Search results

Abstract
The aim of this study is to analyze verbal and pictorial signs in advertisements of cars, collected from Finnish newspapers in the 1950s and 2010s. The semiotic study of the material is based on the sign theory of Charles S. Peirce. The collection also opens a possibility to a micro-historical analysis, where the methodological emphasis lies more on quality than quantity. Finally, the car in urban society is considered as a kind of a Bakhtinian chronotope. The language variants, photos, pictures and other illustrations reveal interesting features in the advertisements, and they also show some social and cultural contrasts. There are only few human beings pictured in the advertisements, and the advertisements have, moreover, a clear masculine label. The car was a great dream for young people in post-war Finland in the 1950s, and that is why the pictures of cars had a great symbolic value in the society with a low number of car owners. From being a more or less luxurious vehicle of the higher social class, the car has become a vehicle for almost everyone. Internationally, the car has played a central role in the industrialized society, a role with an increasing effect even today.

Abstract
The most recent spate of 'democratic revolutions', ushering in the fourth wave of democratization, seems to lend support to those advocating for the primacy of political and civil rights, over economic, cultural and social ones, in the human rights framework. In this article, I challenge that idea, arguing instead that the most recent regime changes, like so many that have preceded them, were, if anything, more about economic rights than political ones. I reassess not only the most recent 'revolutions', but also those that took place over the course of the 20th century, showing commonalities among the human rights goals of communists, anti-communists and contemporary pro-democracy leaders. By framing these various revolutionaries as human rights agents, and mass publics as their allies, this article is designed to engage readers in a debate about what, if any, sorts of rights truly hold primacy. The difference between today's pro-democracy leaders and yesterday's communist ones rests on the perceived international legitimacy of the democratic template. Yet all of these leaders, I argue, have essentially struggled for political change not as an end, but as a means to improved economic rights.

Arend Lijphart's seminal consensus model of democracy does not only try to explain how democracy actually works. It also purports to be a 'kinder, gentler' form of democracy with regard to e.g. unemployment, disability, illness and old age. So far, this conjecture has not been brought to a systematic test which is the purpose of this article. We look into the consequences for one of the areas Lijphart singles out: disability. Does consensus democracy promote a more generous policy towards disabled people than majoritarian democracy? We transfer Lijphart's theory to municipality level. In Sweden, disability care is namely the responsibility for the municipalities, which are comparatively large and independent and with the right to tax their citizens; they are like small nation‐states. There is, however, a considerable variation in disability support between them. Some give ten times as much support than others. Is it those governed according to the consensus model? Our approach helps controlling for the variation in political and cultural context and expands the number of observations. The statistical comparison of Swedish municipalities does not, however, lend any confirmation of the famous theory. Instead, there are reasons to doubt that consensus democracy promotes more generous policies.

This article promotes a "cultural international political economy" approach to globalization in East Asia in the so-called information age. It emphasizes the inherently discursive as well as material character of economic relations and their embedding in a complex web of different scales of action from local to global. Thus it introduces the policy discourses related to two major components in recent efforts to renew U.S. hegemony: promotion of the Global Information Infrastructure and the global expansion of intellectual property rights through the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This initiative has enabled the emergence of a hegemonic GII-IPR-TRIPs complex supported by transnational informational capital, trade-related committees, and state agencies. This complex has triggered several forms of resistance and adaptation in East Asia. Targets of this resistance have been the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex itself. Modes of counterhegemonic resistance have included state strategic support for the Linux movement as well as everyday tactics of software piracy. In addition, subhegemonic forces (e.g., APEC and national governments) have been acting as translating centers that help shape responses to efforts to consolidate the hegemony of the GII-IPR-TRIPs complex at regional levels. (Crit Asian Stud/DÜI)

This article aims at examining how and why industrial location planning intentions and attempts undertaken by a Socialist government during the 1980s in a southern European capitalist metropolis, Greater Athens, were not achieved in practice. It first examines recent trends in the unequal geography of manufacturing production in Athens and identifies the major problems of the Athenian industrial space. It then examines the basic urban-industrial planning attempts undertaken during the 1980s and the actual sociopolitical and cultural responses which drove to the abandonment of those attempts. The article argues that these responses were grounded in a widespread anti-industrial mentality, the political speculation of the environment issue and the fictitious dilemma 'environmental protection-versus-industrial development' in Athens. It then sets forth an explanation of anti-industrialism as the combined outcome of: (1) the general spatial-economic problems; (2) the role of speculative land and housing interests; (3) the lack of a comprehensive and deliberate industrial strategy for the development and effective location of manufacturing; and (4) the mainstream ideological propensities developed during the 1980s. On the basis of these analyses the article finally proposes a re-orientation of future research towards more socially and culturally informed approaches in the Greek context.

This book uncovers the current knowledge on entrepreneurial cultures and the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems between Asia and Europe. Broadening the scope spatially and conceptually, the book discusses the entrepreneurial ecosystems as a system and mediator in their cultural, political, and socio-economic settings in an interdisciplinary approach. This allows a clearer perspective on stakeholders' interaction, international collaboration and competition, power relations, and political influence. The various chapters in this edited volume cover the peculiarities and differences in Asia, Europe, and Eurasia with the New Silk Road (or Belt and Road Initiative) as the bridging component. The chapters, written for researchers and policy makers interested in Asian-European cooperation, also include discussions on economic systems, globalization, and regionalization, politics, cultures, and digitalization

"Andy Blunden's Hegel Marx & Vygotsky, Essays in Social Philosophy presents his novel approach to social theory in a series of essays. Blunden aims to use the cultural psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the Soviet Activity Theorists to renew Hegelian Marxism as an interdisciplinary science. This allows psychologists and social theorists to share their insights through concepts equally valid in either domain. The work includes critical reviews of the works of central figures in Soviet psychology and other writers offering fruitful insights. Essays on topics as diverse as vaccine scepticism and the origins of language test out the interdisciplinary power of the theory, as well as key texts on historical analysis, methodology and the nature of the present conjuncture"--

In the past decades cultural heritage stored at museums and archives has been returned to source communities in various forms and under diverse circumstances. This contribution to the Elements series explores and discusses specifically the return of digital 'ethnographic' images to indigenous and non indigenous people that share a common recent history of coexistence and dispute over the same territory that is to be understood in the light of the consolidation of a Nation State with a settler colonial logic. The author argues that the affective reception of what a given archive labels as tangible and intangible heritage varies according to each audience´s particular memory practices, historical experience and way of relating to shared hegemonic notions of 'whiteness' and 'indigeneity'.

Introduction -- Chapter 1. Overcoming Structural Constraints in EU-GCC Relations:The format, the Content and the Actors -- chapter 2. Tailoring a Local Approach: Extending EU Policy Objectives to facilitate technical and vocational education to work transitions in Saudi Arabia -- Chapter 3. Cultural and Religious Diplomacy as Soft Power in EU-GCC Relations -- chapter 4. Domestic Economic Plans and Visions and Opportunities for Cooperation with Europe -- Chapter 5. Navigating the New Era:Energy and Environmental Considerations in EU-GCC Relations -- Chapter 6. EU-GCC Trade and Investments -- chapter 7. EU-GCC Parliamentary Relations: Multilateral Challenges, Bilateral Gains -- chapter 8. EU approaches to the Gulf Crisis -- chapter 9. Gulf Security Architecture and the Potential Role of Europe -- Conclusion: EU-GCC Relations at a Crossroads.

1. Chapter 1 Historical and Cultural Influences on Education Policy and Disability Services -- 2. Chapter 2 The Immortelle: Planting, Nurturing, and Growing -- 3. Chapter 3 Original Parents' Stories: From "Something not right here" to "She's wonderful!" -- 4. Chapter 4 Forty Years Later: Current Parents – From "Something not Right Here to "We Need Systems!" -- 5. Chapter 5 "Trinidad is Nice, Trinidad is a Paradise": Navigating negativity and creating love -- 6. Chapter 6 Sustaining the Immortelle: "You Have to Love What You Do" -- 7. Chapter 7 Building a Community of Advocates: Seeking Unity in Diversity -- 8. Chapter 8 Health and Education: Seeking an Explicit Place on the Agenda -- 9. Chapter 9 Trinidad and Tobago in a Liminal Space

While it now attracts many tourists, the Colca Valley of Peru's southern Andes was largely isolated from the outside world until the 1970s, when a passable road was built linking the valley--and its colonial churches, terraced hillsides, and deep canyon--to the city of Arequipa and its airport, eight hours away. Noble David Cook and his co-researcher Alexandra Parma Cook have been studying the Colca Valley since 1974, and this detailed ethnohistory reflects their decades-long engagement with the valley, its history, and its people. Drawing on unusually rich surviving documentary evidence, they explore the cultural transformations experienced by the first three generations of Indians and Europeans in the region following the Spanish conquest of the Incas.

"From Catalonia to the Caribbean: The Sephardic Orbit from Medieval to Modern Times is a polyphonic collection of essays in honor of Jane S. Gerber's contributions as a leading scholar and teacher. Each chapter presents new or underappreciated source materials or questions familiar historical models to expand our understanding of Sephardic cultural, intellectual, and social history. The subjects of this volume are men and women, rich and poor, connected to various Sephardic Diasporas--Spanish, Portuguese, North African, or Middle Eastern--from medieval to modern times. They each, in their own way, challenged the expectations of their societies and helped to define the religious, ethnic, and intellectual experience of Sephardim as well as surrounding cultures throughout the world" --

"Taking a long view, and a wide perspective, this book by Japan's leading scholars on Asia and Eurasia provides a comprehensive and systematic comparison of the three greatest powers in the region and assesses how far the recent growth trajectories of these countries are sustainable in the long run. The book demonstrates the huge impact on the region of these countries. It examines the population, resource and economic basis for the countries' rise, considers political, social and cultural factors, and sets recent developments in a long historical context. Throughout, the different development paths of the three countries are compared and contrasted, and the new models for the future of the world order which they represent are analysed"--

With only a small remnant of Jews still living in the Maghrib at the beginning of the 21st century, the vast majority of today's inhabitants of North Africa have never met a Jew. Yet as this volume reveals, Jews were an integral part of the North African landscape from antiquity. Scholars from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Israel, and the United States shed new light on Jewish life and Muslim-Jewish relations in North Africa through the lenses of history, anthropology, language, and literature. The history and life stories told in this book illuminate the close cultural affinities and poignant relationships between Muslims and Jews, and the uneasy coexistence that both united and divided them throughout the history of the Maghrib.