Terra preta is the Portuguese name of a type of soil which is thought to have almost miraculous properties. The newspapers are flooded with reports about black gold,” scientists believe that two of the greatest problems facing the world climate change and the hunger crisis - can be solved by it. The beauty of it is that everyone can do something about it because since 2005 the secret of producing this black soil has been revealed - and it is a secret that seemed to have been lost foreve...

An eye-opening and timely look at how colleges drive the very inequalities they are meant to remedy, complete with a call—and a vision—for changeColleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit o...

An eye-opening and timely look at how colleges drive the very inequalities they are meant to remedy, complete with a call—and a vision—for changeColleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of...

This essay—a work of literary criticism and critical race studies written to be accessible to non-specialists—examines how popular fiction contributed to and contested new forms of white racial dominance, collectively known as Jim Crow or the "color-line," in the U.S. in the 1880s and after. I focus in particular on the cultural work undertaken by the "command performance" scene in these texts, in which a black person was asked to tell a story or otherwise give a performance that was suppo...

This fourth volume in the Comparative Succession Law series provides a historical and comparative study of how and by whom the estates of deceased persons are administered, drawing upon the legal traditions of Europe and beyond. When a person dies, their assets (or their value) will transfer to those entitled to inherit them following the deceased's will or, in the absence of a will, according to the rules of intestate succession. Along the way, the assets have to be identified, l...

The book is intended as a primary resource for Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs), all professionals with interest in sustainability as well as sustainability courses at CBS International Business School and other universities. It starts by reviewing the challenges of sustainability (environmental, social, economic, and governance). The basics of life cycle thinking are explained, looking at Life Cycle Assessment/LCA, Life Cycle Costing/LCC, Social LCAs, and Life Cycle Management. These ...

Probing essays that examine critical issues surrounding the United States's ever-expanding international cultural identity in the postcolonial era.At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we may be in a "transnational" moment, increasingly aware of the ways in which local and national narratives, in literature and elsewhere, cannot be conceived apart from a radically new sense of shared human histories and global interdependence. To think transnationally about literature, hist...

Master's Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Department of Economics), course: Labor Economics II, language: English, abstract: One of the most important issues that was in the center of the political debate in Germany in the last few months is the introduction of minimum wages. It was caused by the politically forced imposition of a minimum wage in the sector for postal services which, in the vie...

What is the real story behind the fight over affirmative action at colleges? Veteran journalist Peter Schmidt exposes truths that will outrage readers and forever transform the debate. He reveals how:* colleges use affirmative action to mask how much they cater to the country club crowd and to solicit support from the big corporations they steer minority students toward;* conservatives have used opposition to affirmative action to advance a broader agenda that includes guttin...

Globalization, immigration and economic crisis challenge the conceptions of nations, trans-national institutions and post-ethnic societies which are central topics in social sciences' discourses. This book examines in an interdisciplinary and international comparative way structures of national identity which are in conflict with or supporting multi-ethnic diversity and trans-national connectivity. The book’s first section seeks to clarify the concepts of national identity, nationalism, pa...

With the Lisbon Treaty in place and the European Union increasingly involved in international crisis management and stabilization operations in places near and far, this volume revisits the trajectory of a European strategic culture. Specifically, it studies the usefulness of its application in a variety of circumstances, including the EU’s operations in Africa and the Balkans as well as joint operations with NATO and the United Nations.The contributors find that strategic culture ...

Crossing Borders is a gathering of twenty original, interdisciplinary essays on the paradigm of borders in African American literature, multi-ethnic U.S. studies, and South Asian studies. These essays by established and mid-career scholars from around the globe employ a variety of approaches to the idea of “border crossings” and represent important contributions to the discourses on modernity, diasporic mobility, populism, migration, exile, sub-nation, trans-nation, as well as the formatio...