This book challenges conventional narratives of the evolution of working hours in Western Europe, offering a fresh perspective on the complex mosaic of actual working time. By examining the historical and sociological dimensions of labour from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, it challenges the oversimplified view that work evolved over three main periods: a pre-industrial era, when working hours were not measured; the advent of industrialisation, when they increased dramatically; and a period after 1850, when they began to decline. In doing so, the book invites readers to reconsider the ideas of influential thinkers such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Michel Foucault.

Key concepts explored include division of labour, variations in work ethic, and the impact of industrialisation. Through meticulous micro-historical case studies, the authors reconstruct the temporal realities of work in Europe, with a focus on France, Belgium and Italy. This approach provides a ground-level view of labour, revealing the nuanced realities of working hours along with work duration and intensity. Ideal for historians, sociologists and scholars of labour studies, this volume offers a bridge between the various historiographies of work and encourages dialogue across periods and regions. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in the historical depth of contemporary issues like productivity and work-life balance.

At first glance, quantum mechanics and behavioural science may appear to belong to entirely separate domains-one rooted in subatomic particles and mathematical formalisms, the other in human thoughts, decisions and emotions. However, recent research reveals a surprising and powerful connection between them. This book investigates that connection through quantum models of cognition and decision-making, illustrating how principles from quantum theory can help us understand ambiguity, bias and perception in ways that classical logic cannot.

This book introduces a practical and computationally accessible framework based on quantum theory. Readers are invited not only to explore vivid case studies-from visual illusions in video games to decision biases in politics and finance-but also to engage directly with the methods. Supporting computer code is provided so that readers can experiment with their own models and ideas immediately after reading. Combining insights from physics, psychology, artificial intelligence and economics, this work offers an innovative perspective on how we think, choose and interact as individuals and societies.

From the acclaimed author of The Fate of Rome and Plagues upon the Earth, a monumental history of the world that lays bare the devastating human toll on animal life

Humans are a force of nature like no other animal on the planet. For thousands of years, we have radically altered the destiny of other species. Today, we do so at such an accelerating rate that it is widely proposed that we live on the brink of a Sixth Extinction, comparable to the most destructive moments in the fossil record. The Last Animal provides the first historical account of humanity's impact on animal biodiversity, taking readers from the megafaunal extinctions of the Ice Age to the planetwide perils of the present.

In a masterful blend of global history with the latest discoveries in ecology, evolution, and Earth system science, Kyle Harper casts the Sixth Extinction in a new light. He meticulously documents the long history of human-driven biodiversity loss, insisting that both species extinctions and ecosystem simplification are essential to measuring humanity's impact, which is more profound than recognized. The Last Animal reenvisions the human story by highlighting a wondrous range of extinct creatures and the webs of life they inhabited. Set against a backdrop of migrations and empires, wars and revolutions, and the inexorable march of technological progress, Harper's epic narrative demonstrates how our ability to manipulate nature is a fundamental yet increasingly dangerous element of our success.

Putting the grand sweep of world history into geological perspective, Harper argues that the long view is essential to confronting the urgent challenges we face. A startling account of how much biodiversity has already been lost, The Last Animal is also a poignant call to protect what remains.

This book explores the profound connections between Nam June Paik's artistic vision and Korean shamanism, a theme that has been largely overlooked in English-language scholarship. Drawing from key historical performances and theoretical insights, this volume examines Paik's role as a shamanic figure who mediated between past and future, technology and tradition, and material and spiritual realms. The book situates Paik's work within broader discourses on emerging media, emphasizing how his engagement with shamanism extends beyond ritual performance to a conceptual framework of communication, transformation, and spiritual resonance. It also investigates Paik's legacy in relation to dark shamanism and neoliberalism, offering new perspectives on the cultural and political dimensions of his art. By bringing together critical essays from leading scholars, Electronic Shaman provides an essential resource for those interested in media art, shamanism, and the intersections of technology and spirituality in contemporary culture.

This book, the first volume of Creating Tomorrow: Character Strengths and Positive Psychology in the Anthropocene, examines how human strengths can support reflection, connection, and responsible action in times of profound ecological and social disruption. Focusing on the virtues of wisdom, knowledge, and courage, it brings together international perspectives that reinterpret the 24 character strengths of positive psychology for the conditions of the Anthropocene. The chapters explore how creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective help individuals and communities navigate the complexity of today's global polycrisis. The discussion of courage highlights bravery, perseverance, honesty, and zest as capacities that underpin ethical resilience and constructive engagement with environmental and societal challenges.

Combining conceptual reflection with applied insight, the contributions show how strengths evolve within educational, cultural, and ecological contexts. Character strengths are presented not as fixed traits but as dynamic, context-sensitive orientations that shape human agency and collective responses to interconnected crises. As such, this book addresses scholars, educators, and practitioners in psychology, education, sustainability studies, ethics, and cultural research. It offers conceptual clarity, practical relevance, and an interdisciplinary lens on character, virtue, and transformation in the Anthropocene.

Despite growing awareness of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are insufficiently engaged in advancing ecosystem-based solutions. This book addresses that gap by providing evidence-based strategies, curricular innovations, and case studies that illustrate how HEIs can embed SDG15 into institutional priorities and practices.

A focused collection situating HEIs as catalysts for systemic sustainability change, the chapters explore how HEIs can advance delivery of SDG15 by tackling environmental degradation and deforestation and support land restoration and biodiversity conservation through teaching, research, and community partnerships. With contributions spanning continents and context - from ecological literacy in business education in Norway to reimagining agronomy curricula in Argentina, stakeholder collaboration in Switzerland, and biodiversity-focused research in Kenya - each chapter maps to SDG15 indicators and illustrates how HEIs are driving localized action with global impact.

Transcending siloed green initiatives, the book emphasizes institutional transformation through curriculum redesign, faculty development, and multi-actor collaboration. This book is important reading for scholars, university leaders, curriculum designers, and policy advocates interested in actionable strategies that link education to land-based sustainability challenges.

Higher Education and the Sustainable Development Goals is a series of 17 books that address each of the SDGs through the lens of higher education. Adopting a solutions-based approach, each book focuses on how higher education is advancing delivery of Agenda 2030. The series is edited by Wendy Purcell, Professor with Rutgers University and Academic Research Scholar with Harvard University; Emeritus Professor and University President Emerita.

Refusenik's Son is an extraordinary story of family, courage, and betrayal during the Cold War. Against the broader political history of the period, Alex Goldfarb weaves his personal story as one of the players in an intricate cat-and-mouse game of deception and survival. Goldfarb's was a fraught world populated by KGB and CIA agents, informers and traitors, foreign correspondents and politicians, artists and dissidents, some of whom risked their lives.

Refusenik's Son begins in the early 1970s, when Goldfarb, a young science student from a privileged Jewish family in Moscow, joins the dissident movement. His circle includes writers, avant-garde artists, Western journalists, and Soviet scientists. Some are loyal to the system, others secretly dream of emigration. Eventually, Goldfarb receives permission to leave, but the authorities continue to deny an exit visa for his father, a prominent microbiologist. Decades later, through a former KGB officer, Goldfarb discovers the identities of informers among colleagues and friends in the details of the case against his father whom the KGB had wrongly suspected of passing secrets of the Soviet germ warfare program to the CIA. The revelation includes the haunting tale of an anonymous Soviet scientist who provided invaluable data to the CIA and was never unmasked or caught.

Ultimately, Goldfarb's father was released in a complex spy swap that required high-level negotiations and the personal involvement of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev. The reunion of father and son in New York City closes a saga that marks a symbolic chapter at the end of the Cold War.

The proposed book undertakes a critical examination of the relationship between technologies of automation, migration and citizenship. Automation is refers to the use of technological systems to carry out operations independently, without human intervention (Nof, 2009). Typically automation is used to augment, improve, and complete tasks in a more efficient manner, promising significant benefits, from standardization to financial savings, freeing labour time for humans (Borry and Getha-Taylor, 2019; Restrepo, 2023). While technologies of automation are accompanied by narratives of progress and freedom, they are linked not only with increased surveillance but also with a shift in surveillance practices from discipline to prediction (Andrejevic, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). Automating technologies, especially machine learning algorithms, operate through sorting and categorisation, which are subsequently used to identify patterns and make predictions on the basis of these patterns. It comes as no surprise therefore that such technologies are involved in replicating discriminatory patterns of the past.

The Self in Context: Pathways to Flourishing, Learning, and Well-Being explores the dynamic and multifaceted nature of self-related processes-such as self-concept, self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-control, self-identity, self-regulation, and self-determination-and their exponential growth in research over recent decades. These constructs have found fertile ground in the fields of positive psychology and education, which emphasize the factors that promote flourishing, learning, and well-being among students, teachers, and the broader school community.

This volume develops both theoretical and methodological perspectives and presents empirical evidence from a range of disciplines and applications. Its broad scope provides a flexible framework for contributors to explore the self in context. A key feature of The Self in Context is its dual focus: presenting cutting-edge research while distilling evidence-based insights for practitioners seeking to enhance well-being and learning outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence has entered religious contexts. This edited volume focuses on AI as it is developed for religious settings and increasingly embedded in concrete religious practices. It offers an interdisciplinary and interreligious perspective on a rapidly evolving field.

Technically oriented contributions provide insights into the development of specific AI tools for religious applications and explore the technical, conceptual, and design-related challenges involved. Contributions from theology, religious studies, and ethics analyze how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping religious communication and practices, reflect on the implications of these developments, and formulate guidelines and impulses for the responsible use of AI in religious contexts.

By systematically bringing technical development into conversation with theological and ethical reflection, the volume bridges theory and practice. It is intended for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in religion in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

This volume offers a comprehensive exploration of how displacement and migration are shaped by the gendered politics of place, through the lens of critical feminist geopolitics. It brings together interdisciplinary contributions that connect historical legacies of colonialism with contemporary issues, such as statelessness, refugee crises, and urban precarity. Spanning themes from colonial-era upheavals to present-day refugee narratives and urban marginalization in urban spaces, the chapters demonstrate how gender, identity, and power intersect across diverse geographic contexts. By bridging feminist theory with empirical case studies, the volume provides fresh conceptual frameworks and comparative insights that deepen our understanding of forced migration, belonging and resistance. The book is a vital resource for researchers, scholars, and graduate students in gender studies, migration studies, human geography, and related fields.

The untold story of West Berlin, the island city deep inside the Soviet bloc that withstood the decades-long confrontation between the USSR and the West

Located more than one hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain, West Berlin served as a stage on which the confrontation between nuclear-armed superpowers played out across nearly five decades. Portrayed in the West as an island of freedom in a totalitarian sea, it increasingly came to be seen by some as a bleak enclave without a future, yet the city also embodied a remarkable openness to alternative lifestyles and radical forms of cultural experimentation. Cold War City is a definitive history of West Berlin that takes readers from the end of the Second World War to the withdrawal of Allied troops in 1994.

Drawing on substantial new research in archives on both sides of the Atlantic, David Barclay vividly describes how some of the most dramatic events of the Cold War took place in and around West Berlin, including the perilous crises that culminated in the building of the notorious Berlin Wall in 1961. A product of the postwar division of Germany, the city was a roiling ideological battleground comprised of American, British, and French sectors. Barclay shows how it became a distinct political and cultural entity despite its connections to the West and he sheds light on the Cold War as a lived experience for West Berliners and the city's Allied occupiers.

A nuanced portrait of a city that came to symbolize the divided postwar world, Cold War City locates the history of West Berlin at the flashpoint between grand geopolitics and the daily concerns of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

A collection of texts illustrating the complex reasons why Jews have contested or rejected the Zionist ideal over more than a century

In the decades since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, many have equated Zionism with Jewish identity-and anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Few remember now that the Zionist movement triggered passionate debate among Jews, with many expressing ambivalence or opposition to the Zionist project. In Jewish Anti-Zionism, Shaul Magid and Zev Mishell have gathered a broad selection of documents, written between the late nineteenth century and the present day, many of them newly translated into English from multiple languages, revealing the rich variety of Jewish opposition to Zionism over the decades. Following Magid and Mishell's long, authoritative introduction on the history of anti-Zionism among Jews, the book features dozens of texts by Jewish writers from diverse backgrounds discussing why they reject the Zionist idea as the best option for Jewish flourishing.

The documents reflect a lively debate carried out though multiple forms-personal letters, essays, speeches, manifestos, newspaper columns, and extracts from learned treatises. The authors range from scholars and other thinkers writing well before the establishment of the state of Israel to well-known contemporary voices including Peter Beinart, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Judith Butler. Magid and Mishell preface each text with a short introduction that offers historical and ideological context

Americans and All the Rest examines how the United States has repeatedly defined itself through changing "Others" and how that evolving sense of national identity has shaped its conduct abroad. Rather than treating foreign policy as the product of interests or elite doctrine alone, the book traces the feedback loop between who Americans consider part of "We the People" and how they imagine, oppose, reform, or aid those outside that circle. Moving from the Revolution and the early republic through expansion, empire, world wars, the Cold War, and the uncertain post-1991 landscape, the narrative links domestic inclusion/exclusion (race, citizenship, immigration, religion) to external missions, confrontations, and ideals.

This open access book offers a profound exploration of Bracha L. Ettinger's theory of the matrixial borderspace through the lens of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic teachings. By situating Ettinger's work within a Lacanian context, this volume illuminates the intricate interplay between psychoanalysis, sexuality, and the concept of the m/Other. Too often, Ettinger's contributions are examined in isolation, missing the critical Lacanian underpinnings that inform her scholarship and art practice.

Key concepts such as the matrixial borderspace, feminine sexuality, and the m/Other are meticulously analyzed alongside Lacan's archetypes of Tiresias, Dora, Lol Stein, and Antigone. Ettinger's critiques and modifications of Lacanian ideas, including the 'weaning complex,' das Ding, the phallus, and the Real, are explored to reveal the nuanced dialogue between these two influential thinkers. This comparative study not only highlights the contiguities and critical differences between their theories but also enhances our understanding of the Feminine and the m/Other.

Scholars of psychoanalysis, gender studies, and philosophy will find this book an invaluable resource. It invites readers to engage deeply with the complexities of Ettinger and Lacan's theories, offering fresh insights into the enduring questions of feminine sexuality and identity.

This book confronts the fragmentation of meaning and the exhaustion of reason in the aftermath of postmodernity. Instinct, Reason and the Self in the Aftermath of Postmodernity: Beyond Reason argues that meaningful orientation cannot be restored through propositional reasoning alone. What must be recovered is instinct: embodied attunement to the world prior to deliberative thought.

Following the collapse of grand narratives, we navigate a liquid terrain with conceptual tools designed for solid ground, one increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures and AI-driven systems of engineered salience, which together form the Sensorial Nexus: a state in which algorithmic mediation pre-organises perception, narrowing the space for reflective judgement and originality.

Drawing on Arnold van Gennep's tripartite ritual schema, the book proposes the reawakening of instinct and introduces the DIEM Method, a practical framework for disengaging from the Sensorial Nexus and restoring interior coherence.