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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2024

        Rethinking untouchability

        The political thought of B. R. Ambedkar

        by Jesús F. Cháirez-Garza

        This book examines the transformation of untouchability into a political idea in India during the first half of the twentieth century. At its heart is Ambedkar's role and the concepts he used to champion untouchability as a political problem. Ambedkar's main objective was to comprehend the numerous avatars of untouchability in order to eradicate this practice. Ambedkar understood untouchability beyond aspects of ritual purity and pollution by stressing its complex nature and uncovering the political, historical, racial, spatial and emotional characteristics contained in this concept. Ambedkar believed the abolition of untouchability depended on a widespread alteration of India's political, economic and cultural systems. Ambedkar reframed the problem of untouchability by linking it to larger concepts floating in the political environment of late colonial India such as representation, slavery, race, the Indian village, internationalism and even the creation of Pakistan.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Emigration from Scotland between the wars

        by Marjory Harper

        Emigration from Scotland has always been very high. However, emigration from Scotland between the wars surpassed all records; more people emigrated than were born, leading to an overall population decline. Why was it so many people left? Marjory Harper, whose knowledge is grounded in a deep understanding of the local records, maps out the many factors which worked together to cause this massive diaspora. After an opening section where the author sets the Scottish experience within the context of the rest of the British Isles, the book then divides the country geographically, starting with the Highlands, then coastal Scotland, and the urban Lowland highlighting in turn the factors that particularly influenced each of these areas. Harper then discusses the organised religious and political movements that encouraged emigration. By interweaving personal stories with statistical evidence Harper brings to life the reality behind the dramatic historical migration.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Emigrants and empire

        by Stephen Constantine

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2021

        The Irish tower house

        Society, economy and environment, c. 1300–1650

        by Victoria L. McAlister

        The Irish tower house examines the social role of castles in late-medieval and early modern Ireland. It uses a multidisciplinary methodology to uncover the lived experience of this historic culture, demonstrating the interconnectedness of society, economics and the environment. Of particular interest is the revelation of how concerned pre-modern people were with participation in the economy and the exploitation of the natural environment for economic gain. Material culture can shed light on how individuals shaped spaces around themselves, and tower houses, thanks to their pervasiveness in medieval and modern landscapes, represent a unique resource. Castles are the definitive building of the European Middle Ages, meaning that this book will be of great interest to scholars of both history and archaeology.

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2021

        African cities and collaborative futures

        Urban platforms and metropolitan logistics

        by Michael Keith, Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, Susan Parnell

        This groundbreaking volume brings together scholars from across the globe to discuss the infrastructure, energy, housing, safety and sustainability of African cities, as seen through local narratives of residents. Drawing on a variety of fields and extensive first-hand research, the contributions offer a fresh perspective on some of the most pressing issues confronting urban Africa in the twenty-first century. At a time when the future of the region as a whole will be determined in large part by its cities, the implications of these developments are profound. With case studies from cities in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, this volume explores how the rapid growth of African cities is reconfiguring the relationship between urban social life and its built forms. While the most visible transformations in cities today can be seen as infrastructural, these manifestations are cultural as well as material, reflecting the different ways in which the city is rationalised, economised and governed. How can we 'see like a city' in twenty-first-century Africa, understanding the urban present to shape its future? This is the central question posed throughout this volume, with a practical focus on how academics, local decision makers and international practitioners can collaborate to meet the challenge of rapid growth, environmental pressures and resource gaps.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        January 2014

        Court and civic society in the Burgundian Low Countries c.1420–1530

        by Andrew Brown, Graeme Small

        This volume is the first ever attempt to unite and translate some of the key texts which informed Johan Huizinga's famous study of the Burgundian court, The Waning of the Middle Ages, a work which has never gone out of print. It combines these texts with sources that Huizinga did not consider, those that illuminate the wider civic world that the Burgundian court inhabited and the dynamic interaction between court and city. Through these sources, and an introduction offering new perspectives on recent historiography, the book tests whether Huizinga's controversial vision of the period still stands. Covering subjects including ceremonial events, such as the spectacles and gargantuan banquets that made the Burgundian dukes the talk of Europe, the workings of the court, and jousting, archery and rhetoric competitions, the book will appeal to students of late medieval and early modern Europe and to those with wider interests in court culture, ritual and ceremony.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Materials and medicine

        by Pratik Chakrabarti

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        Children's & YA

        Hamster Humboldt. Small and Steady Wins the Race

        by Meike Betz

        This intrepid hamster plunges into every adventure with full cheeks! Humboldt is a detective, adventurer and – a hamster. His size doesn’t stop him from helping the people of Villy Village out of all sorts of fixes whenever he’s not helping his owner Babs and her daughter Elli in the post office. No problem is too big for him! Only his owner’s money worries leave him flummoxed. But then Babs and Elli win the lottery and are over the moon – until they receive an anonymous postcard. Humboldt’s life is suddenly in dire straits because the unknown blackmailer wants Babs and Elli’s lottery ticket – or he’s going to hurt Humboldt. When the police refuses to get to the bottom of the case, Humboldt decides to take matters into his own paws. He’s keen to put a stop to this lottery villain’s antics! HAMSTER HUMBOLDT. SMALL AND STEADY WINS THE RACE is a detective and adventure story full of animal-entertainment for girls and boys aged 8+.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2023

        Witnessing to the faith

        by Shanyn Altman

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Unfit for heroes

        Reconstruction and soldier settlement in the empire between the wars

        by Kent Fedorowich

        Research on soldier settlement has to be set within the wider history of emigration and immigration. This book examines two parallel but complementary themes: the settlement of British soldiers in the overseas or 'white' dominions, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, between 1915 and 1930. One must place soldier settlement within the larger context of imperial migration prior to 1914 in order to elicit the changes in attitude and policy which occurred after the armistice. The book discusses the changes to Anglo-dominion relations that were consequent upon the incorporation of British ex-service personnel into several overseas soldier settlement programmes, and unravels the responses of the dominion governments to such programmes. For instance, Canadians and Australians complained about the number of ex-imperials who arrived physically unfit and unable to undertake employment of any kind. The First World War made the British government to commit itself to a free passage scheme for its ex-service personnel between 1914 and 1922. The efforts of men such as L. S. Amery who attempted to establish a landed imperial yeomanry overseas is described. Anglicisation was revived in South Africa after the second Anglo-Boer War, and politicisation of the country's soldier settlement was an integral part of the larger debate on British immigration to South Africa. The Australian experience of resettling ex-servicemen on the land after World War I came at a great social and financial cost, and New Zealand's disappointing results demonstrated the nation's vulnerability to outside economic factors.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        February 2023

        Imagining the Irish child

        Discourses of childhood in Irish Anglican writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

        by Jarlath Killeen

        This book examines the ways in which ideas about children, childhood and Ireland changed together in Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses on different varieties of the child found in the work of a range of Irish Protestant writers, theologians, philosophers, educationalists, politicians and parents from the early seventeenth century up to the outbreak of the 1798 Rebellion. The book is structured around a detailed examination of six 'versions' of the child: the evil child, the vulnerable/innocent child, the political child, the believing child, the enlightened child, and the freakish child. It traces these versions across a wide range of genres (fiction, sermons, political pamphlets, letters, educational treatises, histories, catechisms and children's bibles), showing how concepts of childhood related to debates about Irish nationality, politics and history across these two centuries.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Child, nation, race and empire

        Child rescue discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915

        by Margot Hillel, Shurlee Swain, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        Child, nation, race and empire is an innovative, inter-disciplinary, cross cultural study that contributes to understandings of both contemporary child welfare practices and the complex dynamics of empire. It analyses the construction and transmission of nineteenth-century British child rescue ideology. Locating the origins of contemporary practice in the publications of the prominent English Child rescuers, Dr Barnardo, Thomas Bowman Stephenson, Benjamin Waugh, Edward de Montjoie Rudolf and their colonial disciples and literature written for children, it shows how the vulnerable body of the child at risk came to be reconstituted as central to the survival of nation, race and empire. Yet, as the shocking testimony before the many official enquiries into the past treatment of children in out-of-home 'care' held in Britain, Ireland, Australia and Canada make clear, there was no guarantee that the rescued child would be protected from further harm.

      • Trusted Partner
        March 2021

        Columbus, the Discarded Explorer

        Disaster of the legendary sailor

        by Wolfgang Wissler

        There he stands, the man the whole of Spain cheered, before whom the most catholic regents Isabella and Ferdinand rose to their feet, his eyes on his ship Capitana, devoured by shipworm, stranded off Jamaica. Some of the crew mutiny, the locals can no longer be fobbed off with glass beads, the Spanish on the nearby island of Hispaniola do not help, the world doesn‘t want anything to do with him, the demanding whinger. He, Christopher Columbus, is a John Lackland, a king without land, a conqueror without conquest. Between fiction and historical truth, Wolfgang Wissler recounts the legendary sailor‘s last expedition in an entirely new way – and what a story it is!

      • Trusted Partner
        June 2009

        Max Frisch. Citoyen

        by Max Frisch, Matthias Gunten

        »Wir riefen Gastarbeiter, und es kamen Menschen.« Mit Sätzen wie diesem griff Max Frisch immer wieder in das öffentliche Leben der Schweiz ein. Als politischer Intellektueller war er auch in anderen Ländern ein gefragter Gesprächspartner: Er diskutierte mit Henry Kissinger über den Krieg in Vietnam, war 1977 in der Nacht, in der die »Landshut« gestürmt wurde, bei Helmut Schmidt in Bonn. Dem Citoyen, dem engagierten Bürger Max Frisch hat Matthias von Gunten sein Porträt gewidmet. Zu Wort kommt, neben Kissinger und Schmidt sowie Schriftstellerkollegen wie Christa Wolf, Günter Grass und Peter Bichsel, auch der Autor Max Frisch selbst – seine Tagebucheinträge und Reden werden gelesen von Reto Hänny. »Solche Stimmen fehlen heute in der Schweiz«, sagte von Gunten dazu der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung. Man möchte ergänzen: und anderswo.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Crowns and colonies

        European monarchies and overseas empires

        by Robert Aldrich, Cindy McCreery

        Queen Victoria, who also bore the title of Empress of India, had a real and abiding interest in the British Empire, but other European monarchs also ruled over possessions 'beyond the seas'. This collection of original essays explores the connections between monarchy and colonialism, from the old regime empires down to the Commonwealth of today. With case studies drawn from Britain, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, the chapters analyse constitutional questions about the role of the crown in overseas empires, the pomp and pageantry of the monarchy as it transferred to the colonies, and the fate of indigenous sovereigns under European colonial control. Crowns and colonies, with chapters on North America, Asia, Africa and Australasia, provides new perspectives on colonial history, the governance of empire, and the transnational history of monarchies in modern Europe.

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