity to post-Fordist societies as well as to urban history and the history of social movements, Cities Contested draws on the parallel histories of Italy and Germany to propose new questions and new avenues for investigation.

The Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Summer of Love—the 1960s were one of the most turbulent decades in US history. These years launched an unprecedented public debate over the meaning of “America,” dividing US society in deep and troubling ways. Yet despite the passage of time, the contemporary crises in the “American way of life” and the political system that sustain it might well make one wonder: to what degree are we still living on the outskirts of the '60s? By examining crucial events, trends, and individuals from the civic, social, political, intellectual, cultural, and economic spheres across a range of disciplines, this volume offers a nuanced and pluralist account of the longest decade in America.

Joseph Stalin’s death was a defining event in Soviet history. In its aftermath, the state was forced to reconceive its political, economic, social, and cultural identity. This volume includes new contributions from an international collection of researchers that critically engage with this period of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union. Together, they offer fresh perspectives not just on Stalinism, but also on questions of change and continuity in Soviet politics, modernization, and society more generally, moving broad-scale processes such as urbanization into the center of interpreting Soviet history.  And in so doing, De-Stalinisation Reconsidered makes clear that the Soviet history of the 1950s and ’60s is crucial for understanding not only glasnost and perestroika, but contemporary Russia, as well.

An extraordinarily rich account of the lives of Turkish men and women living in contemporary Germany, Conceptualising 'Home' offers striking insights into how members of a marginalized immigrant community make room for themselves and reconstruct homes away from home. Based on in-depth interviews, the volume places the life experiences of Turkish people into a broader theoretical perspective, while Esin Bozkurt's careful attention to gender and generational differences ensures an accurate, balanced representation. The result is a surprisingly useful understanding of the very idea of "home."

Can Western modernity be analyzed and critiqued through the lens of enslavement and colonial history? As this volume reveals, such analysis is not only possible, it is essential to our understanding of contemporary race relations and society generally. Drawing from the fields of  postcolonial, decolonial, and black studies, this book assembles contributions from renowned scholars that offer timely and critical perspectives from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, political science, gender studies, cultural and literary studies, and philosophy.

In 2005 hopes for closer European integration were dealt a potentially fatal blow when French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed new European Union constitution. Going beyond the instant analysis of journalists, which placed blame for the failed vote on the two nations’ internal politics, Democracy Needs Dispute examines a collection of media accounts of European policy debates to argue that the problem with the EU is its relative lack of vibrant political conflict. Democracy Needs Dispute offers both up-to-date analysis and a rich theoretical understanding of the problems facing further efforts at European integration.

The Chinese government and international observers argue that China’s economy must overcome its excessive dependence on exports if substantial growth in domestic consumption is to be achieved and sustained in the future. But this shift can only occur if China also lessens its reliance on cheap migrant labor and encourages investment in its own labor force.

In The End of Cheap Labour?, Florian Butollo investigates the recent transformation of the garment and LED lighting industries in the Pearl River Delta, China’s largest industrial hub. He reveals that industrial upgrading rarely supports improvements in working conditions and the basic employment pattern; and this failure of “social upgrading” threatens to undermine the desired rebalancing of the Chinese economy. Butollo demonstrates that the implementation of collective labor rights remains an important obstacle in the future of the Chinese growth model.