Böcker utgivna av Amsterdam University Press

This volume takes readers on a journey into a central aspect of life in China, so-called "self-development." Whether prompted by the cultural values of educational success, capitalist competition for wealth, or the Chinese Communist Party's prescriptions for "good" citizenship, few people in China are immune to the impetus to "improve" themselves and thus bring about a better future. Contributors to this volume, interdisciplinary sinologists, draw on materials from practices in education, labor, and self-help as they spotlight "keywords" by which individuals make sense of their self-development journeys - including new forms of resistance to social norms. Rather than simply classify self-development by different activities or groups, the chapters map together ethical features that cut across Chinese society. Contributors explore the nuanced and ambivalent attitudes towards self-development of individuals navigating various requirements and pursuing more complete forms of existence. In so doing, they offer a snapshot of China that intersects with timely global concerns.

The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were among the worst years of the Little Ice Age. This volume attends to English texts from this period to trace associations between wintry physical landscapes and an icy inner landscape of human cruelty and tyranny whose rigors promote the ultimate chill of rigor mortis. Sailors seeking a polar route to the East brought terrifying reports of northern icescapes, long popularly linked with the devil. Simultaneously, concerns about increasingly cold winters at home in Britain overlapped with increased scrutiny of kingship and the church and fear of tyranny from both. Such fears were reflected in ongoing struggles between king and Parliament during the period, leading to revolution and war. The binding power of ice and the power of northern winters to deface, kill, and bury life suggested the Fall's human parallel to winter: cold-hearted humans as tyrannical winters who deal in death.

During the eighteenth century, comfortable everyday life becomes a new ideal. The good life was no longer about grand representation or the manifestation of material opulence. The new luxury was instead the comfortably arranged life at home. This book is about the traces of this change, its approach and consequences and its anchoring in the material and social life of the Swedish manor. The comfort revolution of the eighteenth century was clearly associated with both new types of furniture and new ways of furnishing. An important aspect of the development of comfort was the new mobility and flexibility in form and function that the home and its interior now showed. Through the home of the Wadenstierna family on the country estate of Näs, north of Stockholm, the comfortable everyday life is set by their various tables - at writing desks, sewing tables, dressing tables, coffee tables and games tables.

A headman of a remote Kelabit longhouse in Borneo is wrestling with recent changes caused by logging and roadbuilding. During this time of tension, he tells three historical narratives defining what makes the good life. His stories of history celebrate pioneering heroes who led through warfare and migrations, who interact with the Brooke state and initiate peace-making, and who journey to seek local Christian missionaries. This microhistory highlights the resilience of values in the face of transformative change, values providing a cultural structure for the Kelabit to redefine and adapt whilst maintaining their identity as a community. This work is relevant to Austronesian studies, Southeast Asian history, oral history, the anthropology of value, sociality and ethnic identity, Christian conversion, and issues of borderlands, decolonization, and indigeneity. It is of interest to readers concerned with the history of transnational peoples of Borneo, including the Kelabit, Sa'ban, Kenyah, Ngurek, Penan, and the Lun Dayeh.

The Unfinished History of European Integration is a companion to the history of the European Union. From the aftermath of the First World War to the EU of 27 member states and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it guides the reader past the main events, crucial sites and key actors that shaped the EU we know today. How did it evolve from a market project to a geopolitical force, what explains the expansion of its membership, institutions, policies and the resistance to this growth, and why does it function as it does? This book provides more than just a chronological account of over seventy years of European integration. It also shows how observers past and present have made sense of the EU. The Unfinished History of European Integration is therefore a unique introduction for readers with different disciplinary backgrounds to understanding the EU. If over seventy years of European integration have taught us anything, it is that fundamental crises as well as moments of rapid institutional change have been constants in its history.

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll in Rembrandt's Time focuses on the generation of rich young men that grew up in the seventeenth century in the Dutch Republic. These men had more money to spend on clothes, music, and recreation than the generation before them. This fascinating account of male adolescence in the Dutch Republic reveals how young men including Rembrandt van Rijn disregarded conservative values and rebelled against the older generation, and consequently created a new youth culture that was similar to the one of the 1960s. They had long hair, wore colorful and extravagant clothing, and started taking drugs. Theirs was the first generation in European history to smoke tobacco. Moreover, they defied conventional norms and values with their promiscuity and by singing lewd songs in their free time. With his engaging storytelling-style filled with humorous anecdotes, Roberts convincingly shows how deviant male youth behavior is a feature of all ages, especially in periods when youngsters have too much free time and money.

This book extends the so-called new mobilities paradigm by focusing such theoretical advances on South Asian scholarship. When it comes to analytical approaches to movement, the intellectual trajectory of mobilities work has been tremendously provocative, particularly in the last fifteen years. However, much of that literature remains deeply rooted in Western/Northern geographies, ontologies, and priorities. This volume pushes beyond those earlier approaches to center South Asia as a critical site through which scholars can advance new theoretical and empirical research, diversify extant mobilities studies, and pose a challenge to Western models. Through a diverse set of interdisciplinary chapters, the collection makes a sustained argument about the value of decentering (im)mobilities research. In so doing, South Asia on the Move redirects the regional, theoretical, and methodological foci of the mobilities turn, demonstrating the relevance of South Asia for thinking about movement within the region and around the world.

This book examines Roman façades decorated with fresco and sgraffito between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that once enveloped the central rioni of Rome within a web of symbolic social, political, and familial allegiances that transformed a street-side stroll into a visually engaging experience. Today, many of these faces are lost, and our understanding of what they comprised is frighteningly incomplete. This book offers a refreshed look at this often-forgotten facet of Renaissance visual culture to reignite interest in the tradition before its last remnants disappear. In addition to offering a new compilation of these documented façades, this book also places new emphasis on the making and meaning of these "painted faces" to provide new insights into the place of the decorated façade at the intersections of patron identity and painterly innovation in a city working tirelessly to reinvent itself.

This collection brings together key contributions on the ethics of end-of-life decisions, inspired by the publication of What Kind of Death: The Ethics of Determining One's Own Death, a new standard work by professor Govert den Hartogh. The topics covered reflect the book's comprehensive approach, with its central themes explored by ethicists, legal experts, and medical professionals. The various contributions offer a thorough examination of the major steps in Den Hartogh's 'dual track approach'. This collection serves as a valuable supplement to the book and an important contribution to the ongoing debate about patient self-determination and well-being as foundational values in the ethics of determining one's own death.

In the 'Anatomy lessons' that were painted for the Surgeons' Guild in Amsterdam, the surgeons portrayed, their teachers, the corpse and the dissection are described and discussed.

Frans Hals (1582/83-1666) is rightfully considered one of the most important seventeenth-century Dutch painters. His portraits are admired for their virtuoso brushwork and their seemingly spontaneous character. This volume, with fourteen contributions by twenty-six specialists on Hals's paintings and his artistic network in Haarlem and beyond, presents a rich palette of new research. The authors introduce subjects such as the artist's clientele - from clergymen and fellow painters to governors of charitable institutions - as well as stylistic and technical aspects of individual paintings. Results of recent restorations are discussed, but also how advanced digital technologies contribute to our understanding of the painter's style and artistic development. A final section is dedicated to the rediscovery of Frans Hals in the second half of the nineteenth century and to the following art historical debate among connoisseurs about the artist's oeuvre. Frans Hals: Iconography - Technique - Reputation is the first volume in the Frans Hals Studies book series and is richly illustrated with close to two hundred colour illustrations.

Since 2003 and following the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq witnessed tremendous changes to its political, social, and economic structures, and this book critically maps recent popular protests that engulfed the country and led to the death of thousands of civilian protesters. It delves into the nuances of the Iraqi socio-political context and offers a brief historical overview of political activism by investigating the internal structure of activism in the country as well as the regional and international dimensions. The study involves critical ethnographic research including interviews with Iraqi activists, social media analysis, Arabic and English news analysis, as well as in-depth assessment and contextualization of the Iraqi protests. The author argues that there is a need to call the protests an "Iraqi Spring" because of the country's unique historical, demographic, and political circumstances.

Tracing the recent changes to the technology of film editing, this book offers an account of the aesthetics of digital montage. It is commonly argued that the changes to the technical apparatus of editing, the emergence of new systems for digital editing, have altered the basic identity or ontology of the cinema as an art. Such claims, it is argued in this book, are based on a misunderstanding of the relation between technology and technique, and more generally between the technical and the aesthetic. Applying recent theories of art, and employing specific concepts from philosophical aesthetics, an account of cinematic art is offered that can better accommodate the kinds of technical changes that have occurred in recent decades, with the advent of computer technology in the cinema. An aesthetics of digital montage is presented as part of a more general proposal for a theory of technical change in the cinema.

Women from the Ricasoli and Spinelli families formed a wide variety of social networks within and beyond Florence through their letters as they negotiated interpersonal relationships and lineage concerns to actively contribute to their families in early modern Italy. Women were located at the center of social networks through their work in bridging their natal and marital families, cultivating commercial contacts, negotiating family obligations and the demands of religious institutions, facilitating introductions for family and friends, and forming political patronage ties. This book argues that a network model offers a framework of analysis in which to deconstruct patriarchy as a single system of institutionalized dominance in early modern Italy. Networks account for female agency as an interactive force that shaped the kinships ties, affective relationships, material connections, and political positions of these elite families as women constructed their own narratives and negotiated their own positions in family life.

How Dutch violence of war during 1945-1949 was discussed, concealed, passed on, manipulated and used politically.

This volume analyzes forms of collective resilience through manifestations of strength-in-fragility in selected communities in Asia (Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand). Persistent resistance to communal erasure taking place through repressive policies and commercialized, multinational urban development insensitive to local communities and values often presents an uphill battle. Some of these collective efforts to survive through everyday actions, encounters, and constant struggles have successful outcomes, while others are ephemeral at best. The authors argue that persisting vernacular spaces located between resistance and co-optation are themselves a form of local cultural heritage in the rapidly urbanizing region. Recognizing these nonconformist forms of resilience as heritage acknowledges the creativity involved in challenging social and political inequalities. Supporting the cultural autonomy of local communities by acknowledging resilience as heritage contributes to social justice in the region.

This book examines the impact of space on the perception of art and visual culture in early nineteenth-century Paris. It turns its attention to the way in which space determines the understanding and the development of visual culture. The abundance of images, their status, and their employment alike offer a means to grasp the extent of the development of an approach to art which further involved the spectator. Space is here conceived of as a multifaceted entity, spanning architectural, scholarly, artistic, and visual dimensions. These various aspects offer means to consider the way in which images work and are consumed, and the individual experience they represent. Space works as a link and a connecting tool between different intellectual and visual categories, and this study examines how this interaction applies to works of art as well as everyday objects.

The chapters in this volume explore the major cultural markers, by which an ethnic community defines its cultural identity and cultural affiliation. These markers can differ when perceived as coming from within or from outside of a group and can be re-defined according to inner or outer circumstances. Their importance can increase when a community feels endangered in their cultural existence, or diminish when perceived cultural identity of a group and its members is not questioned. This collective monograph thus not only applies the term "cultural security" exclusively to state- or institution-implemented processes, but also considers the indigenous, bottom-up, and inside-out mechanisms of establishing and maintaining communal cultural security of an ethnic group. The dynamics shaping cultural security are illustrated in examples of ethnic communities in the People's Republic of China and in Mongolia.

Zahra confidently wears the hijab and challenges the widespread assumption that Islam and feminism are mutually exclusive. Hamza, on the other hand, grapples with various toxic stereotypes about masculinity and the roles he is expected to perform. Mariama, as a Black Muslim woman, navigates the realisation that her life is influenced by colonialism and discrimination, while Amari charts their own path through seemingly rigid categories of sexuality and gender. These four young protagonists take us on a journey through their worlds and communities in Europe and beyond. Their everyday stories and experiences not only showcase their perspectives, challenges and activism but also include numerous references to exciting initiatives, academic literature, inspiring historical figures, and important definitions of socially constructed term such as intersectionality and representation. The interactive graphic novel invites participation and demonstrates ways in which young people can engage in society. It exposes anti-Muslim prejudices and emphasises the importance of resilience, community and self-determination.

In the beginning of the 20th century, inspired by the Sherlock Holmes novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, scientists began to make their appearance at the crime scene. It was quickly discovered that studying the 'silent witnesses', crime-related physical evidence and traces, could provide a wealth of information. In many countries pioneers started to shape this new science area by formulating key principles and introducing novel methods and instrumentation. In the Netherlands, Co van Ledden Hulsebosch emerged as the first dedicated forensic scientist, and he quickly became a well-known figure. In 1945 he published his memoirs Forty Years of Detective Work, where he describes his most memorable cases and provides the reader with entertaining insights in how he was able to solve so many crimes through sound reasoning and the use of science. Almost eighty years later, a forensic academic network in the Netherlands is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. This network, consisting of forensic scientists from Dutch universities, academic medical centers, the Dutch Police, and the Netherlands Forensic Institute, is named after this Dutch forensic legend: the Co van Ledden Hulsebosch Center (clhc). For this special occasion, clhc-affiliated scientists and experts translated the memoirs of Co van Ledden Hulsebosch with the use of modern AI tools while also providing contemporary views and insights. Be amazed how relevant the work of Co van Ledden Hulsebosch still is for criminal investigations in the 21st century!

The book addresses the role of particular monstrous figures and apocalyptic scenarios in contemporary cinema and television and evaluates the political potential of horror and sci-fi narratives in our age of never-ending crises. Purpose of the book is to demonstrate how witches, zombies, and cyborgs (among other figures) present the spectre of new people to come, of new possibilities to inhabit the Earth against the apocalyptic fates of Capitalism. Written in an 'acid communist' spirit, the book shows how it is possible to politicise contemporary popular culture tropes and figures, mapping the anxieties they express and also their undisclosed potential and resources. Balancing personal commentary and academic analyses, the book expresses Deleuzian trust in the power of moving images as instruments that allow us to inhabit the present and believe in this world notwithstanding alleged ends of all worlds.

Fueled by Nigeria's momentary emergence as Africa's largest economy, Nollywood's increasingly global reach raises important questions about the industry's relationship to resource extraction. This book looks at Nollywood's literal and metaphorical access to the global while also examining Hollywood's longstanding promotion and participation in extractivism on the African continent. The awesome power of Hollywood derives, in part, from the industry's entwinement with "foreign" cultures and economies, including those of Nigeria. Yet if Hollywood has long mined African cultures and exploited African economies, Nollywood, arguably the continent's leading media industry, has exhibited similar tendencies, creatively appropriating everything from Latin American telenovelas to American-style science fiction in order to furnish a distinct impression of cosmopolitan modernity. Nollywood's far-flung geographies are both literal and conceptual, material and ideological. They contribute to, and comprise, "globalizing vernaculars" as much as they reflect and constitute national cultures. African Media in an Age of Extraction shows how a range of national cinemas intersect at various mining sites, shedding new light on political economies of oil, tin, lumber, telecommunications, and more.

A sparkling, informative account of what makes the Netherlands Dutch, perfect for anyone interested in its history or present and written by the country's foremost scholars