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This book critically examines multiple ways in which cultural diversity is represented and handled in a variety of contexts, from the artistic to the scientific, from the political to the theatrical, in media, fashion and everyday life, today as well as in the past. By drawing from the observation that specific socio-cultural features are made relevant to create asymmetries and hierarchies between individuals, groups and cultural resources, the volume questions, on the one hand, contingent processes of regulation, standardization, and homogenization of diversity. It points at contradictory processes of in- and exclusion related to the construction of differences between the Self and the Other in processes of doing culture. On the other hand, it recognizes and emphasizes the fluidity of cultural entanglements by adopting a transcultural perspective, which unifies the variety of the topics and of the contexts covered by the chapters, as well as their inter- and transdisciplinarity. While processes such as globalization, decolonization, migration, and mediatization have contributed to place diversity at the centre-stage of both scholarly and non-scholarly debates, this book invites to re-think norms, practices and negotiations of diversity and otherness through a variety of narrations, standardizations, imaginations, and negotiations. By emphasizing the contrast between emancipatory vs. standardizing approaches to diversity and otherness it also invites to “transculturalize” the study and the politics of culture.

Regions in the EU's Eastern and Southern peripheries tend to perform badly across many rankings from economic development, to quality of government, social justice and innovation potential, despite the fact that the vast majority of EU structural funding has been spent in these countries. However, these countries followed different development trajectories and reacted differently to the economic crisis. Some of them still struggle, others thrive, others, after years of structural transformation, are stuck in a middle-income trap. Successes and failures as a result of EU cohesion implementation are a valuable source of feedback for future plans. Southern part of the EU, and Central and Eastern Europe provide an excellent opportunity to evaluate them, The whole implementation exercise is sometimes challenging to accomplish, as both the public and private sectors have low absorption capacity. In contrast, positive experiences also emerged. Regions in Central and Eastern European countries witnessed improvements in the form of change in GDP per capita, benchmarked against the EU average during the years 2008-2015, while Southern Europe improved similarly between 2000-2008. In this volume, the authors cover a variety of aforementioned problems and experiences of either all member states, with special attention to peripheral countries, or to sectoral or regional problems in selected countries. The book begins with an overview of the issues of economic convergence and quality of life in all member states. It also addresses political aspects of EU cohesion policy, including involvement of civil society into this public policy, as well as relationships between cohesion policy support and EU identification. The final section discusses an important novelty in the framework of EU cohesion policy, namely the JESSICA initiative, that is, an instrument offering repayable and recyclable funding targeted at economically-viable and sustainable urban development projects.

This anthology sheds new light on cosmopolitanism and culture in the contemporary world. Drawing on postcolonial, ethnic, and critical race studies as well as recent literary and critical theory, it demonstrates that new cosmopolitan thinking can embrace an awareness of ethnic and local differences. It disputes the utopianism of colorblind universalism and argues for the persistence of “race” and racialized thinking in lived experience. The essays collected in this volume valorize minoritarian perspectives and urge readers to rethink cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the underprivileged and marginalized and highlight the role of culture in mobilizing social empathy and solidarity with the world's precariat. The contributors, who come from over a dozen different countries and from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, constitute a vibrant cosmopolitan community in itself.

After the optimism following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has seen more of a democratic backlash. But despite the backlashes, in some societies the stability of democracy does not seem to be threatened. Why is this so? One common answer points to civic culture, a shared feeling of responsibility for the common fate of citizens. An alternative, to be explored in this volume, is that the stability of democratic rule is anchored in its integration in the large set of social institutions with both direct and indirect relationship to politics. These are linked to, give input to and are affected by democratic processes. Where these relations are ubiquitous and strong, democracy is stable. At the same time, institutions are slowly but constantly changing. Hence, in order to understand changes in the functioning of democracy at the level of the state, it is necessary to explore the changes in surrounding institutions and the way they shape a democratic society.The empirical focus of the book is institutional change in the Nordic model, with special emphasis on Norway. There are many reasons to pay closer attention to the Nordic, and Norwegian, case when it comes to analyses of changes in the functioning of democracy. On a par with the other Scandinavian countries, Norway is in the forefront in the world in the quality of democratic governance, as well as social trust and quality of life. As an extreme case, the most corporatist society within the family of the “Nordic Model”, Norwegian society offers an opportunity both for intriguing case studies and for challenging and refining existing theory on processes of institutional change.From a theoretical perspective this invites reflections which, to some extent, are at odds with the dominant conceptions of institutional change. Neither models of path dependency nor models of aggregate, incremental change focus on the continuous social bargaining over institutional change. Despite recent processes of differentiation and liberalization, common to the Western world as a whole, corporatism implies a close connection between state, economy, public sphere, cultural life, and knowledge production. This also means that institutions are intimately bundled, in a stronger, subtler and more wide-reaching way than typically assumed in the literature on varieties of capitalism.The volume draws on, but transcends, two prominent theoretical strands: the civil society perspective (a locus classicus being Cohen and Arato 1992), and the more recent work on well-functioning civil service as a precondition for good governance (Rothstein 2011) pointing out the “road to Denmark”, (Fukuyama 2014). By embracing more social fields than these two approaches, the institutional approach opens a broader space for democratic reflection. Moreover, institutional-historical case studies situated within Nordic societies as a specific social structural framework, demonstrate the diversity of links between democracy and social life outside of politics in a narrow sense, such as:• Policies of citizenship as a limitation to democracy• Democracy in working life• Democracy and policies of gender relations• Expertise and democratic governance• Social elites – a threat to democracy?• Welfare state institutions as core elements in modern democracy• Institutional perspectives on the emergence of capitalism and democracy A detailed outline of contents and contributors is attached. The book rests on and further develops the former two volumes on institutional change. The first volume is centered on corporatist institutions, with emphasis on negotiations by civil society actors in interplay with the state. Concentrated on the public sphere, the second volume sought to locate processes of social deliberation within the contexts of a public sphere that embraces not only the media, but also fields such as voluntary associations, the arts, and religion. This third volume synthes

The ethnographic approach to Indian history and genealogy; the making of dynastic history in the kingdom of Jhalavad; the history of Gujarat. ‘Genealogy, Archive, Image'addresses the ways in which history and tradition are ‘reinvented'through text, memory and painting. It examines the making of dynastic history in the kingdom of Jhalavad, situated in Gujarat, western India, over the longue durée, from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries. The essays critique a collection of contemporary miniature paintings, which chart the dynastic history of Jhalavad's rulers and the textual and ethnographic archive upon which they are based. A multidisciplinary work, it crosses the boundaries of history, anthropology, folklore and mythology, gender, musicology, literary studies, and visual, film and digital media. The essays draw upon a variety of voices, spanning various religious and ethnic communities, including Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Parsees and Siddhi Africans, and caste identities, such as that of the bard, ballad singer, king, priest, court chronicler, soldier, mason and drummer.

Have you ever wondered what makes storytelling and digital media a powerful combination? This edited volume examines the opportunities to think, do, and/or create jointly afforded by digital storytelling. The editors of this volume contend that digital storytelling and digital media can create spaces of empowerment and transformation by facilitating multiple kinds of border crossings and convergences involving groups of peoples, places, knowledge, methodologies, and teaching pedagogies.The book is unique in its inclusion of anthropologists and education practitioners and its emphasis on multiple subfields in anthropology.The contributors discuss digital storytelling in the context of educational programs, teaching anthropology, and ethnographic research involving a variety of populations and subjects that will appeal to researchers and practitioners engaged with qualitative methods and pedagogies that rely on media technology.

This book is the result of the first two-year work of Working Group 1 of the network “LUDI – Play for children with disabilities”. LUDI is an Action (2014-2018) financed by COST; it is a multidisciplinary network of more than 30 countries and almost 100 researchers and practitioners belonging to the humanistic and technological fields to study the topic of play for children with disabilities within the framework of the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (WHO, 2001).The principal objective of this book is to bring the LUDI contribution to the important topic of play in children with disabilities, because today an international consensus on the definition of play and disabilities is still lacking. The process of ensuring equity in the exercise of the right to play for children with disabilites requests three actions: to approach this topic through a “common language”, at least all over Europe; to put play at the centre of the multidisciplinary research and intervention regarding the children with disabilities; to grant this topic the status of a scientific and social theme of full visibility and recognized authority. Children with disabilities face several limitations in play, due to several reasons: impairments; playgrounds, toys and other play tools that are not accessible and usable; environments and contexts that are not accessible nor inclusive; lack of educational awareness and intentionality; lack of specific psycho-pedagogical and rehabilitative competence; lack of effective intervention methodologies. Moreover, disabled children's lives are dominated by medical and rehabilitative practices in which play is always an activity aiming to reach an objective or to provoke an improvement; play for the sake of play is considered a waste of time. The concept of play for the sake of play strongly refers to the distinction between play activities and play-like activities. Play activities are initiated and carried out by the player (alone, with peers, with adults, etc.) for the only purpose of play itself (fun and joy, interest and challenge, love of race and competition, ilinx and dizziness, etc.). They have of course consequences on growth and development, but these consequences are not intentionally pursued. Play-like activities are initiated and conducted by an adult (with one or more children), in educational, clinical, social contexts; they are playful and pleasant, but their main objective is other than play: e.g., cognitive learning, social learning, functional rehabilitation, child's observation and assessment, psychological support, psychotherapy, etc. This book, then, contributes to a clear distinction between play and play-like activities that, hopefully, will bring to new developments in play studies. ABSTRACTING & INDEXING Play development in children with disabilties is covered by the following services: Baidu ScholarBayerische StaatsbibliothekBDSBoDBowker Book DataCNKI Scholar (China National Knowledge Infrastructure)DimensionsDOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)EBSCOElsevier – Scopus BooksExLibrisGoogle BooksGoogle ScholarNavigaReadCubeSemantic ScholarTDOne (TDNet)WorldCat (OCLC)X-MOLAdditionally, the proceedings volume is registered and indexed in the Crossref database and accessible on Amazon.

Why we do what we do is a matter of great interest to everyone, and everyone seems to have had their say about it – philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists, and historians perhaps the most, case by case. Occasionally the specialists have offered their ideas to a general readership, but mostly they prefer to speak to and with their fellows in their particular disciplines. To evaluate and compare their findings in a cross-disciplinary way is now for the first time attempted, by Ramsay MacMullen. Emeritus history professor from Yale University, he is the recipient of various academic awards, including a lifetime Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association

In post-industrial societies more and more people earn an income in creative knowledge work, a highly flexible labour market segment that demands a geographically mobile workforce. Creative knowledge work is based on an understanding of language, culture and symbolic meanings. This can best be obtained through local and national embeddedness. Yet, this necessity for embeddedness stands in contrast to the demand in geographical mobility. How is this contradiction solved by individuals? What new forms of place attachment does this bring about?This book introduces a showcase of 25 multilocal creative knowledge workers, who live in different countries at the same time. It investigates how continuous mobility becomes part of their lifeworld, and how it changes their feelings of belonging and practices of place attachment. Applying an innovative methodological mix of social phenomenology, hermeneutics and mental mapping, this book takes a detailed look at biographies and the role of places in mobile lifeworlds.Plug&Play Places brings forth the idea that places have to be understood as individual items, which are configured and then plugged into the ‘system'of the own lifeworld. They can be ‘played'without great effort once an individual needs to make use of them. This new type of place attachment is a form of subjective standardization of place, which complements the well-known models of objective standardization of places.Plug&Play Places is relevant for scientists who deal with mobility and its impact on individual lifeworlds, with transnational multilocality and with flexibilized labour markets. Furthermore, the book provides a detailed qualitative perspective which can enrich the explanations of quantitative research in the same field. It is an interesting reading also for practitioners engaged in urban planning, housing and real estate development.Robert Nadler holds a doctoral degree in Urban and Local European Studies from the University of Milan-Bicocca. He is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and published on creative industries, multilocality and labour mobility.