Open Access Books - Social Sciences and Humanities - 2022

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  • Publication
    Creating the Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Study
    ( 2022)
    Shoemaker, Stephen J.
    Creating the Qur'an presents the first systematic historical-critical study of the Qur'an's origins, drawing on methods and perspectives commonly used to study other scriptural traditions. Demonstrating in detail that the Islamic tradition relates not a single attested account of the holy text's formation, Stephen J. Shoemaker shows how the Qur'an preserves a surprisingly diverse array of memories regarding the text's early history and its canonization. To this he adds perspectives from radiocarbon dating of manuscripts, the linguistic history of Arabic, the social and cultural history of late ancient Arabia, and the limitations of human memory and oral transmission, as well as various peculiarities of the Qur'anic text itself. Considering all the relevant data to present the most comprehensive and convincing examination of the origin and evolution of the Qur'an available, Shoemaker concludes that the canonical text of the Qur'an was most likely produced only around the turn of the eighth century.
  • Publication
    Exploring Language Education: Global and Local Perspectives
    ( 2022)
    Zetterholm, Elisabeth; Hedman, Christina; Bardel, Camilla; Rejman, Katarina
    The overarching aim of this book is to offer researchers and students insight into some currently discussed issues at the Swedish as well as the international research frontline of Language Education in a selection of up-to-date work. Another aim is to provide teachers, teacher educators and policy-makers with input from research within the interconnected disciplines of Applied Linguistics, Language Education and Second Language Acquisition.The volume includes five examples of topical research on language education and the authors are internationally renowned scholars. The chapters are based on a selection of talks presented at the 1st ELE Conference (‘Exploring Language Education’), which was held at Stockholm University in 2018. Employing a broad thematic scope, the volume reflects the variety of perspectives on language education brought together at the conference by authors working in diverse areas of the field and in different parts of the world. With the first ELE conference the organizers wished to call attention to the intersection of the global and the local, in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity, which may inform both research questions and language education practices. Issues related to multilingualism, Global Englishes, and experienced tensions between research and practice are examples of generally shared issues that were brought up by many speakers. The chapters of the book represent this variety of themes and illustrate how different regions and communities are contingent on local prerequisites and circumstances, leading to a number of particular challenges and assets when it comes to language education.The chapters represent different parts of the broad array of research directions that can be discerned under the large umbrella of Language Education, zooming in on the Western context, specifically Sweden, Canada and the United States. Two of the plenary speakers from the conference, Nina Spada and John Levis contribute in the volume. In Spada’s text different ways to bridge the gap between research and practice in language education are discussed, an issue highly relevant to all of those interested in collaborative research between researchers and teachers. The second chapter, written by Levis, presents current research on phonology and the importance of pronunciation in second or foreign language communication.These two are followed by three chapters reporting on empirical studies. Amanda Brown and colleagues present their work on translanguaging in the English L2 classroom, giving an extensive overview of ideological stances from the last decades on the use of mother tongues vs. target language only in the language classroom.Liss Kerstin Sylvén reports on a recent study on very young Swedish learners of English, their exposure of English before school age and outside school and the role that this exposure plays for the development of English language proficiency. Finally, Gudrun Erickson and colleagues, present a questionnaire answered by a large number of modern language teachers in Sweden. The study explores the teachers’ answers on questions about their professional satisfaction, their use of the target language in the classroom, and the curricular status of foreign languages studied after English. Despite many critical points raised by these teachers, the survey reveals that they would not change profession, were they given the chance.
  • Publication
    Child-directed Speech in Qaqet: A Language of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea
    ( 2022)
    Frye, Henrike
    "Qaqet is a non-Austronesian language, spoken by about 15,000 people in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In the remote inland, children acquire Qaqet as their first language. Much of what we know about child‑directed speech (CDS) stems from children living in middle‑class, urban, industrialised contexts. This book combines evidence from different methods, showing that the features typical for speech to children in such contexts are also found in Qaqet CDS. Preliminary insights from naturalistic audio recordings suggest that Qaqet children are infrequently addressed directly. In interviews, Qaqet caregivers express the view that children 'pick up' the language on their own. Still, they have clear ideas about how to talk to children in a way that makes it easier for them to understand what is said. In order to compare adult- and child-directed speech in Qaqet, 20 retellings of a film have been analysed, half of them told to adults and half to children. The data show that talk directed to children differs from talk directed to adults for several features, among them utterance type, mean length of utterance, amount of hesitations and intonation. Despite this clear tendency, there seems to be a cut-off point of around 40 months of age for several of those features from which the talk directed to children becomes more like the talk directed to adults."
  • Publication
    Contested Sustainability: The Political Ecology of Conservation and Development in Tanzania
    ( 2022)
    Olwig, Mette Fog; Henriksen, Lasse Folke; John, Ruth Wairimu; Namkesa, Faraja Daniel; Minja, Rasul Ahmed; Kamnde, Kelvin Joseph; Gallemore, Caleb; Mwamfupe, Asubisye; Kweka, Opportuna; Silvano, Pilly; Katikiro, Robert Eliakim
    Providing valuable insights into the successes and failures of the management of wildlife, forests and coastal resources in Tanzania, this study draws from 'New Partnerships for Sustainability' (NEPSUS), a 5-year collective research project. Responding to the urgent need in writings on conservation, sustainability and development, this book considers how politics structure sustainability outcomes at multiple levels, it uncovers the complexity of partnerships that are crucial for achieving this, challenging its readers to interrogate these sustainability networks and their environmental and socio-economic outcomes. The contributors, from a range of disciplines, compare 'more complex' partnerships to relatively 'simpler', more traditional top-down and centralized management systems and to location where sustainability partnerships are not in place. Within-sector comparisons allow a fine-tuned analysis that is formed of historical, location and resource-specific issues, which can be used as input for resource-specific policy and partnership design. Experiences and lessons can be drawn from comparisons across the three different sectors, which can be applied to natural resource governance more broadly.
  • Publication
    Land, Life, and Emotional Landscapes at the Margins of Bangladesh
    ( 2022)
    Hölzle, Éva Rozália
    Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in the north-eastern borderlands of Bangladesh, this book focuses on the everyday struggles of indigenous farmers threatened with losing their land due to such state programmes as the realignment of the national border, ecotourism, social forestry and the establishment of a military cantonment. In implementing these programmes, state actors challenge farmers’ right to land, instituting spaces of violence in which multiple forms of marginalisation overlap and are reinforced. Mapping how farmers react to these challenges emotionally and practically, the book argues that these land conflicts serve as a starting point for existentially charged disputes in which the survival efforts of farmers clash with the political imaginations and practices of the nation-state. The analysis shows that losing land represents more than being deprived of a material asset: it is nothing less than the extinction of ways of life.
  • Publication
    Work Requirements: Race, Disability, and the Print Culture of Social Welfare
    ( 2022)
    Carmody, Todd
    Throughout the history of the United States, work-based social welfare practices have served to affirm the moral value of work. In the late nineteenth century this representational project came to be mediated by the printed word with the emergence of industrial print technologies, the expansion of literacy, and the rise of professionalization. In Work Requirements Todd Carmody asks how work, even the most debasing or unproductive labor, came to be seen as inherently meaningful during this era. He explores how the print culture of social welfare-produced by public administrators, by economic planners, by social scientists, and in literature and the arts-tasked people on the social and economic margins, specifically racial minorities, incarcerated people, and people with disabilities, with shoring up the fundamental dignity of work as such. He also outlines how disability itself became a tool of social discipline, defined by bureaucratized institutions as the inability to work. By interrogating the representational effort necessary to make work seem inherently meaningful, Carmody ultimately reveals a forgotten history of competing efforts to think social belonging beyond or even without work.
  • Publication
    Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union
    ( 2022)
    Micinski, Nicholas R.
    Delegating Responsibility explores the politics of migration in the European Union and explains how the EU responded to the 2015-17 refugee crisis. Based on 86 interviews and fieldwork in Greece and Italy, Nicholas R. Micinski proposes a new theory of international cooperation on international migration. States approach migration policies in many ways-such as coordination, collaboration, subcontracting, and unilateralism-but which policy they choose is based on capacity and on credible partners on the ground. Micinski traces the fifty-year evolution of EU migration management, like border security and asylum policies, and shows how EU officials used "crises" as political leverage to further Europeanize migration governance. In two in-depth case studies, he explains how Italy and Greece responded to the most recent refugee crisis. He concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations regarding contemporary as well as long-term aspirations for migration management in the EU.
  • Publication
    Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies
    ( 2022)
    Ong, Elvin Jiayun
    Opposing Power argues that perceptions of regime vulnerability and mutual dependency by opposition elites shape the building of opposition alliances. When electoral autocracies are consistently dominant, opposition parties eschew fully fledged alliances. At best, they allocate only one candidate to contest against the incumbent in each subnational electoral district to avoid splitting the opposition vote. However, when multiple regime-debilitating events strike within a short period of time, thus pushing an incumbent to the precipice of power, opposition elites expect victory, accepting costly compromises to build alliances and seize power. Opposing Power shows how oppositions build these alliances through case study comparisons in East and Southeast Asia-between the Philippines and South Korea in the late 1980s, and between Malaysia and Singapore from 1965 to 2020.
  • Publication
    Vidding: A History
    ( 2022)
    Coppa, Francesca
    Vidding is a well-established remix practice where fans edit an existing film, music video, TV show, or other performance and set it to music of their choosing. Vids emerged forty years ago as a complicated technological feat involving capturing footage from TV with a VCR and syncing with music-and their makers and consumers were almost exclusively women, many of them queer women. The technological challenges of doing this kind of work in the 1970s and 1980s when vidding began gave rise to a rich culture of collective work, as well as conventions of creators who gathered to share new work and new techniques. While the rise of personal digital technology eventually democratized the tools vidders use, the collective aspect of the culture grew even stronger with the advent of YouTube, Vimeo, and other channels for sharing work. Vidding: A History emphasizes vidding as a critical, feminist form of fan practice. Working outward from interviews, VHS liner notes, convention programs, and mailing list archives, Coppa offers a rich history of vidding communities as they evolved from the 1970s through to the present. Built with the classroom in mind, the open-access electronic version of this book includes over one-hundred vids and an appendix that includes additional close readings of vids.
  • Publication
    Putting PIRLS to Use in Classrooms Across the Globe
    ( 2022)
    Marian Bruggink, Nicole Swart, Annelies van der Lee, Eliane Segers
    This open access book provides teachers with approaches to strengthen reading comprehension instruction based on scientific research and evidence-based didactic principles. In this volume, the Progress in International Reading Study (PIRLS) framework is used to inform teachers about the skills and knowledge that students need to comprehend certain texts. The book gives practical guidance on how a teacher can help students to learn these skills, specifically, when teaching reading to multilingual students. Good practices from schools in five participating PIRLS countries—Chile, Chinese Taipei, England, Georgia, and Spain—are shared. A description of the schools’ education in reading comprehension is provided with practical tips and example lessons. These insights into daily reading education in multilingual classrooms across the globe can be an inspiration to teachers all over the world.
  • Publication
    Postcolonial Memory in the Netherlands: Meaningful Voices, Meaningful Silences
    ( 2022)
    van Engelenhoven, Gerlov
    This book is about postcolonial memory in the Netherlands. This term refers to conflicts in contemporary society about how the colonial past should be remembered. The question is often: who has the right or ability to tell their stories and who do not? In other words: who has a voice, and who is silenced? As such, these conflicts represent a wider tendency in cultural theory and activism to use voice as a metaphor for empowerment and silence as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying powerlessness. And yet, there are voices that do not liberate us from, but rather subject us to power. Meanwhile, silence can be powerful: it can protect, disrupt and reconfigure. Throughout this book, it will become clear how voice and silence function not as each other’s opposites, but as each other’s continuation, and that postcolonial memory is articulated through the interplay of meaningful voices and meaningful silences.
  • Publication
    Village Housing: Constraints and opportunities in rural England
    ( 2022)
    Stirling, Phoebe ; Gallent, Nick ; Hamiduddin, Iqbal ; Wu, Meiling
    Violent Affections uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of 'gay propaganda' law, the book shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials. It then utilises an original methodology of studying 'legal memes' and argues that these individual affective states are directly connected to the political violence aimed at queer lives more generally. The main aim of Violent Affections is to explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence evidenced in the reviewed cases. Alexander Sasha Kondakov expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature - queer theory and affect theory - in order to conceptualise what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. Taking the empirical observations from Russia as a starting point, he develops an original explanation of how contemporary power relations are changing from those of late modernity as envisioned by Foucault's Panopticon to neo-disciplinary power relations of a much more fragmented, fluid and unstructured kind - the Memeticon. The book traces how exactly affections circulate from body to body as a kind of virus and eventually invade the body that responds with violence. In this analytic effort, it draws on the arguments from memetics - the theory of how pieces of information pass on from one body to another as they thrive to survive by continuing to resonate. This work makes the argument truly interdisciplinary.
  • Publication
    Festivals and the City: The Contested Geographies of Urban Events
    ( 2022)
    Smith, Andrew; Quinn, Bernadette; Osborn, Guy
    This book explores how festivals and events affect urban places and public spaces, with a particular focus on their role in fostering inclusion. The ‘festivalisation’ of culture, politics and space in cities is often regarded as problematic, but this book examines the positive and negative ways that festivals affect cities by examining festive spaces as contested spaces. The book focuses on Western European cities, a particularly interesting context given the social and cultural pressures associated with high levels of in-migration and concerns over the commercialisation and privatisation of public spaces.The key themes of this book are the quest for more inclusive urban spaces and the contested geographies of festival spaces and places. Festivals are often used by municipal authorities to break down symbolic barriers that restrict who uses public spaces and what those spaces are used for. However, the rise of commercial festivals and ticketed events means that they are also responsible for imposing physical and financial obstacles that reduce the accessibility of city parks, streets and squares.Alongside addressing the contested effects of urban festivals on the character and inclusivity of public spaces, the book addresses more general themes including the role of festivals in culture-led regeneration. Several chapters analyse festivals and events as economic development tools, and the book also covers contested representations of festival cities and the ways related images and stories are used in place marketing.A range of cases from Western Europe are used to explore these issues, including chapters on some of the world’s most significant and contested festival cities: Venice, Edinburgh, London and Barcelona. The book covers a wide range of festivals, including those dedicated to music and the arts, but also events celebrating particular histories, identities and pastimes. A series of fascinating cases are discussed - from the Venice Biennale and Dublin Festival of History, to Rotterdam’s music festivals and craft beer festivals in Manchester. The diverse and innovative qualities of the book are also evident in the range of urban spaces covered: obvious examples of public spaces – such as parks, streets, squares and piazzas – are addressed, but the book includes chapters on enclosed public spaces (e.g., libraries) and urban blue spaces (waterways) too. This reflects the interpretation of public spaces as socio-material entities: they are produced informally through their use (including for festivals and events), as well as through their formal design and management.
  • Publication
    Jamón and Halal: Lessons in Tolerance from Rural Andalucía
    ( 2022)
    Civantos, Christina
    Contemporary Spain reflects broader patterns of globalization and has been the site of tensions between nationalists and immigrants. This case study examines a rural town in Spain's Andalucía in order to shed light on the workings of coexistence. The town of Órgiva's diverse population includes hippies from across Europe, European converts to Sufi Islam, and immigrants from North Africa. Christina Civantos combines the analysis of written and visual cultural texts with oral narratives from residents. In this book, we see that although written and especially televisual narratives about the town highlight tolerance and multiculturalism, they mask tensions and power differentials. Toleration is an ongoing negotiation, and this book shows us how we can identify the points of contact that create robust, respect-based tolerance.
  • Publication
    Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom: Readings to Repair Democracy
    ( 2022)
    Delogu
    A worldwide struggle between democracy and authoritarianism set against a backdrop of global surveillance capitalism is unmistakable. Examples range from Myanmar, China, and the Philippines to Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and the United States. Fascism, Vulnerability, and the Escape from Freedom offers a multidisciplinary analysis drawing on psychology and literature to provide readers with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that drive people to abandon democracy in favor of vertically organized authoritarianism and even fascism. In a comparative study of texts selected for their insights and occasional blind spots regarding fascist experiments of the past 100 years, Delogu examines fascism’s exploitation of fear (of change, loss, and death), disruption, and extreme inequality. The book offers an accessible and persuasive argument linking fascist authoritarianism, also called “right-wing populism," to certain underlying conditions, such as a rise in us-versus-them thinking; distrust or simple apathy regarding democratic institutions, norms, and results; the vulnerabilities that result from extreme inequality (economic, social, racial); and addictions and codependency. Stressful events, such as a pandemic, an environmental disaster, or deep recession aggravate these harmful factors and make the fascist temptation, including the use of violence, almost irresistible. Delogu’s distinctive examination of texts that plumb the unconscious reveal linkages between actions and unavowable motives that purely historical and theoretical studies of fascism leave out. Erich Fromm’s neglected 1941 classic Escape from Freedom serves as a key reference in Delogu’s study, as does Robert Paxton’s authoritative history, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004). After underscoring the argument and urgent context around these two studies (Hitler’s Germany and George W. Bush’s post-9/11 America), Delogu examines novels, a diary, memoirs, and manifestos to show how vulnerability forces individuals to choose between exclusionary fascist authoritarianism and inclusive, collaborative democracy.
  • Publication
    The Tibetan Nun Mingyur Peldrön: A Woman of Power and Privilege
    ( 2022)
    Melnick Dyer, Alison
    Born to a powerful family and educated at the prominent Mindröling Monastery, the Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher Mingyur Peldrön (1699-1769) leveraged her privileged status and overcame significant adversity, including exile during a civil war, to play a central role in the reconstruction of her religious community. Alison Melnick Dyer employs literary and historical analysis, centered on a biography written by the nun's disciple Gyurmé Ösel, to consider how privilege influences individual authority, how authoritative Buddhist women have negotiated their position in gendered contexts, and how the lives of historical Buddhist women are (and are not) memorialized by their communities. Mingyur Peldrön's story challenges the dominant paradigms of women in religious life and adds nuance to our ideas about the history of gendered engagement in religious institutions. Her example serves as a means for better understanding of how gender can be both masked and asserted in the search for authority-operations that have wider implications for religious and political developments in eighteenth-century Tibet. In its engagement with Tibetan history, this study also illuminates the relationships between the Geluk and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism from the eighteenth century, to the nonsectarian developments of the nineteenth century.
  • Publication
    No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job: The Making of Workers’ Mobility in the Netherlands, 1920-1990
    ( 2022)
    Bek, Patrick
    For working people, the cost of getting to work, in terms of time and expense, is a crucial aspect of daily life. In the twentieth century, people’s opportunity to travel increased. This did not, however, apply to everyone. The absence of affordable housing near job locations combined with the lack of safe, efficient, and affordable mobility options aggravated social exclusion for some. No Bicycle, No Bus, No Job details how power relations have historically enabled or restricted workers’ mobility in twentieth century Netherlands. Blue-collar workers, industrial employers, and the state shaped workers’ everyday commute in a changing playing field of uneven power relations that shifted from paternalism to neo-liberalism.
  • Publication
    Legitimacy-Based Policing and the Promotion of Community Vitality
    ( 2022)
    Tyler/Nobo
    This Element presents the history, research, and future potential for an alternative and effective model of policing called 'legitimacy-based policing'. This model is driven by social psychology theory and informed by research findings showing that legitimacy of the police shapes public acceptance of police decisions, willingness to cooperate with the police, and citizen engagement in communities. Police legitimacy is found to be strongly tied to the level of fairness exercised by police authority, i.e. to procedural justice. Taken together these two ideas create an alternative framework for policing that relies upon the policed community's willing acceptance of and cooperation with the law. Studies show that this framework is as effective in lowering crime as the traditional carceral paradigm, an approach that relies on the threat or use of force to motivate compliance. It is also more effective in motivating willing cooperation and in encouraging people to engage in their communities in ways that promote social, economic and political development. We demonstrate that adopting this model benefits police departments and police officers as well as promoting community vitality.
  • Publication
    Identity, Gender, and Tracking: The Reality of Boundaries for Veterinary Students
    ( 2022)
    Vermilya, Jenny R.
    Using in-depth interviews with veterinary students, Identity, Gender, and Tracking: The Reality of Boundaries for Veterinary Students explores the experience of enrollment in an educational program that tracks students based on the species of animals that they wish to treat. The identity of a veterinarian is one characterized by care; thus, students have to construct different definitions of care, creating a system of power and inequality. Tracking produces multiple boundaries for veterinary students, which has consequences not just for the veterinarian, but also for the treatment of animals. Written for administrators and students alike, Identity, Gender, and Tracking sheds light on how and why veterinary students construct their identities and end up in certain specializations.
  • Publication
    States United: A Survival Guide for Our Democracy
    ( 2022)
    Eisen, Norman ; Whitman, Christine Todd ; Lydgate, Joanna
    The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world.Elections are the bedrock of any democracy, but they are under attack in the United States. State legislatures are moving to limit voting rights and seize control of election administration, candidates are refusing to accept election results, and antidemocracy forces are sowing lies and encouraging political violence.The States United Democracy Center is fighting back by equipping state and local officials, law enforcement leaders, and prodemocracy partners with the tools and resources they need to protect free, fair, and secure elections. For this important work, its cofounders are the recipients of the 2022 Brown Democracy Medal. States United was founded during the 2020 election and continues to be led by Joanna Lydgate, former chief deputy attorney general of Massachusetts; Norman Eisen, former ambassador to the Czech Republic and special assistant to President Barack Obama for ethics and government reform; and Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency administrator.