Cambridge University Press strana 7 z 64

This Element sheds new light on Walter Scott's work by investigating the French influence of his wife, Charlotte Charpentier, later Lady Scott, through her transcultural upbringing and international connections. Much of the limited information about her is tainted by misconceptions from predominantly British male biographers of Scott, whose perspectives were centred on the great man and coloured by anti-French sentiment during the revolutionary period. Through new French and British public records, historical archives, annual registers, and personal materials like letters and diaries from the Scotts' family and social circles, this Element corrects false allegations and highlights her significant, yet largely unrecognised, behind-the-scenes social and literary influence on Scott's writing. By analysing these sources and conducting in-depth readings of Scott's texts, the Element emphasises Scott's collaborative literary approach and argues that Lady Scott, a knowledgeable art and literature enthusiast, greatly assisted him in his work as his secretary, amanuensis, and proofreader.

There are many different types of decisions – from the important and life-changing to the mundane and everyday – but all are important for our functioning as humans. This book offers an accessible guide to the complex process of human decision-making, tailored for both undergraduate and graduate students. It combines recent research with real-life examples to provide a comprehensive understanding of the underlying biology of decision-making, its relationship to cognitive abilities such as working memory, executive function and attention, and its intersection with development. The book also explores applications and theories of decision-making, giving readers a broader perspective on the field. Presented in an accessible format with in-depth explanations, the work provides everything needed to build a strong basis of understanding of the underlying biology to the more complex topics of how decision-making develops and impacts on other behaviours. Discussion points are included throughout to encourage deeper reflection on the content covered.

Accessible and engaging, The Politics of Human Rights offers a fresh, empirical approach to understanding human dignity and the global responsibility to protect it. Unlike traditional texts, this textbook moves beyond theory, using data-driven insights to explore why human rights violations occur and how they can be prevented. It emphasizes shared responsibility across borders to uphold human rights. Designed for students and educators, this fully updated edition enhances learning with discussion questions, recommended readings, and a unique collection of films, podcasts, and websites that bring human rights issues to life. It provides a well-rounded perspective, grounded in latest social scientific research, for anyone interested in human rights. Whether used for introductory courses or interdisciplinary studies, this book equips readers with the knowledge and tools to critically engage with human rights issues, making it an essential resource for understanding and advocating for human dignity in the twenty-first century.

Why have some churches in Africa engaged in advocacy for stronger liberal democratic institutions while others have not? Faith in Democracy explores this question, emphasizing the benefits of liberal democratic protections for some churches. The book explains how churches' historic investments create different autocratic risk exposure, as states can more easily regulate certain activities – including social service provision – than others. In situations where churches have invested in schools as part of their evangelization activities, which create high autocratic risk, churches have incentives to defend liberal democratic institutions to protect their control over them. This theory also explains how church fiscal dependence on the state interacts with education provision to change incentives for advocacy. Empirically, the book demonstrates when churches engage in democratic activism, drawing on church-level data from across the continent, and the effects of church activism, drawing on micro-level evidence from Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana.

Economic Displacement examines China's economic displacement of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and its implications for global geopolitics. Through data analysis and case studies, Francisco Urdinez demonstrates how China has filled the economic void left by US retrenchment from 2001 to 2020. He argues that this economic shift has led to a significant erosion of US political influence in the region, affecting public opinion, elite perspective, and voting patterns in international organizations. Providing a multifaceted view of this geopolitical transformation in this timely and important book, the author offers crucial insights into the changing landscape of global influence and the future of US–China rivalry in Latin America.

Elements of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) blends theoretical foundations with practical applications, serving as both a learning tool and a lasting reference. Synthesizing material from diverse sources, including the author's own contributions, it provides a rigorous yet accessible guide for graduate students, faculty, and researchers across social, behavioral, health, and data sciences. The book covers essential SEM concepts – model assumptions, identification, estimation, and diagnostics – while also addressing advanced topics often overlooked, such as Bayesian SEMs, model-implied instrumental variables, and categorical variables. Readers will gain insights into missing data, longitudinal models, and comparisons with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). By presenting complex technical content in a clear, structured way, this authoritative resource deepens readers' understanding of SEMs, making it an indispensable guide for both newcomers and experts seeking a definitive treatment of the field.

This leading textbook introduces students and practitioners to the identification and analysis of animal remains at archaeology sites. The authors use global examples from the Pleistocene era into the present to explain how zooarchaeology allows us to form insights about relationships among people and their natural and social environments, especially site-formation processes, economic strategies, domestication, and paleoenvironments. This new edition reflects the significant technological developments in zooarchaeology that have occurred in the past two decades, notably ancient DNA, proteomics, and isotope geochemistry. Substantially revised to reflect these trends, the volume also highlights novel applications, current issues in the field, the growth of international zooarchaeology, and the increased role of interdisciplinary collaborations. In view of the growing importance of legacy collections, voucher specimens, and access to research materials, it also includes a substantially revised chapter that addresses management of zooarchaeological collections and curation of data.

Since the early works of scholars like Alexis Kagame and Placide Tempels, discussions on the concept of vitality in African philosophy have acquired many dimensions. With scholars like Noah Dzobo and Thaddeus Metz projecting it as a grounding for human values and dignity, Aribiah Attoe and Yolanda Mlungwana each exploring vitalist conceptions of meaning in life, and Ada Agada approaching vitality from a proto-panpsychist/consolationist perspective. Indeed, vitality features as an important concept in African philosophy of religion. This Element contributes to the discourse on vitality in African philosophy of religion by providing a critical overview of some traditional interpretations of the concept from the Bantu, Yoruba, and Igbo religious/philosophical worldviews. Furthermore, it explores how the concept of vitality features in discussions of ethics, dignity, and meaning in life. Finally, the Element provides a critique of the concept based on the interventions of Innocent Asouzu, Metz, and Bernard Matolino.

This commentary on the second epistle of Peter offers a fresh examination of a key New Testament text. Relying on newly available research, A. Chadwick Thornhill brings a multi-pronged approach to his study through his use of a range of methods including narrative theology, and historical, social, cultural, literary, rhetorical, discourse, and linguistic analysis. Thornhill challenges existing paradigms pertaining to the composition of 2 Peter, asks new questions regarding authorship and genre, and revisits the identification of the text as a pseudonymous testament, as it has most recently been understood. His study enables new insights into the letter's message as it would have been understood in its ancient context. Written in an accessible style, Thornhill's commentary concludes by offering reflections on 2 Peter's contributions to the theology of the New Testament and its relevance for the late modern world.

Power struggles between debtors and creditors about unpaid debts have animated the history of economic transformation from the emergence of capitalist relations to the recent global financial crashes. Illuminating how ordinary people fought for economic justice in Mexico from the eve of independence to the early 2000s, this study argues that conflicts over small-scale debts were a stress test for an emerging economic order that took shape against a backdrop of enormous political and social change. Drawing on nearly 1,500 debt conflicts unearthed from Mexican archives, Louise E. Walker explores rapidly changing ideas and practices about property rights, contract law, and economic information. This combination of richly detailed archival research, with big historical and theoretical interpretations, raises provocative new questions about the moral economy of the credit relationship and the shifting line between exploitation and opportunity in the world of everyday exchange.

Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of personhood, society, and health. However, the widely held enthusiasm for medical progress escapes more general critiques of progress as a conceptual category. From the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and the medical humanities, Vanessa Rampton sheds light on the politics of medical progress and how they have downplayed the tensions between individual and social goods. She examines how a shared consensus about its value gives medical progress vast political and economic capital, revealing who benefits, who is left out, and who is harmed by this narrative. From ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, exploring the origins and ethics of different visions of progress offers valuable insight into how we can make them more meaningful in future. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

There are many different types of decisions – from the important and life-changing to the mundane and everyday – but all are important for our functioning as humans. This book offers an accessible guide to the complex process of human decision-making, tailored for both undergraduate and graduate students. It combines recent research with real-life examples to provide a comprehensive understanding of the underlying biology of decision-making, its relationship to cognitive abilities such as working memory, executive function and attention, and its intersection with development. The book also explores applications and theories of decision-making, giving readers a broader perspective on the field. Presented in an accessible format with in-depth explanations, the work provides everything needed to build a strong basis of understanding of the underlying biology to the more complex topics of how decision-making develops and impacts on other behaviours. Discussion points are included throughout to encourage deeper reflection on the content covered.

This bold, sweeping history of the turbulent American-Russian relationship is unique in being written jointly by American and Russian authors. David Foglesong, Ivan Kurilla and Victoria Zhuravleva together reveal how and why America and Russia shifted from being warm friends and even tacit allies to being ideological rivals, geopolitical adversaries, and demonic foils used in the construction or affirmation of their national identities. As well as examining diplomatic, economic, and military interactions between the two countries, they illuminate how filmmakers, cartoonists, writers, missionaries and political activists have admired, disparaged, lionized, envied, satirized, loved, and hated people in the other land. The book shows how the stories they told and the images they created have shaped how the two countries have understood each other from the eighteenth century to the present and how often their violent clashes have arisen from mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentations.

Afrodescendant religious music in the Caribbean and Latin America typically foregrounds drumming and centuries-old songs of praise to spirit deities. In recent years, a new form of worship, known as a violín or toque de violín, which features the violin alongside the guitar, electronic piano, and/or other instruments commonly associated with popular music, has gained popularity in Cuba. Violines can be understood as loosely defined spaces for performance that developed in a context of cultural oppression and dominance. They can be viewed as a concession to Eurocentric and secular tastes, or as a blackening/creolizing of those same practices, or both. They express religious faith in pluralistic ways, incorporating repertoire from various Black religions alongside influences from folk Catholicism, and classical, commercial, and folkloric music. Drawing from an encyclopedic knowledge of Cuban music, ethnographic work, and interviews, Robin D. Moore's groundbreaking book is the first to explore the compelling violín ceremony in detail.

Criticism and creativity characterised literary reception in eighteenth-century Britain. The press – periodicals, newspapers, and magazines – harboured the reviewing cultures belonging to the emerging professionalisation of literary criticism. It also provided highly fertile ground for creativity, including imitative items inspired by new publications, while critical reviews often incorporated parody. The press fostered experimentation among often anonymous reader-contributors, even while it facilitated the establishment of 'classic' works by recirculating well-known authors' names. Laurence Sterne's reception was energetically shaped by the interaction between critical and creative responses: the press played a major role in forging his status as an 'inimitable' author of note.

This Element explores why historic urban places matter emotionally. To achieve this the Element develops a conceptual framework which breaks down the broad category of 'emotion' into three interrelated parts: 1. Emotional responses, 2. Emotional attachments, and 3. Emotional communities. In so doing new lines of enquiry are opened up including the reasons why certain emotional responses such as pride and fear are provoked by historic urban places; the complex interplay of the physical environment and everyday experiences in informing emotional attachments, as well as the reasons why emotional communities coalesce in particular historic urban places. In addition, the Element explores the ways in which emotion, in the form of responses, attachments, and communities, can be considered within heritage management and concludes with a discussion of where next for heritage theories and practices. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.