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This book offers new transdisciplinary perspectives on luxury, exploring the topical phenomenon of digitally retouched (censored) and blockchain-secured (sensored) luxury watches and outlining implications that emerge for the field of luxury studies and managerial practice.

Based on a cross-disciplinary approach, the book integrates theoretical and empirical perspectives to advance the readers' understanding of luxury. With a particular focus on the Swiss luxury watch context, the book thereby draws on qualitative, quantitative, and archival data to shed new light on recent luxury trends, integrating literature on aesthetics of labour, conspicuous consumption, Gestalt theory, ethical theory, functional theories of attitudes, and surveillance studies. Eight chapters take the readers through a range of topical challenges arising with the display and changing moral perceptions of luxury and shifts that the luxury watch sector is facing in light of the digital transformation impacting luxury goods and the luxury management environment.

This unique book will be of value for academics, scholars, and upper-level students across management studies with a particular interest in the luxury and fashion industries, luxury management, brand management, business ethics, and digital transformation.

With a foreword by Thomaï Serdari, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University.

This book analyses regional development policy or the lack thereof in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which forms a key trading bloc on the African continent as well as the Global South. It explores the main attributes relevant to the formulation of regional policy in terms of socio-economic policies as well as spatial planning instruments. Further, it integrates macro and sectoral policy frameworks and applies the goals and objectives thereof practically through the appropriate and timely application of spatial targeting instruments within the SADC as a developing region.

The focus of the research is to reflect on the social, economic, environmental, and political arguments through a focused analysis of relevant planning instruments, policies, and barriers in terms of the regional policy goals for the SADC region. The book provides insight into the role of the SADC in the context of regional development, analyses regional policy on a national, regional, and continental scale with reference to the SADC, and evaluates the inherent potential in the regional economy as well as barriers to regional development. It identifies gaps in the existing regional policy framework of the region and its constituent members and makes recommendations for improved regional policy frameworks and their implementation.

The book is targeted at scholars, researchers, and students studying international trade as well as regional and economic development, and urban and regional planning and policy. It will also be a useful resource for policymakers, as it provides practical policy guidelines for improved regional planning towards a comprehensive regional policy framework.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Delivering a Climate Neutral Europe summarises the achievements of 25 years of EU Climate Policy, with the emphasis on what has been achieved under the Green Deal. It also highlights climate issues on the table of policy makers in the next European policy cycle 2024–2029.

Curated by Jos Delbeke, one of the foremost experts in this field, the chapters are all written by responsible officials of the EU Commission services, who were deeply involved in the negotiations related to the legislation they prepared. They explain how ambitious targets were prepared for 2030 and 2050 in view of implementing the commitments taken in 2015 under the Paris Agreement and present the overall architecture of the policy to counter the idea that an avalanche of legislative action is being developed without much structure. In particular, this book examines the carbon pricing tool that Europe implemented under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the differentiated targets Member States have to deliver and climate-relevant EU legislation in the fields of energy, transport, industry, finance and agriculture and forestry. The authors also discuss the upcoming headwinds in the form of a growing scepticism in public opinion, and the impact of the wars in the close neighbourhood of the European continent.

Written as a follow-up to previous publications EU Climate Policy Explained and Towards a Climate-Neutral Europe, this new volume will be a vital resource for students, scholars and policy makers alike who are researching and working in the areas of climate change, environmental governance and EU policy more broadly.

In Europe's recent history, there have been several challenges to the strength of the European Union—Brexit, COVID, financial crises, and global tensions—bringing an increased need to understand the ways that the European Union (EU) could successfully stay together or fall apart. In examining how the European Union has changed since 1993, important puzzles have emerged, including how national government functions are transferred to the EU without reforming the EU, how increased transparency is announced while decisions are approved in informal meetings, and how the effects of the polarizing rise of Euroscepticism can be managed to still promote the formation of solidarity and trust among Europeans. To understand these puzzles, Thomas König introduces a new theory of (supra)national partyism to help explain the causes and consequences of choices made by political leaders for Europe. He uses a game-theoretical perspective to look at how conditions for leaders change through accessions of new members, shocks, and crises, and separates institutional choices into two different games played by office- and policy-seeking political leaders—the interstate summit game and the national game of party competition. The Dynamics of European Integration reveals how the reorganization of electoral systems can harness dissensus and polarization among diverse national constituencies to enable the promotion of solidarity and trust in the EU.

Implementing national policies is a crucial function of the local Chinese bureaucracy and an indispensable part of Beijing's overall state capacity. Yet the specifics of how and why local officials interpret and implement such policies have so far escaped detailed attention. In Redeveloping China's Villages in the Twenty-First Century, Lior Rosenberg fills this gap by examining the national Village Redevelopment Program, one of China's most significant policies of recent decades to promote rural change. Based on Rosenberg's on-site research, Redeveloping China's Villages in the Twenty-First Century investigates the Village Redevelopment Program's implementation in both the industrialised county of Chenggu, in Shandong province, and the predominantly agricultural county of Beian, in Anhui province. At the book's heart is a puzzle: the program was supposed to prioritise poorer villages, but in both Chenggu and Beian—despite being carried out in surprisingly divergent ways—it has subsidised improved infrastructure and services in already industrialised and prosperous villages, while leaving behind poorer ones. In explaining this outcome, Rosenberg elaborates on the larger economic, political and social environment in which Chinese local officials operate, as well as the pressures they face from above. He analyses the dual role played by higher-level authorities, as both policy enablers and thwarters in a system that sanctifies commandism but where the distinction between principals and agents is blurred.

Die Frage nach der Zugehörigkeit Tibets zum chinesischen Kulturraum sorgt seit langem für Debatten. Nachdem das tibetische Hochplateau im 18. Jahrhundert China eingegliedert wurde, drang um die Wende vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert die britische Kolonialmacht aus Indien nach Tibet vor. Woher kommt es, dass westliche und chinesische Ansichten zur "Tibet-Frage" so stark divergieren? In seiner Analyse erörtert der Autor Probleme, die weit über den Einzelfall Tibets hinausgehen: Was macht einen Nationalstaat heute aus? Lässt sich dieses westliche Konzept auf den ostasiatischen Fall übertragen, in dem die Beziehungen zwischen politischer Zentrale und staatlich wenig definierten Regionen historisch ganz anders gewachsen sind? Ist das Nationalstaatsprinzip überhaupt noch aktuell oder schürt es religiöse, soziale und ethnische Konflikte? Das Buch bietet fundierte Einsichten zu einer Schlüsselregion der Welt und lädt kundig wie thesenreich zu gemeinsamer Debatte ein.

This open access book demonstrates that despite different epistemological starting points, history and speculative fiction perform similar work in "making the strange familiar" and "making the familiar strange" by taking their readers on journeys through space and time. Excellent history, like excellent speculative fiction, should cause readers to reconsider crucial aspects of their society that they normally overlook or lead them to reflect on radically different forms of social organization. Drawing on Gunlög Fur's postcolonial concept of concurrences, and with contributions that explore diverse examples of speculative fiction and historical encounters using a variety of disciplinary approaches, this volume provides new perspectives on colonialism, ecological destruction, the nature of humanity, and how to envision a better future.

This open access book is a rare example of the ethnographic study of investigative journalism. This book explores entrepreneurial attempts to combine traditional investigative journalism with alternative ways of organising this work. It transcends watershed investigative projects in favour of the ways in which new actors (citizens, technologists, bloggers and local reporters, among others) join experienced investigative journalists in experiments with the practices of watchdog journalism in the digital era. Cases include Bristol Cable, Bureau Local and the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism, as well as Forbidden Stories. The book also includes two chapters on the impact of COVID-19 upon the development of cross-disciplinary work in a traditional newsroom and in the larger media ecosystems of both Norway and China. This is a timely book for journalism students, scholars and investigative reporters, who share a passion for this form of journalism.

This book was prepared with the purpose of facilitating the understanding of a relevant dimension of the contemporary metamorphosis of the world of work: the emerging, complex, heterogeneous, dynamic and blurred constellation of work activities mediated by digital platforms. This specific variety of process digitization is designated here by the name digitrab, an acronym for digital work.

Eisenbahn und Telegrafie stehen im 19. Jahrhundert für die Beschleunigung und Ausweitung gesellschaftlicher Beziehungen. Wie der Autor zeigt, entsprach die im deutschsprachigen Raum übliche Kurrentschrift nicht mehr den Anforderungen an schriftliche Kommunikation. Als "Beschleunigungsmittel des Gedankenverkehrs" bot sich die Stenografie an. Ihre Nutzung als Verkehrsschrift setzte jedoch eine Einheitskurzschrift voraus. Zu deren Einführung kam es aber erst 1924 nach langwierigen Verhandlungen auf Druck der Reichsregierung. Anhand von Presseberichten und Archivtexten bietet der Band einen Einblick in die vielschichtigen Beziehungen zwischen gesellschaftlichen, technischen und kulturellen Entwicklungen sowie den Veränderungen im Bereich der Kommunikation.

Realismusdebatten und literarische Strömungen der italienischen Nachkriegsliteratur legen meist eine Überlappung von außersprachlicher Realität und deren Darstellung im Medium des Romans zugrunde. Einige Literaturschaffende entziehen sich dieser Tradition jedoch, indem sie sich auf ästhetische, politische und explizit an ein neues soziopolitisches Paradigma der Nachkriegszeit geknüpfte Gesichtspunkte beziehen. Britta Köhler-Hoff legt dar, wie dabei nicht nur die Abbildbarkeit der Wirklichkeit durch Literatur infrage gestellt wird, sondern auch - teilweise im Rahmen eigener Theoriebildung - abweichende und engagierte literarische Wirklichkeitskonzeptionen entstehen.

This book focuses on social and political developments in Armenia during a turbulent post-2018 period. Between 2018 and 2020, the country experienced three significant waves of upheaval: a revolution, a pandemic, and a war. These events had far-reaching implications for Armenia's social, cultural, security, and political foundations. The book provides both factual insights and theoretical underpinnings that help readers understand the country's transformation and the resulting challenges. In its immediate neighbourhood, Armenia is one of the few countries with a clear commitment to democratic governance. However, the country, with its democratic potential in Europe's eastern neighbourhood, is currently undergoing complex dynamics in security and social spheres. The main goal of this volume is to shed light on Armenia's complicated reality, bring it into the research spotlight, and foster discussions about the country's core challenges.

In Europa und den USA des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts revoltierten mehrere Bewegungen für einen "starken Liberalismus": in England die Leveller, in den USA Unabhängigkeitskämpfer um Tom Paine und in Frankreich der Cercle Social. Sie kämpften nicht nur für Menschenrechte und Demokratie, sondern auch gegen eine Machtkonzentration in der Wirtschaft. Trotz großer Anhängerschaft wurden sie verfolgt, eingekerkert oder ermordet und ihr Gedankengut geriet in Vergessenheit. Der Autor macht ihre Ideen und Lösungsvorschläge in diesem posthum erscheinenden Band zugänglich und zeigt, wie aktuell ihre Tradition in der heutigen Welt einer globalisierten Wirtschaft ist. Mit einem Vorwort von Carsten Herrmann-Pillath.

Constitutional adjudication is a subject of fascination for scholars. Judges may annul the will of a democratically elected Parliament in counter-majoritarian fashion. Although conceived as a remedy against majoritarianism, judges also decide cases by voting. Whether they do so through simple majorities or supermajorities is not trivial.

The debate around supermajorities has awakened anew amidst theories of judicial limitation and new conceptions of judicial review. This book advances our knowledge of systems employing supermajorities in constitutional adjudication by performing a comparative analysis of ten jurisdictions and twelve supermajority models. It introduces a typology of the main models of institutional design, the reasons leading policymakers to establish them, and the impact supermajorities have on courts. It explores the question of whether supermajorities grant deference and foster consensus, or if they disable constitutional courts from exercising judicial review. By analyzing the history, practice, and effects of supermajority rules in courts, this book contributes to an ongoing conversation on the democratic implications of voting protocols in constitutional courts. It will be a valuable resource for policy-makers, scholars, and researchers working in the areas of comparative constitutional law and constitutional politics.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Wer sich aufmacht, der Rede vom Plausiblen nachzuspüren, kommt zu einem eigenartigen Befund: In Alltag und Wissenschaft sind Aussagen, dass etwas "plausibel" ist, nahezu allgegenwärtig. Auf der anderen Seite zeigt sich, dass wissenschaftliche Konzeptualisierungen der im Begriff anklingenden Bedeutungen selten sind. Der Band bietet daher eine interdisziplinäre kulturwissenschaftliche Erkundung des Konzepts der Plausibilität und der Praxis des Plausibilisierens. Dabei beleuchten die Beiträger*innen soziokulturelle Erscheinungsformen, Modalitäten, Funktionsweisen, Dynamiken und Strategien des Plausibilisierens - jeweils in unterschiedlichen historischen und regionalen Kontexten.