This Open Access book explores the role and agency of stories and storytelling in understanding places and in revealing how places tell stories. It addresses themes of colonialism, more-than-human agency, environment, atmospheres, borders, dwelling, enchantment, haunting, care and hope, revealing the power of stories to make and unmake worlds. Contending with the ethical complexities of storytelling and the political implications of the stories that are shared and heard, it illuminates how some stories dominate ways of being and knowing while others are excluded and overlooked. Ultimately, this book demonstrates how stories can provide alternative, critical and progressive ways of knowing and encountering place.

Written by the Storying Geographies Collective.

This book brings together recent results of extensive and varied archaeological, stable isotope and ancient DNA research from the south coast of Tierra del Fuego and carefully integrates them with earlier archaeological, ethnographical and paleoenvironmental works in the region. Fuegian societies have fascinated travelers, naturalists and scientists during the last two centuries. The chapters analyze and review data on demographic trends, the trophic relations between human and faunal communities in ancient food webs and population genetics, providing a comprehensive picture of the hunter-gatherer history in the Fuegian Andes.

During the last decade, new perspectives and methodologies in archaeological research have taken place in the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego. Now, new results are emerging on the long-term interaction between human and coastal ecosystems. This book attempts to tell this state of the art in a comprehensive and approachable manner. In this sense, the book synthesizes current research that will be accessible to students and professionals alike.

An illuminating ramble along the American sidewalk: routinely unnoticed, yet central to daily life, neighborhood vitality, and significant legal controversies.

Public infrastructure is as essential to our communities as it is easily overlooked. A case in point is the humble sidewalk: constantly taken for granted, yet linked to nearly every pressing issue of local governance in urban, suburban, and even rural areas. From commerce, taxes, and property rights to policing, homelessness, and surveillance; from free speech and socioeconomic equity to public health and climate resilience-sidewalks, surprisingly, are at the core of numerous major debates.

Sidewalk Nation offers a vivid travelogue spanning more than a dozen cities and towns across the United States to show how diverse communities are grappling with big challenges. Some are prosaic, if critical: How do we ensure that sidewalks facilitate mobility for disabled people? Whose job is it to clear snow from public space? And some touch on the most profound issues in law, including our rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. While traversing the country, Michael Pollack provides expert insight into the property, tax, and zoning laws that shape sidewalk management and land use more broadly. Offering a holistic vision for improving a vital resource, Pollack argues for reforms to ensure that local governments have both the obligation and the funding needed to give due attention to sidewalks and all that they offer.

Whether elected officials, civil servants, engineers, developers, or voters, everyone has a stake in the question of where sidewalks should be placed and how they should be used. Indeed, as Sidewalk Nation makes clear, what's under our feet should be at the front of our minds as we decide how to build, regulate, and protect our neighborhoods.

This book offers the most comprehensive and in-depth exploration of applied psychology in fashion to date, drawing on cutting-edge research and theory from across psychology and related disciplines. It examines the relationship between fashion, dress, and the self; the psychological impact of dress and fashion industry practices on consumers and the industry's workforce; and the role of psychology in understanding fashion consumption, sustainability, and digital innovation.

Bringing together perspectives from areas such as social, personality, cognitive, clinical, occupational, and positive psychology, the authors investigate how fashion influences the self, mental health, and well-being. They also explore how psychological insights can inform inclusive design, ethical marketing, and sustainable fashion practices. The volume highlights the concrete contributions psychologists can make to steer the fashion industry towards a healthier, more inclusive, and environmentally responsible future.

This is an essential resource for students, researchers, and professionals working in fashion psychology, fashion design, marketing, and management. It will also appeal to those interested in the broader cultural and psychological dimensions of fashion.

All cultures change - but some aspects change more rapidly than others. Drawing on extensive experience of various cultures, in this book David Lewis develops a model that differentiates between the rates of change in different aspects of a culture.Culture teaches us how to relate to other human beings, so David also explores aspects of what it means to be human. Some distinctively human features that are influenced by culture include the development of a sense of humour, a sensitivity to the voice of one's conscience and a capacity to look towards the future with hope.

The edited volume analyzes how Korean culture fandoms construct their social identity within the emerging global subculture. It explores the formation of fandom networks and the resulting cultural reproduction. It also seeks to understand fans' consumerism, activism, and appropriation of Korean culture. Scholars from diverse academic backgrounds provide an interdisciplinary analysis of K-culture fandoms, broadening readers' understanding of how fandoms influence the formation of youth identities and subcultural practices. This book examines how Korean culture fandoms sustain themselves with affective practices and how cultural preferences are shifting. An in-depth analysis of these elements provides insights into cultural hybridity, cross-national cultural communication, subculture, youth identity, consumerism, and cultural reproduction against the backdrop of increasing digitalization worldwide. The book contributes in the areas of media and cultural studies, global culture and politics, arts and humanities, social sciences and area studies.

This book presents a bold reimagining of urban futures through the convergence of generative artificial intelligence and digital twin technologies. This book presents AI-powered digital twins as catalysts for systemic change, civic empowerment, and environmental regeneration rather than just as planning tools at a time when cities are dealing with growing climate stresses, infrastructure stress, and profound social inequality. This book explores the development of urban digital twins from data-driven models to intelligent, adaptive systems that learn, simulate, and co-design with their urban settings. It does this via eleven technically sound and conceptually rich chapters. It investigates how generative AI may improve climate simulation, manage floods, lessen urban heat, lower emissions, and promote participatory planning, all while posing important ethical, equitable, and governance issues. This book covers open data standards, AI-twin integration architectures, and the difficulties of implementing prototypes into citywide systems, moving from fundamental theory to state-of-the-art practice. It demonstrates how these technologies can be used to depict community-driven urban scenarios, model circular material flows, and build green roofs. Throughout, this book maintains that cities' ability to restore ecosystems, incorporate a variety of viewpoints, and envision resilient and just futures are what truly define intelligence, not efficiency alone. This book promotes a new urban paradigm where ethics are ingrained, intelligence is dispersed, and regeneration becomes the design axiom. It does this while keeping a close eye on both potential and responsibility. This book provides scholars, planners, technologists, and policymakers with a visionary yet doable road map for creating cities that are not just intelligent-but profoundly alive-by drawing on real-world examples, speculative design theory, and systems thinking. This is not a book about managing cities more efficiently. It is a book about reconsidering the basic concept of urban intelligence and co-creating the urban futures filled with care, courage, and collective imagination.

This open access book offers an overview on the intermediate results obtained in the context of the Italian National Research Programme "Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Sustainable Society" by the Working Group "Spoke 7", which focuses its research on the development and improvement of strategies and methodologies to protect the cultural heritage against the effects of climate change and of natural and anthropic risks. Topics covered in this book include chapters on digital twins and documentation for cultural heritage as well as on monitoring, assessment, and preventive conservation of heritage. The book also examines restoration and sustainable strategies for heritage preservation and offers advice on green materials and methodologies for conservation.

The impact of climate change on cultural heritage accelerates the effects of natural hazards as well as those caused by human actions: these phenomena raise new research questions and open new challenges for modern societies, thus requiring a broad multidisciplinary approach towards problem solving. Relevant case studies will be identified with a multi-scale approach to encompass different scenarios and to address both general and specific issues to finally deliver innovative solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change, natural and anthropic risks on cultural heritage.

Offers both a guide in restorative narrative methods for use with marginalised and exploited groups, and examples of what successful, guided work can look like in practice.

This book is a groundbreaking introduction to restorative intercultural practices. It explores the understanding of the narration and positionality of the researcher in a more-than-human world. Following a collaborative, call and response structure, the book explores how Indigenous people and refugees can lead the development of research methods in social scientific research.

It shows how practices from 'back home' and 'on the land' might be taught to researchers for ethical and consensual use. Beginning with the practices of the dare from Southern Africa and pepeha from Aotearoa New Zealand it offers a fresh discourse of restorative narrative research methodology. Above all it is an insight into how innovative academic work can develop from a context that prioritises collaboration, care and a holistic approach to humans and their experiences.

This book is open access under a CC BY ND licence.

This book unpacks the multifaceted ways of living with heritage in contemporary Vietnam. It shows how heritage shapes our community and shines possible directions of pathways to the future(s). It also shows that heritage is something being reconfigured, recombined, or compounded (and sometimes erased) over time and across space through changing contexts. Within this collection, the chapters cover a broad range of these aspects of heritage: The first shows how heritage is mobilized as a key instrument in constructing a national cultural identity, followed by a call for the preservation of the collective housing complex, a significant architectural symbol of life during the Subsidy Period. Another then examines passive design in the traditional Cham house, a living heritage hiding in plain sight, and the book goes on to highlight the dark aspect of heritage by recounting the construction process of the Dian-Vi?t Railway. Using the case of the arch bridges of Hu? Imperial City across Ng? Ha River, another chapter demonstrates the contradiction between preservation and living with the needs of the present. One author shows how performance of intangible cultural heritage is a collaborative process that involves diverse actors, and the next unveils the dedicated commitment of folklore practitioners and heritage scholars in ensuring Mother Goddesses worship belief practices lives on in the face of political and social challenges. Finally, the book recounts the dedicated contribution by heritage researchers working on the Complex of Hu? Monuments, key actors in the heritage field whom we often take for granted. Relevant to scholars in cultural studies, history, archaeology, and heritage studies, specifically, and to Southeast Asian humanities and social science researchers more broadly, particularly those with a specific interest in Vietnam, this is a timely contribution to discussions on Vietnamese heritage - past, present, and future.

This book explores Indian animation, a sector in rapid transition. Major studios have built international reputations through outsourcing and co-production, while smaller studios and independent filmmakers increasingly create original content for TV, streaming platforms and festivals. Alongside these visible transformations in the industry, artisanal and ethnographic animation have also flourished. India Animated: Essays on Contemporary Practice examines key ways in which practices and preoccupations in India are shifting. Distinctive postcolonial approaches are the focus of this volume, which foregrounds the inventive animation works of filmmakers in recent decades. Substantial essays consider the conception, production and marketing of animated works, alongside a selection of interviews that provide a vivid, granular sense of creative processes. Indian animation remains largely overlooked in both public discourse and scholarly research. This volume addresses that absence by examining the region's pluriform practices and their broader implications for animation studies.

This book provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing efficiency and productivity with a focus on sustainability applications. It uniquely integrates theoretical foundations, empirical methodologies, and practical programming implementations in Stata. The innovative approach bridges the gap between abstract concepts and applied research by offering step-by-step guidance on implementing advanced analytical techniques.

The book covers both parametric and non-parametric methods, spanning from basic efficiency concepts to sophisticated models including Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), Parametric Linear Programming (PLP), and econometric methods. Special attention is given to environmental efficiency measurement, green total factor productivity, and sustainability metrics that are increasingly relevant in policy and research contexts.

This book serves as a comprehensive monograph for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in economics, management, and environmental economics and management, as well as an essential reference for researchers in efficiency and productivity analysis. Readers will gain both theoretical understanding and practical skills to conduct rigorous efficiency and productivity analysis for sustainability applications in their own research and professional work.

This book explores the pioneering work of influential American sociologist Harrison C. White, known for his contributions to social network analysis, the sociology of culture, and economic sociology. It highlights his many insights that have reshaped how we understand the broader foundations of sociology. White's theories reach well beyond technical methods: they offer a general vision of how social structures form, evolve, and give rise to new social formations.

The authors, who have co-authored with White, translated his writings, or deeply engaged with his ideas in their own research, provide a thorough yet accessible discussion of his work, particularly Identity and Control. They show how White's relational approach illuminates fundamental sociological questions about identity, meaning, and control, and how his concepts help us grasp the dynamic processes through which social formations such as institutions or styles emerge.

The book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in sociology, the history and epistemology of the social sciences, network analysis, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as to scholars and professionals in fields such as economics, political science, and organizational studies. It will also interest members of academic associations and research institutions, and practitioners concerned with the dynamics of social networks and the emergence of collective forms.

As The Walt Disney Company celebrates 100 years of fairy-tale magic, this collection of essays encapsulates this long and successful journey. From its beginnings as Laugh-O-Gram in the early 1920s, the two-man operation has become a multi-billion-dollar corporation that is a world leader in media communications. Their magical stories have continued across generations, supported by film, theme parks, and merchandise, all of which have made Disney a household name. This collection seeks to celebrate these stories, both historically and within present-day times, examining the relevance and importance of the world of Disney in popular culture.

The aim of this book is to question the standard Christian narrative about procreation. It explores the key philosophical arguments for anti-natalism and argues that many of them are compatible with Christianity. It also develops a risk-based argument suggesting that even a slight possibility of one's children going to hell should give prospective parents pause. Undergirding these ideas is the uncontroversial assumption that in most cases Christians should be concerned with preventing harm.

The book features coverage of the history of anti-natalism, especially within Christianity, and concludes by addressing an extensive number of objections.

Christian Anti-Natalism is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of religious ethics especially those focussing on questions related to procreation.

This book brings together a range of scholarly essays on the Catholic Church's commitment to education through an examination of both its traditional teaching congregations and some new educational movements in the Church. This book integrates both historical and contemporary approaches and addresses the current state of play in Catholic schools internationally, whereby laity are tasked with maintaining the charism of the Congregations and Orders as the presence of religious schools has become less. This book provides an introduction to the Orders and Congregations in Catholic Education before providing the historical and contemporary perspective of specific Congregations. It explores both the historical and intended charism before discussing the contemporary and future focused directions of charism in education.

A story of pioneering students who brought together Americans of all faiths to embrace their differences, improve civil discourse, and work for the betterment of society. An inspiring model for activists, organizers, and educators seeking middle ground in a polarized world.

Interfaith Inclusion tells the almost-forgotten story of the University Religious Conference (URC) and the students who sought to expand the circle of inclusion in the United States. The URC was a multifaith student organization that began in 1928, functioning primarily at UCLA. It started out by reaching across religious lines and expanded to reaching across ethnic and racial lines as well.

Lois E. Nettleship begins with the origins of the group in the policies that the US War Department put in place in the First World War to build a sense of unity and inclusion among recruits of different religions. Following the war, O. D. Foster, a Congregational minister and YMCA worker in the US Army camps, applied these inclusive values to public higher education. He and others who shared his vision created the URC, which went on to create similar organizations at other universities across the nation. The URC carried out projects designed to bring students of different religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds together and to demonstrate to the public that all of them, however different they might appear, were Americans who shared many common values.

In the 1950s these projects, religious and secular, became a model for other organizations. The URC pioneered student summer trips to India that exposed them to new religions and became a model for the Peace Corps. Soon thereafter the New York City Public School System used the URC model of acceptance, led by former URC participants, to train teachers, counselors, and pupils in how to demonstrate similar kinship among diverse groups in the city. Nettleship argues that building inclusion was the work not only of prominent politicians, religious leaders, and others in the spotlight, but also of students, amateurs, and volunteers with a practical bent and a sense of civic duty.

Interfaith Inclusion resurrects one of the earliest efforts in the United States to develop a diverse movement for the purpose of improving civil discourse and embracing difference. Nettleship's story of how liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews sought to work together to better society is particularly relevant today in a time of religious strife, division, and political polarization. Contemporary inclusive activists and educators likely have never heard of the URC, but they are continuing its legacy.

Plastic is everywhere-wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins. Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it can seem impossible. Over the last seventy-five years, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace.

The Problem with Plastic critically examines the paradox of this material, first celebrated for its innovations and now recognized for its devastating environmental and public health impacts. With clarity and urgency, the book reveals how plastic pollution contributes to poisoned oceans, polluted air, a warming planet, and overwhelming waste, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities who bear the brunt of petrochemical pollution.

Revealing the alarming extent of microplastics infiltrating both the natural world and the human body, this compelling narrative challenges the illusion that recycling alone will save us. It unpacks the mechanisms of environmental racism and the deceptive greenwashing strategies used by the plastics industry to maintain the status quo.

More than a critique, The Problem with Plastic emphasizes the urgent need for action against plastic's toxic legacy. It highlights powerful stories of frontline resistance in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Appalachia, and equips readers with practical tools-including a "Household Waste Audit" to track and reduce plastic consumption, as well as model policy guides for driving legislative change.

Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately empowering, The Problem with Plastic reminds us: plastic is a problem-but together, we can be the solution.

This book examines climate change communication on Twitter (now X) through the lens of transnational public sphere theory. Building on contributions from Nancy Fraser and Iris Marion Young, it argues that the concept of a transnational public sphere is useful if two questions are addressed: legitimacy-who should be part of it-and effectiveness-who can be reached by transnational discourse. Both are treated as questions of voice, understood as the opportunity to influence the thinking of others.
The study explores whether participants from the Global Southgain international visibility (legitimacy) and under what conditions they reach audiences in the Global North, where the greatest scope for ambitious climate change mitigation policies currently exists (effectiveness). An analysis of global retweet networks shows that users from the Global South are significantly underrepresented and that higher climate vulnerability is negatively associated with visibility. Civil society organizations emerge as crucial brokers of information across regions, amplifying voices otherwise excluded from international debate.
The findings are set against the normative assumptions of public sphere theory and the principles of climate justice.