By means of a comparative analysis of the ‘Dutch case’ with the Saintonge in South-West France and Bohuslän in South-West Sweden, this paper analyses the rise and decline of maritime services clusters in preindustrial Europe. The leading question for this comparative analysis is: Was the ‘Dutch case’ exceptional or can similar developments be recognised in other parts of Europe as well…
Covid-19 emergency has produced within societies a strong impulse toward digitization policies, designed to mitigate the negative effects produced on national economies and to ensure a recovery of it. Among the objectives included by the Italian Government within the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) there is a boosting of investments in the 4.0 Transition with measures involving not…
This good practice essay puts the Community Education Program (CEP) as a focus for comparison between West Virginia (USA) and Germany/European Union (EU). The essay is a combination of reflections on qualification frameworks, learning outcomes, lifelong learners/learning, transnational organisations, the Scottish Framework, a number of good practices, and accreditation from a research and pract…
This work offers a new interpretation about the main groups implicated in the textile trade in Seville during the 16th century, proposing a new chronology concerning the substitution processes happened between them and the nature of the importance of those groups. This is specially clear in the longer endurance of the activity of castilian and mainly burgalese merchants in the importation of ca…
This paper analyses the rise of Swedish trade and shipping in the Mediterranean in the eighteenth century. It focuses on three factors that shaped Sweden’s role in the area: foreign policy interest, foreign trade policy (mercantilism), and commodity demand and supply. The foreign policy interest is represented by attempts to build an alliance with the Ottoman Empire against Russia. An outcome…
‘Who is in and who is out? – these are the first questions that any political community must answer about itself’ (Walzer 1993: 55). We can agree with Michael Walzer on this point, but there is one important question that precedes asking who is in and who is out and that is, why are we in this together in the first place? How did a concrete political community come into being, and why doe…
The digital pdf of Chapter 5 is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist internati…
The sequencing of the entire human genome has opened up unprecedented possibilities for healthcare, but also ethical and social dilemmas about how these can be achieved, particularly in developing countries. UNESCO's Bioethics Programme was established to address such issues in 1993. Since then, it has adopted three declarations on human genetics and bioethics (1997, 2003 and 2005), set up nume…
"This book examines the key dimensions of 21st century war, and shows that orthodox thinking about war, particularly what it is and how it is fought, needs to be updated. Accelerating societal, economic, political and technological change affects how we prepare, equip and organise for war, as well as how we conduct war – both in its low-tech and high-tech forms, and whether it is with high in…
This chapter argues for the significance of semiotic organisation of messaging in communicating the country-of-origin (COO) of a brand in advertising, and ultimately–brand itself. The author analyses persuasive structures of human thought used in visual advertising. Metaphorical thinking, narrativisation, using stereotypes, mythisation, and the accompanying aestheticisation in advertising bec…