Open Access Books

This book offers a unique perspective on meaning in language, broadening the scope of existing understanding of meaning by introducing a comprehensive and cohesive account of meaning that draws on a wide range of linguistic approaches.The volume seeks to build up a complete picture of what meaning is, different types of meaning, and different ways of structuring the same meaning across myriad forms and varieties of language across such domains, such as everyday speech, advertising, humour, and academic writing. Supported by data from psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research, the book combines different approaches from scholarship in semantics, including formalist, structuralist, cognitive, functionalist, and semiotics to demonstrate the ways in which meaning is expressed in words but also in word order and intonation. The book argues for a revised conceptualisation of meaning toward presenting a new perspective on semantics and its wider study in language and linguistic research. This book will appeal to scholars interested in meaning in language in such fields as linguistics, semantics, and semiotics.

This volume focuses on hospitality as a theoretically and historically crucial phenomenon in Shakespeare’s work with ramifications for contemporary thought and practice. Drawing a multifaceted picture of Shakespeare’s scenes of hospitality—with their numerous scenes of greeting, feeding, entertaining, and sheltering—the collection demonstrates how hospitality provides a compelling frame for the core ethical, political, theological, and ecological questions of Shakespeare’s time and our own. By reading Shakespeare’s plays in conjunction with contemporary theory as well as early modern texts and objects—including almanacs, recipe books, husbandry manuals, and religious tracts — this book reimagines Shakespeare’s playworld as one charged with the risks of hosting (rape and seduction, war and betrayal, enchantment and disenchantment) and the limits of generosity (how much can or should one give the guest, with what attitude or comportment, and under what circumstances?). This substantial volume maps the terrain of Shakespearean hospitality in its rich complexity, demonstrating the importance of historical, rhetorical, and phenomenological approaches to this diverse subject.

Crime is often perceived as an urban issue rather than a problem that occurs in rural areas, but how far is this view tenable? This book explores the relationship between crime and community in rural areas and addresses the notion of safety as part of the community dynamics in such areas.Rural Crime and Community Safety makes a significant contribution to crime science and integrates a range of theories to understand patterns of crime and perceived safety in rural contexts. Based on a wealth of original research, Ceccato combines spatial methods with qualitative analysis to examine, in detail, farm and wildlife crime, youth related crimes and gendered violence in rural settings. Making the most of the expanding field of Criminology and of the growing professional inquiry into crime and crime prevention in rural areas; rural development; and the social sustainability of rural areas, this book builds a bridge by connecting Criminology and Human Geography. This book will be suitable for academics, students and practitioners in the fields of criminology, community safety, rural studies, rural development and gender studies.

World War I marks a well-known turning point in anthropology, and this volume is the first to examine the variety of forms it took in Europe. Distinct national traditions emerged and institutes were founded, partly due to collaborations with the military. Researchers in the cultural sciences used war zones to gain access to »informants«: prisoner-of-war and refugee camps, occupied territories, even the front lines. Anthropologists tailored their inquiries to aid the war effort, contributed to interpretations of the war as a »struggle« between »races«, and assessed the »warlike« nature of the Balkan region, whose crises were key to the outbreak of the Great War.

The Routledge Handbook of Taxation and Philanthropy ventures into a territory that is still widely unexplored. It contains 30 academic contributions that aim to provide a better understanding of whether, why, and how philanthropic initiatives, understood as voluntary contributions for the common good, can and should be fostered by states through tax incentives. The topic has been addressed from a multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective – covering neuroeconomics, sociology, political science, psychology, affective sciences, philosophy, behavioral economy, and law – because of its global and multifaceted nature. It also contains the OECD report on Taxation and Philanthropy released in November 2020, which was prepared in this context as a result of a collaboration with the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy of the University of Geneva.The book is divided into four sections, exploring, respectively, the justification of tax incentives for philanthropy, theoretical and empirical insights about taxes, efficiency and donor behavior in that context, and tax incentives for cross-border philanthropy and for hybrid entities and social entrepreneurship. It is believed that this volume will be a landmark yet only the beginning of a journey in which a lot remains to be studied, learned, and said.

Due to the competitive edge it confers on students, educational institutions, and non-English speaking nations in a globalized economy, English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been gaining popularity in tertiary education in non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Institute-wide EMI implementation has often been imposed by top-down decisions, in combination with the optimistic view that the horse should always be placed before the cart. However, emerging evidence suggests that the delivery of such programs to NNES students has led to new pedagogical challenges and learning problems that go beyond the scope of language learning and teaching and deserve immediate attention. For example, how would an instructor respond to situations in which students’ learning of content is compromised by their limited language proficiency? This book draws on the current practice of EMI in diverse disciplines and university settings and examines how these new pedagogical and learning issues can be addressed. The discussion also involves a reflection on the essence of EMI in relation to the use of the first language (L1) as the medium of instruction in tertiary education. In addition, the book includes discussion about how to ensure and maintain the quality of EMI programs and assess the readiness of stakeholders for such programs, which include administrators, teachers, and students. The discussion is led by exemplars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the majority of students are native Chinese speakers, in the hope of developing critical perspectives and practical guidelines as references for EMI in other NNES settings.“The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/ISBN, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Regulating Coastal Zones addresses the knowledge gap concerning the legal and regulatory challenges of managing land in coastal zones across a broad range of political and socio-economic contexts.In recent years, coastal zone management has gained increasing attention from environmentalists, land use planners, and decision-makers across a broad spectrum of fields. Development pressures along coasts such as high-end tourism projects, luxury housing, ports, energy generation, military outposts, heavy industry, and large-scale enterprise compete with landscape preservation and threaten local history and culture. Leading experts present fifteen case studies among advanced-economy countries, selected to represent three groups of legal contexts: signatories to the 2008 Mediterranean ICZM Protocol, parties to the 2002 EU Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management, and the USA and Australia.This book is the first to address the legal-regulatory aspects of coastal land management from a systematic cross-national comparative perspective. By including both successful and less-effective strategies, it aims to inform professionals, graduate students, policy makers, and NGOs of the legal and socio-political challenges as well as the better practices from which others could learn.

In a world where entrepreneurial success often seems deceptively accessible, it is not always clear what makes a person entrepreneurial. In this book, Dimo Dimov offers a reflective insight into the entrepreneurial journey, striking up a conversation about entrepreneurship in order to challenge and untangle existing preconceptions.A discussion of challenges and tensions such as idea versus opportunity, genius versus lunatic, and skill versus luck forms the foundation of the book, while the second part offers actions and considerations which can help the reader to seek opportunities in a fractious environment. The final part of the text focuses on the collective spirit in entrepreneurship, arising from the interplay between participation and outcomes.The author brings a succinct diversity to the field, making this book essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on entrepreneurship courses, as well as scholars, researchers, and practitioners looking for a new perspective on entrepreneurship.

This book bridges a scholarly divide between empirical and normative theorizing about procedural justice in the context of relations of power between citizens and the state. Empirical research establishes that people’s understanding of procedural justice is shaped by relational factors. A central premise of this volume is that this research is significant but needs to be complemented by normative theorizing that draws on relational theories of ethics and justice to explain the moral significance of procedures and make normative sense of people’s concerns about relational factors. The chapters in Part 1 provide comprehensive reviews of empirical studies of procedural justice in policing, courts and prisons. Part 2 explores empirical and normative perspectives on procedural justice and legitimacy. Part 3 examines philosophical approaches to procedural justice. Part 4 considers the implications of a relational perspective for the design of procedures in a range of legal contexts. This collection will be of interest to a wide academic readership in philosophy, law, psychology and criminology.

This book offers a fundamental contribution to the literature on the creative industries and the knowledge-based economy by focusing on three aspects: urban spaces as key sites of capitalist restructuring, creative industries policies as state technologies aimed at economic exploitation, and the role of networks of aesthetic production in inflecting these tendencies. It simultaneously goes beyond these debates by integrating a concern with the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of the creative industries. As such, the book is relevant to researchers interested in the transdisciplinary project of a cultural political economy of creativity and urban change.

This book explores the relationship between populism or populist regimes and constitutional interpretation used in those regimes. The volume discusses the question of whether contemporary populist governments and movements have developed, or encouraged new and specific constitutional theories, doctrines and methods of interpretation, or whether their constitutional and other high courts continue to use the old, traditional interpretative tools in constitutional adjudication. The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains three chapters elaborating the theoretical basis for the discussion. Part II examines the topic from a comparative perspective, representing those European countries where populism is most prevalent, including Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Part III extends the focus to the United States, reflecting how American jurisprudence and academia have produced the most important contributions to the theory of constitutional interpretation, and how recent political developments in that country might challenge the traditional understanding of judicial review. This section also includes a general overview on Latin America, where there are also some populist governments and strong populist movements. Finally, the editors’ closing study analyses the outcomes of the comparative research, summarizing the conclusions of the book. Written by renowned national constitutional scholars, the book will be essential reading for students, academics and researchers working in Constitutional Law and Politics.

Music, as the form of art whose name derives from ancient myths, is often thought of as pure symbolic expression and associated with transcendence. Music is also a universal phenomenon and thus a profound marker of humanity. These features make music a sphere of activity where sacred and popular qualities intersect and amalgamate. In an era characterised by postsecular and postcolonial processes of religious change, re-enchantment and alternative spiritualities, the intersections of the popular and the sacred in music have become increasingly multifarious. In the book, the cultural dynamics at stake are approached by stressing the extended and multiple dimensions of the sacred and the popular, hence challenging conventional, taken-for-granted and rigid conceptualisations of both popular music and sacred music. At issue are the cultural politics of labelling music as either popular or sacred, and the disciplinary and theoretical implications of such labelling. Instead of focussing on specific genres of popular music or types of religious music, consideration centres on interrogating musical situations where a distinction between the popular and the sacred is misleading, futile and even impossible. The topic is discussed in relation to a diversity of belief systems and different repertoires of music, including classical, folk and jazz, by considering such themes as origin myths, autonomy, ingenuity and stardom, authenticity, moral ambiguity, subcultural sensibilities and political ideologies.

The Routledge History of Death Since 1800 looks at how death has been treated and dealt with in modern history – the history of the past 250 years – in a global context, through a mix of definite, often quantifiable changes and a complex, qualitative assessment of the subject. The book is divided into three parts, with the first considering major trends in death history and identifying widespread patterns of change and continuity in the material and cultural features of death since 1800. The second part turns to specifically regional experiences, and the third offers more specialized chapters on key topics in the modern history of death. Historical findings and debates feed directly into a current and prospective assessment of death, as many societies transition into patterns of ageing that will further alter the death experience and challenge modern reactions. Thus, a final chapter probes this topic, by way of introducing the links between historical experience and current trajectories, ensuring that the book gives the reader a framework for assessing the ongoing process, as well as an understanding of the past. Global in focus and linking death to a variety of major developments in modern global history, the volume is ideal for all those interested in the multifaceted history of how death is dealt with in different societies over time and who want access to the rich and growing historiography on the subject.

Painting the Novel: Pictorial Discourse in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction focuses on the interrelationship between eighteenth-century theories of the novel and the art of painting – a subject which has not yet been undertaken in a book-length study. This volume argues that throughout the century novelists from Daniel Defoe to Ann Radcliffe referred to the visual arts, recalling specific names or artworks, but also artistic styles and conventions, in an attempt to define the generic constitution of their fictions. In this, the novelists took part in the discussion of the sister arts, not only by pointing to the affinities between them but also, more importantly, by recognising their potential to inform one another; in other words, they expressed a conviction that the theory of a new genre can be successfully rendered through meta-pictorial analogies. By tracing the uses of painting in eighteenth-century novelistic discourse, this book sheds new light on the history of the so-called “rise of the novel”.

To justify the plundering of todays Democratic Republic of the Congo, U.S. intellectual elites have continuously produced dismissive Congo discourses. Tracing these discourses in great depth and breadth for the first time, Johnny Van Hove shows how U.S. intellectuals (and their influential European counterparts) have been using the Congo in similar fashions for their own goals. Analyzing intellectuals as diverse as W.E.B. Du Bois, Joseph Conrad, and David Van Reybrouck, the book offers a theorization of Central West Africa, a case study of normalized narratives on the »Other«, and a stirring wake up call for all contemporary writers on international history and politics.

The integrated meta-model for organizational resource audit is a consistent and comprehensive instrument for auditing intangible resources and their relations and associations from the network perspective. This book undertakes a critically important problem of management sciences, poorly recognized in literature although determining the current and future competitiveness of enterprises, sectors and economies. The author notes the need to introduce a theoretical input, which is manifested by the meta-model. An expression of this treatment is the inclusion of the network as a structure of activities, further knowledge as an activity, and intangible assets as intellectual capital characterized by a structure of connections. The case study presented is an illustration of the use of network analysis tools and other instruments to identify not only the most important resources, tasks or actors, as well as their effectiveness, but also to connect the identified networks with each other. The author opens the field for applying her methodology, revealing the structural and dynamic features of the intangible resources of the organization. The novelty of the proposed meta-model shows the way to in-depth applications of network analysis techniques in an intra-organizational environment. Organizational Network Analysis makes a significant contribution to the development of management sciences, in terms of strategic management and more strictly resource approach to the company through structural definition of knowledge; application of the concept of improvement-oriented audit abandoning a narrow understanding of this technique in terms of compliance; reliable presentation of audits available in the literature; rigorous reasoning leading to the development of a meta-model; close linking of knowledge and resources with the strategy at the design stage of the developed audit model, including the analysis of link dynamics and networks together with an extensive metrics proposal; an interesting illustration of the application with the use of metrics, tables and charts. It will be of value to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of strategic management, organizational studies, social network analysis in management, knowledge management, and auditing knowledge resources in organizations.