Economic historians have placed commercialization at the centre of Europe’s early modern capitalism, emphasizing the importance of domestic and international trade, shipbuilding and concomitant manufactures, the financial sector, and urbanization. As the Iberian polities extended geographically to Africa, Asia and the Americas during the early modern period, trade, whether domestic, international or colonial, had a critical effect upon economic development. However, the economic impact of colonial expansion was uneven across Iberia. Iberia commercial exchange associated with the overseas empires produced surprisingly few backward and forward linkages in the European national economies. The question this chapter seeks to address is thus to what extent and how Iberian trade, especially colonial trade, supported or hindered economic development in the early modern period.

By the time Christianity reached Iceland, saints’ lives were already a vast and enormously popular genre of literature well-established across the medieval Christian world. This chapter discusses how Icelandic writers engaged with this genre, concentrating especially on translated saints’ lives in Old Norse. While rooted in and responding to the particular conditions of Icelandic society, these vernacular adaptations and engagements with Latin Christian culture also transported the readers and writers of Old Norse-Icelandic literature far beyond their immediate environs. Beginning with the earliest examples of saints’ lives from the twelfth century, this chapter outlines how the genre developed over time from relative simplicity to a more complex and rhetorically accomplished approach. It describes how saints’ lives intersected with other forms of literature being written in medieval Iceland, including romance and the family sagas, and addresses categories of saint’s life which have received less critical attention: the Marian corpus, the lives of virgin martyrs and Low German translations into Old Norse-Icelandic.

This chapter provides a chronological review of critical responses to Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The ‘book-prose vs free-prose’ debate is the starting-point for this overview, which then focuses on modern scholarship on sagas. The approach of the Icelandic school is discussed, followed by consideration of theoretical issues such as orality, structuralism, anthropological methods and the influence of non-Icelandic literary forms. Next come post-structuralism and narratology. The diversity of theoretical approaches which grew up towards the end of the twentieth century is documented, including post-colonialism and polysystem theory. Long-held generic distinctions are reviewed, and the development of gender studies with regard to Old Norse is described. Recent developments in the study of orality in prose and poetry are discussed, as are theoretical topics such as memory studies and the role of the paranormal. The chapter concludes with an account of the diversity of critical approaches to Old Norse-Icelandic literature and explains the need to employ integrated theories bringing in research from a number of disciplines, including archaeology, psychoanalysis and sociology.

This chapter considers the child’s right to identity. It is for good reason that the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that core aspects of a child’s legal identity are in place soon after birth. A legal identity secures the child’s place in society, nation and family, providing the foundations for the child’s sense of self and relationships with others. The fact that these crucial aspects of identity are put in place when the child is an infant means that particular care must be taken to ensure that the child’s interests are not lost; not least because adults often have powerful interests in the way in which a child’s identity is determined and recorded. This chapter considers the formation of a child’s legal identity through recognition of parenthood and the challenges posed by changing reproductive technology and social norms such as the growth of international surrogacy arrangements. Further, a child’s knowledge of their genetic origins and the circumstances of their birth may be important to their sense of self and personal identity. The extent to which the right to identity incorporates a right to knowledge of origins is also considered.

This chapter focuses on one element of causal complexity: disjunctions, or equifinality. Using an example from applied research, it is explained which new SMMR principles and subtypes of cases need to be formulated to capture the consequences for descriptive and causal inference triggered by disjunctions. Learning goals: - Understand the inferential challenges triggered by disjunctions (equifinality) - Get acquainted with the additional sub-types of cases produced by disjunctive solution formulas - Understand how additional principles guide case selection in the presence of disjunctions - Learn if and how moving up the ladder of generality can be used to theorize away disjunctions and the inferential challenges it poses - Become more familiar with the smmr() function and the interpretation of its output in the presence of disjunctions

IN THE AMERICAN imagination of the early twentieth century, rare books and economic value were firmly united. With detailed accounts of lucrative library sales and front-page headlines, the press ensured that even lay audiences were aware of record-breaking book sales, particularly following the auction of the library of Robert Hoe III, which began in 1911. As book sales captured public interest, increased speculation in the early-twentieth-century rare book trade was probably inevitable. Such was the perceived profitability of rare books that unscrupulous sellers were prepared to take advantage of naïve buyers, and stories of rare book fraud surfaced in the press. In 1912, The New York Times reported that the Federal government had indicted eleven men for committing $5,000,000 worth of rare book fraud, stating that the “alleged fraud for which these men were indicted consisted in the deception of persons with more money than knowledge of books.” The swindle had been profitable for at least ten years, indicating that from the start of the twentieth century, the rare book trade had gained acceptance as a dazzling yet bewildering business, blending the satisfaction of material consumption with the lure of social pretensions.

The American press typically characterized the most successful collectors as investing heavily and swiftly when opportunities arose, recognizing that supplies were limited, and market values were only moving upwards—a narrative that left naïve buyers open to exploitation. The fact that fraudsters were able to extract large sums from victims with little or no prior trade experience, points to wider perceptions of the market’s dependability and profitability. Not all the victims were even bibliophiles. One man, named in the press as “Levingston of Saratoga Springs,” was simply looking to make a short-term investment, believing that the rare books he purchased “would be resold in a short time at a considerable profit to a millionaire who was nibbling at them.” Lev ingston reportedly lost $153,000. Contemporary collectors likely felt little sympathy for Levingston, and members of the trade could be openly critical of investment collecting. The dealer A. S. W. Rosenbach informed The New York Times that he “had no sympathy with collectors who purchase books primarily for speculation.” American Book-Prices Current responded to speculation in stronger terms:

The IBF is a quotient of the relative numerical value of two fundamental rights – the numerical value assigned as a result of input elements for the right to privacy divided by the numerical value assigned to the freedom of expression as a result of input elements. The input elements are internet vulnerability, degree of interference into privacy, the element of time, public interest, public figure, how the information was obtained and empathy. The Internet Balancing Formula is capable of maximising the element of transparency and minimising the element of arbitrariness in private online balancing. It is therefore a tool that brings optimised order to the online dimension of conflicting fundamental rights. The formula can claim correctness in a given time–space related context. It is a rational, mathematical and living instrument.

Introduction

As discussed in Chapter 3, several Indicators have been proposed for the 169 Targets for the 17 SDGs, and consequently different types of metadata, terminologies and guidelines have been developed for gathering and sharing of the relevant data. However, it is evident that given the diversity of the SDGs and their associated Targets, the Indicators are also quite diverse. Given the fact that every country in the world is required to gather data for measuring success in the diverse set of SDG Targets, it is quite evident that the Indicators are based on the established measurement methods and data availability – in particular, time series – and data consistency (Spangenberg, 2019).

This chapter discusses different SDG Indicators, with some examples to demonstrate the diverse sets of data required for measuring success. Achievements of success in different SDGs are also discussed and appropriate sources for full reports on achievements in the SDGs are also provided for the further understanding of the reader. Specific challenges associated with data quality, data completion, data aggregation and so on are also discussed, to demonstrate how data and information form the foundation of the SDGs and their Targets. This chapter also discusses various challenges associated with data collection, data sharing and use for some Indicators. The differences amongst countries and regions in terms of data availability vis-a-vis achievements in specific SDG Targets are also discussed. The discussions in this chapter demonstrate the needs for co-operation and collaboration at inter - national level, and also the need for understanding of various social and human issues that are associated with data collection, data sharing and data use.

Metadata and the FAIR principles

The FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles were proposed in 2016 to promote data sharing (Wilkinson et al., 2016). These principles have since been adopted by research institutions worldwide in order to support knowledge discovery and innovation, as well as data and knowledge integration, and to promote sharing and reuse of data. The FAIR principles help data and metadata to be machine-readable, supporting new discoveries through the harvesting and analysis of multiple datasets (CGIAR, n.d.).

As we show in Chapter 2, there has been a long tradition of the archaeological research in both the Pampas and Patagonia since the end of the nineteenth century. From the very beginning of the investigations, the Late Pleistocene human occupation was at the top of the research agenda in both regions. Giant ground sloth skins from Cueva del Milodón and human skulls supposedly found in very ancient (Tertiary) layers in the Pampas seashore ignited the imagination of scientists of those times, and fieldwork looking for spectacular findings as well as reckless interpretations abounded. Since then, the first human occupation has been the main focus of the archaeological investigation in both regions. This chapter summarizes and discusses the results of this almost continuous, intense, and fertile archaeological research.

This chapter discusses some of the existing beliefs about juror decision-making and the jury process at three distinct phases of a trial: before the trial, during the trial, and at the trial’s conclusion. Before the trial, there are beliefs surrounding the jury process, including jury duty, jury size, and jury selection (i.e. voir dire). During the trial, there are common beliefs surrounding courtroom factors that influence jury decision-making, including attitudes, beliefs, and expectations regarding attorneys, expert witnesses, confession evidence, and emotion-evoking evidence. Finally, at the end of trial, there is the existing belief that juries make extreme and unpredictable decisions in civil and criminal court. This chapter uses current research and empirical evidence within law and behavioral sciences to examine these myths, showing support for some of these beliefs, while also showing that others are simply myths about jury decision-making. Finally, the chapter discusses future research to address such myths.

This chapter uses archaeological theory to enrich readings of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, exploring human interactions with the physical world during the Viking Age. The focus is on artefacts, buildings and constructed places in the landscape. The chapter begins with a survey of Viking Age material culture studies, emphasizing the move beyond data collection to ways of probing meaning and highlighting new areas of archaeological research and theory, including landscape archaeology, geophysics and laboratory-based techniques such as isotopic analysis. Theories of landscape and the social significance of the physical world are discussed, and also the way materials, methods of construction, and the form and decoration of material culture carry meaning. The role of diaspora studies is also explored. The chapter continues with an analysis of three particular kinds of object – swords, brooches and combs – and moves on to consider acts of transformation and the magic associated with objects, especially hoards and ritual deposition. There are sections on the construction of Viking Age buildings, ships and mounds and what they can tell us about life in the Viking Age.

In this chapter, I test the effects of post-Stalinist transitions on two important measures of agency capacity: officers employed and individuals registered as secret informants by coercive agencies. I present an original cross-national dataset on officer and informant numbers for every coercive agency in communist Central and Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1989. I show that countries that experienced post-Stalinist transitions had similarly sized coercive agencies to other states before 1953, but these agencies shrank thereafter while others continued to grow. I then estimate a series of difference-in-difference models to test the effect of post-Stalinist transitions on agency size. I find that agencies under post-Stalinist regimes had significantly smaller coercive agencies after Stalin’s death. This confirms the theoretical logic laid out in Chapter 2 in a broader setting than the comparative historical analyses of Poland and East Germany in Chapters 4 and 5. Although the number of cases and coverage of data here are limited, my results suggest that the logic of elite cohesion and coercive capacity laid out in Chapter 2 is applicable to a wide range of authoritarian regimes.