Cambridge University Press strana 24 z 64

This Element is about change. Specifically, it''s about the underlying mechanisms that cause change to happen, both in nature and in culture; what types there are, how they work, where they can be found, and when they come into play. The ultimate aim is to shed light on two barbed issues. First, what kind of system of change is culture and, second, what kind of change in that system counts as creativity; that is, what are the properties of the mechanisms of change when we explore unknown regions of the cultural realm. To that end, a novel theoretical framework is proposed that is based on the concept of a sightedness continuum. A sightedness framework for the mechanisms of change can integrate the three mechanisms causing gradual, adaptive, and cumulative change ? evolution, learning, and development ? into a single dimension and provide a clear view of how they cause change.

Why are interest groups on the march in Europe? How do they become so powerful? Why do reformers struggle with plans to overhaul education systems? In Who Controls Education?, Susanne Wiborg investigates the dynamics of educational interest groups across four European countries: England, France, Germany and Sweden, alongside their counterparts in the European Union. She delves into why some groups wield more power than others and how they gain access to policymaking venues to shape education reforms. The book reveals a gap between reformers' intentions and policy outcomes, often attributed to group politics, with significant consequences for education users, historically a weak organisational group. Wiborg shows that addressing the role of vested interest is crucial for creating an education system where all children benefit.

Mass polarization is one of the defining features of politics in the twenty-first century, but efforts to understand its causes and effects are often hindered by empirical challenges related to measurement and data availability. To address these challenges and provide a common standard of analysis for researchers, this Element presents the Polarization in Comparative Attitudes Project (PolarCAP). PolarCAP clearly defines polarization as a property of group relations and uses a Bayesian measurement model to estimate smooth panels of ideological and affective polarization across ninety-two countries and forty-nine years. The author uses these data to provide a descriptive account of mass polarization across time and space. They further show how PolarCAP facilitates substantive inference by applying it to three sets of variables often hypothesized as causes or consequences of polarization: institutional design, economic crisis, and democracy. Open-source software makes PolarCAP easily accessible to scholars and practitioners.

Walking is a determining trope and structure in Samuel Beckett''s oeuvre, furnishing a textual and performance figure, a framing device, and a material practice. The walk begins as a motif, becomes a rhythm, expands into a compositional principle, and culminates in an ontology -- a defining means by which his characters are cognitively embodied and by which meaning is grounded. The book contends that Beckett''s literary pedestrianism involve passage from an evasive and narcissistic vestige of Romanticism and a solipsistic variation on Edwardian autonomy to an embrace of mutuality and transitory being: life not as a network of stations so much as a meshwork of ways, peripatetic coming and going as the basis of human possibility and ethical value. The study examines the Beckett walk with reference to, for instance, cognitive theory, materialities theory, environmental studies, infrastructure theory, cultural and literary history, speech-act theory, mobility studies and performance studies.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous Western missionaries were involved in debating the existence of God in various religious texts and practices in ancient China. Drawing on both the rising philological scholarship in Europe and their own field experience in China, the Western missionaries examined the idea of God, the Thearch, and Heaven as the Supreme Being in the spiritual life and ritual activities of the Chinese people. From the Christian perspective, they attempted to identify the original belief in one God in ancient China in order to convert their Chinese audience. Furthermore, they addressed the issue of monotheism in the broader Asian context by suggesting the universal monotheistic degeneration from Persia to China across Asia continent.

This thoroughly updated second edition guides readers through the central concepts and debates in the philosophy of science. Using concrete examples from the history of science, Kent W. Staley addresses questions about what science is, why it is important, and the basis for trust in scientific results. The first part of the book introduces the central concepts of philosophy of science, with updated discussions of the problem of induction, underdetermination, rationality, scientific progress, and important movements such as falsificationism, logical empiricism, and postpositivism, together with a new chapter on social constructionism. The second part offers updated chapters on probability, scientific realism, explanation, and values in science, along with new discussions of the role of models in science, science in policy-making, and feminist philosophy of science. This broad yet detailed overview will give readers a strong grounding in philosophy of science whilst also providing opportunities for further exploration.

In recent decades the cult of Santa Muerte has become a remarkable phenomenon in Mexico''s popular religious landscape, from where it has migrated abroad. Due to the uncommon iconography of the robed skeleton and the association with criminality, the Santa Muerte cult has been the object of public controversy. This Element deconstructs mainstream views of Santa Muerte devotion by privileging the voices and practices of devotees. Counterintuitively, Santa Muerte devotion is about assuring a good life in health, work, love, justice, and security. Notwithstanding the cult''s rapid growth and public visibility since 2000, it is deeply embedded in Mexico''s religious and cultural history. The analysis of material culture, theology, and ritual demonstrates the importance of devotional intimacy. This Element also studies how gender, family, leadership, and political relations intersect with the cult. Santa Muerte popular religiosity is examined in terms of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, ineffective social protections, exclusion, and existential insecurities.

This Element leverages a comparative approach to understand how conspiracy theories and their believers differ within and across countries. Using original survey data from eight varied cases (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Lebanon, Morocco, South Africa, and the United States) the authors present specific contemporary conspiracy theories, illustrate how these theories appeal in their national context, and determine whether the characteristics of the typical conspiracy theory believer vary across setting. They first demonstrate that there is a wide range of conspiracy theories, some of which have worldwide reach, whereas others are more context specific. Then, they show that the determinants of individual conspiracism are very similar in the Western world and Brazil, but do not necessarily travel to Lebanon, Morocco and South Africa. Lastly, they summarize the main conclusions of this Element and discuss the need for greater comparative research on conspiracy theories and propose clear areas for future research.

This coursebook helps students build an understanding of key business concepts, with engaging visual tools and real-life examples to ensure topics are accessible for all students. Engage your students with a variety of activities to encourage active learning, from calculating the labour productivity of a manufacturing business to debating whether globalisation is beneficial to the economy. Case studies with questions encourage students to explore roles and operations within real businesses, such as Yao Secret and Hasbro. Access short videos and key term definitions in the digital coursebook, to provide additional support for students with English as an additional language.

Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that ''we have all a better guide in ourselves...than any other person can be''. Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen''s own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen''s 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how - for over half a century - Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life. Part personal memoir, part expert interaction with all the letters, manuscripts and published novels, Janet Todd''s book reveals what living with Jane Austen has meant to her and what it might also mean to others. Todd celebrates the undimmable power of Austen''s work to help us understand our own bodies and our environment, and teach us about patience, humour, beauty and the meaning of home.

This Element offers a fresh treatment of the two cycles of reduction-emergence debates in the sciences and their 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' positions. It suggests philosophers have neglected the compositional models/explanations, and 'endogenous' kind of metaphysics, central to these debates. It highlights how such endogenous metaphysics underpins what is termed the 'Dynamic Cycle,' by which scientists develop novel ontological concepts to underwrite new models/explanations to solve scientific problems. And it subsequently shows that the 'reductionist' and 'emergentist' views in the scientific debates follow the Dynamic Cycle. In the first cycle of debates, in the early twentieth century, the Element outlines how 'everyday reductionism' pioneered a novel family of compositional models/explanations in one of the most successful research movements in twentieth-century science. And, in present debates, it frames contemporary emergentist positions offering ontological innovations, underwriting new families of models, to address problems at the cutting-edge of twenty-first-century science.

This Element assesses the claim that Central Asian countries hold a special position as Russia''s near abroad. The region has been important for millennia, and only after conquest in the second half of the nineteenth century did Russia become important for Central Asia. This connection became stronger after 1917 as Central Asia was integrated into the Soviet economy, with rail, roads, and pipelines all leading north to Russia. After independence, these connections were gradually modified by new trade links and by new infrastructure, while Russia''s demand for unskilled labour during the 1999?2014 oil boom created a new economic dependency for Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. In 1991, political independence could not be accompanied by economic independence, but over the next three decades economic dependence on Russia was reduced, and the Central Asian countries have felt increasingly able to adopt political positions independent of Russia.

Designed to increase confidence, help you recognise different question types, understand connections between concepts, reflect on progress and manage test anxiety. Questions and activities improve your ability to recall knowledge and answer effectively. Includes digital access and over 400 auto-marked questions and past-paper question practice. This text has not been through the endorsement process for the Cambridge Pathway. Any references or materials related to answers, grades, papers or examinations are based on the opinion of the author(s). The Cambridge International Education syllabus or curriculum framework associated assessment guidance material and specimen papers should always be referred to for definitive guidance.

This Element considers recent changes to the long-standing pattern in US politics that women are less politically active than men. On one hand, the gender gap in political activity beyond voting has disappeared. On the other, the disparity remains when it comes to political money. What is the explanation? The Element begins with politics – both the long-term increase in women occupying political positions and the way that trends/events like MeToo, the defeat of Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump's performative masculinity made gender salient. It then turns to social structural changes, examining in particular women's relative gains in income and, especially, education. Paying consistent attention to intersectional differences among men and among women, whether based on political party, race, or ethnicity, the authors find the explanation of these trends to be rooted not in politics, but rather in social structure. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Since Buddhism does not include a belief in a personal god instrumental to the creation of the world or to human salvation, it is often assumed that gods play no part in Buddhism at all. This Element complicates the simplistic assessment of Buddhism as an ''atheistic religion'' and discusses the various roles deities play in Buddhist texts and practice. The Problem of God in Buddhism includes a comprehensive analysis of the Buddhist refutations of a creator God, the idea of salvation without divine intervention, the role of minor deities in Buddhism, the question of whether Buddhas and Bodhisattvas can function as gods in certain forms of Buddhism, and the notion of the sacred as apart from the divine in Buddhist traditions.

Global security, climate and health challenges have all created a deep-seated unease about international society''s capacity to cope with change. International Relations should help practitioners develop appropriate responses, but Jason Ralph argues that IR would be better positioned to do so if it drew more explicitly on the insights of classical Pragmatism. By bringing this tradition in from the margins, Ralph comprehensively engages norm, practice, realist and global IR theory to extend the ''new constructivist'' research agenda in a normative direction. He develops a ''Pragmatic Constructivist'' approach to assess how well communities of practice facilitate the learning that mitigates emergent social problems and improves lived experiences. This normative assessment focuses on the extent to which communities of practice are characterized by inclusive reflexivity and deliberative practical judgment. These two tests are then applied to critique existing communities of practice, including the UN Security Council, the UNFCCC and the WHO.