Open Access Books

The first applied research volume in Scottish Romanticism, this collection foregrounds the concept of progress as ‘improvement’ as a constitutive theme of Scottish writing during the long eighteenth century. It explores improvement as the animating principle behind Scotland’s post-1707 project of modernization, a narrative both shaped and reflected in the literary sphere. It represents a vital moment in Romantic studies, as a ‘four-nations’ interrogation of the British context reaches maturity. Equally, the volume contributes to a central concern in the study of Scottish culture, amplifying a critical synthesis of Romanticism and Enlightenment.

Knowledge of and sensitivity toward diversity is an essential skill in the contemporary United States and the wider world. This book addresses the standard topics of race, ethnicity, class and gender but goes much further by engaging seriously with issues of language, religion, age, health and disability, and region and geography. It also considers the intersections between and the diversities within these categories. Eller presents students with an unprecedented combination of history, conceptual analysis, discussion of academic literature, and up-to-date statistics. The book includes a range of illustrations, figures and tables, text boxes, a glossary of key terms, and a comprehensive bibliography. Additional resources are provided via a companion website.

Within the overlapping fields of the sociology of sport, physical education and health education, the use of critical theories and the critical research paradigm has grown in scope. Yet what social impact has this research had?This book considers the capacity of critical research and associated social theory to play an active role in challenging social injustices or at least in ‘making a difference’ within health and physical education (HPE) and sporting contexts. It also examines how the use of different social theories impacts sport policies, national curricula and health promotion activities, as well as the practices of HPE teaching and sport training and competition.Critical Research in Sport, Health and Physical Education is a valuable resource for academics and students working in the fields of research methods, sociology of sport, physical education and health.

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices.The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations.An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

This book explains the concept, framework, implementation, and evaluation of controlled document authoring in this age of translation technologies. Machine translation (MT) is routinely used in many situations, by companies, governments, and individuals. Despite recent advances, MT tools are still known to be imperfect, sometimes producing critical errors. To enhance the performance of MT, researchers and language practitioners have developed controlled languages that impose restrictions on the form or length of the source-language text. However, a fundamental, persisting problem is that both current MT systems and controlled languages deal only with the sentence as the unit of processing. To be effective, controlled languages must be contextualised at the document level, consequently enabling MT to generate outputs appropriate for their functional context within the target document. With a specific focus on Japanese municipal documents, this book establishes a framework for controlled document authoring by integrating various research strands including document formalisation, controlled language, and terminology management. It then presents the development and evaluation of an authoring support system, MuTUAL, that is designed to help non-professional writers create well-organised documents that are both readable and translatable. The book provides useful insights for researchers and practitioners interested in translation technology, technical writing, and natural language processing applications.

In the decade since Kevin Hylton’s seminal book ‘Race’ and Sport: Critical Race Theory was published, racialised issues have remained at the forefront of sport and leisure studies. In this important new book, Hylton draws on original research in contemporary contexts, from sport coaching to cyberspace, to show once again that Critical Race Theory is an insightful and productive tool for interrogating problematic social phenomena. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ statement that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line”, this book sheds a critical light on the way sport perpetuates racism, while identifying opportunities to challenge its insidious presence. Exploring and explaining the ways in which notions of ‘race’ are expressed and contested at individual, institutional and societal levels, it addresses key topics such as whiteness, diversity, colourblindness, unconscious bias, identity, leadership, humour and discourse to investigate how language can be used as a device for resistance against racism in sport.
Contesting ‘Race’ and Sport: Shaming the Colour Line is vital reading for all sport studies students, academics and those with an interest in race, ethnicity and society.

The EURO-C conference series (Split 1984, Zell am See 1990, Innsbruck 1994, Badgastein 1998, St. Johann im Pongau 2003, Mayrhofen 2006, Schladming 2010, St. Anton am Arlberg 2014, and Bad Hofgastein 2018) brings together researchers and practising engineers concerned with theoretical, algorithmic and validation aspects associated with computational simulations of concrete and concrete structures. Computational Modelling of Concrete Structures reviews and discusses research advancements and the applicability and robustness of methods and models for reliable analysis of complex concrete, reinforced concrete and pre-stressed concrete structures in engineering practice.The contributions cover both computational mechanics and computational modelling aspects of the analysis and design of concrete and concrete structures: Multi-scale cement and concrete research: experiments and modellingAging concrete: from very early ages to decades-long durabilityAdvances in material modelling of plain concreteAnalysis of reinforced concrete structuresSteel-concrete interaction, fibre-reinforced concrete, and masonryDynamic behaviour: from seismic retrofit to impact simulationComputational Modelling of Concrete Structures is of special interest to academics and researchers in computational concrete mechanics, as well as industry experts in complex nonlinear simulations of concrete structures.

This book offers the first comparative monograph on the management of elections. The book defines electoral management as a new, inter-disciplinary area and advances a realist sociological approach to study it. A series of new, original frameworks are introduced, including the PROSeS framework, which can be used by academics and practitioners around the world to evaluate electoral management quality. A networked governance approach is also introduced to understand the full range of collaborative actors involved in delivering elections, including civil society and the international community. Finally, the book evaluates some of the policy instruments used to improve the integrity of elections, including voter registration reform, training and the funding of elections. Extensive mixed methods are used throughout including thematic analysis of interviews, (auto-)ethnography, comparative historical analysis and, cross-national and national surveys of electoral officials. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners interested and involved in electoral integrity and elections, and more broadly to comparative politics, public administration, international relations and democracy studies.

Classical Heritage and European Identities examines how the heritages of classical antiquity have been used to construct European identities, and especially the concept of citizenship, in Denmark from the eighteenth century to the present day. It implements a critical historiographical perspective in line with recent work on the “reception” of classical antiquity that has stressed the dialectic relationship between past, present and future.Arguing that the continuous employment and appropriation of lassical heritages in the Danish context constitutes an interesting case of an imagined geography that is simultaneously based on both national and European identities, the book shows how Denmark’s imagined geography is naturalized through very distinctive uses of classical heritages within the educational and heritage sectors.

“This volume is critical to the two dominant historiographical paradigms on the topic of Balkan revolutions. This new treatment does not adopt a description of the national movements resulting from the dissolution of the territories of the “Sick man of Europe” from the Great European Powers (Eastern Question Paradigm). Nor is it based on the autonomous process of repetitive awakenings of sleeping Nations, drugged from the Oriental influence of their ruler (Balkan Nationalism Paradigm). Instead, the author attempts a classification as well as a new description of the Balkan national movements as a continuous feedback with the internal sociopolitical schisms in Western Europe, as expressed in the great revolutionary crises from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century.”

Civic Spaces and Desire presents an original and critical appraisal of civic spaces for a novel theoretical intersection of architecture and human geography. The authors address civic spaces that embody a strong moral code, such as a remembrance park or a casino, in various places in the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. The consecutive chapters of the book present these chosen spaces as the interconnection between the everyday and the ideological. By doing so the book reimagines the socio-political effects of the countercultural assemblages and ontologies of difference that these spaces produce, represent and foster, as presented through outcasts and nomads of various kinds and forms. The book reflects on different interpretations of the key texts from primarily post-linguistic theoreticians, such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Jacques Derrida. It will benefit students and academics in architecture, geography, philosophy and urban studies and planning, who seek to understand the politics of space, place and civility. By deconstructing normative ideological constructs, the book uses the concept of desire to explore the tensions between expectations of civic spaces and the disappointment and wonder of their immanent existence.

Charged Particle Optics Theory: An Introduction identifies the most important concepts of charged particle optics theory, and derives each mathematically from the first principles of physics. Assuming an advanced undergraduate-level understanding of calculus, this book follows a logical progression, with each concept building upon the preceding one. Beginning with a non-mathematical survey of the optical nature of a charged particle beam, the text:

Discusses both geometrical and wave optics, as well as the correspondence between them

Describes the two-body scattering problem, which is essential to the interaction of a fast charged particle with matter

Introduces electron emission as a practical consequence of quantum mechanics

Addresses the Fourier transform and the linear second-order differential equation

Includes problems to amplify and fill in the theoretical details, with solutions presented separately

Charged Particle Optics Theory: An Introduction makes an ideal textbook as well as a convenient reference on the theoretical origins of the optics of charged particle beams. It is intended to prepare the reader to understand the large body of published research in this mature field, with the end result translated immediately to practical application.

Casting a Movement brings together US-based actors, directors, educators, playwrights, and scholars to explore the cultural politics of casting.Drawing on the notion of a “welcome table”—a space where artists of all backgrounds can come together as equals to create theatre—the book’s contributors discuss casting practices as they relate to varying communities and contexts, including Middle Eastern American theatre, Disability culture, multilingual performance, Native American theatre, color- and culturally-conscious casting, and casting as a means to dismantle stereotypes. Syler and Banks suggest that casting is a way to invite more people to the table so that the full breadth of US identities can be reflected onstage, and that casting is inherently a political act; because an actor’s embodied presence both communicates a dramatic narrative and evokes cultural assumptions associated with appearance, skin color, gender, sexuality, and ability, casting choices are never neutral. By bringing together a variety of artistic perspectives to discuss common goals and particular concerns related to casting, this volume features the insights and experiences of a broad range of practitioners and experts across the field.As a resource-driven text suitable for both practitioners and academics, Casting a Movement seeks to frame and mobilize a social movement focused on casting, access, and representation.

This edited volume provides a synthesis on the question of business attitudes towards and its influence over the development of the modern welfare state. It gathers leading scholars in the field to offer both in-depth historical country case studies and comparative chapters that discuss contemporary developments.Composed of six archive-based historical narratives of business’ role in the development of social insurance programs in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and six comparative case studies, this volume also extends the study of business to policy fields that have hitherto received little attention in the literature, such as active labor market policies, educational policies, employment protection legislation, healthcare, private pension programs and work‐family policies. It illuminates why business groups have responded so very differently to demands for increased social protection against different labor market risks in different countries and over time.
This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of comparative welfare, political science, sociology, social policy studies, comparative political economy and welfare history.

“Der Einzug digitaler Techniken in die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung bringt neue Chancen, aber auch Herausforderungen mit sich. Dieser Band beleuchtet, welche Projekte das Georg-Eckert-Institut entwickelt, um die Potentiale der Digital Humanities für die Schulbuchforschung zu erkunden und nutzbar zu machen. Wie werden Daten akquiriert und aufbereitet? Wie Informationen daraus gewonnen? Wie werden diese zugänglich gemacht und zur Nachnutzung zur Verfügung gestellt? Zu Wort kommen neben den Entwicklerinnen und Entwicklern digitaler Forschungsinfrastrukturen auch diejenigen, die die Anwendungen nutzen.”

This book offers the first attempt at understanding interpersonal violence in ancient Athens. While the archaic desire for revenge persisted into the classical period, it was channeled by the civil discourse of the democracy. Forensic speeches, curse tablets, and comedy display a remarkable openness regarding the definition of violence. But in daily life, Athenians had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They did so by enacting a discourse on violence in the performance of these genres, during which complex negotiations about the legitimacy of violence took place. Since discourse and reality were intertwined and the discourse was ritualized, actual violence might also have been partly ritualized. By still respecting the on-going desire to harm one’s enemy, this partial ritualization of violence helped restrain violence and thus contributed to Athens’ relative stability.