Open Access Books - Social Sciences and Humanities - 2023

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Browsing Open Access Books - Social Sciences and Humanities - 2023 by Title

  • Publication
    A City Against Empire: Transnational Anti-Imperialism in Mexico City, 1920-30
    ( 2023)
    Lindner, Thomas K.
    An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. A City Against Empire is the history of the anti-imperialist movement in 1920s Mexico City. It combines intellectual, social, and urban history to shed light on the city's role as an important global hub for anti-imperialism, exile activism, political art, and solidarity campaigns. After the Russian and the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City became a space and a symbol of global anti-imperialism. Radical politicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, migrants, and revolutionary tourists took advantage of the urban environment to develop their visions of an anti-imperialism for the twentieth-century. These actors imagined national self-determination, international solidarity, and an emancipation from what they called "the West." Global, local, and urban factors interacted to transform Mexico City into the most important hub for radicalism in the Americas. By weaving together the intellectual history of Mexico, the urban and social histories of Mexico City, and the global history of anti-imperialist movements in the 1920s, this books analyses the perfect storm of anti-imperialism in Mexico City.
  • Publication
    A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean: A Collection of Stories Curated by Leïla Sebbar
    ( 2023)
    Brozgal, Lia
    A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. A Jewish Childhood in the Muslim Mediterranean brings together the fascinating personal stories of Jewish writers, scholars, and intellectuals who came of age in lands where Islam was the dominant religion and everyday life was infused with the politics of the French imperial project. Prompted by novelist Leïla Sebbar to reflect on their childhoods, these writers offer literary portraits that gesture to a universal condition while also shedding light on the exceptional nature of certain experiences. The childhoods captured here are undeniably Jewish, but they are also Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Turkish; each essay thus testifies to the multicultural, multilingual, and multi-faith community into which its author was born. The present translation makes this unique collection available to an English-speaking public for the first time. The original version, published in French in 2012, was awarded the Prix Haïm Zafrani, a prize given by the Elie Wiesel Institute of Jewish Studies to a literary project that valorizes Jewish civilization in the Muslim world.
  • Publication
    A Summer of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal for the Hungarian Holocaust
    ( 2023)
    Eisen, George
    "Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets. The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate of these Hungarian Jews and their local coreligionists, A Summer of Mass Murder transcends conventional history by introducing a multitude of layers of politics, culture, and, above all, psychology-for both the victims and the executioners. The narrative presents an uncharted territory in Holocaust scholarship with extensive archival research, interviews, and corresponding literature across countries and languages, incorporating many previously unexplored documents and testimonies. Eisen reflects upon the voices of the victims, the images of the perpetrators, whose motivation for murder remains inexplicable. In addition, the author incorporates the long-forgotten testimonies of bystander contemporaries, who unwittingly became part of the unfolding nightmare and recorded the horror in simple words. This book also serves as a personal journey of discovery. Among the twenty thousand people killed was the tale of two brothers, the author's uncles. In retracing their final fate and how they were swept up in the looming genocide, A Summer of Mass Murder also gives voice to their story."
  • Publication
    About That Life: Barry Lopez and the Art of Community
    ( 2023)
    Cheney
    Why write? Why ask a reader to give their time and attention to your words? How can writing be more than narcissism and self-aggrandizement? These questions were ones that the writer and naturalist Barry Lopez asked at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in the summer of 2000, and they are questions at the heart of About That Life, a meditation on matters of living, making, and seeking. While Lopez is best known for such works of nonfiction as the National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams, Matthew Cheney brings our attention to the many works of short fiction that Lopez published throughout his life, demonstrating how they fit within Lopez’s sense of ethical aesthetics. That sense is then set alongside the work of San Francisco’s New Narrative writers, insights from David Hinton’s translations of Tu Fu, the story of community arising around a pottery kiln in western Oregon, the beauties and contradictions of Sōetsu Yanagi’s The Unknown Craftsman, and the implications of the right-wing mob attack on the U.S. Capitol – an event that occurred on what would have been Barry Lopez’s 76th birthday. Through a collage of memoir, history, literary criticism, philosophy, aesthetic theory, and creative writing exercises, About That Life wonders how we might live and dream in a world that seems ever more cruel and destructive.
  • Publication
    Accustomed to Obedience?: Classical Ionia and the Aegean World, 480–294 BCE
    ( 2023)
    Nudell, Joshua P.
    Many histories of Ancient Greece center their stories on Athens, but what would that history look like if they didn't? There is another way to tell this story, one that situates Greek history in terms of the relationships between smaller Greek cities and in contact with the wider Mediterranean. In this book, author Joshua P. Nudell offers a new history of the period from the Persian wars to wars that followed the death of Alexander the Great, from the perspective of Ionia. While recent scholarship has increasingly treated Greece through the lenses of regional, polis, and local interaction, there has not yet been a dedicated study of Classical Ionia. This book fills this clear gap in the literature while offering Ionia as a prism through which to better understand Classical Greece. This book offers a clear and accessible narrative of the period between the Persian Wars and the wars of the early Hellenistic period, two nominal liberations of the region. The volume complements existing histories of Classical Greece. Close inspection reveals that the Ionians were active partners in the imperial endeavor, even as imperial competition constrained local decision-making and exacerbated local and regional tensions. At the same time, the book offers interventions on critical issues related to Ionia such as the Athenian conquest of Samos, rhetoric about the freedom of the Greeks, the relationship between Ionian temple construction and economic activity, the status of the Panionion, Ionian poleis and their relationship with local communities beyond the circle of the dodecapolis, and the importance of historical memory to our understanding of ancient Greece. The result is a picture of an Aegean world that is more complex and less beholden narratives that give primacy to the imperial actors at the expense of local developments.
  • Publication
    Acts of Aid: Politics of Relief and Reconstruction in the 1934 Bihar–Nepal Earthquake
    ( 2023)
    Eleonor Marcussen
    Acts of Aid explores the interaction between politics and natural disasters after a massive earthquake hit northern India and Nepal in 1934. While famines and to some extent flood management have been written into South Asian history, government and civil society responses to 'natural' disasters remain an elusive topic. This first comprehensive historical overview of the earthquake aftermath argues that its disastrous outcome was a human and historical event shaped by existing social and economic practices. Distribution of relief-and attempts at redistribution-as well as long-term reconstruction efforts, reflected the colonial government's political economy of aid during famines and floods. At this particular moment in history, the aftermath proved an opportunity for civil society organisations, and among them the Indian National Congress, to challenge the colonial state beyond the politics of the disaster. In the distribution of aid and attempts at changing as well as preserving established social orders, the relief process turned into a display of state-making, fuelled by nationalism and public contributions to philanthropic associations. Focusing on the 1934 earthquake and its consequences, this book conceptualises the politics of disaster in terms of governance, civil society participation and state-making in South Asian modern history. Ultimately, it argues that efforts to implement disaster relief in various forms shaped the course of governance, state-building and the fate of communities across the region
  • Publication
    Administering Justice: Placing the Chief Justice in American State Politics
    ( 2023)
    Wilhelm, Teena ; Vining, Richard
    Administering Justice examines the leadership role of chief justices in the American states, including how those duties require chief justices to be part of the broader state political environment. Vining and Wilhelm focus extensively on the power of chief justices as public spokespersons, legislative liaisons, and reform leaders. In contrast to much existing research on chief justices in the states, this study weighs their extrajudicial responsibilities rather than intracourt leadership. By assessing the content of State of the Judiciary remarks delivered over a period of sixty years, Vining and Wilhelm are able to analyze the reform agendas advanced by chief justices and determine what factors influence the likelihood of success. These analyses confirm that chief justices engage with state politics in meaningful ways and that reactions to their proposals are influenced by ideological congruence with other political elites and the scope of their requests. Administering Justice also examines the chief justice position as an institution, provides a collective profile of its occupants, and surveys growing diversity among court leaders.
  • Publication
    Advance Directives Across Asia: A Comparative Socio-legal Analysis
    ( 2023)
    Edited by Daisy Cheung, Michael Dunn
  • Publication
    All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology
    ( 2023)
    Garcia, Antero
    The role of the humble school bus in transforming education in America/strong Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It's been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its form unaltered for decades, is the most substantial piece of educational technology to ever shape how schools operate. As it noisily moves young people across the country every day, the bus offers the opportunity for a necessary reexamination of what "counts" as educational technology. Particularly in light of these buses being idled in pandemic times, emAll through the Town/em questions what we take for granted and what we overlook in public schooling in America, pushing for liberatory approaches to education that extend beyond notions of school equity. emForerunners: Ideas First/em is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
  • Publication
    An International Collection of Multidisciplinary Approaches to Violence and Aggression
    ( 2023)
    Catherine Lewis (editor)
    This book is a collection of theoretical perspectives and research studies from international scholars on neuropsychological aspects of aggression, personality features, gender-based violence, and cultural origins of conflict. Written by experts in the field, it offers insights into multi-theoretical perspectives on aggression and violence and the multifaceted factors involved in the etiology and management of conflict. This useful resource presents perspectives from Western and non-Western frameworks of violence, broadening the spectrum of the shared knowledge base.
  • Publication
    Analytic Induction for Social Research
    ( 2023)
    Ragin, Charles C.
    A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This book explores analytic induction, an approach to the analysis of cross-case evidence on qualitative outcomes that has deep roots in sociology. A popular research technique in the early decades of empirical sociology, analytic induction differs fundamentally as a method of social research from conventional variation-based approaches. In Analytic Induction for Social Research, Charles C. Ragin demonstrates that much is gained from systematizing analytic induction. The approach he introduces here offers a new template for conducting cross-case analysis and provides a new set of tools for answering common research questions that existing methods cannot address.
  • Publication
    Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War: A Very British Witch Hunt
    ( 2023)
    Gerth, Matthew
    "The Cold War produced in many countries a form of political repression and societal paranoia which often infected governmental and civic institutions. In the West, the driving catalyst for the phenomenon was anti-communism. While much has been written on the post-war American red scare commonly known as McCarthyism, the domestic British response to the 'red menace' during the early Cold War has until now received little attention. Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War is the first book to examine how British Cold War anti-communism transpired and manifested as McCarthyism raged across the Atlantic. Drawing from a wealth of archival material, this book demonstrates that while policymakers and politicians in Britain sought to differentiate their anti-communist initiatives from the 'witch hunt hysteria' occurring in the United States, they were often keen to conduct - albeit less publicly - their own hunts as well. Through analysing how domestic anti-communism exhibited itself in state policies, political rhetoric, party politics and the trade union movement, it argues that an overreaction to the communist threat occurred. In striking detail, this book describes a nation at war with a specific political ideology and its willingness to use a variety of measures to disrupt or eradicate its influence."
  • Publication
    Anti-Racist Shakespeare
    ( 2023)
    Ambereen Dadabhoy, Nedda Mehdizadeh
    Anti-Racist Shakespeare argues that Shakespeare is a productive site to cultivate an anti-racist pedagogy. Our study outlines the necessary theoretical foundations for educators to develop a critical understanding of the longue durée of racial formation so that they can implement anti-racist pedagogical strategies and interventions in their classrooms. This Element advances teaching Shakespeare through race and anti-racism in order to expose students to the unequal structures of power and domination that are systemically reproduced within society, culture, academic disciplines, and classrooms. We contend that this approach to teaching Shakespeare and race empowers students not only to see these paradigms but also to take action by challenging and overturning them.
  • Publication
    Architecture's Model Environments:
    ( 2023)
    Moffitt, Lisa
    Seen through the distilling lens of the architectural model, Architecture's Model Environments is a novel and far-reaching exploration of the many dialogues buildings have with their environmental surroundings. Expanding on histories of building technology, the book sheds new light on how physical models conventionally understood as engineering experimentation devices enable architectural design speculation. The book begins with a catalogue of ten original model prototypes - of wind tunnels, water tables and filling boxes - and is the first of its kind to establish an architectural approach to fabricating such environmental models. Subsequent chapters feature three precedent models that have been largely overlooked within the wider oeuvres of their authors: French polymath Étienne-Jules Marey's 1900-2 wind tunnels, Hungarian-American architects Victor and Aladár Olgyay's 1955-63 thermoheliodon, and Scottish chemist and building ventilation expert David Boswell 'The Ventilator' Reid's 1844 test tube convection experiments. Moving between historic moments and the present day, between case studies and original prototypes, the book reveals the potent ability for models, as both physical artefacts and mental ideals, to reflect prevailing cultural views about the world and to even reshape those views. Fundamentally, Architecture's Model Environments illustrates how environmental models reveal design insights across scales from the seam (that leaks) to the body (that feels) to the building (that mediates) to the world (that immerses).
  • Publication
    Are Books Still 'Different'?: Literature as Culture and Commodity in a Digital Age
    ( 2023)
    Caroline Koegler, Corinna Norrick-Rühl
    The famous 1962 precedent at the Restrictive Practices Court of the United Kingdom, 'Books are different,' is still the reasoning behind many cultural policies around the world, building on longstanding assumptions surrounding 'the book'. As this suggests, the 'difference' of the book as a unique form of cultural (rather than economic) production has acquired a powerful status. But are books still different? In (somewhat provocatively) asking this question from a network-oriented and interdisciplinary perspective (book studies/literary studies), this Element inquires into the notion of 'difference' in relation to books. Challenging common notions of 'bibliodiversity,' it reconsiders the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. It also engages with the diversifying potentials of the digital literary sphere, offering a case study of Bernardine Evaristo's industry activities and activism, the Element concludes with thoughts on bookishness, affect and networked practice.
  • Publication
    Aristotle and the Ontology of St. Bonaventure
    ( 2023)
    van Buren, Franziska
    Contemporary scholarship on Bonaventure has characterized him as the Neo-platonic foil to the Aristotelianism of his day. The present book, however, shows a Bonaventure who is highly enthusiastic about utilizing the philosophy of Aristotle and who centers much of his philosophical project around interpreting and understanding the texts of Aristotle. Two goals are central to this book. The first is to shed light on Bonaventure's greatly understudied ontology and theory of forms, demonstrating how his philosophical system is an important and unique alternative to other medieval Aristotelian systems. The second is to establish, more broadly, how Bonaventure's interpretation of Aristotle is a resource which should be mined for contemporary efforts in thinking about and reading Aristotle himself.
  • Publication
    Baby Ninth Amendments: How Americans Embraced Unenumerated Rights and Why It Matters
    ( 2023)
    Sanders, Anthony B
    "Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and free exercise of religion, plus a handful of others. However, we do not need to enumerate every liberty because there is another way to protect them: an ""etcetera clause."" It states that there are other rights beyond those specifically listed: ""The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."" Yet scholars are divided on whether the Ninth Amendment itself actually does protect unenumerated rights, and the Supreme Court has almost entirely ignored it. Regardless of what the Ninth Amendment means, two-thirds of state constitutions have equivalent provisions, or ""Baby Ninth Amendments,"" worded similarly to the Ninth Amendment. This book is the story of how the ""Baby Ninths"" came to be and what they mean. Unlike the controversy surrounding the Ninth Amendment, the meaning of the Baby Ninths is straightforward: they protect individual rights that are not otherwise enumerated. They are an ""etcetera, etcetera"" at the end of a bill of rights. This book argues that state judges should do their duty and live up to their own constitutions to protect the rights ""retained by the people"" that these ""etcetera clauses"" are designed to guarantee. The fact that Americans have adopted these provisions so many times in so many states demonstrates that unenumerated rights are not only protected by state constitutions, but that they are popular. Unenumerated rights are not a weird exception to American constitutional law. They are at the center of it. We should start treating constitutions accordingly."
  • Publication
    Belief in Marriage: The Evidence for Reforming Weddings Law
    ( 2023)
    Blake, Sharon ; Akhtar, Rajnaara C. ; Probert, Rebecca
    EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. In principle, couples getting married in England and Wales can choose to do so in a way that reflects their beliefs. In practice, the possibility of doing so varies considerably depending on the religious or non-religious beliefs they hold. To demonstrate this divergence, this book draws on the accounts of 170 individuals who had, or led, a wedding ceremony outside the legal framework. The authors examine what these ceremonies can tell us about how couples want to marry, and what aspects of the current law preclude them from doing so. This new evidence shows how the current law does not reflect social understandings of what makes a wedding meaningful. As recommended by the Law Commission, reform is urgently needed.EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. In principle, couples getting married in England and Wales can choose to do so in a way that reflects their beliefs. In practice, the possibility of doing so varies considerably depending on the religious or non-religious beliefs they hold. To demonstrate this divergence, this book draws on the accounts of 170 individuals who had, or led, a wedding ceremony outside the legal framework. The authors examine what these ceremonies can tell us about how couples want to marry, and what aspects of the current law preclude them from doing so. This new evidence shows how the current law does not reflect social understandings of what makes a wedding meaningful. As recommended by the Law Commission, reform is urgently needed.
  • Publication
    By Kelman Out of Pessoa
    ( 2023)
    Nufer
    In 2002, Doug Nufer wrote a story narrated by a tout, who proposed a novel way to beat the races. It was so absurd and ludicrous it gave him an idea. So Nufer went to Emerald Downs, home of thoroughbred racing in the Northwest. There, he split himself into three characters modeled on the heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa. Using a money management plan from a James Kelman short story, Nufer gave these characters money and set them free to gamble. He returned to the track every week for a full season, and his characters/heteronyms continued to bet, with real money and in the name of art. At the end of the season, he had pages of data in the form of a wagering diary, the outcome of a literary experiment that formed the basis of a literal experimental novel.
  • Publication
    Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea: Movements for Political and Economic Democratization in the 21st Century
    ( 2023)
    Han, Gil-Soo
    Nationalism in a nation-state reflects its emergent structural, cultural, and personal properties at a given time. In the politico-historical context of South Korea and the globe, the fruits of the 1968 Revolution in France could not reach Korean society under its military regime and exploitative economic structure. This continued to frustrate the grassroots and especially social actors in South Korea, which eventually brought about the June Struggle in 1987 and the 2016–2017 Candlelight Revolution. Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea sketches Korean grassroots’ perception of their nation-state, national identities, and what they desire regarding the future direction of their nation-state. The grassroots have openly spoken out about their frustrations through political rallies and media. This book attempts to reflect the minds of Korean progressives regarding, in particular, the forcibly recruited Japanese military “comfort women," Abe’s trade provocation against South Korea in 2019, reunification, the 2016–2017 Candlelight Revolution, National Flag-carriers’ struggles, and bullying at work.