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This book deals with community-building as it manifested itself in early modern 's-Hertogenbosch. Citizenship and autonomous collective organisations were phenomena that were present in all West-European cities. Mostly men organised themselves in among others civic militias, craft-guilds and the reformed congregation: corporations that may be considered the most important institutions of the middling sort. The members of the corporate institutions rendered their services to a great extent to the master-corporation, their domicile. On the basis of the situation in 's-Hertogenbosch the following questions will be answered: 1. how was civil society formed in Dutch cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth century; 2. in what way did the corporate institutions contribute to the local community-building; 3. how did these social connections develop in time. Craft-guilds, civic militias and the church created a bond between the people. By their regulations members of these corporations took up a juridically clearly defined position towards the inhabitants who did not belong, and especially towards foreigners. In the corporations individual freedom was not sought as its highest goal, but the welfare of the collective. The corporations offered their members dignity, social acceptance, participation, sociability and protection in times of distress, and they bore responsibility for the organization of the city. In this book there is definitely a place for conflict as well. A harmonious and prosperous society is in the view of communautarists like Robert Putnam's almost the natural outcome from citizens cooperating in unions. Conflict forms an essential part of the interaction between people. In spite of the conflicts corporations did not collapse. Corporations underlined the importance of the social bond for the individual as well as the community. The main obstacle was religion. The policy of the town council was directed towards a fair and just treatment of the different confessions within the framework of the Capitulation Treaty of 1629 and the "laws of The Hague". The town council was the guardian of the common interest and it corrected the corporations that were inclined to serve their own ends. Skipping the details Robert Putnam draws attention to the corporations in North-Italian city-states that caused civil communities to bloom. Putnam relates this to the present American society. He just like Amitai Etzioni, another important community-thinker, recognizes the importance of social connections in which members cooperate, have discussions and in doing so keep democracy alive. Communautarists pay attention to the transmitting of norms and values. Corporations in early modern times also were emphatically engaged in this. What applied to Putnam's city-states in the late Middle Ages also applies to the corporations in early modern 's-Hertogenbosch. Members of the corporations created a lively culture of discussion, a necessary condition for a community on its way to democracy. (Jonathan Israel states that 'the democratic republic [started] in the Republiek') In order to deliberate with one another it is important that the partners in deliberation trust one another. Cooperating within social connections and delegating responsibilities is only possible, as Fukuyama points out, if there is trust. Both within the guilds and the militias this trust could grow because quite soon after the Reduction of 1629 the catholic and reformed members started to work on the ecumenicity of everyday life. Schilling and Blickle both ascertain, ignoring details, that changes into a democratic direction in early modern times were initiated bottom-up in small connections. The discussion that Tönnies started on Gesellschaft und Gemeinschaft is still very much alive especially when we take into account the 'golden rules' of Etzioni. He draws attention to the smaller connections - intermediary institutions - that a democratic communitarian society, a 'community of communities' needs if it is to stay alive.

Preface -- Contents -- Introduction to Belowground Defence Strategies in Plants -- Part I: General Principles of Belowground Defence Strategies -- Belowground Defence Strategies in Plants: Parallels Between Root Responses to Beneficial and Detrimental Microbes -- 1 Introduction -- 2 The Study of Root-Microbe Interactions -- 2.1 Plant Systems -- 2.2 Microbial Systems -- 2.2.1 Foliar Fungal Pathogens -- 2.2.2 Oomycete Pathogens -- 3 Can I Stay or Must I Go? Parallels in Root Responses to Beneficial and Detrimental Microbes at the Tissue Level -- 3.1 Nutrition Status

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. Continuation along current development pathways is not sustainable. Available technology and production practices and the consumption patterns of modern societies are leading to global warming and ecological destruction. Business as usual is not an option. There is an urgent need to find a new development paradigm that ensures environmental sustainability while managing to provide, now and in the future, a decent livelihood for all of humankind. In Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development, experts in the area provide a variety of insights about the technical transformation needed for sustainable development. It spells out the behavioural and policy changes that would need to accompany the next technological transformation, taking into account the complexity of inducing technological change in the energy and agricultural sectors. The assessment suggests that this will require major, but doable improvements in national innovation systems and major, but affordable shifts in investment patterns and related macroeconomic adjustments.

"This richly documented account of the arrival of rubber traders, new Christian missionaries, and the Portuguese colonial state in the Kongo realm is told from the perspective of the kingdom's inhabitants. Jelmer Vos shows that both Africans and Europeans were able to forward differing social, political, and economic agendas as Kongo's sacred city of São Salvador became a vital site for the expansion of European imperialism in Central Africa. Kongo people, he argues, built on the kingdom's long familiarity with Atlantic commerce and cultures to become avid intermediaries in a new system of colonial trade and mission schools. Vos underlines that Kongo's incorporation in the European state system also had tragic consequences, including the undermining of local African structures of authority--on which the colonial system actually depended. Kongo in the Age of Empire carefully documents the involvement of Kongo's royal court in the exercise of Portuguese rule in northern Angola and the ways that Kongo citizens experienced colonial rule as an increasingly illegitimate extension of royal power."--

Preliminary Material -- Introduction /Pieter Vos and Onno Zijlstra -- The Law of God in a Secular State /Gé Speelman -- Multiculturalism, Religion and Public Justice /Jonathan Chaplin -- The Natural Law and Liberal Traditions /David VanDrunen -- The Empire and the Desert /Alfons Brüning -- Whose Civilization is Europe Today? /Ábrahám Kovács -- The Aniconic God in Isaiah 43:10 and the Contemporary Discourse on Monotheism /Emanuel Gerrit Singgih -- Is Christ Among Us? /Jaeseung Cha -- A Violent God? /Renée van Riessen -- The Irreducibility of Religious Faith /Pieter Vos -- Civic Integration /Mechteld Jansen -- Prophecy and Democracy? /Nico Koopman -- Mapping the Christian Character /Heleen Zorgdrager -- In Defense of Authenticity /Onno Zijlstra -- Religious Transformations within Modernity /Wilhelm Gräb -- List of Contributors /Pieter Vos and Onno Zijlstra -- Index /Pieter Vos and Onno Zijlstra.

This book assesses financing strategies in Latin America and the Caribbean, in pursuance of the United Nations' millennium development goals (MDGs) and their achievement in 2015. It looks at how to make public policies more conducive to support sustained growth and reduce the still widespread poverty and inequality in the region.