Affirm Press is an independent publisher in Melbourne, Australia, dedicated to publishing great stories, big ideas, and the most engaging local and international authors. Our children's list was shortlisted for the 2020 BOP Bologna Best Children’s Publisher of the Year award.
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Our passion is to show kids, how colourful and fascinating the world is. There is not only one way to live but so many. We love curious children and we do the books they need to explore the world. So we do travel books for kids and novels for the journey in a hammock.
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This book is about power in welfare encounters. Present-day citizens are no longer the passive clients of the bureaucracy and welfare workers are no longer automatically the powerful party of the encounter. Instead, citizens are expected to engage in active, responsible and coproducing relationships with welfare workers. However, other factors impact these interactions; factors which often pull in different directions. Welfare encounters are thus influenced by bureaucratic principles and market values as well. Consequently, this book engages with both Weberian (bureaucracy) and Foucauldian (market values/NPM) studies when investigating the powerful welfare encounter. The book is targeted Academics, post-graduates, and undergraduates within sociology, anthropology and political science.
This book offers important new insights into the history and culture of the Gaelic-speaking world from the mid-fifteenth century through to the reign of James VI and I. Throughout this period, the reach of the English and Scottish crowns within these western regions was limited. The initiative lay with local communities and royal power was contingent upon negotiating with well-established and largely autonomous aristocratic lineages. Moreover, events within this western world could exert a powerful, often unpredictable, influence upon the affairs of the wider archipelago. Using a series of case studies, this collection examines the evolving relationship between Ireland and Scotland in rich detail. It demonstrates how this world interacted with the encroaching English and Scottish states and underlines the importance of paying closer attention to this neglected area of Irish and British history.
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This book describes how human rights have given rise to a vision of benevolent governance that, if fully realised, would be antithetical to individual freedom. It describes human rights' evolution into a grand but nebulous project, rooted in compassion, with the overarching aim of improving universal welfare by defining the conditions of human well-being and imposing obligations on the state and other actors to realise them. This gives rise to a form of managerialism, preoccupied with measuring and improving the 'human rights performance' of the state, businesses and so on. The ultimate result is the 'governmentalisation' of a pastoral form of global human rights governance, in which power is exercised for the general good, moulded by a complex regulatory sphere which shapes the field of action for the individual at every turn. This, unsurprisingly, does not appeal to rights-holders themselves.
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Imperial power, both formal and informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely dependent in the nineteenth century. This book examines a portion of the mass-produced juvenile literature, focusing on the cluster of ideas connected with Britain's role in the maintenance of order and the spread of civilization. It discusses the political economy of Western ecological systems, and the consequences of their extension to the colonial periphery, particularly in forms of forest conservation. Progress and consumerism were major constituents of the consensus that helped stabilise the late Victorian society, but consumerism only works if it can deliver the goods. From 1842 onwards, almost all major episodes of coordinated popular resistance to colonial rule in India were preceded by phases of vigorous resistance to colonial forest control. By the late 1840s, a limited number of professional positions were available for geologists in British imperial service, but imperial geology had a longer pedigree. Modern imperialism or 'municipal imperialism' offers a broader framework for understanding the origins, long duration and persistent support for overseas expansion which transcended the rise and fall of cabinets or international realignments in the 1800s. Although medical scientists began to discern and control the microbiological causes of tropical ills after the mid-nineteenth century, the claims for climatic causation did not undergo a corresponding decline. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Magazine was patriotic, militaristic and devoted to royalty. The book explores how science emerged as an important feature of the development policies of the Colonial Office (CO) of the colonial empire.
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Windows for the world explores the display and reception of nineteenth-century British stained glass in a secular exhibition context. International in scope, the book focuses on the global development of stained glass in this period as showcased at, and influenced by, these exhibitions. It recognises those who made and exhibited stained glass and demonstrates the long-lasting impact of the classification and modes of display at these events. A number of exhibits are illustrated in colour and are analysed in relation to stylistic developments, techniques and material innovations, as well as the broader iconographies of nation and empire in the nineteenth century.
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The essays in this volume have been written by leading experts in their respective fields and bring together established scholars with a new generation of migration and transnational historians. Their work weaves together the 'new' imperial and the 'new' migration histories, and is essential reading for scholars and students interested in the interplay of migration within and between the local, regional, imperial, and transnational arenas. Furthermore, these essays set an important analytical benchmark for more integrated and comparative analyses of the range of migratory processes - free and coerced - which together impacted on the dynamics of power, forms of cultural circulation and making of ethnicities across a British imperial world.
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World Stages, local audiences argues that the forms of intimacy and identification that come from being part of the public of a local performance, provide a potential model for rethinking our roles as world citizens. Using his own experience of recent theatrical practice in Vancouver as a starting point, Dickinson maps the spaces of connection and contestation, the flows of sentiment and social responsibility, produced by different communities in response to global sports spectacles. He also analyses how such topics are taken up in the work of playwrights, conceptual, installation, and performance artists like Ai Weiwei, and Rebecca Belmore. In so doing, Dickinson makes an original contribution to the emerging discourse on live art and 'livability' by examining not only the geographical and historical affiliations between different sites of performance, but also the - at times - radical new social bonds created by audiences witness to those performances. ;
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Christian dualism originated in the reign of Constans II (641-68). It was a popular religion, which shared with orthodoxy an acceptance of scriptual authority and apostolic tradition and held a sacramental doctrine of salvation, but understood all these in a radically different way to the Orthodox Church. One of the differences was the strong part demonology played in the belief system. This text traces, through original sources, the origins of dualist Christianity throughout the Byzantine Empire, focusing on the Paulician movement in Armenia and Bogomilism in Bulgaria. It presents not only the theological texts, but puts the movements into their social and political context.
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Worldwide eradication of the devastating viral disease of smallpox was devised as a distant global policy, but success depended on implementing a global vaccination programme within nation states. How this was achieved remains relevant and topical for responding to today's global communicable disease challenges. The small and poor Himalayan kingdom of Nepal faced enormous geographical and infrastructure challenges if it was going to succeed in a nationwide vaccination programme. This book acknowledges the key role of the WHO but disrupts the top-down, centre-led standard narrative. Against a background of widespread internal political and social change, Nepal's programme was expanded, effectively decentralised and a vaccination strategy introduced that aligned with people's beliefs. Few foreign personnel were involved.
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A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his own groundbreaking paintings, this book had a tremendous impact on the development of modern art. Kandinsky's ideas are presented in two parts. The first part, called "About General Aesthetic," issues a call for a spiritual revolution in painting that will let artists express their own inner lives in abstract, non-material terms. Just as musicians do not depend upon the material world for their music, so artists should not have to depend upon the material world for their art. In the second part, "About Painting," Kandinsky discusses the psychology of colors, the language of form and color, and the responsibilities of the artist. An Introduction by the translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, offers additional explanation of Kandinsky's art and theories, while a new Preface by Richard Stratton discusses Kandinsky's career as a whole and the impact of the book. Making the book even more valuable are nine woodcuts by Kandinsky himself that appear at the chapter headings. This English translation of Über das Geistige in der Kunst was a significant contribution to the understanding of nonobjectivism in art. It continues to be a stimulating and necessary reading experience for every artist, art student, and art patron concerned with the direction of 20th-century painting.
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The first comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the literature on poverty, communal welfare systems and alternative welfare strategies. Offers a new perspective on how we should conceptualise poverty and how ordinary families and communities responded to that poverty.. Indicates the need for new directions in the study of poverty and welfare using previously unpublished results form one of the biggest poor law databases in existence.. Argues that welfare historians have paid too little attention to the complexities of defining and measuring poverty, and a variety of primary source material is used to reconsider the extent of poverty in the period 1700-1850.. Provides the first systematic attempt to discuss the regional dimensions of the welfare system in an English context. ;
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At the core of this book are three central contentions: That medical welfare became the totemic function of the Old Poor Law in its last few decades; that the poor themselves were able to negotiate this medical welfare rather than simply being subject to it; and that being doctored and institutionalised became part of the norm for the sick poor by the 1820s, in a way that had not been the case in the 1750s. Exploring the lives and medical experiences of the poor largely in their own words, Sickness, medical welfare and the English poor offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the so-called crisis of the Old Poor Law from the later eighteenth century. The sick poor became an insistent presence in the lives of officials and parishes and the (largely positive) way that communities responded to their dire needs must cause us to rethink the role and character of the poor law.
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Representing Renaissance art, c.1500-c.1600 is a study of change and continuity in the iconographies of art and the visual representation of artists during the sixteenth century, especially in Italy and the Netherlands. The issue of how, and how far, artists obtained higher status for their profession during the Renaissance is a key question for the study of the early modern period. This book considers the maintenance of well-established traditions for the visual representation of artists, and also examines the new iconographies that emerged in the sixteenth century. By highlighting art and architecture that artists designed for their personal use, including the decoration of their houses, this study provides insight into the tastes and 'ways of looking' specific to artists. By examining the visual evidence we see the opinions both of artists who expressed their views in literary texts, and additionally those of artists who did not publish their ideas in written form.
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A football is a moody thing, and the art of mastering it a highly challenging concern. Whether fan or philosopher, football is a fascination, and its various facets are revealed in this anthology with memorable, intelligent and curious contributions. How and with what (human rights-violating) methods did Qatar prepare for the World Cup? Actress Christiane Paul explains why she supports FC Bayern. Herman van Veen explains the difference between Dutch and German football fans, and the report 'Five balls for Angola' takes readers on a journey to football in Africa. A book for dedicated fans and critical football observers.
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Is the Atlantic World in a state of crisis? At a time when many political observers perceive indeed a crisis in transatlantic relations, critical evaluation of past narratives and frameworks in Transatlantic Relations and Atlantic History alike become crucial. This volume provides an academic foundation to critically assess the Atlantic World and to rethink transatlantic relations in a transnational and global perspective. The TransAtlantic reconsidered brings together leading experts such as Harvard historians Charles S. Maier and Bernard Bailyn and former ERC scientific board member Nicholas Canny. All the scholars represented in this volume have helped to shape, re-shape, and challenge the narrative(s) of the Atlantic World and can thus (re-)evaluate its conceptual basis in view of historiographical developments and contemporary challenges.
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Civic identity and public space, focussing on Belfast, and bringing together the work of a historian and two social scientists, offers a new perspective on the sometimes lethal conflicts over parades, flags and other issues that continue to disrupt political life in Northern Ireland. It examines the emergence during the nineteenth century of the concept of public space and the development of new strategies for its regulation, the establishment, the new conditions created by the emergence in 1920 of a Northern Ireland state, of a near monopoly of public space enjoyed by Protestants and unionists, and the break down of that monopoly in more recent decades. Today policy makers and politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of public space in a divided city, while endeavouring to promote a new sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian and political divisions.
