Böcker utgivna av Ubiquity Press (Cardiff University Press)

This book presents a synthesis and analysis of the possessions of non-elite rural households in medieval England. Drawing on the results of the Leverhulme Trust funded project 'Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households, 1300-1600', it represents the first national-scale interdisciplinary analysis of non-elite consumption in the later Middle Ages. The research is situated within debates around rising living standards in the period following the Black Death, the commercialisation of the English economy and the timing of a 'revolution' in consumer behaviour. Its novelty derives from its focus on non-elite rural households. Whilst there has been considerable work on the possessions of the great households and those living in larger towns, researchers have struggled to identify appropriate sources for understanding the possessions of those living in the countryside, even though they account for the majority of England's population at this time. This book will address the gap in understanding.The study combines 3 sources of data to address 2 questions: what goods did medieval households own, and what influenced their consumption habits? The first is archaeological evidence, comprising 14,706 objects recovered from archaeological excavations. The book synthesises this data, much of which is unpublished and therefore inaccessible to researchers. The second dataset derives from lists of the seized goods of felons, outlaws and suicides collated by the Escheator, a royal official, in the 14th and 15th centuries. The work of the Escheator is not well understood, but these lists, relating to some of the poorest people in medieval society (for whom traditional sources such as wills and probate inventories do not exist), provide new insights into the living standards of rural households. The lists typically detail and value the possessions of a household, meaning that it is possible to present a quantitative analysis of non-elite consumption for the first time. The final dataset draws on equivalent lists generated by the Coroner for the 16th century. An interdisciplinary approach is essential, as many objects identified archaeologically do not occur in the written records, and goods such as textiles do not survive in the ground. Drawing these sources together therefore allows the presentation of a more comprehensive analysis of the possessions of medieval households.The introduction lays out the research context in a manner accessible to historians and archaeologists who may not be familiar with work in each other's disciplines. This is followed by a brief summary of the research methodology and the sources underpinning the research. The next 5 chapters focus on addressing the question of what medieval households owned, discussing the evidence for kitchen equipment, tableware, furniture, clothing and personal items. The following 3 chapters discuss household economy, considering the evidence for the production of goods, variation in consumption between town and country and variation in accordance with wealth, firstly through the consideration of these themes at the national scale and secondly through a regional case study focussed on Wiltshire, which has particularly rich archaeological and documentary sources. The volume closes with a concluding chapter which places the research back into its wider context.

The internet is changing the way knowledge is made and understood. It is a change from making knowledge via face-to-face interaction to making knowledge via remote interaction. The authors of this book believe that this change, if left unchecked, could be disastrous for the long-term future of pluralist democracy and the very idea of truth itself. The book explains what the change is, why it is so dangerous, and what needs to be done to stop it.That such dangers are real is made clear by recent events, which include the storming of the US Capitol in January 2020 by rioters unwilling to believe the election result, and the many similar 'controversies' around the Covid-19 pandemic.The argument is built in three stages, starting with the fundamental role of face-to-face interaction. The key element of this first section is a classification of the different features of face-to-face interaction. This combines extensive research in the sociology of science with insights from other fields, to identify the ways in which face-to-face interactions enable the formation of societies. That starts with primary socialisation, through which we learn the objects that make up our reality, and extends into secondary socialisation and other forms of learning. In all cases, trust in others, grounded in face-to-face interaction, is crucial, with science providing both the exemplary institution of knowledge production and the hard case upon which the irreducible need for face-to-face interaction is established.The authors then examine the development of remote communication and provide a systematic analysis of its strengths and weaknesses. This comparative element is important: face-to-face communication is not always good and remote communication is not always bad. Indeed, much of modern society would be impossible without remote communication. There is, however, a limit to how far face-to-face interaction can be replaced. This is illustrated with case studies, drawing on the wide experience of the authors, that examine what happens in settings where remote communication might seem to be preferable, and showing that, despite its apparent advantages, it cannot reproduce all the functions of face-to-face interaction.The third and final stage of the argument applies this analysis to the problems facing democratic societies. The authors show that social media enables users to create an 'illusion of intimacy' and to deploy remote communication to promote misinformation and distrust on an industrial scale. These developments are linked to the rise of populism, and the risk it poses to more pluralist forms of democracy characterised by institutional checks and balances. Drawing on the virtues of face-to-face communication, the authors argue that the 'conservation of democracy' depends on citizens understanding the long-term consequences of an over-reliance on remote communication. They conclude, therefore, by returning to the themes set out at the start of the book, namely the crucial role played by trust in modern societies and the importance of face-to-face interactions in reproducing that trust, and the democratic institutions in which it should be invested. All this should be part of the civic education of the future and is of immediate importance to politicians and social and political scientists among others.

The INTERACT Conferences are an important platform for researchers and practitioners in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) to showcase their work. They are organised biennially by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13), an international committee of 30 member national societies and nine Working Groups.INTERACT is truly international in its spirit and has attracted researchers from several countries and cultures. With an emphasis on inclusiveness, it works to lower the barriers that prevent people in developing countries from participating in conferences. As a multidisciplinary field, HCI requires interaction and discussion among diverse people with different interests and backgrounds.The 17th IFIP TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2019) took place during 2-6 September 2019 in Paphos, Cyprus. The conference was held at the Coral Beach Hotel Resort, and was co-sponsored by the Cyprus University of Technology and Tallinn University, in cooperation with ACM and ACM SIGCHI.This volume contains the Adjunct Proceedings to the 17th INTERACT Conference, comprising a series of selected papers from workshops, the Student Design Consortium and the Doctoral Consortium. The volume follows the INTERACT conference tradition of submitting adjunct papers after the main publication deadline, to be published by a University Press with a connection to the conference itself. In this case, both the Adjunct Proceedings Chair of the conference, Dr Usashi Chatterjee, and the lead Editor of this volume, Dr Fernando Loizides, work at Cardiff University which is the home of Cardiff University Press.