Bøger udgivet af Palgrave MacMillan

This open access book offers a concise overview of the theories constructed within the various human sciences around the theme of creativity as a symbolic capacity to link things together: it manifests itself when the individual endowed with a certain type of intelligence encounters cultural and social conditions that enable them to develop that capacity to the maximum, rather than inhibiting it or diverting it to other fields where it is doomed to failure. Even the most intimate of human expressiveness is considered as a result of an active social relationality. Social dimensions of creativity (evaluation, primary socialization, motivation, leadership) and "creative processes" (creative attitude, creative gesture, divergent thinking, problem-solving capacity, interdisciplinary approach, randomness, algorithmic creativity) are also analysed.The book concludes by evaluating the course taken in the light of the relational theory of society: the development of creativity cannot be conceived outside of self-other relations.This book is the result of a translation done with the help of artificial intelligence. The text has subsequently been revised further by a professional copy editor in order to refine the work stylistically.

This open access book examines the implications for the EU of a radically changed international context characterized by systemic rivalry, competition over norms and regulations, and growing strategic tension. Globalization that once tied national economies together and internationalized social phenomena, such as education, research and innovation, and tourism, has gone in reverse. An opposite trend is driving the world into distinct spheres of competing models of governance, regulation, technological development, and communication. Facing the most extensive rupture of economic and inter-state relations since the onset of the Cold War, the management of the EU's internal and external borders is taking on a completely new meaning. The open access book brings together scholars from economics, law, and political science to provide updated assessments and policy advice on the insecurity in the neighborhood and war in Ukraine, the EU's role in the future European security architecture, weaponized energy dependence, and the global competition on norms.

This volume offers a critical examination of how counterterrorism measures influence democratic processes, with a specific focus on the case study of post-2011 Tunisia. More concretely, it assesses the effects of counterterrorist discourses and practices on the democratic transition initiated after the Dignity Revolution of 2010-2011. Tunisia has been the only Arab country to experience a structured democratic transition after the Arab uprisings. However, the measures taken to counter the rise of salafi jihadism in the country strongly marked the transitional process. This research analyses the detrimental impact of counterterrorism on Tunisian political transition and democratic consolidation. It highlights human rights violations and their legitimization, the strengthening of repressive mechanisms, the enactment of liberticidal laws, the normalization of exceptional governance, and the constriction of public space, while also detailing its negative effects on the state's economy.The book posits that the counterterrorism rhetoric and policies have played a significant role in facilitating the democratic backsliding witnessed in Tunisia beginning in 2021. The research adopts a discursive-ethnographic approach that integrates critical analysis of presidential and parliamentary discourse with extensive fieldwork among institutional and associative actors in Tunisia. The volume represents the first comprehensive and holistic assessment of counterterrorism discourses and policies implemented in post-2011 Tunisia, highlighting their progressive impact on democratic transition.

The South African economy has largely performed below its potential. Although the size of the South African economy has significantly increased since 1994, its performance has lagged behind other comparable economies, and has even been overtaken by Nigeria as the largest economy in Africa. Unemployment, income inequality, and poverty have remained high since 1994. In the past decade, South African economic performance has been so poor that is has resulted in declining per capita incomes. In this study, Vusi Gumede and his co-authors offer a comprehensive analysis of the South African economy since 1994, dealing with many important issues, ranging from its history to its political travails in an effort to provide better understanding and find possible solutions to ensuring inclusive growth.

This book assesses the quality of self-government in four northern European regions with strong autonomy rights. Examining the experiences of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and the Åland Islands, it considers how these regions have developed their own political and administrative systems within the larger states they form part of. The book looks to understand the key democratic and administrative qualities of a functioning self-government, and how geographic size and economic and human resources can impact the ways in which partially independent territories govern. It also assesses the emotional dimensions of regional nationalism, and how this impacts the concept and public perception of partially independent nation-territories. By focusing on the quality of self-government within these nation-territories, the book considers whether strong autonomy contributes to peaceful co-existence within established national borders, or provides new munition for secessionist movements. It will appeal to students and scholars of sub-national governance, European politics, territorial politics and conflict management.

This volume explores current methodological developments in the interpretation of the Bible from an African perspective. Previous scholarship has explored the relevance of Eurocentric biblical interpretive methods to African experiences and contexts. This book furthers the discussion by examining the continuing importance of contextual Bible interpretation. Authors provide an evaluation of the work done by the precursors and predecessors interpreting the Bible from an African point of view, and then analyse the emerging challenges to interpreting the Bible in an ever-changing context. The volume is a comprehensive resource, providing new interpretations of the Bible in Africa, and addressing the contemporary questions of people in Africa and beyond.

Aid organizations usually embrace the idea of digitalization, both in terms of using diverse technologies and processing data digitally for improving their services, making their operations more efficient and even mitigating various risks. While digital fundraising, the use of biometric ID systems or digitalized cash and voucher assistance enjoys widespread attention both in academic and practitioner circles, it is less known how aid organizations navigate between counterterrorism legislations and data protection laws in technical terms. Limiting the discussion to the EU General Data Protection Regulation and by conceptualizing screening -- commonly used to prevent the use of donor money for illicit purposes, money-laundering, terrorism finance or corruption -- as a data processing operation conducted by larger international aid organizations operating in the Global South, this book focuses on the matter of 'transparency' and 'right to information' being at the nexus ofsurveillance studies and privacy studies. By means of legal and social science methods, it simultaneously explores screening in light of classic surveillance and analyses whether opacity around screening by NGOs (data controllers) is in line with the spirit of European Union data protection regime from the perspective of individuals (data subjects). In so doing, Paragi also contributes to the discussion on the politics of transparency and highlights the dilemmas and challenges aid organizations operating in authoritarian regimes or conflict settings may face.

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money surveys the role of money in the history of ideas. Volume 1: Ancient and Medieval Thought explores the worldviews of societies in the process of monetization. The volume is divided into sections on early Civilizations, classical Greece, the Roman era, and Medieval and Renaissance thought.

The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy surveys the role of money in the history of ideas. Volume 2: Modern Thought examines the treatment of money in the writings of philosophers from the emergence of capitalism through the 20th century. The volume is divided into sections on Early Modernity, Late Modernity, and the Twentieth Century. Volume 2 presents an alternative history of modern philosophy in which monetary relations are both an explicit theme and an implicit condition of philosophical reflection.

This book investigates the entanglement of memory and morality in an extended case study of the memory policy of the European Commission between 2014 and 2020. The main empirical aim is to provide an understanding of how the European Commission, various non-governmental intermediary institutions (including the Memory Studies Association and Euroclio) and, in the end, participants in policy projects, attribute meaning to the past and connect that past with specific norms and values. The book queries how the European Commission turns more general cultural memories into concrete moral discourses in its memory policy; how these policies are institutionally operationalised; what draws these institutions to the European Commission's memory policy; and what happens when individual citizens are exposed to the outcomes of those policy projects. Theoretically, Outsourcing the European Past integrates theories from cultural sociology, political science, cultural studies and sociolinguistics in an innovative theory of memory.

Global governance has a major impact on the lives of people around the world. However, traditional theories of legitimacy were usually developed for states and are not suitable for the diversity of global governance institutions that exist today. This book first develops a normative concept of legitimacy that is applicable to all political institutions. According to this concept, to regard an institution as legitimate means ascribing it the right to exercise its function in political practice. Secondly, the book discusses how the use of this concept opens up new perspectives in the debate on legitimacy criteria for global governance institutions. In this context, the book analyses the relationship of legitimacy to the values of justice and democracy and discusses the role of feasibility constraints and the all-affected principle in legitimacy judgements. The concept of legitimacy as the right to function opens up the conceptual space to accommodate the insight that legitimacy criteriaare not the same for all global governance institutions, but depend on their function and context. Thirdly, the book applies the developed theoretical framework to a specific global governance institution, the G20.

This book is focused on screenwriting and development for virtual reality (VR). It explores a diverse range of creative approaches to the writing and screen development of VR stories and immersive audience experiences. Contributions from scholars and practitioners combine conceptual and practically orientated approaches for creating fictional and documentary media VR stories. The book evaluates, challenges and adapts existing screenwriting models and practices for immersive storytelling and grapples with the future of storytelling in the era of sophisticated computer visualization, AI and the online social metaverse. The book proposes new VR storytelling models, identifies altered relationships between creators, screen works and their audiences and demonstrates how interdisciplinary practices will be core to the future of screen storytelling.

In this intriguing book, professors Fasano, Natale and Newell offer a comprehensive and compelling discussion of the European left's evolution. As the left grapples with its historical legacy and attempts to connect with voters in a changing political landscape, the authors examine the journey of the Italian Democratic Party (PD) from its inception to the present day, shedding light on its evolution and struggles. Drawing a fascinating parallel with the UK's New Labour, the book explores the challenges faced by these parties as they navigate their post-communist heritage. A timely exploration of social-democratic politics in an era of populism, this book is a must-read for political enthusiasts, scholars, and anyone interested in the changing landscape of the left in all the European countries.

This book brings together a group of British and Italian scholars who have made significant contributions to the historiography of modern Italy over the last three decades, dedicated to the influence of Paul Ginsborg. Reflecting Ginsborg's interest in the encounter of social and political history in modern Italy, contributions explore the varied forms taken by activism in civil society. Rather than just treating activism and engagement as limited, circumscribed phenomena within a political system, the essays consider these as interventions in the social. Taken together, the contributions gathered here highlight Ginsborg's contributions to scholarship and activism, as well as advancing our understanding of cultural change, institutional reform and the renewal of community in modern Italian history.

SME credit ratings are one of the most underutilised and misunderstood concepts, though they have the potential to proliferate the ability of SMEs to access funding opportunities via both traditional and non-traditional channels. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the industry and sets out innovative solutions for improving the effectiveness, viability, and coverage of SME credit rating services. It focuses on how private and public sector SME credit rating industries can be established and how the unique "ecosystem approach" can be incorporated. It reintroduces the public sector credit rating model and highlights how it can be an effective solution within the SME space. The book will also include feedback from direct interviews with SME credit rating agencies (private and public), ministries linked to the SME credit rating industry, regulators, and related multilateral organisations. Furthermore, the book incorporates the author's knowledge from recently completed credit rating projects from the World Bank Group, The United Nations, and The African Union. This, together with innovative ideas around how SME credit rating industries can be created/initiated, establishes vital policy tools that can be utilised by governments, credit rating agencies, regulators, and related stakeholders.

This book is the first full-length study of apes and monkeys on the early modern stage. It broadens the scope of existing scholarship by situating the apes glimpsed in Shakespeare's plays in the wider context of the many uncelebrated uses by other playwrights, c. 1603-1659. The book investigates the theatrical appearances of real monkeys, actors dressed up as apes, and characters mistaken for them, arguing that the ape trope is so insistent in early modern drama that it becomes a structural metaphor. It addresses both plays and masques across the period, arguing that the ways of seeing in these different kinds of theatre make apes mean differently in their generic contexts. Grounded in historicist readings, this book also draws significantly on the field of ritual studies and the new intersectional discipline of animal performance studies.

This book identifies the turning points in Habermas's work and his transition from one stage to another in the development of his theoretical oeuvre. Habermas began his academic career as part of the Frankfurt School, but the two key points at which his career changes trajectory are moving from historical materialism to normative idealism and playing with some of the ideas of liberalism. Normative idealism is an ahistorical theory that insists on the independence of the normative from material reality, severing the connection between base and superstructure that Marx wrote about. The break with the basic concepts of Marxism enabled Habermas to build his own discursive (critical) theory, which, especially since the end of the 1980s, takes the ideas of liberalism seriously. This book makes a systematic, multidimensional and detailed analysis of Habermas's theoretical oeuvre in two dimensions, chronological (in the order in which Habermas worked on certain topics) and thematic (enclosingcertain thematic units).

The book explores Islamic perspectives on conflict resolution and peacemaking. It delves into key topics such as the principles of Islamic conflict resolution, historical examples of peaceful resolutions, and contemporary challenges faced by Muslim societies. By addressing these topics, the book aims to provide insight into Islamic teachings and practices that can contribute to building bridges and fostering peace in diverse contexts. The book is important and relevant due to the increasing need for understanding and promoting peaceful resolutions in today's world, particularly in regions influenced by Islam. It offers a comprehensive examination of the principles and methods of conflict resolution within an Islamic framework, shedding light on the rich history of peacemaking within Muslim societies. By highlighting Islamic perspectives on peace, the book aims to bridge cultural divides and foster dialogue, promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of the contributions Islam can make to conflict resolution. The book seeks to address the prevalent misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding Islam's approach to conflict resolution. It aims to challenge the notion that Islam is inherently associated with violence or lack of peaceful solutions. By presenting authentic Islamic teachings and historical examples of peaceful resolutions, the book endeavours to contribute to a more nuanced and accurate understanding of Islam's role in promoting conflict resolution and peacemaking. It offers readers an opportunity to explore Islamic perspectives on resolving conflicts, encouraging dialogue, and cultivating a more peaceful world.

Derivative trading? That's something for Wall Street types, right? Maybe, but it also affects everyone else in ways that are still little appreciated. Futures traders have paralysed the global trade of nickel, a key component in the battery of your neighbour's Tesla. For a few minutes one trading day during the pandemic, sellers of crude oil were paying buyers to take the stuff, defying the very notion of trading, in an episode straight out of "Alice in Wonderland".Understanding how this obscure corner of finance works (and what happens when it doesn't) is a key pillar of financial literacy today. If you are a financial markets practitioner, everyday investor, academic, regulator, policy maker or kitchen-table economist, you need to know how financial derivatives really work and be aware of the emerging digital innovations that makes this market the highest stake metaverse.

This book takes a historical approach to explore data, algorithms, their use in practice through applications of AI in various settings, and all of the surrounding ethical and DEI implications. Summarizing our current knowledge and highlighting gaps, it offers original examples from empirical research in various settings, such as healthcare, social media, and the GIG economy.The author investigates how systems relying on a binary structure (machines) work in systems that are instead analogic (societies). Further, he examines how underrepresented populations, who have been historically penalized by technologies, can play an active role in the design of automated systems, with a specific focus on the US legal and social system.One issue is that main tasks of machines concern classification, which, while efficient for speeding up decision-making processes, are inherently biased. Ultimately, this work advocates for ethical design and responsible implementation and deployment of technology in organizations and society through through government-sponsored social justice, in contrast with free market policies.This interdisciplinary text contributes to the timely and relevant debate on algorithmic fairness, biases, and potential discriminations. It will appeal to researchers in business ethics and information systems while building on theories from anthropology, psychology, sociology, management, marketing, and economics.

This is the first book to look exclusively from at the use of MHapps from an applied psychosocial perspective. Much of the academic literature on MHapps in psychology focuses on the clinical efficacy of using apps (e.g., depression reduction as result of using a certain app) and will typically report on the use of randomised controlled trials (or a similar method) to illustrate the use of apps as a tool for improving a psychological condition. Therefore, the main benefit of this book is that it recognises the impact of apps from a social perspective and will aim to show how everyday forms of distress are embedded in the use of these apps and the broader set of relations that constitute people's everyday lives. The content of this book will identify how an applied social perspective can offer insight into the power of apps to shape our sense of ourselves and of others. This book will be of use to educators and students in psychology, sociology, health studies, media studies andcultural studies.

This book addresses the implementation of monetary policy (MP) and focuses on the operations used by the central banks to implement their policies: the so-called operational framework of MP. The operational framework has become of paramount importance in the last fifteen years, due to the profound transformations taking place in this period. The financial crisis, started in August 2007, has rapidly changed the way in which MP is implemented around the world. Further, innovations have been introduced to address other crises in the following years: a new set of "unconventional" instruments have been adopted, like the large-scale purchases of private and government securities and the long-term refinancing operations. The balance sheets of central banks have increased by huge amounts. The recent surge of inflation has induced several central banks to exit those exceptional policies. However, instead of going back to the traditional "interest rate steering" approach, they are going towards a "new normal" that combines some features of that approach with others inherited from the "quantitative easing" experience. The book therefore addresses the following questions: Which are the common stylized patterns of the unconventional MP across the different countries? Did the economic profession work out a theoretical framework within which to place the unconventional MP? Which are the issues related to the exit strategy from unconventional MP? Which are the main features of the operational framework under the "new normal" approach? This book answers these questions by looking at the experiences of the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve System alongside other central banks, and providing some original modelling and empirical evidence, which will be of interest to academics, researchers in banking and finance, policy makers, and practitioners in the financial industry.

This book explores the multilateral control of agro-economic spaces in West African developing countries through international trade, spearheaded by the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture. Responding to growing food insecurity in the region, Ichimi here examines the web of intricacies in this arrangement by discussing some of the main international trade policies directly and indirectly impacting on food security in West Africa and critically engaging with empirical praxis as well as the theoretical underpinnings vis-a-vis multilateral strategies adopted for the amelioration of the crisis. In so doing, they expose how multilateral trading agreements under the auspices of the World Trade Organization produce negative outcomes for the food security status of a large and growing population in West Africa, privileging primary commodity production and export, maintaining the preference for food imports, and driving the pattern of agricultural investment towards an inexorable dependence of the sector to the dictates of the international market.

This book presents empirical and anecdotal evidence on the persistence of the variety of Majorcan Catalan that has been spoken since the 1850s in San Pedro, Argentina. Drawing on a series of 60-minute interviews (N=49) conducted with speakers recruited from the community, this study demonstrates how most participants appear to have preserved their heritage language to some extent, according to their observed Performative Language Competency levels (PLCs). Building on participants' firsthand accounts, additional historical, anthropological, and sociolinguistic details are provided to convey a vivid picture of the community, its traditions, speakers' attitudes to their heritage language, and the current status of San Pedro Majorcan Catalan in terms of endangerment. Within the field of understudied minority languages in the Americas, the reader of this volume will find an innovative, distinct approach to bilingualism in 'heritage vs. majority language' settings, which will beof interest to scholars and students with a background in sociolinguistics, bi- and multilingualism, and language policy and revitalization.

Aging is a topic of growing interest. As life expectancy in western societies is increasing, the growing number and proportion of 'elderly' persons raise urgent questions on how to age 'well'. Predominantly, questions on aging are taken from biomedical and economic paradigms, which are intertwined. While people of age are seen as a cost in society, biomedical research aims at curing the declining effects of aging, thus furthering ideals of 'healthy' aging, 'active' aging, or 'successful' aging. In this book, Peter Derkx offers a comprehensive account of meaningful aging with Anthony Pinn responding in a fruitful and constructive way, for the benefit and edification of all of us.

This open access book sheds light on collective practices of remembering, imagining and anticipating in relation to recent acts of urban terrorism in Europe. Analysing a range of personal and collective responses to urban terrorism in contemporary Europe, this book shows that current debates on this issue are shaped by multiple co-existing and intersecting memories of political violence in the past. Moreover, despite public declarations of unity and solidarity, collective memories of urban terror in contemporary Europe are far from consensual - memory can be both a catalyst for and an impediment to social and political change. The analyses in this book reveal that memory can be both at the same time. Drawing on case studies from a range of European countries and art representations from survivors, artists, and poets, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to key methods (e.g. discourse analysis and (auto-)ethnography) and concepts (e.g. Lieux de Mémoire and 'grassroots memorials') for the study of the memoralization of terror attacks.

This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today's context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel's and Benjamin's metropolis has thus become an "endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.

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

This open access book is based on a multi-country collaborative research project focussing on Canada, China, India, and Indonesia.It responds directly and concretely to concerns about the generational sustainability of smallholder farming worldwide- reflected in the current UN Decade of Family Farming. Drawing on research that asks how (some) young people continue to pursue a (future) livelihood in farming, the book uses the life-course perspective and privileges voices of young farmers to show that movement away from farming such as time spent in education, migration and non-farm work does not exclude eventual farming futures.The book will be of interest to scholars and students of agrarian studies, anthropology, development studies, gender studies, human geography, rural sociology, and youth studies.

This book explores how unresolved questions of social justice shape the character of the political terrain and political actors, through the lens of social media. It treats communication as the medium through which social issues and processes are made visible. Given the rise and spread of populist politics, the views of ordinary people on social issues have never mattered more. One platform through which these voices can be studied extensively is social media. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter now X, YouTube, and Instagram, among others, afford ordinary citizens--often marginalized by traditional mainstream media--space to vent their opinions, engage in discussions of whatever topic, share information and ideas, and explore various kinds of information as well as data, links to which are often provided through various macro and micro discursive spaces therein. Arguably, therefore, social media have become a quintessential platform for studying contemporary sociality. Social media mustbe studied not just as a communication platform, but one through which the social world, social processes and social issues are made visible and, in some cases, enacted. With rich case studies from the Global South, and a particular focus on Africa, this collection does just that.