bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
COMPETITIVENESS OF THE ENTERPRISE: ECONOMIC ESSENCE AND EVOLUTION OF VIEWS
Authors:   Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University of Drohobytsk, Kyshakevych Bohdan , Demediuk Bohdan ,   Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University of Drohobytsk, Volynskyi Oleksandr ,   Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University of Drohobytsk
Published: September 2023

The article analyzes modern conceptual approaches to substantiate the economic essence of the enterprise competitiveness and considers the corresponding methods of competitive analysis. It is shown that, despite the fact that competitiveness is one of the key economic terms and despite the existence of a large number of scientific studies on competitiveness, today there is no generally accepted definition of this term. It is argued that the most common approach to the interpretation of competitiveness at the enterprise level is the analysis of existing competitive advantages, but there are discrepancies in the methods of their accounting and ranking. The expediency of applying competitive analysis, which consists in assessing the level of competition in a certain market for the purpose of substantiating business decisions, is substantiated. Today, the term "competitiveness" is used in different perspectives, as scientists put different concepts into its essence. It is shown that in the economic literature one can find three approaches to understanding the term "enterprise competitiveness". The first approach is based on an analysis of the internal and external activities of the enterprise without mentioning products or goods. The second approach is based only on the study of the product, that is, the competitiveness of a company is considered as its ability to produce a competitive product or service. The third approach combines the commodity and production activities of the company. It is shown that the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises is often determined by the methods provided for large companies, which is not justified, since SMEs differ in their organizational structure, forms of cooperation with the environment, management systems and ways of competing with other companies. Competitiveness can belong to different levels of aggregation: supranational, national, regional, local, industrial, sectoral, as well as individual companies. It was argued that given the fact that a single conceptual approach to the economic substantiation of the term "competitiveness" has not yet been developed, there is currently no single methodology for comprehensive quantitative assessment of the competitiveness of an enterprise, the need for which is becoming increasingly urgent.
INSTITUTIONALIZATION: PROCESSES AND ELEMENTS IN THE LIGHT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Authors:   Odessa National Economic University, Kovalskyi Andrii
Published: September 2023

More than two decades after the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, sustainable development remains a major challenge. Politics and administration, especially in democratic societies, have a special responsibility for coordinating sustainable development. To fulfill this role, the regulative idea of sustainability must be integrated into policy and governance decision-making at all levels, from the local to the global. Taking this into account, we analyzed the development of the institutionalization of sustainable development as a cross-cutting and long-term problem. Drawing on a theoretical-conceptual framework derived from the theory of democracy, bureaucracy and political management/governance, we applied qualitative methods to understand how sustainability is integrated into political-administrative practice. In this article, we examine the elements and processes of institutionalization and present a perspective on how exactly sustainability is understood at the level of strategy formation. A deep analysis of the dynamics of the development of processes and elements of institutionalization indicates that the old institutional economics and the new institutional sociology can become an effective basis for an extended theoretical study of social and environmental accounting and reporting. The interaction of these two theories allows consideration of various aspects of institutions and their dynamics, including regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive aspects. It is important to approach aspects of the old institutional economy, where the emphasis is on normative and customary aspects such as norms, conventions, rules and routines. The old theorists of institutional economics emphasize the importance of habits, procedures, and rules that define and maintain existing forms of behavior. Routines are «patterns of thought and action commonly adopted by groups of individuals», while rules are «a formally recognized way in which 'what should be done'». This approach reveals the difference between stable routines and formally defined rules that can be subject to change and institutionalization. On the other hand, new institutionalism is defined by a shift in focus from normative elements to shared understandings of social reality, such as symbols, meanings, and beliefs. He considers cultural and cognitive elements, as well as regulatory, as socially constructed phenomena that define a «common structure» for perceiving events and taking actions. As for the concept of «sustainable development», it can be concluded that it is a complex and ambiguous term that does not have a strict definition, but covers various aspects and understanding. Different points of view lead to different interpretations of this concept. As noted in the sources, in the additive model of sustainability, different actors may prioritize different aspects of sustainability (social, economic, environmental), depending on their interests and field of activity.
ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНО-ЕКОНОМІЧНИЙ ІНСТРУМЕНТАРІЙ РОЗВИТКУ ЖИТЛОВОГО ФОНДУ В УКРАЇНІ
Authors: Дубина Максим , Забаштанський Максим
Published: September 2023

У статті поглиблено теоретичні положення застосування організаційно-економічного інструментарію для розвитку житлового фонду України. Це було реалізовано на основі аналізу організаційно-економічного механізму такого розвитку, конкретизації його сутності, структури з визначенням в ній місця економічних та організаційних інструментів. Також проаналізовано сутність економічних інструментів та визначено основні особливості використання організаційно-економічного інструментарію для розвитку житлового фонду. Це дозволило конкретизувати основні напрямки економічних та організаційних заходів, які варто реалізовувати на основі активного застосування доступних для органів державної влади та місцевого самоврядування відповідних інструментів з метою розвитку житлового фонду у довгостроковій перспективі.
“A Double-double and a Maple-glazed Doughnut”
Authors: Power Elaine , Koc Mustafa
Published: September 2023

This special issue of Food, Culture and Society celebrates the founding of the Canadian Association of Food Studies (CAFS) by showcasing some of the best contemporary scholarship in Canadian food studies research. CAFS was conceived in the spring of 2005 to promote critical, interdisciplinary scholarship in the broad areas of food policy, production, distribution and consumption. As two of its founders, we were stunned—and thrilled—at the interest in this new academic association; seventy papers were presented at the first CAFS scholarly meeting in Toronto a year after its founding. It was clear to us that CAFS was an idea whose time had come. At the time of this writing, CAFS is planning its third conference, in Vancouver, in conjunction with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and anticipating full society membership in the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Factors associated with Afghan household food security pre- and post-Taliban regime
Authors: Sadat Seyyed Amin Allah , Charvadeh Mohammad Reza Pakravan , Gholamrezai Saeed , Rahimian Mehdi , Lane Ginny , Béland Daniel , Koc Mustafa , Clark Nancy , Omidvar Nasrin , Sadeghi Rasoul , Vatanparast Hassan
Published: September 2023

To determine multifaceted determinants of household vulnerability to food insecurity in Afghanistan before and after the Taliban takeover, we randomly selected 555 households from 13 provinces, conducted in-person surveys, and applied the Household Food Insecurity Assess Scale (HFIAS) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). We collected data from January to April 2022. We observed an increase in both prevalence and severity of food insecurity among Afghan households after the Taliban takeover. Approximately, 98% and 70% of interviewed households were food insecure after and before the Taliban takeover, respectively. Similarly, households were more likely to be severely food insecure (81%) than before (40%). Our results showed that policy and political conditions contributed substantially to the food insecurity of Afghan households after the Taliban takeover. We recommend that the Taliban forces facilitate the presence of humanitarian organizations and NGOs to improve low-income households’ food security, especially for women and children. We also recommend that international organizations enhance their attempts to negotiate with the Taliban to ensure freedom for women. 
Cooperación Sur y Norte globales en pedagogía y antropología: la orientación planetaria en la formación de profesores
Authors: Rodríguez Gómez Hilda Mar , Stienen Angela
Published: September 2023

En el marco de una cooperación interinstitucional entre la Universidad Pedagógica de Berna (PHBern) en Suiza y la Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA) en Medellín, desarrollamos una propuesta para contribuir a una orientación planetaria de la formación del profesorado, guiada por teorías decoloniales y enfoques que se comprometen críticamente con los órdenes de diferencia existentes. Este artículo se centra en las reflexiones conceptuales, metodológicas y prácticas generadas por la colaboración, a la cual arribamos con nuestro patrimonio académico, intelectual y sociopolítico; lo que nos ha permitido dar cuenta de las tensiones y disputas en torno a conceptos, como el de aprendizaje global; o de estrategias como la movilidad formativa para el conocimiento, la investigación y el intercambio analítico sobre la formación de maestros y maestras desde una perspectiva planetaria para seguir la senda de la pluriversidad.
Antik Roma’da Süt ve Süt Ürünleri: Üretim ve Tüketim
Authors: KAPKA Emine
Published: September 2023

Süt, insanoğlunun dünyaya geldikten sonra tükettiği ilk gıda maddesi olup insan yaşamında hayati bir öneme sahiptir. Diğer hayvanlardan farklı olarak sütten kesildikten sonra hem süt hem de ondan üretilen ürünleri tüketmeye devam etmesi onun önemini açıklayan diğer bir husustur. Bu çalışma, Antik Çağ Akdeniz dünyasının en büyük imparatorluklarından olan Roma İmparatorluğu’nda süt ve süt ürünleri, bunların üretim ve tüketimini incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Roma’nın ilk yerleşimcilerinin hayvancılıkla uğraşan halklar olmalarından dolayı bol miktarda süt ve süt ürünleri üretmiş ve tüketmiş olmalıdır. Bu sava yanıt bulmak için, Roma’nın kuruluşundan (MÖ 753), Principatus döneminin sonuna değin geçen sürede (MS 280) kaleme alınmış Latince literatür incelenmiştir. Bu çalışma yürütülürken Roma İmparatorluğunun merkezi olan Roma kenti ve çevresi coğrafi sınır olarak belirlenmiştir. Çalışmanın sınırları içerisinde kalan ilgili referanslar tetkik edilerek, Romalıların tükettiği süt ürünleri, bunların üretim süreci, kullanım alanları ve toplumdaki karşılığı tespit edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Yapılan araştırmalar, Roma’da sütü en çok tercih edilen hayvanların, keçi, koyun ve inek olduğunu gösterirken, süt (Lat. lac) tüketimi, Roma’nın gelişip büyümesinin tersi yönde olduğunu göstermiştir. Başka bir deyişle, Roma büyüyüp geliştikçe süt içim oranı düşmüştür. Roma ideolojisinde genellikle barbarlık veya göçebe halklarla ilişkilendirilmiştir. Ulaşılan kaynaklarda adı geçen süt ürünleri peynir (caseus), colostrum, tereyağı (Lat. butyrum), melca, oxygala ve schistondur. Bu ürünlerden en çok tercih edilenin ise peynir olduğu ve Roma’nın tüm sınıfları tarafından takdir edildiği ve neredeyse tüm öğünlerde tüketildiği görülür. Kullanım alanları incelendiğinde ise başta mutfak olmak üzere tıbbi, kozmetik ve dini alanlar dikkat çekmektedir.
Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment
Authors: Graham Gordon
Published: September 2023

This book is a set of interrelated, but relatively free-standing essays studying the Scottish philosophical tradition in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The opening essay addresses the relation between philosophy and the history of ideas. Subsequent chapters focus on principal figures such as Sir William Hamilton, J F Ferrier, Alexander Bain, Thomas Carlyle, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, Alexander Campbell Fraser and John Macmurray. Less prominent figures such as Thomas Brown, John Tulloch, Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Thomas Chalmers and Sir Henry Jones are considered in other more thematic chapters. Taken together the essays explore the topics of idealism versus realism, moral philosophy and moral psychology, religion and evolution, the philosophy of rhetoric, progress in philosophy Hegelianism, and the nature of persons. The aim of the book is threefold. 1. To determine the degree to which the debates between Hume and his 18th century Scottish philosophical critics (especially Thomas Reid) shaped philosophical debate in 19th century Scotland 2. To reveal the intrinsic philosophical interest in debates from an era now almost completely unknown. 3. to identifies the culmination of the Scottish philosophical tradition in relation to the publication of George Davie’s Democratic Intellect in 1961.
Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945-1968: An Ethnographic Study
Authors: Coates Jennifer
Published: September 2023

How can we understand what cinema means to others? One of the biggest issues in audience and reception studies is the ultimate unknowability of the processes going on in the mind and body of another person as they watch a film. This has implications for our understanding of how these processes contribute to meaning making, in relation to how viewers understand the events and images onscreen to relate to, inform, or contrast with their own lives and understandings of the world. This book approaches the question of viewers’ relationship to film from a different angle, asking instead what it means to engage discursively with one another through cinema.
Film Viewing in Postwar Japan draws from four years of interviews, participant observation, questionnaire surveys, and written communications with over 100 study participants in the Kansai region of Western Japan. This is an in-depth study of memories of cinema-going among the generations who regularly attended film theatres between 1945-1968, the peak period of production and cinema attendance in Japan.
Through investigating the role of film viewership, broadly conceived, in the formation of a postwar sense of self, the reader will benefit from rare access to the voices of grass-roots viewers, who often tell a different version of cinema history and its effects than that available in extant scholarship.
The Gendered and Colonial Lives of Gurkhas in Private Security
Authors: Chisholm Amanda
Published: September 2023

This book explores the ways in which affect, colonial histories, and militarism organise global security workforces within private military and security companies (PMSCs). It locates its analysis with Gurkhas; a group of militarised men from Nepal with over 200-years of military experience with the British and Indian armies and the Singaporean police, who now participate as security contractors in global markets. These men are celebrated in British popular culture for their heroic martial attributes and their broader military service to the United Kingdom. However, less known, is the fact that many Gurkhas located back in Nepal and their families are drawn into these markets under often exploitative relations. Drawing upon over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with unprecedented access to these security communities throughout Nepal and in Afghanistan, the book’s motivating questions are how security is made through these market relations and how is this security experienced by Gurkhas and their families.
Rev. James Fraser, 1634-1709
Authors: Worthington David
Published: September 2023

This book provides a new interpretation of Scottish Highland history prior to the Battle of Culloden in 1746. It does so by interrogating the autobiographical sources left by Rev. James Fraser (1634-1709) of Kirkhill, a Gaelic-speaking scholar, traveller and minister. Through the example of this ‘curious cleric’, the book illuminates the scholarly dynamism and individual and collective agency of the people of the Highlands. The entire period between 1493 and 1746 can still appear enigmatic in the history of the region, but this book highlight to readers a different side to the north of mainland Scotland during Fraser’s lifetime. It focuses on the region’s strong engagement with Europe and early entanglement with empire, offering a different interpretation of the Highlands as it was prior to the peripheralisation, depopulation and under-development associated with the centuries that followed. The book: challenges the assumption that the Highlands comprised a vacuum, sealed off from the rest of Scotland and the world beyond prior to the eighteenth century; examines the life-writing of an energetic, curious, mobile Gaelic-speaking male and situates him within his locality, his region, country, archipelago and continent in a way unparalleled by any other contemporary example; identifies, in the context of growing global engagements and entanglements, the agency, vitality and resilience of the people of the Highlands in the century before Culloden; strengthens a rich vein of recent historiography that is allowing for a more comprehensive presentation of the early modern Highlands.
Contemporary Arabic Literature
Authors: Snir Reuven
Published: September 2023

The present book is complementary to my Modern Arabic Literature: A Theoretical Framework (2017), but, unlike the latter’s macro-conception, which at times could be subject to the charge of ignoring the nuances and details of the topic, the emphasis here is on the texts themselves and specific literary activities—in other words, on the micro-systems that make up the entire system of Arabic literature. The book has two main axes relevant to contemporary Arabic literary production: the first is heritage – modern Arab authors have been drawing inspiration from their rich ancient heritage whether it has been embodied in texts or concrete experiences, real or imaginary. This is why the way we view the relationship between modern and medieval Arabic literature is highly essential for our understanding of the nature of contemporary Arabic literature. The second axis is world literature – the relationships and connections between Arabic literature and other literatures are essential for the understanding of its nature, whereby Arabic literary works may become a source of direct or indirect loans for another literature and vice versa. What may move, be borrowed, and/or taken over from one culture to another is not just an item of literary repertoire, but also a host of other literary features used in that repertoire.
General William Roy, 1726-1790
Authors: Welfare Humphrey
Published: September 2023

This is the first biography of the man who set the standards and culture of national cartography in Britain. William Roy’s attitudes and values were moulded by his family background in Clydesdale and seem to have been shaped further by intellectual society in Edinburgh. He was recruited to lead the Military Survey of Scotland which was a distillation of the military intelligence required in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-6.
Thereafter his lifelong career was as a military Engineer, engaged in surveying, managing logistics, and in procurement. He was given particular responsibility for recording and analysing military intelligence about the coast for the defence of the realm.
As a Fellow of the Royal Society, he worked assiduously to make good the deficiencies in cartographic science that he had experienced in the Military Survey, specifically the lack of a trigonometrical framework and of reliable data for the determination of elevation. By practical experiment, and by encouraging the development and improvement of instruments, he refined the methodology of hypsometry: using barometers to record differential air pressure and identifying improvements to a rule to convert this data into topographical heights. In geodesy he established meticulous procedures that achieved unprecedented accuracy in the measurement of the baselines fundamental to trigonometrical precision. This would lead to the formation of the Ordnance Survey.
Precise observation and innovation were also evident in his recording and analysis of the Roman military antiquities of Scotland, especially their earthwork remains, thus providing an important foundation for field archaeology.
‘No Words around to Describe’: between Seeing and Comprehending Kuwait’s Oil Fires
Authors: Al-Nakib Farah
Published: September 2023

On 17 January 1991, US-led coalition forces launched Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. By mid-February, as a ground offensive became imminent, the Iraqi regime ordered the detonation of Kuwait’s oil wells. When the war ended on 26 February, 735 of around 870 active wells were ablaze and burned 5 million barrels of oil per day for the next nine months. Neither the world nor the oil industry had ever seen a man-made crisis of this magnitude. This chapter examines diverse perspectives—the international and Kuwaiti firefighters tasked with extinguishing the fires in 1991, films that depict vivid imagery of (and critical commentary on) the oil fires, and the archives of Iraqi Ba‘ath regime now housed at the Hoover Institution—to unpack the push and pull between the shocking visibility of Kuwait’s oil fires, on the one hand, and their overwhelming incomprehensibility, on the other.
Amnesty and Reconciliation in Late Fifth-Century Athens
Authors: Joyce Christopher J.
Published: September 2023

The Athenian Reconciliation of 403 BCE was the pinnacle of amnesty agreements in Greek antiquity. It guaranteed lasting peace in a political community torn apart by civil conflict, because it recognised that for a society to cohere, vindictive action over crimes which predated the exchange of oaths was legally inadmissible. This study analyses the historical circumstances which led to the fall of democracy in 404, the civil conflict which followed under the Thirty Tyrants and the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in 403. It analyses afresh the Reconciliation Agreement in the light of New Institutionalist perspectives, showing that the resurrection of democracy was guaranteed by the rule of law and by the strict application of the agreement in the democratic law courts. It offers fresh readings of the clauses of the Agreement and the legal trials which followed in its wake and shows that the Athenian example was the paradigm not only for amnesties in the ancient world but for those since the seventeenth century.
Militant Cosmopolitics
Authors: Caraus Tamara
Published: September 2023

Militant cosmopolitics explores cosmopolitanism’s radical dynamic as expressed in the struggles from below, all over the world, against exclusion and domination, pointing to the horizon of another world that appears possible. By re-reading the first cosmopolitan stance, that of the Ancient Cynics, the book shows that cosmopolitanism emerges negatively through disaffiliation from the given forms of belonging and by questioning the existing meanings and practices. Through a radical critique, cosmopolitanism goes to the roots of the existing world order based on the nation-state, exposes its exclusionary structure, and reaffirms instead the idea of a World Republic where ‘No One Is Illegal’ and where all are equal citizens of the world. The book captures this radical dynamic in a cluster of novel concepts, such as ‘cosmopolitanism of dissent’, ‘post-foundational cosmopolitanism’, ‘cosmopolitan ontology’, ‘institution of critique’, ‘critique of cosmopolitan desire’, all integrated into an a radical and militant cosmopolitics. Written in a self-critical manner, the book confronts the main criticisms of cosmopolitanism, concomitantly describing the trajectory of elaborating a political theory of cosmopolitanism through a continuous questioning of the advanced concepts.
Francois Hemsterhuis and the Writing of Philosophy
Authors: Whistler Daniel
Published: September 2023

Hemsterhuis and the Writing of Philosophy argues that Hemsterhuis’ philosophy matters and that its exclusion from the canon of modern philosophy has been unjust. And this is not just because of its reception history (i.e., its influence on later German thinkers, such as Goethe, Hamann, Hegel, Herder, Hölderlin, Jean Paul, Kant, Jacobi, Novalis, Schelling, the Schlegels, Schleiermacher, Wieland), but it is primarily because Hemsterhuis’ philosophy contains a rich assemblage of ideas and philosophical practices. The book looks specifically at Hemsterhuis’ reflections on philosophical style and the strategies he employs to communicate ideas in his late dialogues. Taking seriously Hemsterhuis’ newly-published complete correspondence as a significant philosophical text, it contends that Hemsterhuis deserves to be placed alongside Shaftesbury, Hamann, Friedrich Schlegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche as one of the preeminent philosophical stylists of modernity. And, in so doing, it aims to bring Hemsterhuis into an conversation with many key concepts in contemporary theory, such as modernity, temporality, Bildung, materialism and technology.
The Work of Words
Authors: Waithe Marcus
Published: September 2023

The Work of Words explores the unconventional path of middle-class writers who re-presented literature as a manual craft. Thomas Carlyle’s praise for the ‘Singer-guilds’ of Nuremberg is illustrative: in a city known for metalwork, he found that ‘poetry was taught and practised like any other handicraft’. While a significant body of scholarship addresses the representation of work in Victorian literature, and several recent studies address authorial attempts to professionalise literary labour, this book offers a new perspective: 1) rather than focus on the well-known ‘dignity of literature’ debate, whereby authors such as Dickens sought to establish authorship as a middle-class profession, it considers the alternative path of middle-class writers who re-described literature as artisanal labour; 2) unlike many works in the field, it extends beyond the mid-Victorian novel as a generic and historical focus, to address its aesthetic and political afterlife right up to the periods of Guild Socialism, modernism, and European fascism. Given the tilt of world trade towards China, and more recent supply chain shocks, it is not just writers who are haunted by a lost world of material production, but much of the de-industrialised West. By studying the Victorian attempt to make composition (and related mental processes) palpable, this book takes the long view on questions that are still trouble us, and responds to recent concerns, whether as manifested through the revival of craft and workshop culture, or debates about the visibility, weight, and worth of the humanities.
Journalism in the Grey Zone
Authors: Selvik Kjetil , Høigilt Jacob
Published: September 2023

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Lebanon and Tunisia enjoyed a position as the freest Arab countries, with a degree of media pluralism seldom witnessed in the region. But elites in both countries sought to manipulate media organizations and individual journalists for their own purposes. This book explores the political role of journalism in these hybrid settings where democratic and authoritarian practices co-exist. Through nearly 100 interviews and analyses of key events in recent years, Journalism in the grey zone explains the tensions that media instrumentalisation creates in the news media and how journalists navigate the conflicting pressures from powerholders and a marginalized populace. Despite political and economic actors’ ‘capture’ of the media, journalism remains a powerful and occasionally disruptive force. This book offers stimulating insights to students of journalism as well as Middle Eastern politics, based on a framework that invites comparison with other regions around the world.
Late-colonial French Cinema
Authors: Sharpe Mani
Published: September 2023

Deploying the term ‘late-colonial’ to describe a body of largely French films made during, and in response to, the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), this book revolves around one question – what is late-colonial French cinema? – generating two answers. Firstly, this book argues that late-colonial cinema represents a formally and thematically important, yet unappreciated tendency in French cinema; one that has largely been overshadowed by a scholarly focus on the French New Wave. Secondly, this book contends that whilst late-colonial French cinema cannot be seen as a coherent cinematic movement, school of filmmaking, or genre, it can be seen as a coherent ethical trend, with many of the fifteen central case studies explored in Late-colonial French Cinema filtering the Algerian War of Independence through a discourse of ‘redemptive pacifism’.
Boom and Bust, Mainstream and Alternative: The 1990s
Authors: Williams Paul
Published: September 2023

Chapter 6 outlines the erratic 1990s, which began with comics selling in their multimillions. These huge sales were inflated by speculation: consumers buying comics in the hope they would increase in value. By mid-decade the mainstream industry was crashing and Marvel declared bankruptcy, but during the boom there were signs of institutional change that would underpin graphic novel production in years to come. Popular writers and artists parlayed their reputational capital into personal projects, which might be released by imprints at the Big Two, by independent publishers, or by presses set up by creators (such as the company Image). One of the longest comics narratives in the period was The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, published by DC’s Vertigo imprint between 1989 and 1996 and reprinted in book editions after each chapter was completed in serialisation. Given the marketing hype at the start of the decade, the sense of an alternative comics movement defined against a superhero-oriented mainstream hardened, and alternative creators sought common ground with fanzine-makers; comics creator Daniel Clowes had particular affinities with the world of fanzines, or ‘zines’, and he depicted zinesters in his graphic novel Ghost World. Zines and minicomics were thriving in the 1990s thanks to DTP software and cheap and easy access to photocopying, and comics writers and artists frequently depicted alternative comics holding out against the mass-produced commodities of multinational corporations.
Prefigurative Democracy
Authors: van de Sande Mathijs
Published: September 2023

In the wake of protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Spanish 15-M movement, the past decade has seen an increased interest in prefigurative politics: the attempt of activists to already realise or embody their ideal of a future society within their own organisational structures or political practices. This book reconstructs the history of prefiguration as an idea and concept, focusing on its place and meaning in anarchist practices and discourses. It also argues why this anarchist idea of prefiguration may fall short in explaining the democratic relevance of protest movements today. For instance, whereas the traditional concept of prefiguration is often considered to eschew any form of political representation, we may need to better understand how movements such as Occupy Wall Street and their prefigurative practices precisely fulfilled an important representative role. This book argues that a more radical-democratic conception of prefigurative politics is needed. It builds on the work of various radical-democratic theorists – primarily Hannah Arendt and Ernesto Laclau, but also others such as Claude Lefort, Rosa Luxemburg, and Judith Butler – to reveal the radical potential and representative role of protest and social movements. Engaging with these radical-democratic sources also offers various accounts of how prefigurative practices and movements may continue to have political relevance long after they have ended.
Global Displacement in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Cole Phillip
Published: September 2023

The book calls for a radical review of what international protection looks like and who is entitled to it. It brings together different issues of forced displacement into one place to provide a systematic overview. It draws attention to groups other than refugees who are often overlooked when it comes to discussions of international protection, such as the internally displaced, those displaced by disasters, development projects and climate events. The book draws on extensive case studies, such as border practices by European Union states, the United States and the United Kingdom. It places the experiences of displaced people at the centre and argues that they should be key political agents in determining policy in this area.
At the centre of the book is a concern with the voice and agency of the displaced, that they should be active participants in the process of resisting the injustice of displacement, and that the key task for those seeking to support them is to construct a common political space of resistance through strategies of solidarity.
The Greek Imaginary
Authors: Castoriadis Cornelius
Published: September 2023

This book collects twelve previously untranslated seminars offered by Cornelius Castoriadis in 1982-1983 at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. It also includes important supplemental writings by Castoriadis and a substantive essay by Pierre Vidal-Naquet highlighting Castoriadis’s contributions to the study of the ancient Greece intellectual legacy. Castoriadis’s seminars themselves focus broadly on the interconnection between philosophy and democracy and the way both emerge within a broader, self-critical social imaginary institution already visibly expressed in the work of early Greek poets and Presocratic philosophers. The first two lectures focus on methodology and the philosophical premises of the seminars’ inquiries. The following six lectures focus on Homer, Hesiod, and Greek tragedy, as well as on Greek religion and the social context of mythology broadly. Here, Castoriadis analyses not only textual themes but also the concrete practices which likely conditioned the poems emergence and the methods of investigation (e.g., archaeology) which, today, condition our own access to and understanding of them. The final four lectures focus on the early Greek philosophical tradition, with emphasis on Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Democritus. Here, Castoriadis understands this tradition not to have emerged in an isolated way but to have developed through critical conversation with the preceding mythological traditions and through engagement with the surrounding social, political, and religious practices. The supplemental materials include Castoriadis’s succinct summary of his early seminars’ themes as well as a substantive, previously unpublished essay from 1979, “Political Thought”, which concerns the correlated emergence of democratic institutions and philosophical inquiry. The volume concludes with eminent classicist Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s thoughtful memorial assessment of the significance of Castoriadis’s work on the ancient Greeks.
Transnational Kaiju
Authors: Rawle Steven
Published: September 2023

This book examines the ways in which the kaijū eiga has developed into a global genre. From relatively humble beginnings in a King Kong-inspired Japanese studio picture, the kaijū eiga has developed into a worldwide phenomenon. While the origins of giant kaijū – the term often preferred to ‘monster’ – remain firmly rooted in Japan, the figure has become a transnational spectacle. This book explores how kaijū went global, from the adoption of Godzilla movies in translation to the appropriation of cultural material across borders. With reference to the genre’s global development, its exploitative Western circulation and the labour of fans, the book examines how genres with deep national roots can become transnational phenomena. As one of very few academic texts to treat the kaijū eiga seriously, it sheds light on an under-appreciated cinematic form and considers more widely how globalisation has contributed to the spread and popularisation of the kaijū film.
Contemporary Disney Animation
Authors: Benhamou Eve
Published: September 2023

Contemporary Disney Animation: Genre, Gender and Hollywood is the first in-depth study of Disney’s latest animated output from the perspective of genre theory. Analysing a decade in Disney’s history (2008-2018), Benhamou examines the multifaceted interactions between animated films, Disney properties such as Pixar and Marvel, and popular genres including the romantic comedy, the superhero film and the cop buddy film. Through this extensive critical lens, combined with a focus on gender, the book provides illuminating and original insights on films such as Tangled, Frozen and Moana. Informed by wider discourses on contemporary Hollywood and post-feminism, it challenges conventional approaches to Disney and its expanding cinematic universe, and foregrounds the importance of animation in understandings of film genres. This study is supported throughout by close analyses of the films, marketing materials, merchandising, and a wide range of comparative case studies from mainstream animation and Hollywood cinema.
‘Third way’ teenage fashion: housewives’ films documenting ideals of middle-class youth culture in 1950s Sweden
Authors: Björkin Mats
Published: September 2023

This chapter pays attention to the immediate postwar era, focusing on Sweden’s sociohistorical context. Mats Björkin addresses the expansion of consumerism in Swedish society at the end of World War II through an analysis of ‘housewives films’, a novel format which combined marketing and information. Although advertisement driven, these films put emphasis on an efficient lifestyle and are representative of the household rationalisation scheme, encouraged by the political climate of the time which prompted women to work part-time while continuing being the main homemaker. Björkin focuses on one particular instalment titled Tonårsmodet [Teenage Fashion] shedding new light on an understudied aspect of Swedish fashion and textile industry.
Blood on the Lens
Authors: McMurdo Shellie
Published: September 2023

Blood on the Lens: Trauma and Anxiety in American Found Footage Horror Cinema explores how the most visually recognisable post-millennial horror subgenres engages with cultural trauma and societal anxieties.
Through three distinct sections, Blood on the Lens: Trauma and Anxiety in American Found Footage Horror Cinema, presents found footage horror as a vital and ever evolving subgenre, which readily incorporates new forms of media and emerging reality aesthetics. The central argument of this book is that found footage horror is uniquely positioned in relation to our contemporary experience of trauma and anxieties in the 21st century, and that this is key to its popularity and longevity.
Through analysis of selected case study films both mainstream and lesser known, this book examines key shifts in found footage horror cinema, and identifies how significant cultural events have impacted on, and been integrated within, the subgenre. This book traces how and why the subgenre has endured, and how it has responded to moments of uncertainty in contemporary society.
Virginia Woolf and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers
Authors: Reus Anne
Published: September 2023

This book explores Virginia Woolf’s influence on the literary afterlives of a selection of marginalized and canonical nineteenth-century women of letters, showing that Woolf’s interest in the lives and personalities of authors fundamentally shapes her critical encounters with them. Comprising case studies on Jane Austen, Mary Russell Mitford, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mary Augusta Ward, and Margaret Oliphant, this book argues that Woolf’s responses to her literary predecessors allow new insights into her self-positioning within the literary canon, her engagement with select writers and the interplay of biographical innovation and Victorian legacies in her non-fiction. Showing that Victorian narratives and tropes of female professionalism continue to shape Woolf’s representations of nineteenth-century women writers even at the heyday of her Modernist fame, this book therefore contrasts the overt feminism of A Room of One’s Own (1929) with the more ambiguous literary biography to argue for its status as a transitional, post-Victorian body of work.
‘Vain are these speculations’: Jane Austen and Female Perfection
Authors: Reus Anne
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines Virginia Woolf’s writing on Jane Austen.
Austen’s persona is fundamentally a product of the 1870s constructed by her family, complementing Victorian critics’ praise for Austen’s feminine awareness of her own limitations and small-scale perfection, but causing considerable unease for her literary successors. The chapter argues that Woolf’s unease with Austen’s status is a reaction to her biographical afterlife, demonstrating the fundamental importance of biographies like Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen to Woolf’s literary criticism. Biography not only creates, but also resolves this tension: with the publication of Austen’s juvenilia and letters in 1922 begins a process of recovery that leads Woolf to rewrite her as a satirical and irreverent commentator on patriarchal culture as well as a proto-modernist foremother of her own, and ultimately all women’s writing in A Room of One’s Own.
The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay
Authors: Aquilina Mario
Published: September 2023

The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay distinguishes itself by the wide range and scope of its themes, voices and approaches. Thirty-five leading essayists, literary critics and writing instructors explore the essay from multiple perspectives, including its theories, forms and histories as well as its cultural, political and pedagogical contexts. In particular, the volume extends the theory of the essay by addressing topics such as the construction of an essayistic self and the political dimensions of essaying. It further explores the relationship between the essay and other forms, such as philosophical writing, the column, science writing, the novel, the lyric and the advert as well as the essay in digital spaces.
Refusing to Behave in Early Modern Literature
Authors: Seymour Laura
Published: September 2023

Examines the interrelation of the body and the textual in four early modern works: Thomas Dekker’s If This Be Not a Good Play The Devil is In It (c.1611), Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604) and its English translation by James Mabbe (1622), Thomas Ellwood’s History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (1714) and the anonymous play Grim the Collier of Croydon (c.1600). Refusing to Behave reads these texts within frameworks of kinesic and kinaesthetic intelligence, examining how readers’ and audiences’ embodied knowledge is engaged in response to them. The book draws on folkloric, theological, and other cultural material to contexualise these works within early modern understandings of the body and embodiment. Simultaneously, Refusing to Behave is informed by current and recent literary work in cognitive theory. Overall, this book advances the argument that descriptions of bodies in early modern text can exert a special power over readers and audiences.
Introduction
Authors: Haldon Yannis
Published: September 2023

The introductory chapter discusses the theoretical-methodological background of the volume focussing on the concepts of ‘identity’ and ‘ideology’. Considering that both terms offered, explicitly or implicitly, the conceptual framework for all contributors in their analyses, the chapter aims to offer insight into their definitional background and their various uses in order to help readers to orientate themselves the better to appreciate the value of the various different contributions to the present volume. Moreover, the concepts of ‘society’ and ‘symbolic universe’ are discussed. Finally, the introduction offers a short summary of the contents and main aims of the individual chapters and how these contribute to the discussion set out by the volume.
British Romanticism and Denmark
Authors: Duffy Cian
Published: September 2023

British Romanticism and Denmark traces a multifaceted discourse about Denmark across a wide range of different areas of enquiry and genres of cultural productivity in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Britain.  In so doing, the book has a twofold purpose. First: to recover a significant but still largely-unfamiliar aspect of the cultural history of Britain during the Romantic period.  Second, and by extension: to further scholarly understanding of Romanticism as a European phenomenon by exploring how two national Romantic traditions interacted across political and linguistic borders.  British Romanticism and Denmark shows how the articulation in British Romantic-period writing of the idea of a ‘Northern’ cultural identity shared by Britain and Denmark, and rooted in the Classical Scandinavian past, played an important role in the emergence and development of Romanticism and Romantic nationalism in both countries.
Understanding Islam
Authors: Turner Bryan S.
Published: September 2023

This book begins with a comparison of understanding something versus explaining it. Whereas dialogue works towards mutual understanding and respect, explanations examine issues of which the participants may not be aware. This distinction also relates to the problems of insider and outsider knowledge. A dialogic understanding of Islam has been problematic in recent times because of international instability, military conflict, and extreme political movements. However, understanding Christianity may be as difficult as understanding Islam following St. Paul’s commentary on Christian belief being ‘foolishness to the Greeks’. Edward Said’s Orientalism has also been influential in considering the limitations of western understanding. The limitations of secular feminist approaches are considered along with debates about Islamophobia. The general conclusion is to take a critical view of ‘positionality’ that claims that factual knowledge is limited by the position of the researcher. While understanding might be from the position of the viewer, explanation strives for information that can be shared as reliable evidence. The introduction concludes with a defence of the possibility and prospects of dialogue.
On Solé and Planat Criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis
Authors: Vega Frank
Published: September 2023

There are several statements equivalent to the famous Riemann hypothesis. In 2011, Solé and Planat stated that the Riemann hypothesis is true if and only if the inequality $\zeta(2) \cdot \prod_{q\leq q_{n}} (1+\frac{1}{q}) > e^{\gamma} \cdot \log \theta(q_{n})$ holds for all prime numbers $q_{n}> 3$, where $\theta(x)$ is the Chebyshev function, $\gamma \approx 0.57721$ is the Euler-Mascheroni constant, $\zeta(x)$ is the Riemann zeta function and $\log$ is the natural logarithm. In this note, using Solé and Planat criterion, we prove that the Riemann hypothesis is true.