Search results for ""Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften""

The rapid development of China’s economy has resulted in various kinds of conflict of interest (COI). This study focuses on how COI is resolved in Chinese civil court hearings via discourse information processing. Based on Discourse Information Theory, and the notions of Context Model Schema and Discourse Space, an analytical framework is constructed for the description, analysis and interpretation of the language used in Chinese court hearings. Data analysis has revealed the following major findings: a) litigants in Chinese civil court hearings mainly resort to three information categories when making interest appeals: subjective, objective and explanatory information; b) the process of interest negotiation in court hearings is greatly influenced by such sociological, psychological and discursive factors as identities, intentions, information sharing status, discourse expectations, etc.; and c) different discourse management strategies are adopted to promote conciliation between litigants, among which information management, cognitive management and linguistic management are the most frequently used.

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Als ein globales Phänomen des 19. Jahrhunderts belegt das Maurische Revival die Faszination westlicher Architekten für das islamische Erbe von al-Andalus. Dieses spielte eine zentrale Rolle im Werk Carl von Diebitschs (1819–1869), der als einer der ersten deutschen Architekten die nasridischen Bauten Granadas, die spektakulären Paläste der Alhambra, den Alcázar von Sevilla und die Moschee-Kathedrale von Córdoba in den Jahren 1846-1847 vor Ort studierte und ihren ornamentalen Reichtum in zahlreichen Bleistiftskizzen und Aquarellen festhielt. Vom 27. Oktober 2017 bis zum 10. Januar 2018 werden Carl von Diebitschs Architekturstudien und Bauentwürfe im Rahmen der im Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin stattfindenden Ausstellung «A Fashionable Style. Carl von Diebitsch und das Maurische Revival» erstmals in Deutschland gezeigt. Die vorliegende Publikation wurde begleitend zur Ausstellung konzipiert und bietet einen vertiefenden Blick auf die gezeigten Exponate und thematischen Schwerpunkte. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf Carl von Diebitschs Jahren an der Berliner Bauakademie, seinen Studien zur islamischen Architektur von al-Andalus und seinen neo-maurischen Bauten und Interieurs in Deutschland und Kairo. Weitere Aspekte sind der Löwenhof als Nukleus des Alhambra-Stils und seine Transformation im 19. Jahrhundert, Owen Jones’ international gefeierter Alhambra Court von 1854, die serielle Reproduktion nasridischer Architektur und Ornamentik in Form von Gipsabgüssen, Architekturmodellen und Möbelstücken oder die Bedeutung von Stuck und Eisen im Werk des preußischen Architekten. Als innovativer Erneuerer gelang Carl von Diebitsch die Revitalisierung der nasridischen Baukunst und ihrer Herstellungsverfahren, die er von Berlin aus in die Welt trug.

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Ce volume présente les contributions des cinquièmes Rencontres Internationales organisées à Lausanne par la Fondation harmoniques en septembre 2010. Il offre un regard panoramique et des études à plusieurs voix sur la variété des écoles de facture de piano et des styles pianistiques à l’époque de Chopin. C’est la conjonction de l’observation scientifique, de la connaissance des sources historiques et de la pratique artisanale qui constitue l’intérêt principal de ces communications. This volume comprises the proceedings of the fifth International Congress which was organised by the harmoniques foundation and held in Lausanne during September 2010. Through the juxtaposition of scientific observation, historical research and practical instrument-making in the assembled essays, an impressive diversity of piano making and playing encountered in Chopin’s time unfolds.

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This book explores and evaluates non-territorial autonomy (NTA), an important modality of ethnic and religious diversity management. Whereas multicultural liberal democracies sincerely champion equality and individual human rights, they often have considerable difficulty in accommodating culturally diverse minority communities. In most cases, minority communities do not reside within a compact space, making any territorial representation impossible. This brings into focus modalities of NTA as a possible alternative approach. NTA takes a variety of different forms, such as consociationalism or national cultural autonomy, and also encompasses other forms of representation, such as frameworks for accommodating indigenous peoples, juridical autonomy extended to religious communities, or elements of some models of multiculturalism. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, and also including the work of legal practitioners, the essays within this volume examine the challenges and possible solutions offered by different NTA models for the effective participation of minorities in public life, addressing issues such as the limits and/or possibilities of implementing NTA models in liberal democracies, the extent to which NTA approaches can serve the goals of European integration and the European minority protection framework, and the possible role of NTA in resolving protracted territorial conflicts.

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This volume offers a critical insight into the life and work of the controversial Victorian explorer and translator Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890). Analysis focuses on his travel accounts and erotic translations, which both re-elaborated and challenged dominant Victorian discourses on race, gender and sexuality, generating controversies in the fields of anthropology, sexology and medicine. The premise of the study is that Burton entertained an ambiguous relationship with the colonial institutions: on the one hand, he pursued the colonial project, while on the other, he was an irreverent outsider who clashed with the imperial authorities. As this investigation reveals, he defied British sociocultural norms by appropriating and importing the rituals and languages of the colonial subjects. The volume examines Burton’s ‘impersonations’ of multiple masculine identities in the countries that he visited, which involved elaborate processes of both identification and dis-identification. The author argues that these impersonations enabled a series of queer encounters which broke down the barriers between imperial Self and colonised Other, and led Burton to embody several self-conscious, performative constructions of masculinity. Burton’s life and works are analysed in light of recent critical and theoretical debates.

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This book provides a cognitive analysis of the poetry of George Herbert (1593- 1633). From Herbert’s own thinking, recorded in his prose treatises, can be deduced that his poems should serve a specific function: teaching self-knowledge to his readers. Self-knowledge is a necessary skill, to be applied in one’s strife for ‘temperance’: the regulation of body, house, church, mind, and community. To Herbert, the meaning of his poems is subservient to this function: poetry should aid his readers to temper their lives. The cognitive framework applied here can serve to explain this function. Following Merlin Donald’s theory of cognitive evolution, art serves the purpose of mimetic meta-cognition: a specific cognitive strategy at the disposal of a county priest. Moreover, a cognitive framework can serve to explain why the Herbert-tradition has paid so little attention to this artistic function; this tradition operates within specific confines, the same confines that Herbert sought to compensate with his poetry and his thinking.

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Le Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les langues (CECR) et le dispositif de Bologne ont révolutionné l’apprentissage, l’enseignement et l’évaluation des langues dans les centres universitaires en Europe et un peu partout dans le monde. Le CECR est disponible actuellement dans une trentaine de versions linguistiques. Ce volume qui allie recherche appliquée et analyse des pratiques de classes présente une réflexion sur les applications du CECR et du processus de Bologne dans un centre de langues universitaire. La répartition des textes se fait selon deux grands axes thématiques, d’une part, l’enseignement/apprentissage des langues étrangères, d’autre part, l’évaluation des compétences langagières. Les textes qui constituent cet ouvrage ont été présentés lors de la Journée scientifique Enseignement et apprentissage des langues dans le contexte de Bologne et du Cadre Européen Commun de Référence pour les langues, organisée par le Centre de langues de l’Université bilingue de Fribourg (Suisse), en 2011. Sowohl der Gemeinsame europäische Referenzrahmen für Sprachen (GER) als auch der Bologna-Prozess haben das Lernen, Lehren und Beurteilen von Sprachen an universitären Sprachenzentren in Europa und überall auf der Welt nachhaltig beeinflusst. Der GER ist gegenwärtig in ungefähr dreissig Sprachversionen verfügbar. Der vorliegende Band, welcher angewandte Forschung und Analyse der Unterrichtspraxis vereint, stellt Beiträge zur Umsetzung des GER und der Bologna-Reform in einem Sprachenzentrum an einer Hochschule vor. Die Artikel gliedern sich in zwei thematische Schwerpunkte: das Lehren und Lernen von Fremdsprachen einerseits und die Evaluation von Sprachkompetenzen andererseits. Die Texte dieser Publikation wurden während der wissenschaftlichen Tagung zum Thema Sprachenlehren und ­lernen im Kontext von Bologna und dem Gemeinsamen europäischen Referenzrahmen für Sprachen vorgetragen, welche 2011 vom Sprachenzentrum der zweisprachigen Universität Freiburg (Schweiz) organisiert wurde.

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In Leben und Werk Wolfgang Hildesheimers kommt England der Status eines Kulturtopos zu, der in bestimmten Lebensphasen prominent, in anderen verschleiert in Erscheinung trat. Der Einfluss englischsprachiger Autoren prägte Hildesheimers Schaffen – von Shakespeare, Shaw, Joyce, T. S. Eliot über Barnes und Beckett – und die englische Sprache durchzieht Werk und Briefe. Wie läßt sich die englische Topografie in Hildesheimers Werk vermessen? Wie das Geopoetische in seinen England-Bezügen werten? Auf welches ‘England’ bezog sich Hildesheimer? War es jenes Shakespeares, Shaws, T.S. Eliots, Becketts oder die Welt des James Joyce? Was am Englischen äußerte sich stilbildend, sprachprägend in seinem Werk? Dieser Band dokumentiert erstmals thematisch zusammenhängend die Lebensspuren Hildesheimers im englischen Kulturraum und die Spuren des Englischen in seinem literarischen und bildkünstlerischen Œuvre. Er präsentiert die Ergebnisse der Tagung «Wolfgang Hildesheimer und England», die im September 2010 am Queen Mary College der University of London stattfand.

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‘Was ist eine Witwe mehr als … ein aufgewärmtes Essen?’ According to politician and statesman Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel (1741-1796), widows were superfluous beings and second-hand goods, but they were also perceived by theologians and moralists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a threat due to their sexual experience and supposedly ungovernable lust. This book analyses the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the widow in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German fiction. Male writers in the works discussed repeat the theory that, once deprived of their husbands, widows become sexually voracious. Indeed, the widow is often presented as a dangerous sexual predator who is prone to violence. Female authors, however, highlight the invisibility of the widow and portray her as a figure alienated from society and her family because she has internalized the ideas propounded by Hippel. The widow is depicted throughout as a figure to be at best re-educated and at worst to be feared and guarded against.

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This book deals with bilingual education in general, but it pays special attention to bilingual education in monolingual areas. One central aim is to study the effects of bilingual programmes during the final stages of Primary and Secondary Education in contexts where the L2 (English) is not normally used as an instrument of social communication in the students’ environment, but instead is used only at school, where some subject areas are undertaken totally or partially in this language. The reader interested in bilingual education will find a valuable source of information on different bilingual programmes in the USA and Spain: what schools do and the contents they teach, their timetable and extracurricular activities; the specific objectives that they aim to achieve and the methodology they use, with special reference to the CLIL approach, the schools and the students’ level of success with bilingual education, the most common problems that they have to face in monolingual areas and how to solve them.

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Au sortir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, des millions d’étrangers se trouvent sur le sol allemand : anciens travailleurs forcés, rescapés des camps nazis ou déracinés aux profils multiples. La plupart d’entre eux sont rapatriés après la capitulation allemande, mais presque un million de personnes déplacées (Displaced Persons – DPs), effrayés par l’antisémitisme à l’Est de l’Europe, ou redoutant la montée des régimes communistes, refusent de rentrer dans leur patrie. C’est donc dans les trois zones occidentales de l’Allemagne occupée, exsangue et traversée par des flux incessants, que les DPs vivent pendant plusieurs mois ou années. Leur histoire est multiple et ils en sont à la fois les objets et les acteurs. Cet ouvrage, rassemblant des contributions en trois langues (français, anglais, allemand), croise les perspectives entre histoire politique et internationale, histoire des migrations, analyses culturelles et études des représentations. Il permet de saisir les interactions entre les décisions internationales, les impératifs des pays d’origine des DPs mais aussi ceux des pays d’immigration, les réalités de l’Allemagne occupée et les besoins et espérances des DPs eux-mêmes. Entre sortie du conflit mondial et début de guerre froide se nouent autour des DPs les grandes problématiques politiques et humaines qui forgent l’histoire des déplacements et du refuge. In the aftermath of the Second World War, millions of foreign civilians found themselves in the German territory. Among them, there were former forced laborers, survivors from the Nazi camps, many uprooted migrants who had all experienced the war in different ways. Most of them were repatriated after the German capitulation. However, almost one million of these «Displaced Persons» (DPs) refused to go back to their homeland. They were scarred by anti-Semitic violence, or by the rise of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. For a few months, even a few years, they remained mostly in the Western zones of occupied Germany, facing the harsh post-war conditions of defeated Germany. DPs became both targets and actors of global politics dealing with the refugee problem. This book puts together articles in three languages (French, English, and German). The contributions reveal the DPs’ history from different points of view. They rely on the history of international relations at the end of the war and of the various states involved in the DP question, as well as on social and cultural studies. The diversity of methodological patterns allows for a broad comprehension of this singular story at different scales, from the international debates and tensions to the needs and the hopes of the DPs themselves, in the social and political context of post-war occupied Germany. As the end of the war led to the Cold War, the DP question raised most of the political and humanitarian issues that would continue to interfere with the management of population displacements and refugees until the present day. Am Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges befanden sich einige Millionen Ausländer auf deutschem Boden: ehemalige Zwangsarbeiter, Überlebende der NS-Lager und andere entwurzelte Personen. Die meisten von ihnen kehrten nach der deutschen Kapitulation in ihre Heimat zurück; zurück blieben hingegen fast eine Million Displaced Persons (DPs), die den Antisemitismus in Osteuropa oder den Aufstieg der kommunistischen Regime in diesen Ländern fürchteten, so dass sie sich weigerten, in ihre Ursprungsländer zurückzukehren. Sie fanden sich schließlich für mehrere Monate oder gar Jahre in den drei westdeutschen Besatzungszonen wieder, die von den Kriegsfolgen gezeichnet waren und mehrere Millionen von Flüchtlingen aufnehmen mussten. Ihre Geschichte ist vielfältig; bisweilen wird

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This volume aims to provide information aboutand interpretations of the concept of evidentialitylexically realized with certain verbs andapplied to the genre of medical posters. Morespecifically, issues relating to how knowledgeis conveyed through language will be discussedand how evidence for such knowledge is linguisticallytransmitted in a set of specialised texts.This study uses some of the possibilities offeredby electronic corpora in conjunction with concordancetools, which allow quantitative analysis.Thanks to this quantitative analysis, followedby a qualitative interpretation of thefindings, we could detect the pragmatic functionthese evidential items have in contextual use,allowing us to see that evidentiality in medicaldiscourse is intended in a slightly different wayfrom general discourse.

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International migration is one of the prominent facts in the contemporary world, which affects the political, socio-economic and cultural processes both in origin and destination countries. Historically, Western Europe has been one of the most attractive destinations for migrants because of the level of socio-economic development and political stability. However, there are many complex institutional, socio-economic and cultural issues to be addressed to achieve the integration of migrants and to eliminate social inequalities between the native populations and migrants in these host countries. In this respect, this book examines some aspects of socio-economic disparities between native populations and the migrants in Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Different migration histories, labour market features and welfare state characteristics of these countries are expected to provide insight about how the integration-related and inequality-related issues emerge in diverse social and institutional settings. The study covers the empirical analyses of the disparities in the labour market and accessing the social benefits between 2004 and 2016 by using comparable cross- country survey data. These analyses attempt to demonstrate the relationships between these two domains. The study has a comparative approach, which aims at providing comparable evidence both across the countries and over time in each of the selected countries.

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This interdisciplinary book brings an empirical evidence that social capital is an important building block in the reintegration processes, migration challenges and economic dynamism of the SEE communities. Such a conclusion opposes the common belief that (re)establishing social relations in a post-ethnic conflict environment is difficult, or sometimes even impossible. These are indeed societies where trust in people and institutions remains low, but it is often replaced with other forms of social capital emerging on a daily basis, within and between different population strata, either formally but often informally. Most people who know the region are aware that formal and state institutions in South-East Europe enjoy very low levels of trust. Nearly everybody loves to point to ethnicity as the causal factor behind every difficulty. The authors of this groundbreaking study explore two basic questions: how do people meet their needs and the needs of others when official institutions do not function? And how do members of different ethnic groups experience the role of others and cross symbolic boundaries? The answers, constructed out of empirical evidence using a variety of methods, point to the crucial importance of social capital as an everyday resource, and to the essential role of ethnic, national, and religious diversity in enhancing people's life chances in an unstable environment. Eric Gordy, Professor of Cultural and Political Sociology, University College London Since Mark Granovetter many of us know that both over-socialised (macro) level, and under-socialised (narrowly individualist) representations of social world may lead to counter-effective policies. We need to focus on the meso level, where social cooperation is the most real and the most productive. That leads us to the concept of social capital. This is something the authors of this book understand very well. Moreover, applying it, they are able to shed light on human behaviour in the context of the two key phenomena of present day Europe: migration and capacity for self-help during the crises. Great research questions and contribution. Tomasz Mickiewicz, Professor at Aston University and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London

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Nature, a topic central to art history, is concurrently a dominant concept in contemporary art, art theory and its related disciplines such as cultural theory, philosophy, aesthetic theory and environmental studies. The project Naturally Hypernatural questions lines of tradition and predetermined categories that coexist with the topic of nature. Currently, nature in art surpasses the simple depiction of art as a material or object. To clarify and analyze the interrelations between nature and art is the aim of the project Naturally Hypernatural. Concepts of Nature – the first volume of this project – argues that contemporary art is predominantly concerned with concepts of nature regarding the depth of their implications in order to reveal and analyze their internal structure.

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Contemporary impressions of Islām – especially in the post-9/11 world – are creating daunting challenges for Muslims everywhere. Muslim women, because of their specific mode of attire, seem to be at the forefront of the growing skepticism surrounding Islamic education. Ironically, it would appear that the same detailed attention devoted by Islamic scholars to the conduct of Muslim women now surfaces in contemporary debates, focusing on the exclusionary practices they remain subjected to in their communities. Yet because these debates seldom move beyond continued diatribes against Muslim women’s subjugation to entrenched societal norms of male chauvinism, little is known about what has given shape to their identity and sense of belonging. This book attempts to further the debate in two ways: Firstly, it offers an insight into how some Muslim women engage with one another and with society more generally, and how their practices reflect the plurality of interpretations constitutive of Islam both within and outside the spheres of cosmopolitanism. Secondly, it offers the opportunity to consider how a renewed Islamic education informed by the principles of democratic citizenship education can begin to reshape multifarious forms of engagement by, with and among Muslim women.

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Graduate employability is often put forth as a marker of the success of a given institution or education system. High rates of school and university graduates in jobs offer a number of potential advantages for a country, including encouraging social mobility, increasing citizen participation and social stability, and making national economies more productive. The importance of achieving these and many other associated outcomes has recently received greater attention in many developing nations; this is especially the case in those countries where English assumes an important role as a mediator of educational and economic success. A number of authors claim that the gap between education, training and employment can be closed through the development of academic and employment skills such as motivation, time management, literacy and communication competence. This book explores the ways in which communication and literacy skills can be developed through English language instruction in EFL settings to help bring together the aims and outcomes of education and employment.

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Ukraine’s protest movement of 2013–14, known as the Euromaidan, and its culmination, the people’s uprising in late 2013–early 2014 became one of the most dramatic world events in recent years. The accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation and military conflict in the Donbas demonstrate that the dramatic dynamics of the country’s ongoing transformation are still far from predictable. This book examines the manifold aspects of Ukraine’s current crisis and its political upheaval. The contributors to the book, Ukrainian experts in a variety of disciplinary fields, explore social, political and cultural reasons and factors behind the country’s transformation in its national and regional dimensions, the impact of Ukraine’s revolution on European and global politics, and also the new challenges of tough reforms with which the country is faced. The contributors share the view that the Euromaidan brought new opportunities for Ukraine’s modern development and the greatest historical chance for the country’s European future since independence in 1991.

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Comment l’espace médiatique (presse, télé, web) façonne-t-il la définition et l’attribution de valeurs pour des entités de toutes sortes ? Au moment où abondent les instruments d’évaluation fondés sur la quantification – des indicateurs aux classements, des hit-parades aux baromètres, des mégadonnées au like, des commentaires aux notes – et que concours, prix ou récompenses font florès, ce livre entend éclairer les logiques, les processus et les discours médiatiques à l’œuvre dans la production, la circulation et la publicisation de l’évaluation. How does the media space (press, television, web) shape the definition and assignment of values to various entities? While evaluative tools based on quantification proliferate – from indicators to rankings, from charts to barometers, from big data to like, from comments to notes – and contests, prizes or awards are flourishing, this book aims to shed light on the media logics, processes and discourses at work in the production, circulation and publicization of evaluation.

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Qu'y a-t-il de commun entre l'alcoolisme, les maladies veneriennes, la tuberculose? A priori peu de choses, en dehors de leur etiquette commune de fleau social. Mais, si chacun presente des specificites propres, force est de contacter la convergence des dangers qu'ils presentent. Ces fleaux sociaux menacent la population. Ils sont la cause d'un surcroit de mortalite dans une France qui se singularise deja par de hauts niveaux comparativement a ses voisins. Mais ils compromettent aussi la qualite de la population en vertu de l'idee selon laquelle ils se transmettent de generation en generation. Aussi, face a un tel danger, les fleaux sociaux font-ils l'objet d'une intense mobilisation qui conduira a la mise en place d'une veritable politique de population que l'expression hygiene sociale subsume. Un ensemble de mesures est portee par des associations reunies au sein d'institutions qui lui sont dediees et ce, en depit de concurrences fortes entre elles. Leur objectif : proteger voire encourager le renouvellement demographique. Le livre s'interesse a l'intense mobilisation qu'ont suscite ces fleaux sociaux et aux actions - le plus souvent convergentes qu'ils ont menes sous le label d' hygiene sociale . La lutte contre les fleaux est passee en particulier par l'education des populations. L'analyse de ses contenus, si elle temoigne des balbutiements de l'education a la sante devoile aussi les representations de ce que doit etre la demographie francaise et de ce qui la menace.

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This book examines Japan’s changing pacifism and its implications for Japan’s security identity from 1945 to the present. To examine the shift in Japanese pacifism, this research employs the concept of ‘negative pacifism’ (Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution) and ‘positive pacifism’ (the Preamble of the Constitution) as an analytical framework. To analyse multiple factors which facilitated the shift in Japan’s pacifism, this study applies ‘analytical eclecticism’ and integrates the analytical framework (negative-positive pacifism) with orthodox international relations theories and approaches. In an application of analytical eclecticism, the author proposes four theoretical models of Japan’s security identity: (a) ‘pacifist state’ (classical liberalism/negative pacifism); (b) ‘UN peacekeeper’ (neo-liberalism/positive pacifism); (c) ‘normal state’ (classical realism/domestic pressure); and (d) ‘US ally’ (neo-realism/external-structural pressure). In addition to the four basic models above, this book attempts to reveal Japan’s ‘core security identity’ as a ‘global pacifist state’.

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This volume allows a new generation of scholars, from the Balkans and beyond, to shed light on some of the struggles the region faces. The combination of post-communist and post-conflict transition, together with the current economic and financial crisis, pose difficult challenges for the Western Balkans. What is the state of democracy in the region? Are the countries of the Western Balkans stuck somewhere between authoritarianism and genuine democracy? What are the remaining obstacles to state building? What effect has the crisis had on young people in the Western Balkans? These are some of the questions the authors of this volume seek to answer. The studies look at different countries and combine methods from various disciplines ranging from political science, history, economics and law to sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

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Cet ouvrage réunit les travaux des plus grands spécialistes en poésie épique romane du Moyen ge, rassemblés en juillet 2009 à Genève pour le XVIIIe congrès international de la Société Rencesvals. Ils ont consacré leurs efforts à analyser et à commenter des chansons de geste qui ont vu le jour dans les limites géographiques, politiques ou linguistiques de l’Occident européen. Les articles sont groupés en quatre sections : l’épopée franco-italienne ; l’épopée germanique en relation avec la romane ; la postérité épique dans le roman en Espagne ; les animaux dans les chansons de geste. Parmi tant d’autres, la Chanson de Roland, la Chanson de Guillaume, le Nibelungenlied, le Poème du Cid ou le Digenis Akritis permettent d’établir des liens thématiques ou littéraires qui contribuent à dessiner un panorama toujours plus complet du monde médiéval.

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This volume offers a comparative analysis of the functioning of totalitarian and authoritarian discourses and their aftermath. Whereas other studies often focus on communist/post-communist examples and hence particularize totalitarian discourse, this book starts from a more encompassing theoretical perspective, transcending the limitation of totalitarian discourse to its communist constituent. The case studies presented in this volume thus provide a more differentiated analysis of discursive strategies in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes across the globe, including the former East Germany, former Yugoslavia, Romania, Lithuania, China, North Korea, the Philippines, Burma, Cuba and Tunisia. In addition to this geographical range, these studies also undertake new research into different eras, enabling comparison between past and present discourses. The findings are presented in three interconnected sections dealing with culture and education, media and official discourse, and power structures and politics. The extended scope of the case studies reveals the universal characteristics of totalitarian/authoritarian discourses over space and time.

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Over thirty years, privatization of public enterprises was in the air. Before and during this period of neo-liberalism, and since the 2008 crisis, public enterprises were nonetheless created: they did what they were set up for and they frequently managed to get interesting results, as much on their public mission as regarding profitability. How is this possible? This book looks at public enterprises with new eyes.What are the emerging insights? Those public enterprises evolved a lot during those years. Their governance has been adjusted: they now respond to all kind of stakeholders, they face independent regulators and did enter complex institutional arrangements. Further, they often transformed into conglomerates active in several activity sectors and/or expanded their geographical coverage. Being frequently large-sized, public enterprises are now able to compete on international markets, while continuing delivering important services to their home community. With fifteen case studies from Europe and the Americas, knowledge on public enterprises in the 21st century is updated. Depuis plus de trente ans, ‘privatisation’ se lit et s’entend chaque jour. Pourtant, avant et pendant la période du néo-libéralisme, et depuis la crise de 2008, des entreprises publiques ont vu le jour, générant des résultats probants en termes de mission de service public et de rentabilité. Comment y sont-elles parvenues ? Cet ouvrage analyse les entreprises publiques avec un nouveau regard.Que retenir de cette analyse ? Ces entreprises publiques ont fort évolué au cours de ces années. Leur gouvernance s’est ajustée vis-à-vis d’un contexte institutionnel complexe et face à diverses ‘parties prenantes’, dont les régulateurs indépendants. Elles sont fréquemment devenues des conglomérats actifs dans plusieurs domaines, ou bien se sont étendues géographiquement. Souvent de grande taille, elles sont alors capables d’être concurrentielles sur les marchés internationaux tout en offrant des services importants à leur collectivité d’origine. 15 études de cas d’Europe et d’Amérique sont proposées pour renforcer la connaissance des entreprises publiques au 21e siècle. This book is the result of the International Ciriec working group on "The future of the public enterprise: mission, performance and governance" developed by the CIRIEC International Scientific Commission "Public Enterprises/Public Services": http://www.ciriec.uliege.be/en/research/commission-ep/themes-en-cours-ep/theme-recherche-4/

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Black German Studies is an interdisciplinary field that has experienced significant growth over the past three decades, integrating subjects such as gender studies, diaspora studies, history, and media and performance studies. The field’s contextual roots as well as historical backdrop, nevertheless, span centuries. This volume assesses where the field is now by exploring the nuances of how the past – colonial, Weimar, National Socialist, post-1945, and post-Wende – informs the present and future of Black German Studies; how present generations of Black Germans look to those of the past for direction and empowerment; how discourses shift due to the diversification of power structures and the questioning of identity-based categories; and how Black Germans affirm their agency and cultural identity through cultural productions that engender both counter-discourses and counter-narratives. Examining Black German Studies as a critical, hermeneutic field of inquiry, the contributions are organized around three thematically conceptualized sections: German and Austrian literature and history; pedagogy and theory; and art and performance. Presenting critical works in the fields of performance studies, communication and rhetoric, and musicology, the volume complicates traditional historical narratives, interrogates interdisciplinary methods, and introduces theoretical approaches that help to advance the field.

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This book addresses the issue of task equivalence, which is of fundamental importance in the areas of language testing and task-based research, where task equivalence is a prerequisite. The main study examines the two ‘seemingly-equivalent’ picture-based spoken narrative tasks, using a multi-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies with MFRM analysis of the ratings, the analysis of linguistic performances by Japanese candidates and native speakers of English (NS), expert judgements of the task characteristics, and perceptions of the candidates and NS. The results reveal a complex picture with a number of variables involved in ensuring task equivalence, raising relevant issues regarding the theories of task complexity and the commonly-used linguistic variables for examining learner spoken language. This book has important implications for the possible measures that can be taken to avoid selecting non-equivalent tasks for research and teaching.

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Freida Sima (Bertha) Eisenberg Kraus was among the two million Jewish men, women and children who emigrated from Europe to the United States during the Great Wave of Immigration (1881–1914). This book tells her story and that of her family, from her birth in the Bukovina to her immigration to New York City alone at age fifteen in 1911, her immigrant work life, her marriage to a widower with four sons, and the birth of their only daughter right before the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929. It describes how she and a whole immigrant generation survived that Depression, sent their children off to fight for America during the Second World War while worrying about what was happening to the families that they had left back in Europe. It takes the story further, describing what happened to her European family and how she was reunited with her surviving siblings after the war. The book continues for almost a half century after the war’s end, portraying the «Golden Years» of these former immigrants through their retirement and until the final years of their lives.

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How does the experience of travel transform culture over time? This question is at the heart of this book, which brings together two main areas of scholarship: the cultural analysis of German literature and film and the emerging field of mobilities studies, which places movement and travel at the centre of human experience. The author grounds her analysis in two main concepts or ways of being: dwelling, or remaining in one place, which connotes stability, groundedness and permanence; and mobility, or travel to other destinations, which connotes movement, change and uncertainty. Travel Texts and Moving Cultures provides a comparison of travel writing from two significant periods of global social change: historical (1770–1830) and contemporary (1985–2010). The study includes literature such as Georg Forster’s A Voyage Round the World (1777), which recounts the young German scientist’s journey to New Zealand with Captain Cook; Erich Loest’s Zwiebelmuster [Blue Onion] (1985), which exposes the travel desires of East Germans before the Wende via a semi-autobiographical narrator; and Bernhard Schlink’s Die Heimkehr [Homecoming] (2006), which recontextualises and deconstructs Homer’s Odyssey in the present moment through a son’s search for his father. Whereas a culture founded on mobilities and a desire for travel emerges in the historical period, the contemporary period reveals an increasingly mobile world in which travel is regarded as a human right. The approach taken in this book sheds light on the ethics of ever-increasing mobility and problematises the possibility of homecoming.

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This interdisciplinary volume gathers recent work related to the diverse migratory movements in South-East Europe. The contributions address current aspects of emigration, immigration, transit migration and return from different disciplinary vantage points. They impressively demonstrate that South-East Europe is a highly dynamic migration region marked by a multiplicity of migration-related processes fuelled by global and especially European developments. «This edited book presents an illuminating and stimulating range of essays on a key European and global region which has experienced an extraordinary diversity of migration types and regimes in recent decades. Employing an innovative range of methodologies, the contributions show that South-East Europe is no longer to be seen as a ‘problematic’ space of emigration and transit but as a theatre for highly dynamic mobility phenomena.» (Russell King, Professor of Geography, University of Sussex) «This thought-provoking book makes an important contribution to understanding migration processes from, within and through South-East Europe. The innovative research approach and new insights about diversity of human mobility in the region described in the book will resonate with scholars, policymakers and broader readership within and beyond the region.» (Hariz Halilovich, Associate Professor of Anthropology, RMIT University, Melbourne) «The thorough theoretical and empirical contributions of this volume reveal South-East Europe as a highly diversified European space of complex migration regimes and processes beyond the image of the "troubled", "ethno-national" Balkans. This timely book impressively shows how good scholarship both critically re-assesses knowledge production and points to inequalities and hierarchies on different scales.» (Jelena Tosic, Researcher and lecturer in Social Anthropology, Universities of Vienna and Berne)

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The book examines the presence of medicine matters in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and documents how the theme of medicine can acquire particular importance for the interpretation of the plays: namely, it matters. Andrea A. Conti provides information on certain aspects of the medical context of the Renaissance, effecting the essential connections with previous and subsequent periods and furnishing the necessary background for the understanding of the state of the art of medicine at the time. Luisa Camaiora presents a close reading of the comedies, and identifies for each a specific and dominant medical facet, then proposed as a structural key for the analysis of the plays. The medical motifs enucleated determine the critical perspective for the discussion of the dramatic characters and events and for the interpretation of the overall meaning and significance of the single works. Features and references related to the sphere of medicine, identified in the comedies, are also commented upon and examined in the context of this medical reading of the plays.

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This volume examines the relationship between poetic language and place in the work of Paul Muldoon. Through a close reading of the formal and stylistic aspects of his poems, the book explores the question of how poetry as an art form can be engaged to map the complex exchanges between language and the material, phenomenal, personal and social dimensions of our sense of place. In particular, it demonstrates how various forms of repetition and return, in language and memory, are crucial to Muldoon’s approach to place and landscape. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the poet’s work: the naming of place; the genre of the long poem; poetry, music and nostalgia; and, finally, the place of poetry in the information age.

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The Cold War left indelible traces on the city, where polarities on the global stage crystallized and intersected with political and social dynamics predating and bypassing the Blocs. This collection taps into the rich fabric of memories, histories and cultural interactions of thirteen cities worldwide and the lived experience of urban communities during the long Cold War: activated and mobilized by atomic technologies, taking tourist photographs, attending commercial fairs, enjoying the cinema and the ballet, singing in choirs, paying respect in local cemeteries, visiting museums, and responding to town councils, unions and the local press. Literature, film, photography, the press, the monument, the cemetery, the factory, the ruin, the archive and the natural ecosystem are some of the key frameworks of cultural production elucidated here with a view to countering and exploding received myths about the Cold War.

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