"Paganism" is an evocative word that even today conjures up deep-seated emotions and prejudices. Until recently, it was primarily a derogatory term used by Christians to describe the non-Christian cultures vanquished by their churches. For some it evokes images of sacrifice and barbaric behavior, while for others it symbolizes a peace-loving, nature-worshipping spiritual relationship with the e…
Concern about food exists throughout the world, but the aspects of concern differ with location. In underdeveloped regions of the world, the bulk of the population is involved in food production, yet attainment of adequate amounts and kinds of basic nutrients remains an ever-present problem. In developed regions of the world, food production is highly mechanized and only a small fraction of the…
Yet we cannot foreclose the extent to which some thinkers and theorists, especially looking back over the long arc of TV reception, have raised concerns about the medium’s deleterious potential: its apparent agency in human dissipation and degeneracy. While Raymond Williams offered a critical materialist approach equipped with a searing interest in how serious criticism of …
We wanted to have this experience to assess whether our hypotheses were well founded. Hassan, an old camel driver of few words but who knew all the “secrets” of a desert journey, served as our guide.From the expedition diary: 12 February 1990: “Since a few hours, we have been travelling on our teetering rides across an immense stony plain towards Jebel Maqran, a tiny outcrop tha…
Questions of responsibility arise at all levels of health care. Most prominent has been the issue of patient responsibility. Some health conditions that risk death or serious harm are partly the result of lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme sports. Are patients with such conditions responsible for them? If so, might healthcare providers, be they state-run systems …
s this story of the Golden Age develops – with Eustace’s charming descrip-tions of meals growing on trees, carefree fun, and the bright aura – it in fact reveals the sinister myth of Pandora, here a “playfellow” sent by the gods to the boy Epimetheus, in whose household “a great box” menacingly awaits. Even though in Hawthorne’s version the girl is not responsible for…
The only up-to-date frequency dictionary of Spanish currently available, this is an invaluable tool for all learners of Spanish that provides a list of the 5,000 most commonly used words in the language. Based on a twenty million word corpus evenly divided between spoken, fiction and non-fiction texts from both Spain and Latin America, the Dictionary provides a detailed frequency-based list,…
This volume demonstrates how the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) provides a necessary context for late medieval literature. Many of the major writers of the period, in a variety of different languages, lived either all or most of their lives under the shadow of war, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, Giovanni Boccaccio and Bridget of Sweden. The essays collected here investigate ho…
The world is facing a biodiversity crisis and around 1 million animal and plant species are estimated to be threatened with extinction (IPBES, 2019). Trees are highly visible in most landscapes and are excellent biodiversity indicators. They are ecologically, culturally and economically of vital importance and yet there have been surprising gaps in knowledge of the diversity, distribution, abun…
Animal research is part of a complex web of relations made up of humans and animals, practices inside and outside the laboratory, formal laws and professional norms, and social imaginaries of the past and future of medicine. Researching Animal Research sets out an innovative approach for understanding and intervening in the social practices that constitute animal research. It proposes the idea …