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Overarching this book and its companion volume Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union (ed. Schmitt and Thomassen) is the theme of exploring political representation in Europe in a truly comparative context. A distinguished array of academic experts analyse the ‘views from within’ concerning European integration and the role of parliaments in this process. Ranging from chapters on role orientations among parliamentarians to the future of European integration, the overall focus in this volume is uniquely on the attitudes, backgrounds, and reported actions of parliamentarians both in national parliaments and in the European Parliament.

How severe a problem is what many call the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU? Despite a voluminous theoretical literature dealing with this question, there is hardly any systematic empirical investigation of the effectiveness of the system of political representation in the EU, and of the legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens that spring from it. This book elaborates a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of the alleged democratic deficit. Four dimensions of legitimacy beliefs are identified and analysed: the European political community; the scope of EU government; the institutions and processes of EU government; and EU policies. Based upon large‐scale representative surveys (the ‘European Representation Study’) among the mass publics, and different strata of the political elite of the EU and its member‐states, the book examines the conditions of political representation in the EU. The results demonstrate, by and large, that legitimacy beliefs of EU citizens are the more positive the less specific the object of identification and evaluations is, and that the process of political representation works pretty well as long as issues other than EU issues are concerned. These findings are finally discussed in view of familiar strategies for institutional reform of the EU. The book is arranged in two main parts: I. Legitimacy (4 Chs) and II. Representation ( 6Chs); it also has an introduction, a conclusion, and an appendix giving details of the European Representation Study. The book is one of two companion volumes that report on the results of this study. The other is The European Parliament, the National Parliaments, and European Integration (edited by Richard S. Katz and Bernhard Wessels), and is also published by OUP.

In the last 12,000 years, human societies have moved through phases of forager, agricultural, industrial and ‘post-industrial’ economies. Each of these has been affected by the natural world and in turn has changed the workings of the non-human or ‘natural’ components of this planet. For each of these phases the author discusses questions of population growth and distribution together with the technologies available to the human groups of the time. Overall there is no doubt about the central role of access to energy flows and storage in making possible the life ways of many diverse groups. In addition to these basic chronicles the author is at pains to include the question of how these economies and ecologies are represented in today's cultural frameworks. The theme of scale pervades the book. A distinction is made between processes which affect many parts of the world but are not coalescent (‘worldwide’) and those which penetrate the entire biophysical entity and to which the term ‘global’ can truly be applied. Despite the current levels of anxiety about human-environmental relationships this book concentrates on environmental history and not prophecy. There is though a parting shot to the effect that history is probably not a good guide to human futures.

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.

Since its origins in 1967, The Smithsonian Folklife Festival has gained national and international recognition as a model for the research and public presentation of living cultural heritage and the advocacy of cultural democracy. Festival curators play a major role in interpreting Festival principles and shaping its practices. Curatorial Conversations brings together for the first time in one volume the combined expertise of Festival curatorial staff—past and present—in examining the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s cultural heritage representation practices and their critical implications for issues of intangible cultural heritage policy, cultural pluralism, and identity. This volume represents the first concerted project by Festival staff curators to systematically examine institutional principles and philosophical underpinnings and claims as they have evolved over time, and to address broader debates on cultural representation from their own experiences at the Festival.

The challenge of the sublime argues that the unprecedented visual inventiveness of the Romantic period in Britain could be seen as a response to theories of the sublime, more specifically to Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). While it is widely accepted that the Enquiry contributed to shaping the thematics of terror that became fashionable in British art from the 1770s, this book contends that its influence was of even greater consequence, paradoxically because of Burke’s conviction that the visual arts were incapable of conveying the sublime. His argument that the sublime was beyond the reach of painting, because of the mimetic nature of visual representation, directly or indirectly incited visual artists to explore not just new themes, but also new compositional strategies and even new or undeveloped pictorial and graphic media, such as the panorama, book illustrations and capricci. More significantly, it began to call into question mimetic representational models, causing artists to reflect about the presentation of the unpresentable and the inadequacy of their endeavours, and thus drawing attention to the process of artistic production itself, rather than the finished artwork. By revisiting the links between eighteenth-century aesthetic theory and visual practices, The challenge of the sublime establishes new interdisciplinary connections which address researchers in the fields of art history, cultural studies and aesthetics.

For over two decades, the media have chronicled escalating participation in family history prompted by, among other things, the aging of Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, the growing availability of digital genealogy sites and archives, and a burgeoning interest in racial and ethnic history and culture of the sort inspired by the airing of the historical drama miniseries Roots forty years ago. Alternate Roots is the first book to critically address a wide array of media-related institutions, texts, technologies, and practices of family history readily encountered in the new millennium, including genealogy-themed television series, books, documentaries, websites, family photos and civil records, social media interactions, genealogical institutions, “roots” tourism, and genetic ancestry testing services capitalizing on the 2003 mapping of the human genome. These objects of inquiry present unique and pressing issues for critical investigation in terms of economic and privacy concerns as well as ethnicity, race, and hybrid identities. Judiciously interweaving her own genealogical journey involving ethnic, racial, classed, and gendered identities pertinent to her southern Italian and Italian American family history throughout the multifaceted examination of critical objects, Christine Scodari unearths pivot points of thought and action in the performance and representation of family history that can be adapted by others and facilitated by digital media. This alternate roots strategy, an expansive approach to family history, enables practitioners to venture beyond genetic definitions of kinship, their own ancestral history, and the struggles of those sharing their affiliations, and to interrogate genealogical media and related commodities and activities accordingly.

Driven by exacting methods and hard data, this volume reveals gender dynamics within the dance world in the twenty-first century. It provides concrete evidence about how gender impacts the daily lives of dancers, choreographers, directors, educators, and students through surveys, interviews, analyses of data from institutional sources, and action research studies. Dancers, dance artists, and dance scholars from the United States, Australia, and Canada discuss equity in three areas: concert dance, the studio, and higher education. The chapters provide evidence of bias, stereotyping, and other behaviors that are often invisible to those involved, as well as to audiences. The contributors answer incisive questions about the role of gender in various aspects of the field, including physical expression and body image, classroom experiences and pedagogy, and performance and funding opportunities. The findings reveal how inequitable practices combined with societal pressures can create environments that hinder health, happiness, and success. At the same time, they highlight the individuals working to eliminate discrimination and open up new possibilities for expression and achievement in studios, choreography, performance venues, and institutions of higher education. The dance community can strive to eliminate discrimination, but first it must understand the status quo for gender in the dance world.

Moving images of the British monarchy, in fact and fiction, are almost as old as the moving image itself, dating back to an 1895 dramatic vignette, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. Led by Queen Victoria, British monarchs themselves appeared in the new “animated photography” from 1896. Half a century later, the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II was a milestone in the adoption of television, watched by 20 million Britons and 100 million North Americans. At the century’s end, Princess Diana’s funeral was viewed by 2.5 billion worldwide. Seventeen essays by international commentators examine the portrayal of royalty in the “actuality” picture, the early extended feature, amateur cinema, the movie melodrama, the Commonwealth documentary, New Queer Cinema, TV current affairs, the big screen ceremonial and the post-historical boxed set. These contributors include Ian Christie, Elisabeth Bronfen, Andrew Higson, Steven Fielding, Karen Lury, Glyn Davis, Ann Gray, Jane Landman, Victoria Duckett, Jude Cowan Montague, James Downs, Barbara Straumann, Deirdre Gilfedder, Jo Stephenson, Ruth Adams, Erin Bell, Basil Glynn and Nicola Rehling.

In his work, the philosopher John Haugeland (1945–2010) proposed a radical expansion of philosophy’s conceptual toolkit, calling for a wider range of resources for understanding the mind, the world, and how they relate. Haugeland argued that “giving a damn” is essential for having a mind, and suggested that traditional approaches to cognitive science mistakenly overlook the relevance of caring to the understanding of mindedness. Haugeland’s determination to expand philosophy’s array of concepts led him to write on a wide variety of subjects that may seem unrelated—from topics in cognitive science and philosophy of mind to examinations of such figures as Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and Thomas Kuhn. Haugeland’s two books with the MIT Press, Artificial Intelligence and Mind Design, show the range of his interests. This book offers a collection of essays in conversation with Haugeland’s work. The essays, by prominent scholars, extend Haugeland’s work on a range of contemporary topics in philosophy of mind—from questions about intentionality to issues concerning objectivity and truth to the work of Heidegger. Giving a Damn also includes a previously unpublished paper by Haugeland, “Two Dogmas of Rationalism,” as well as critical responses to it. Finally, an appendix offers Haugeland’s outline of Kant’s "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories.”

This book is about the relationship between emergencies and the spectator. In the early twenty-first century, ‘emergencies’ are commonplace in the newsgathering and political institutions of western industrial democracies. From terrorism to global warming, the refugee crisis to general elections, the spectator is bombarded with narratives that seek to suspend the criteria of everyday life in order to address perpetual ‘exceptional’ threats. I argue that repeated exposure to these narratives through the apparatuses of contemporary technology creates a ‘precarious spectatorship’, where the spectator’s ability to rationalise herself, or her relationship with the object of her spectatorship, is compromised. In terms of the ways in which emergencies are dramatized for the spectator, this book focuses primarily on the framing and distribution of images. Because images are cheap and easy to produce; because they can be quickly and limitlessly distributed; because they are instantly affective and because they can be easily overwritten, they have become a pre-eminent tool in the performance of emergencies. In response to this, the book proposes theatrical performance as a space in which the relationship between the spectator and emergencies may be critically examined, and I analyse a range of contemporary theatrical pieces which challenge the spectator under the aegis of emergencies.

What is representation? How do the more primitive aspects of our world come together to generate it? How do different kinds of representation relate to one another? This book identifies the metaphysical foundations for representational facts. The story told is in three parts. The most primitive layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of sensation/perception and intention/action, which are the two most basic modes in which an individual and the world interact. It is argued that we can understand how this kind of representation can exist in a fundamentally physical world so long as we have an independent, illuminating grip on functions and causation. The second layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of (degrees of) belief and desire, whose representational content goes far beyond the immediate perceptable and manipulable environment. It is argued that the correct belief/desire interpretation of an agent is the one which makes their action-guiding states, given their perceptual evidence, most rational. The final layer of representation is the ‘aboutness’ of words and sentences, human artefacts with representational content. It is argued that one can give an illuminating account of the conditions under which a compositional interpretation of a public language like English is correct by appeal to patterns emerging from the attitudes conventionally expressed by sentences. The three-layer metaphysics of representation resolves long-standing underdetermination puzzles, predicts and explains patterns in the way that concepts denote, and articulates a delicate interactive relationship between the foundations of language and thought.