bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
World Mining Regions before the Rise of Modern Capitalism
Authors: Graulau Jeannette
Published: May 2020

This chapter talks about how geology not only sets in motion the primary “law of attraction” and pulled miners into the wombs of mountains, but also how geography cultivated and turned excitement in mining into an economic force. Geography initiated the conditions for turning ore deposits into the underground wealth of Europe. The results were astonishing: the low elevations of Europe's mountains were transformed into world mining regions. The chapter describes mining regions, such as the central Alps and Lombardy that constituted a world mining region from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. Mining fields extended into the Austrian Alps and the territori montuosi that encircle Lake Lugano, between Lake Maggiore and Lake Como. Later in the fifteenth century, mining fields shifted slightly to the east, in Padova, Vicenza, Verona, Treviso, Feltre, and Belluno, north of Venice, controlled by diverse società tedesca.
Climate Embodiment
Authors: Méndez Michael
Published: May 2020

Examines how activists view the human body as a site of intersection between social, political, and environmental dynamics. Activists understand climate change as an embodied phenomenon that has multiple impacts on the people who live with it every day. This chapter shows how they have introduced embodied, local forms of knowledge into public debate and transformed climate change solutions. The chapter uses the heavily polluted community of Richmond, California to develop the concept of climate embodiment.
Changing the Climate from the Streets of Oakland
Authors: Méndez Michael
Published: May 2020

Focuses on the city scale, analyzing how climate change from the streets unfolds in the case of the Oakland, California climate action planning process. Provides an exemplar for featuring climate embodiment, the human scale of climate impacts, meaningful public participation, a focus on health co-benefits, and an explicit emphasis on environmental justice in the development of municipal climate policy.
Cap and Trade-Offs
Authors: Méndez Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on state-level implementation of climate policy via a climate change community benefits fund. Describes how activists helped institutionalize the country’s first program to redistribute action proceeds from a cap and trade program to socially and environmentally overburdened communities.
Climate beyond Borders
Authors: Méndez Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter reveals the international dimensions and contradictions of California’s climate change regulatory program. It provides an account of the rise of a coalition of translocal justice actors—California-based environmental justice activists and Indigenous rights leaders in Chiapas, Mexico and Acre Brazil—who mobilized against linking California’s forest carbon offsets in the Global South.
The Internet in Everything
Authors: DeNardis Laura
Published: May 2020

The Internet has leapt from human-facing display screens into the material objects all around us. In this so-called Internet of Things—connecting everything from cars to cardiac monitors to home appliances—there is no longer a meaningful distinction between physical and virtual worlds. Everything is connected. The social and economic benefits are tremendous, but there is a downside: an outage in cyberspace can result not only in a loss of communication but also potentially a loss of life. Control of this infrastructure has become a proxy for political power, since countries can easily reach across borders to disrupt real-world systems. This book argues that this diffusion of the Internet into the physical world radically escalates governance concerns around privacy, discrimination, human safety, democracy, and national security, and it offers new cyber-policy solutions. The book makes visible the sinews of power already embedded in our technology and explores how hidden technical governance arrangements will become the constitution of our future.
After the Internet
Authors: DeNardis Laura
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how digital systems have leapt from human-facing display screens into the physical world of material objects and artificial intelligence. The Internet is no longer merely a communication system connecting people and information. It is a control system connecting vehicles, wearable devices, home appliances, drones, medical equipment, currency, and every conceivable industry sector. Cyberspace now completely and often imperceptibly permeates offline spaces, blurring boundaries between material and virtual worlds. This transformation of the Internet from a communication network between people to a control network embedded directly into the physical world may be even more consequential than the shift from an industrial society to a digital information society. The potential for human advancement and economic growth is as staggering as the accompanying society-wide dilemmas. Indeed, the Internet of things bleeds into the real world in ways that enhance life but also can compromise personal safety and security.
Interoperability Politics
Authors: DeNardis Laura
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses how technical standardization faces unique challenges. Embedded objects require high security but are also constrained architectures that demand lower energy consumption and restricted processing power. The current state of interoperability is fragmented, heterogeneous, complex, and involving multiple competing standards and an expanding base of standards-setting organizations. Unlike traditional communication systems that require universality, fragmentation by sector might actually have beneficial effects, such as serving as a de facto security boundary. The chapter then explains the evolution of fragmented standards in the Internet of things space but suggests that open standards and interoperability in the underlying common infrastructure are still vital for accountability, innovation, and stability.
Disruptions to Global Internet Governance
Authors: DeNardis Laura
Published: May 2020

This chapter looks at provocations for the future of Internet governance. Policy entanglements with previously distinct spheres—consumer safety, systems of democracy, cryptocurrency, and environmental protection—expand the scope of global Internet governance. Power relations in the multistakeholder governance regime shift as new companies, new standards regimes, and new tensions arise between bordered government regulatory responses and a global cyber-physical architecture. Meanwhile, the rising stakes of digital security, such as to consumer safety and national security, challenge some venerable norms of Internet governance. Lastly, notions of a free and open Internet, still vitally important, move toward notions of security, stability, and reliability.
The Map of Our World: The Limits of the Classical System
Authors: Waters Timothy William
Published: May 2020

This chapter surveys current law and politics, revealing a period of ferment and stagnation: the postwar order in its late, classical decadence. By the 1970s, the world had settled on the classical model of self-determination—a formal set of rules, elegant and stable in its principles and assumptions. Of course, in reality such models and moments are anything but stable, and ever since there has been almost continuous ferment and change. Indeed, one could say that as the classical model was announced, even while it was still forming, the world entered into the postclassical era, in which the classical model persists, still dominant but increasingly indeterminate, insensible, decaying, unable to explain its own premises or operate effectively: an age of self-determinative decadence. The chapter then explores the elements and operations of the classical model, including recent challenges.
The Hardest Part: Creating a Right of Secession
Authors: Waters Timothy William
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores strategies to achieve acceptance of a right to secede, whether as a legal rule or as a model for individual states. Secession is a hard sell, and the principal battleground is moral and political. A shift in attitudes must precede the legal project; only then will people see doctrinal arguments lining up and making sense. And, after all, the goal is not a new legal right for its own sake, but a change in how societies and states behave. The chapter then considers why a formal right of secession is implausible, and what that implies about the best strategies to adopt—the narrow but real possibilities that exist. The path is indirect: It relies on transnational diffusion of norms, and for this people can draw lessons from once-improbable projects that have become orthodoxies, such as decolonization and human rights; also, recent secession attempts suggest that constitutional projects could serve as models. The path leads through many small changes, rather than a single, quixotic swerve toward a new legal rule. But because the existing global norm limits the ability to create change within states, people cannot abandon the idea of a new rule: Advocates of secession need a point of triangulation outside the state to advance their cause, and that point will be found in international law.
Social insecurities and grown-up policy-making
Authors: Bristow Jennie
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers some solutions for the generation wars. Indeed, it argues that, in terms of the generation wars, the answer is simple: just stop fighting them. There is no conflict between the generations, and there is nothing to be gained from inciting one. This is a symbolic conflict, driven by an elite in thrall to two fashionable prejudices: doomography and gerontophobia. The former term refers to demographic perceptions created to raise concerns about intergenerational equity. By exposing these prejudices and the pessimistic outlook on which they are based, the chapter looks for more positive ways of addressing the problems that are evaded by the distorted focus on so-called generational inequalities.
Introduction
Authors: Kloeckl Kristian
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter argues that technology-mediated interactions in cities today can be better understood and conceived of by adopting an improvisation-based design perspective. This allows one to better disclose the potential of today's technology-saturated urban environments for urban dwellers. Improvisation is here examined as a framework for making, for the design of interactions in what this chapter refers as the hybrid city. It leverages the essence of improvisation as an art, a practice, and a concept to construct a system of ideas to help better understand the current condition of the hybrid city. And to facilitate the design of urban interventions, the chapter puts forth a set of four principles, or positions, that underlie the design of interactions in hybrid cities.
When the City Begins to Talk
Authors: Kloeckl Kristian
Published: May 2020

This chapter introduces the digitally augmented city as a major focus of current design research and practice. It critically examines the impact that the entanglement of networked information technologies with the urban realm has produced and discusses this in reference to extant literature. The entanglement of networked information technologies and urban environments has changed cities and urban life, and it has changed how we think about cities. Over the past two decades, a profusion of terms have been coined by scholars and practitioners to describe aspects of this changing urban condition. Networked city, real-time city, virtual city, smart city, hybrid city, responsive city, and ad hoc city are terms that are at times used lightly but that have underlying concepts that can help us capture more of the current urban condition and point to ways of working with it.
An Improvisation-Based Model for Urban Interaction Design
Authors: Kloeckl Kristian
Published: May 2020

This chapter articulates four positions for an improvisation-based model of urban interactions in today's hybrid city environments. It builds upon the previous chapters by identifying the interactions in and with urban responsive environments and the art of improvisation as fundamentally related topics of investigation. From there, the chapter proposes to identify four key positions that are recurrent in different types of improvisation and that together point toward a foundational model for urban interaction design. These are: open beginnings, timing and agency, understanding in action, and unexpected interactions. These four positions provide a framework by which responsive systems and environments in the context of the hybrid city might be more systematically understood and developed.
Epilogue
Authors: Kloeckl Kristian
Published: May 2020

This concluding chapter reviews the central arguments of the book and reflects critically on living with uncertainty and unpredictability as a form of critical mobility for urban living. It considers how the focus on efficiency, data-driven predictability, and control in the narrative about cities over the past two decades strikingly recalls the early days of the twentieth century. What then was the idealized new and modern has become the smart of today. The development of technology has long pursued the superlatives of faster, higher, bigger, cleaner, stronger, better, and safer. This was a promising strategy when the scope and reach of technologies were limited. Today, however, networked information technologies pervade not only cities but also large and intricate parts of our everyday practice.
The Warrior-Diplomat
Authors: Fullagar Kate
Published: May 2020

A narrative of the first half of Ostenaco’s life, it tells the story of the Cherokees from their first encounters with Europeans to the deadly Anglo-Cherokee War of 1760-61. Ostenaco’s life illuminates the Cherokees’ changing sense of themselves, from a town-based identity, to a region-based identity, to a nation-based identity. It also reveals an Indigenous face to the history of empire. We learn that, in Cherokee terms, the story of Ostenaco’s life started with his mother rather than with the actual fleshy entrance of his body into the world. From the description of Ostenaco’s childhood, we also learn about the peculiar gender dynamics of Cherokee society as well as its clan system, economic values, and overall embeddedness in the place of the Appalachians Mountains. By the 1740s, Ostenaco had gained the high-ranking military title of Mankiller; by the 1750s, he was allying with British officers like George Washington. In early 1760, deteriorating relations with multiple colonial centres lead Ostenaco abruptly to reject all colonial alliance.
Home to a New World
Authors: Fullagar Kate
Published: May 2020

In late 1762, Ostenaco returns to a changing Appalachia. The chapter narrates the second half of his life, detailing his adventures with home life, war, land cession, and much else. The year 1763 brings the momentous news of Britain’s final victory over France. With European rivalry now removed, British settlers seem more rather than less intrusive upon Native Americans. Such a reaction prompts both an Indian backlash in the shape of Pontiac’s War and a British administrative scramble to legislate some measures of protection against settler encroachment. Ostenaco is caught up in the consequent maelstrom. Although he maintains his diplomat’s demeanour through the 1760s and the early 1770s, something snaps for Ostenaco in 1775. That year, he witnesses the Cherokee young-blood, Dragging Canoe, stamp his feet and refuse to negotiate with any whites any longer. By 1777 Ostenaco has joined Dragging Canoe’s Chickamauga secessionists. The plot twist in Ostenaco’s story, then, is in how he manages to remain, in his own mind at least, loyally Cherokee while bucking the prevailing Cherokee trend towards surrender. Through a novel turn to non-cooperation, Ostenaco maintains a sense of autonomy from empire till the very end.
The Supernatural, Science and ‘Atheism’
Authors: Hunter Michael
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter explores the Scientific Revolution and its relationship with the supernatural, as well as the significance of atheism. It identifies two developments in the Scientific Revolution which have left an impact on magic. The first was the rise of the inductive philosophy which gave a methodological structure to the inchoate empiricism that had already begun to flourish in the Middle Ages and more notably in the sixteenth century. The second was the rise of the mechanical philosophy, the claim that everything in nature could be explained in terms of the interaction of matter and motion. In addition to this relation between science and the supernatural, the chapter delves into the question of atheism and why so much effort was invested in opposing it during this period.
John Wagstaffe, Witchcraft and the Nature of Restoration Free-Thought
Authors: Hunter Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter comprises the study of John Wagstaffe's The Question of Witchcraft Debated (1669) that was published in 1995. This is a reprint close to its original form, and has been cited by other scholars during the intervening period. Wagstaffe's book can bring one closer to the otherwise elusive phenomenon of oral, fashionable scepticism about which contemporaries complained, and hence to the nature of free-thought in the Restoration period. That this is the case is further suggested by the debate between Wagstaffe and two orthodox antagonists that followed the work's initial publication. In replying to his critics, Wagstaffe enhanced the learned character of his work, and this may illustrate how printed controversy had the effect of directing intellectual discourse into predictable channels.
From the Deists to Francis Hutchinson
Authors: Hunter Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter expands more fully on Wagstaffe's legacy. It takes the story forward into the early eighteenth century. The chapter considers the comparable views that were expressed by Deists and freethinkers at that point and the way in which orthodox thought at last began to change — not least in the hands of Francis Hutchinson. Hutchinson's reference to Wagstaffe's book in his Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft (1718) neatly encapsulates just how far the orthodox did and how far they did not follow their freethinking precursors. The chapter focuses on him both to try to understand what factors underlay the change of beliefs among the educated about witchcraft, and to explore how far thinkers like him were now speaking the language previously espoused by the heterodox.
The Ambivalence of the Early Royal Society
Authors: Hunter Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter turns to the rather paradoxical role of the early Royal Society in connection with magic, since as an institution it proved far less supportive of the supernaturalist project of Joseph Glanvill and Robert Boyle than might have been expected. This reveals significant fissures in scientific circles at the time which are often ignored. It was only in the early eighteenth century that the society's avoidance of magic was construed as displaying a systematically sceptical attitude which in practice had never really existed. This formed a part of the process by which the orthodox gradually began to come round to a cautiously sceptical viewpoint. The chapter ends by considering the legacy of their misrepresentation of the society's earlier role down to the twentieth century.
Second Sight in Scotland
Authors: Hunter Michael
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers changing attitudes during the long eighteenth century to second sight — the uncanny ability of certain individuals to foresee the future — in Scotland. This was a topic which fascinated Boyle in the late seventeenth century. This chapter illustrates how his enquiries on the subject began a tradition of empirical study of the phenomenon which continued into the eighteenth century. But then a change came, and by about 1800 the possibility of second sight was increasingly rejected among English and Scottish intellectuals on the grounds that it was incompatible with the ‘principles’ by which the universe operated. In parallel with this, however, a separate tradition emerged in which second sight and related phenomena were deemed appropriate for imaginative interpretation by poets and others, which is significant in itself.
The First Industrial Revolution
Authors: Scott Jonathan
Published: May 2020

This chapter concerns the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution involved the transformation of organic economies by means of a complex of changes which gave birth to the modern world. In Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere those economies were agricultural. Thus the chapter discusses the replacement of an economy 80 per cent of the output of which might have been agricultural by another in which manufacturing became the dominant sector. This involved a transition in the scale of manufacturing from artisanal to large-scale workshop and then factory production. In Britain, that entailed technological innovation, but it would not have been possible in the first place without prior sustained changes in the rest of the economy and society.
The Revolution Completed, 1672–1702
Authors: Scott Jonathan
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the period 1672–1702, during which time the Restoration was unravelling and England saw its relationship to the Netherlands changing once more. In 1670–2, England was attempting to undo the religious settlement of 1662, ally with the most powerful monarch in Christendom, and embark on a war of annihilation against the United Provinces. The latter in particular would yield some cross-Channel territory and erase the memory of Chatham. These measures, though a desperate gamble, were not only opposed but abhorred by an overwhelming majority of England's subjects. And during this time, Protestantism was in decline not just in England, but across Europe, and certainly within the United Provinces as well.
Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune
Authors: Muir Rory
Published: May 2020

In Regency England the eldest son usually inherited almost everything while his younger brothers, left with little inheritance, had to make a crucial decision: what should they do to make an independent living? This book begins with an exploration of the complicated relations between siblings during the Regency era, given the privileged position of the eldest son in the family. Not all gentlemen were rich; indeed, many had little money of their own and had to pursue a career. The eldest son would normally inherit the family estate, while the daughters and younger sons would receive no more than a start in life. Inequality was universal and taken for granted. The chapters discuss the career options for younger sons, often with bleak prospects. The book weaves together the stories of many obscure and well-known young men, shedding light on an overlooked aspect of Regency society.
Beelzebul Against Satan
Authors: Bazzana Giovanni B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter is focused on the analysis of an extremely puzzling Gospel pericope. A careful redaction-critical examination of the texts recording the “Beelzebul accusation” shows that these Gospel materials preserve a much more complex and challenging representation of the dynamics of possession. In particular, the pericope describes, by employing a theological political idiom, the diversity and conflict that characterize the “spirit” world. In such a context a medium can find a way to cope with the traumatic and empowering experience of the Other that is at the root of possession and, in so doing, to cease being a “hostage” but rather a true “host.” The chapter's redaction-critical analysis reveals that the earliest form of this pericope represented the performative and dialogical nature of “emergent” possession. However, the immediate developments of the oral and textual tradition already began to re-center the episode christologically and to cast it within a polemical frame.
A Ghost among the Tombs
Authors: Bazzana Giovanni B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter tackles the longest and most articulated exorcism narrative in the Gospels, Mk 5:1–20. Mark and the other Gospel traditions inherited from the earliest groups of Jesus followers a conceptualization of the Otherness of the “spirits” rooted in the cultural idioms of Enochic traditions. The identity of these “spirits” as “unclean” is widespread in Second Temple Judaism and indexes the mytheme of the partial survival of the primeval giants, the ill-fated offspring of the union between angels and women. However, Mark combines such a mythological representation with pan-Mediterranean ideas about the return of certain classes of troubled dead, which are well attested in antiquity. The chapter moves from these initial observations to a more detailed analysis of Mk 5:1–20, in which the foreignness of the possessing “spirit” is further compounded by the insertion of an anti-Roman political theme. By reading the narrative of Mk 5 as a reflection on and a refraction of a ritual of exorcism, the chapter shows that an interpretation informed by the insights of anthropological literature can understand the exorcism not simply as an inverted imitation of Roman imperialism but as a means to reshape imaginatively the local structure of ethnic identities in Gerasa, a locale in which Jewish and Gentile identities had to cohabit in flux and in contrast up to the catastrophic events of the first Jewish war.
The Last Adam Became a Life-Giving Spirit
Authors: Bazzana Giovanni B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter looks at the fundamental role played by spirit possession in the religious experience of Paul and of his Christ groups. It begins with their doctrinal and specifically christological elaborations. Being “in Christ” is the idiom through which Paul expresses the experience of possession by a πνεῦμα‎, which is identified with the risen Christ and which, through its presence in them, grants to believers salvation from the eschatological wrath and the expectation of eternal life. For Paul, Christ has achieved the state of existence designated as πνεῦμα‎ through his death and resurrection. This was an idea that was also shared by other early Christ groups, as is confirmed—albeit not without negligible difference—by an examination of a key section in the Shepherd of Hermas.
“Will They Not Say That You Are Out of Your Mind?”
Authors: Bazzana Giovanni B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter deals more closely with the performative nature of possession. This phenomenon's effectiveness and validity is constantly generated and supported through a triangular negotiation involving mediums, “spirits,” and their audiences. Such a negotiation spills beyond the boundaries of the performance per se to inform conversations among practitioners and participants that, in turn, contribute to the construction of identities, forms of authority, and social structures. The chapter attends closely to the argument developed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12–14 as an instance of this negotiation about the “correct” performance of a possession ritual. In order to decenter the figure of Paul as much as possible, the three chapters are read with an eye on the possibility of reconstructing the “voice” of the Corinthians behind the apostle's rhetoric in this dialogue.
Gender equality and gender mainstreaming: the issue of equal opportunities in the European context
Authors: Lomazzi Vera , Crespi Isabella
Published: May 2020

This chapter deals with the definition, understanding and exploration of the issue of gender equality approaches that the EU has developed to promote equal opportunities between men and women.
The chapter examines the different strategies used across time to implement gender equality in the EU and how this conceptualisation led to the current approach of gender mainstreaming. In particular, three phases are identified and discussedinthe chapter: equal treatment, positive action and gender mainstreaming.
The last one is discussed deeply because itformed a substantial and important backbone in the context of the individual rights of citizens of the Union by creating a basis of equal rights guaranteed to all, regardless of gender.
The goal pursued by gender mainstreaming approach consists of a deep change in the organizational culture of society, institutions and workplace, where gender equality should be implemented in a transformed cultural framework.
Gender equality in Europe: measures and indicators
Authors: Lomazzi Vera , Crespi Isabella
Published: May 2020

This chapter dealswith the complex task of measuring gender equality across European countriesby assuming two principal perspectives: the use of macro indicators, developed using gender statistics and describingthe country’s situation;and the employment of micro-level indicators, which are built on survey-population measurements, such as ISSP and Eurobarometer, and refer to individuals’ perspectives on gender issues.
The critical overview provided on the international indicesspeaks to different conceptualisations of gender equality. This requires awareness not only among scholars interested in the study of gender equality, but also among policymakers and audit bodies that evaluate policies. The EIGE Gender Equality Index, developed in the gender-mainstreaming perspective’s framework by the European Institute for Gender Equality,appears particularly meaningful for evaluating gender equality according to the overall European strategy. The measurement of gender-equality issues through surveys needs better conceptualisations, which so farmainly refer to women’s double role as working mothers, thereby neglecting gender equality’s multidimensionality and the fact that it encompasses the status of both women and men.
Current challenges to gender mainstreaming in Europe
Authors: Lomazzi Vera , Crespi Isabella
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses some of the most urgent challenges to gender equality policies in Europe.
The European gender-mainstreaming strategy represents one of the few attemptsto promoting gender equality through a transnational legislative framework.However,theachievements reached so far cannot be given for granted. Political changes, as the rise of right-wing Eurosceptic parties supporting traditional-family models and ethnocentric views, may address new political agendas in which gender equality is marginalised. Furthermore, economic changes can impact on family patterns and gender arrangements, with policy budgets affected as well.
The chapter also points out the technocratic approachto gender equality adopted by European laws,whichneglected the cumulative and simultaneous effect of multiple inequities. However, gender often intersects with other differences that can exacerbate inequities. The chapter discusses therefore the gendered consequences of the economic crisis and of defamilisation policies, implemented to deal with the ageing population; and the risks connected with the adoption of ethnocentric, gender-blind policies in the management of the refugees crisis and integration.
Transport matters
Authors: Shaw Jon , Docherty Iain
Published: May 2020

We begin by considering why, how and how much transport matters, both in itself and in relation to a whole host of public policy areas including economic development, social inclusion, health and wellbeing, (im)migration, education, crime / law and order, housing and the environment. We set out and explain the aim of the book, and provide an overview of transport policy over the last 50 years by way of context for a summary of what follows in the remainder of the book. We conclude by considering key themes that emerged in authors’ discussions during the process of putting the book together.
Connecting places: towards a participatory, ordinary urbanism
Authors: Vigar Geoff , Varna Georgiana
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the opportunities and pitfalls of integrating transport planning with urban design and place-making strategies, using design thinking as a way to address many of the ‘intractables’ associated with implementing transport policy. We argue for a focus on the substance and consistency of macro level strategy alongside the significance of creative and consistent micro level interventions. We position our argument alongside smart city debates, aiming to reinsert into these a more ‘ordinary’ approach that celebrates the significance of intervention in ‘ordinary neighbourhoods’ through the deployment of ‘ordinary technologies’ (benches, quality pavements) to create more livable cities and neighbourhoods. We concur that planning is a form of knowledge in action but choices over what counts as knowledge and how it is used and deployed are highly significant. In doing so, and to better secure citizen buy-in to the transformation of public space, we argue for an approach centred on co-design to counter planning orthodoxy that subverts people’s everyday needs to the paradigms and embedded routines of regulatory systems.
Public engagement and consultation: decide, announce and defend?
Authors: Cohen Tom , Durrant Dan
Published: May 2020

Phase One of the UK’s High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project is taken as a representative example of the government’s approach to citizen participation with respect to planning major infrastructure projects. The engagement process in general and the 2011 national consultation in particular are found to be paradigm cases of “decide, announce and defend”, in spite of an increasing need for scheme sponsors to take a more inclusive and open approach to planning. A methodical approach to selecting engagement techniques produces three approaches – deliberative polling, the 21st century town meeting, and participatory multi-criteria analysis – that appear well suited to a project such as HS2. Without suggesting that any of these would have been a panacea, it is possible to conclude that the government could have pursued a more innovative approach to participation.
Future mobility
Authors: Lyons Glenn
Published: May 2020

This chapter reflects upon change and the prospect of change in looking to the future of mobility and why transport matters. As we bear witness to the digital age colliding and merging with the motor age, it seems we are in a transitional period towards a new regime of mobility – or perhaps more helpfully, a new regime of how society interacts and how people access what they need or desire. Against the backdrop of examining technological innovation and social and behaviour change, the chapter highlights that we are confronted by two agendas: (i) a need for policymaking and investment to chart a course into a deeply uncertain future; and (ii) a need to consider how well equipped our orthodox approaches in transport analysis are in the face of what appears to be an ever more complex and changing world. With regards to the latter, ‘decide and provide’ is advocated as an alternative to ‘predict and provide’.
Re-placing employment support: multi-spatial activation diorama
Authors: Whitworth Adam
Published: May 2020

Geography and public policy are intimately related but explored typically only I relation to what critical geographical thinkers might regard as a simplistic, and certainly highly partial, absolute conceptualisation of space. Using the policy domain of employment support policy as its case study example this chapter explore how richer alternative conceptualisations of geography can serve to illuminate and empower policy analysis and practice.
A critical neuro-geography of behaviourally and neuroscientifically informed public policy
Authors: Pykett Jessica
Published: May 2020

Amidst the growing enthusiasm for the application of behavioural insights from behavioural economics, psychology and the neurosciences in social policy, there has been a shift in emphasis from structural, through individuated and towards neuromolecular scales of explanation for social problems. This chapter explores the role of these trends in carving out new spatialities of social policy. The chapter considers the scale at which government intervention is deemed necessary, effective and efficient; and who should be responsible for health, productivity and wellbeing in liberal societies. It traces continuities between behavioural and neuroscientifically-informed public policy through analysis of international and supra-national policy documentation within societies in which neoliberalism is increasingly recognised as a source of social harm and economic instability. The chapter develops an approach to ‘critical neuro- geography’ which sheds new light on the strategic importance of scalar claims and other spatialities to forms of governance targeted at the mind, body and soul.
Not just nuisance: spatialising social statistics
Authors: Harris Richard
Published: May 2020

Outside of the specialist community of quantitative spatial researchers’ statistical analyses in the social sciences see geography merely as simple units of analysis or else as nuisance risks to the satisfaction of underlying statistical assumptions, if indeed it sees geography at all. In step-by-step discussion and visualisations this chapter upends that dominant treatment by illustrating the range of rich and frequently untapped spatial insights that a clearer understanding and grasp of specialist but (relatively) straightforward spatial methodologies can bring substantively to social policy analysis and practice.
Developing a spatial social policy: taking stock and looking to the future
Authors: Clarke John
Published: May 2020

This closing chapter reflects on some of the different ways in which the book has brought geography into conversation with social policy. In particular, it draws attention to the different sorts of geographical understandings that are mobilised in this project, from Philo’s view of Foucault as a critical spatial analyst to Pykett’s engagement with ‘neurogeographies’. Each of the chapters contributes something important to the challenge of making space and place visible as dynamic elements in the world of social policy. Too often, social policy studies view place as a passive context for policy rather than a formative or constitutive force. The chapter aims to deepen the critique of social policy’s limited attention to space and place. It ends by considering ways in which policy might be seen as an active ‘place making’ process, and how topological approaches to geography and the concept of assemblage might contribute to such possibilities.
The multi-scalar puzzle of social innovation
Authors: Kazepov Yuri , Colombo Fabio , Saruis Tatiana
Published: May 2020

Most of the scholars emphasise the local dimension and the bottom-up dynamics as the modus of social innovation. At the same time, they tend to assume that other (higher) spatial, institutional and political levels are hostile to social innovation. These assumptions entail manifold risks for both social research and action. In this chapter, we challenge the idea that social innovation is a solely bottom-up practice, to embrace a more comprehensive and relational approach on how it actually moves between and across scales, depending on the strategies it adopts and on the institutional scalar arrangements framing its development. We do not argue that the local does not play a relevant and special role. Many initiatives are indeed ‘bottom-linked’ and the ‘local’ is the level where all other levels conflate.
The case studies´ analysis of the ImPRovE project highlights which scales are mainly involved in social innovation and how opportunities and constraints are distributed among them. A typology on the multiscalar nature of social innovation is proposed, considering the strategies that socially innovative initiatives adopt in order to establish connections between and across scales. Finally, the potential avenues for further research are described to better disentangle the multi-scalar puzzle of social innovation.
Local Policies and the European Social Fund
Authors: Zimmermann Katharina
Published: May 2020

In the context of an ‘activation turn’ in many European welfare states, the local level gained increasing relevance in the last decades and brought local social policies and national employment policies more closely together. At the same time, at the European level the European Social Fund (ESF) made a career from an unconditional simple financing instrument towards a complex governance tool; meant to back up European social and employment policies in close combination with tools such as reporting or benchmarking. Greater coordination of domestic policies in social and employment policies, where the EU had no regulative competences, was sought to be achieved via ‘bypass strategies’ which directly focused on the subnational implementation systems of the member states. Against the backdrop of these scenarios, the book is interested in the actual role of the ESF in local activation policies. It wants to know how local social and employment policy fields react to the ESF, what shapes their reactions, and what the effects of these reactions are in terms of change in local policy fields. By drawing on both sociologists’ and political scientists’ literature, the book develops a unique perspective on the role of supranational money at the local level. By comparing comprehensive qualitative data from 18 local case studies in six European countries (Sweden, France, Poland, UK, Italy, and Germany) and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the book provides rich insights into a field where so far comparative qualitative research is missing.
Introduction
Authors: Zimmermann Katharina
Published: May 2020

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the overall research interest of the book: the role EU funding plays in local social and employment policies. Departing from a European perspective and taking the ESF (– which has turned from a relatively small and unconditional financing tool into a powerful and complex governance instrument; meant to back up EU social and employment policy – as a crucial case for financial incentives in multilevel setups, the study asks how local entities in different European countries react to the European money and how they are shaped by it. The introduction outlines in which way this question is addressed in the course of the study and how the book is structured.
Beyond numbers: Using case study insights to support interpretation
Authors: Zimmermann Katharina
Published: May 2020

Chapter 7 takes up the formal results from chapter 6 on the contextual settings behind the three response-patterns and discusses them in light of case-knowledge. Here, more in-depth insights on the contextual conditions illustrate on the basis of the empirical material how the different conjunctions of conditions unearthed in chapter 6 work in practice. For instance, it is shown how local actors in some cases perceive the ESF as a burden due to high co-financing and administrative overload, how in other local cases actors are attracted by the conceptual freedom of the funding, or how usage of the ESF becomes normalised in the context of public interventions in some cases. Chapter 7 uses the insights from the case studies to unravel the broader empirical pictures behind the contextual settings of the three response-patterns.
The creation and use of big administrative data
Authors: Goldstein Harvey , Gilbert Ruth
Published: May 2020

his chapter addresses data linkage which is key to using big administrative datasets to improve efficient and equitable services and policies. These benefits need to weigh against potential harms, which have mainly focussed on privacy. In this chapter we argue for the public and researchers to be alert also to other kinds of harms. These include misuses of big administrative data through poor quality data, misleading analyses, misinterpretation or misuse of findings, and restrictions limiting what questions can be asked and by whom, resulting in research not achieved and advances not made for the public benefit. Ensuring that big administrative data are validly used for public benefit requires increased transparency about who has access and whose access is denied, how data are processed, linked and analysed, and how analyses or algorithms are used in public and private services. Public benefits and especially trust require replicable analyses by many researchers not just a few data controllers. Wider use of big data will be helped by establishing a number of safe data repositories, fully accessible to researchers and their tools, and independent of the current monopolies on data processing, linkage, enhancement and uses of data.
Social media data
Authors: Tear Adrian , Southall Humphrey
Published: May 2020

The increasing availability of huge volumes of social media ‘Big Data’ from Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter and other social network platforms, combined with the development of software designed to operate at web scale, has fuelled the growth of computational social science. Often analysed by ‘data scientists’, social media data differ substantially from the datasets officially disseminated as by-products of government-sponsored activity, such as population censuses or administrative data, which have long been analysed by professional statisticians. This chapter outlines the characteristics of social media data and identifies key data sources and methods of data capture, introducing several of the technologies used to acquire, store, query, visualise and augment social media data. Unrepresentativeness of, and lack of (geo)demographic control in, social media data are problematic for population-based research. These limitations, alongside wider epistemological and ethical concerns surrounding data validity, inadvertent co-option into research and protection of user privacy, suggest that caution should be exercised when analysing social media datasets. While care must be taken to respect personal privacy and sample assiduously, this chapter concludes that statisticians, who may be unfamiliar with some of the programmatic steps involved in accessing social media data, must play a pivotal role in analysing it.
The control and ‘fitness for purpose’ of UK official statistics
Authors: Rhind David
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes the evolution of UK Official Statistics over an 80 year period under the influence of personalities, politics and government policies, new user needs and changing technology. These have led to changing institutional structures – such as the Statistics Commission - and periodic oscillations in what statistics are created and the ease of their accessibility by the public. The chapter concludes with the impact of the first major statistical legislation for 60 years, particularly as a consequence of its creation of the UK Statistics Authority. This has included major investment in quality assurance of National and Official Statistics and in professional resourcing. These changes are very welcome, as is the statutory specification of government statistics as a public good by the 2007 Statistics and Registration Service Act. But problems of access to some data sets and the pre-release of key economic statistics to selected groups of users remain. Given the widespread societal consequences of the advent of new technologies, what we collect and how we do it will inevitably continue to change rapidly.
Welfare reform: national policies with local impacts
Authors: Beatty Christina , Fothergill Steve
Published: May 2020

Welfare reform has been central to UK policymaking since the election of a Conservative-led government in 2010. The welfare reforms apply across the whole of the country, but their impacts vary profoundly from place to place – a consequence that government seems largely to have ignored. The measures introduced are targeted at working age people which leads to a disproportionate impact on areas with weaker local labour markets. This chapter draws on a range of official statistics, including local area claimant data, to document the financial losses in different parts of the country. It concludes that although the overall financial loss to claimants proved less than originally anticipated it remains very large, even before the implementation of Universal Credit and the post-2015 benefit changes, and that one of the main impacts of welfare reform is to hit the poorest places hardest.