This open access book focuses on the role of civil society in the creation, dissemination, and interpretation of knowledge in geographical contexts. It offers original, interdisciplinary and counterintuitive perspectives on civil society. The book includes reflections on civil and uncivil society, the role of civil society as a change agent, and on civil society perspectives of undone science. …
‘Following the data’ is a now-familiar phrase in Covid-19 policy communications. Well-being data are pivotal in decisions that affect our life chances, livelihoods and quality of life. They are increasingly valuable to companies with their eyes on profit, organisations looking to make a social impact, and governments focussed on societal problems. This book follows well-being data back cent…
This Open Access edited collection calls for a greater understanding of ‘the local’ within the ways the arts, culture and creative practices are governed, promoted, regulated, resourced and valued. Cultural policy studies tends to privilege the national (and international) as the primary site at which cultural policy is enacted, and focuses on the ‘local’ as a case study of practice, ra…
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This volume provides a series of illuminating perspectives on the timings of death, through in-depth studies of Shakespearean tragedy, criminal execution, embalming practices, fears of premature burial, rumours of Adolf Hitler’s survival, and the legal concept of brain death. In doing so, it explores a number of questions, including: how …
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license This book explores the magical and medical history of executions from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century by looking at the afterlife potency of criminal corpses, the healing activities of the executioner, and the magic of the gallows site. The use of corpses in medicine and magic has been recorded back into antiquity. The lace…
Those convicted of homicide were hanged on the public gallows before being dissected under the Murder Act in Georgian England. Yet, from 1752, whether criminals actually died on the hanging tree or in the dissection room remained a medical mystery in early modern society. Dissecting the Criminal Corpse takes issue with the historical cliché of corpses dangling from the hangman’s rope in crim…
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence. This book is a multidisciplinary work that investigates the notion of posthumous harm over time. The question what is and when is death, affects how we understand the possibility of posthumous harm and redemption. Whilst it is impossible to hurt the dead, it is possible to harm the wishes, beliefs and memories of persons that once li…
This book analyses the different types of post-execution punishments and other aggravated execution practices, the reasons why they were advocated, and the decision, enshrined in the Murder Act of 1752, to make two post-execution punishments, dissection and gibbeting, an integral part of sentences for murder. It traces the origins of the Act, and then explores the ways in which Act was actually…
This book offers a research-based, holistic overview of the entire value chain of the global food industry. It captures and defines over 80 contemporary ‘megatrends’ in agriculture and the food market that can be empirically documented and have a major impact on business, economies, industries, societies, and individuals. Today the world is characterized by more uncertainty and unpredict…
This Open access book is a collection of interviews published by China News Service, a Beijing-based news agency, in its “West-East Talk” column. It has been divided into five sections: “Mutual Learning Among Civilizations,” “Hot Issues,” “About China,” “Sino-U.S. Relations” and “Cultural Collision”. The interviews are with more than 50 eminent scholars, scientists, poli…