The majority of scholarly conceptions of the Mediterranean focus on the sea’s northern shores, with its historical epicentres of Spain, France or Italy. This book seeks to demonstrate the importance of economic, political and cultural networks emanating from the Mediterranean’s lesser-studied southern shores. The various chapters emphasize the activities that made connections between the southern shores, sub-Saharan Africa, the lands along its northern shores, and beyond to the United States. In doing so, the book avoids a Eurocentric approach and details the importance of the players and regions of the southern hinterland, in the analysis of the Mediterranean space. The cultural aspects of the North African countries, be they music, literature, film, commerce or political activism, continue to transform the public spheres of the countries along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and beyond to the whole of the European continent. In its focus on the often overlooked North African shore, the work is an innovative contribution to the historiography of the Mediterranean region. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of North African Studies.

The eighteenth century has been hailed for its revolution in consumer culture, but Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain repositions Britain as a nation of makers. It brings new attention to eighteenth-century craftswomen and men with its focus on the material knowledge possessed not only by professional artisans and amateur makers, but also by skilled consumers. This edited collection gathers together a group of interdisciplinary scholars working in the fields of art history, history, literature, and museum studies to unearth the tactile and tacit knowledge that underpinned fashion, tailoring, and textile production. It invites us into the workshops, drawing rooms, and backrooms of a broad range of creators, and uncovers how production and tacit knowledge extended beyond the factories and machines which dominate industrial histories. This book illuminates, for the first time, the material literacies learnt, enacted, and understood by British producers and consumers. The skills required for sewing, embroidering, and the textile arts were possessed by a large proportion of the British population: men, women and children, professional and amateur alike. Building on previous studies of shoppers and consumption in the period, as well as narratives of manufacture, these essays document the multiplicity of small producers behind Britain's consumer revolution, reshaping our understanding of the dynamics between making and objects, consumption and production. It demonstrates how material knowledge formed an essential part of daily life for eighteenth-century Britons. Craft technique, practice, and production, the contributors show, constituted forms of tactile languages that joined makers together, whether they produced objects for profit or pleasure.

This study explores the dynamic relationship between science, numbers and politics. What can scientific evidence realistically do in and for politics? The volume contributes to that debate by focusing on the role of “numbers” as a means by which knowledge is expressed and through which that knowledge can be transferred into the political realm. Based on the assumption that numbers are constantly being actively created, translated, and used, and that they need to be interpreted in their respective and particular contexts, it examines how numbers and quantifications are made ‘politically workable’, examining their production, their transition into the sphere of politics and their eventual use therein. Key questions that are addressed include: In what ways does scientific evidence affect political decision-making in the contemporary world? How and why did quantification come to play such an important role within democratic politics? What kind of work do scientific evidence and numbers do politically?

Conference proceedings of the First Annual Valletta 2018 Conference held in Malta in 2014, in the build up to Valletta as European Capital of Culture. Contributions by: Jason Micallef, Evarist Bartolo, Owen Bonnici, Mostafa Hassani-Idrissi, Henry Frendo, Khadija El Bennaoui, Lluis Bonet, Christine M. Merkel, Karel Bartak, Carlo Testini, Ferdinand Richard, Nadia von Maltzahn, Enric Olivé Serret, Roger Tropeano, Giacomo Sferlazzo, Hatto Fischer, George Cassar, Anna Steinkamp, France Irmann, Jason Dittmer, Karsten Xuereb.

This book investigates how ideas of and discourses about Europe have been affected by images of the Mediterranean Sea and its many worlds from the nineteenth century onwards. Surprisingly, modern scholars have often neglected such an influence and, in fact, in most histories of the idea of Europe the Mediterranean is conspicuously absent. This might partly be explained by the fact that historians have often identified Europe with modernity (and the Atlantic world) and, therefore, in opposition to the classical world (centred around the Mediterranean). This book will challenge such views, showing that a plethora of thinkers, from the early nineteenth century to the present, have refused to relegate the Mediterranean to the past. Importance is given to the idea of a distinct ‘meridian thought’, a notion first set forth by Albert Camus and now reworked by French and Italian thinkers. As most chapters argue, this might represent an important tool for rethinking the Mediterranean and, in turn, it might help us challenge received notions about European identity and rethink Europe as the locus of ‘modernity’. Mediterranean Europe(s): Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in European studies and Mediterranean history.

This important and timely volume brings together a distinguished set of international scholars who provide rich information about the social, economic, political, and historical factors responsible for shaping ageing policy in the Mediterranean region.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

This book acquaints readers with a range of techniques to help them effectively identify, record, map, analyze and report on patterns in various dimensions of human development (HD) with spatial scales down to the village level. It is impossible to capture HD at the local and global scale with only a single index, because differences in HD at the international scale are caused by ‘general’ factors, whereas local-scale differences are influenced by ‘specific’ factors. This book offers a variety of methods for scientifically mapping HD at any spatial scale. It covers how to rationally select variables; how to test the models; how to validate the results, and how to analyze them. For this purpose, it employs a case study on an Indian district. The socio-economic factors regulating the patterns of HD are now more complex than they were only a few decades ago, making it essential to incorporate newer models in order to successfully ‘replicate’ the real-world situation. Accordingly, the book offers essential methodological tools & techniques for mapping HD. It sheds new light on a handful of statistical multivariate analysis and machine learning algorithms that are rarely used in the social sciences when dealing with HD, yet have sound mathematical and statistical bases. These techniques can be successfully used for predictive analysis in the earth & natural sciences, decision sciences and management disciplines, and are equally effective in terms of capturing, predicting and projecting the composite HD ‘landscape.’ This book will especially benefit two groups of readers: firstly, HD practitioners who want to find out ‘why some areas are doing better than others’ by exploring the complex interactions of spatially linked variables with different HD parameters. And secondly, practitioners in other branches of the social sciences who are not concerned with HD but are looking for ‘hands-on training’ with techniques they can apply in their respective field of spatial investigations.

Recoge: 1. Bridging the gap - 2. From the bottom up - 3. Recent member states and candidate states - 4. The new economy - 5. The euro between the dollar and the yen - 6. New technology - 7. The European Union maintaining stability and peace in the world - 8. Supporting the development and addressing the needs of the regions - 9. Achievements and prospects of the European People's Party: 1976-2001.

L'Europe de la méditerranée, comparée aux autres régions européennes, dispose d'une histoire et d'une géographie particulières. Et pourtant elle entretient avec ces régions de nombreux rapports qu'il conviendra d'analyser afin d'enrichir notre compréhension de l'Europe dans son ensemble. Une longue tradition de rapports économiques et culturels rapproche tous les pays donnant sur la mer, berceau des principales civilisations du monde, bassin où s'échangent hommes, idées, matières premières, et technologies. L'Union européenne est appelée à développer une grande politique méditerranéenne, aussi bien par l'adhésion de nouveaux pays que par une politique de bon voisinage ou d'associations privilégiées. L'instrument principal devrait en être une politique culturelle servant de pont entre l'Est et l'Ouest, le Nord et le Sud, politique commune afin de répandre les valeurs contenues dans le projet de constitution européenne qui reconnaît dans le concept de diversité son bien le plus précieux. Les pays de l'Europe méditerranéenne, avec leurs expériences et leurs savoirs, peuvent fournir à cette politique une contribution précieuse. Ce volume, fruit de la coopération internationale de vingt chercheurs, apporte des éclairages sur l'Europe méditerranéenne non seulement dans des dimensions historiques, économiques, démographiques et politologiques, mais également dans le domaine des relations internationales et de la politique culturelle. The geography and the history of Mediterranean Europe are very different from those of the other European regions, but their role in the relationships with the other shores of the Mediterranean can be of great assistance to Europe as a whole. All the countries bordering the sea that witnessed the birth of some of the major civilisations of the world share a long tradition of economic and cultural relations. In the past numerous diasporas knit the harbour cities together, transmitting the ideas of the Enlightenment; today an uninterrupted flow of raw materials traverses the Mediterranean, together with people, ideas and technology. The European Union is called upon to develop a major Mediterranean policy, both through the accession of new countries, and by means of a policy of neighbourhood or of privileged associations. The principal tool should be a cultural policy that serves as a bridge between east and west, north and south. A common policy to spread the values contained in the project of the European constitution. In its motto «United in diversity», the Union recognises diversity as its most valuable asset. The countries of Mediterranean Europe, with their experience and their knowledge, can make a precious contribution to this policy. This book, the fruit of international co-operation among 20 researchers, offers a contribution to the study of Mediterranean Europe not only in the historic, economic, demographic and politological ambit, but also in the sphere of international relations and cultural policy.