This Open-Access-book examines the phenomenon of discrimination using a descriptive approach. Discrimination is omnipresent, whether it is people who discriminate against other people or, more recently, also machines that discriminate against people. The first part of the analysis employs decision theory on discrimination, leading to two fundamental subtypes: taste-based discrimination and stat…
This book seeks to narrow two gaps: first, between the widespread use of case studies and their frequently 'loose' methodological moorings; and second, between the scholarly community advancing methodological frontiers in case study research and the users of case studies in development policy and practice. It draws on the contributors' collective experience at this nexus, but the underlying iss…
As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral registers including derivate “languages” and “dialects,” Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Moreover, due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual activity, and religion, they are often regarded as cultural markers…
This open access book discusses and analyses competing views and social implications of gestational surrogacy, which is making inroads as an option for parenthood as well as a work opportunity for women. It provides a rich account of transnational mobilizations for the abolition and regulation of surrogacy, with focus on United States, Italy and Mexico. The author critically assesses the core n…
This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of …
How and why did the African elite turn from loyal intermediaries into opponents of the colonial state? This book wants to help better understand the dramatic political and cultural processes of decolonization in the Belgian Congo. Focusing on the making of a bourgeois African elite, the book deals with the social identity and cultural self-representations, the daily life and political activism …
This open access book examines the significance of gay neighborhoods (or ‘gayborhoods’) from critical periods of formation during the gay liberation and freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to proven durability through the HIV/AIDS pandemic during the 1980s and 1990s, to a mature plateau since 2000. The book provides a framework for contemplating the future form and function of gay nei…
Improving learning evidence and outcomes for those most in need in developing countries is at the heart of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG4). This timely volume brings together contributions on current empirical research and analysis of emerging trends that focus on improving the quality of education through better policy and practice, particularly for those…
This open access book focuses on the formation and later socio-spatial trajectories of large housing estates in the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It also explores claims that a distinctly “westward-looking orientation” in their design produced housing estates that were superior in design to those produced elsewhere in the Soviet Union (between 1944 and 1991, Estonia was…
Arts Education institutions and programs create an excellent framework for personality development: learning knowledge, learning skills and learning life. Their attainment requires education to be a holistic concept of advancement that includes aesthetic practice and involvement with the arts. It challenges them to use their actions to think about the meaning of life, in as much as everyone can…