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Creative Practice as a Way of Life: After Barthes (Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture)
by Eddie TayThis book combines autoethnographic reflections, poetry, and photography with the aim to bridge the gap between creative practice and scholarly research. Drawing on an innovative combination of different forms of knowledge, creative writing and street photographs are presented as means to reflect on the development of knowledge and self-knowledge through a thought-provoking dialogue with Roland Barthes’ post-structuralist work. What does it mean to be a creative practitioner in a world traversed by values of capitalism and artificial intelligence? What does it mean to teach creative practices in such an environment?The urban landscape of Singapore, with the Jewel Changi mall, the Universal Studios, and Little India in the background, is the stage where the capitalist demands of modern city life grapple with the solitary act of writing poetry and taking photographs through the personal experience of the author. Capitalist realism and depression realism entwine with Barthes' notion of vita nova in a mesmerizing phantasmagoria that drags the reader to the bowels and secret pleasures of the creative process.
The Household Finance Issues in China
by Sibo Zhao Dawei ZhaoThis book systematically studies and discusses pertinent issues related to household finance in China. This book not only elucidates the concept and connotation of household finance, but also extensively examines the significance and necessity of enhancing household finance and upholding household financial well-being. Drawing upon theories from economics, psychology, sociology, and behavioral finance, it conducts a quantitative analysis of family finance and its influencing factors by constructing models such as Probit model, Tobit model, and APC model to empirically test the underlying mediation mechanism. In addition, from the perspective of inclusive finance development and safeguarding the rights and interests of financial consumers, this book expounds on its profound impact on household finance.This book is a valuable reference for researchers in related fields, and it also provides some insights into residents’ and families’ awareness of financial health. Furthermore, itaids in formulating and improving consumption policies, adjusting economic structures, and preventing household financial risks. This research provides valuable guidance for enhancing family welfare and increasing property income for Chinese residents.
Histories of the Present: People and Power in Ecuador
by Norman E. Whitten Dorothea Scott WhittenThe wellspring of critical analysis in this book emerges from Ecuador's major Indigenous Uprising of 1990 and its ongoing aftermath in which indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian action transformed the nation-state and established new dimensions of human relationships. The authors weave anthropological theory with longitudinal Ecuadorian ethnography to produce a unique contribution to Latin American studies.
Tactical Inclusion: Difference and Vulnerability in U.S. Military Advertising (Feminist Media Studies)
by Jeremiah FavaraThe revolution in military recruitment advertising to people of color and women played an essential role in making the US military one of the most diverse institutions in the United States. Starting at the dawn of the all-volunteer era, Jeremiah Favara illuminates the challenges at the heart of military inclusion by analyzing recruitment ads published in three commercial magazines: Sports Illustrated, Cosmopolitan, and Ebony. Favara draws on Black feminism, critical race theory, and queer of color critique to reveal how the military and advertisers affected change by deploying a set of strategies and practices called tactical inclusion. As Favara shows, tactical inclusion used representations of servicemembers in the new military to connect with people susceptible to recruiting efforts and rendered these new audiences vulnerable to, valuable to, and subject to state violence. Compelling and eye-opening, Tactical Inclusion combines original analysis with personal experience to chart advertising’s role in building the all-volunteer military.
Terror in Minnie Vautrin's Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38
by Minnie VautrinIn December of 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army marched into China's capital city of Nanjing and launched six weeks of carnage that would become known as the Rape of Nanjing. In addition to the deaths of Chinese POWs and civilians, tens of thousands of women were raped, tortured, and killed by Japanese soldiers. In this traumatic environment, both native and foreign-born inhabitants of Nanjing struggled to carry on with their lives. This volume collects the diaries and correspondence of Minnie Vautrin, a farmgirl from Illinois who had dedicated herself to the education of Chinese women at Ginling College in Nanjing. Faced with the impending Japanese attack, she turned the school into a sanctuary for ten thousand women and girls. Vautrin's firsthand accounts of daily life in Nanjing and the intensifying threat of Japanese invasion reveal the courage of the occupants under siege--Chinese nationals as well as Western missionaries, teachers, surgeons and business people--and the personal costs of violence in wartime. Thanks to Vautrin's painstaking effort in keeping a day-to-day account, present-day readers are able to examine this episode of history at close range through her eyes. With detailed maps, photographs, and carefully researched in-depth annotations, Terror in Minnie Vautrin's Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38 presents a comprehensive and detailed daily account of the events and of life during the horror-stricken days within the city walls and in particular on the Ginling campus. Through chronologically arranged diaries, letters, reports, documents, and telegrams, Vautrin bears witness to those terrible events and to the magnitude of trauma that the Nanjing Massacre exacted on the populace.
To Advance the Race: Black Women's Higher Education from the Antebellum Era to the 1960s
by Linda M. PerkinsFrom the United States' earliest days, African Americans considered education essential for their freedom and progress. Linda M. Perkins’s study ranges across educational and geographical settings to tell the stories of Black women and girls as students, professors, and administrators. Beginning with early efforts and the establishment of abolitionist colleges, Perkins follows the history of Black women's post–Civil War experiences at elite white schools and public universities in northern and midwestern states. Their presence in Black institutions like Howard University marked another advancement, as did Black women becoming professors and administrators. But such progress intersected with race and education in the postwar era. As gender questions sparked conflict between educated Black women and Black men, it forced the former to contend with traditional notions of women’s roles even as the 1960s opened educational opportunities for all African Americans. A first of its kind history, To Advance the Race is an enlightening look at African American women and their multi-generational commitment to the ideal of education as a collective achievement.
Talking with the Children of God: Prophecy and Transformation in a Radical Religious Group
by Gordon Shepherd Gary ShepherdGrounded in direct, systematic observation by neutral observers, Talking with the Children of God is a unique study of the radical religious movement now known as The Family International. The book draws on extraordinarily candid interviews with the group's leaders and administrative staff. In revealing new information about the organization's history, beliefs, and use of prophecy, Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd offer a highly detailed case study that is both an antidote to sensationalized coverage of the group and a means for understanding the transformational practices of new religious movements in general. One of the most controversial groups emerging from the Jesus People movement of the 1960s, the Family originally was known as The Children of God. Under leader David Berg, members proclaimed an apocalyptic "Endtime," shunned secular occupations, lived communally, and adopted unusual sexual practices that led to abuse scandals in the 1970s and 1980s. Following Berg's death in 1994, the organization began to dramatically alter its evangelization efforts and decision-making processes. Talking with the Children of God builds a picture of a complex organization with ten thousand core members worldwide, including details on the lives, careers, and responsibilities of the second generation and their efforts to defend their faith. The authors summarize the Family's history and beliefs as well as its controversial past. In particular, they analyze the organization's use of prophecy--or channeled revelations from Jesus and other spiritual beings--for making decisions and setting policy, revealing how this essentially democratic process works and how it shapes Family life and culture. These remarkable insights are the result of sixteen years of surveys and field observations conducted in Family member homes in sixteen countries, plus four days of face-to-face interviews with Family leaders and organizational staff. The volume also includes condensed transcripts of the interviews with analysis by Shepherd and Shepherd.
Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons
by Jan ShippsInfused with Jan Shipps’s lively curiosity, scholarly rigor, and contagious fascination with a significant subculture, Sojourner in the Promised Land presents a distinctive parallel history in which Shipps surrounds her professional writings about the Latter-day Saints with an ongoing personal description of her encounters with them. By combining a portrait of the dynamic evolution of contemporary Mormonism with absorbing intellectual autobiography, Shipps illuminates the Mormons and at the same time shares with the reader what it has been like to be on the outside of a culture that remains both familiar and strange.
How to Think about Information
by Dan SchillerIt is common wisdom that the U.S. economy has adapted to losses in its manufacturing base because of the booming information sector, with high-paying jobs for everything from wireless networks to video games. We are told we live in the Information Age, in which communications networks and media and information services drive the larger economy. While the Information Age may have looked sunny in the beginning, as it has developed it looks increasingly ominous: its economy and benefits grow more and more centralized--and in the United States, it has become less and less subject to democratic oversight. Corporations around the world have identified the value of information and are now seeking to control its production, transmission, and consumption. In How to Think about Information, Dan Schiller explores the ways information has been increasingly commodified as a result and how it both resembles and differs from other commodities. Through a linked series of theoretical, historical, and contemporary studies, Schiller reveals this commodification as both dynamic and expansionary, but also deeply conflicted and uncertain. He examines the transformative political and economic changes occurring throughout the informational realm and analyzes key dimensions of the process, including the buildup of new technological platforms, the growth of a transnationalizing culture industry, and the role played by China as it reinserts itself into an informationalized capitalism.
On the Picket Line: Strategies of Working-Class Women during the Depression
by Mary TrieceBonnie Ritter Book Award, National Communication Association's Feminist and Women Studies Division, 2008. On the Picket Line uncovers the voices of working-class women, particularly those active in the Communist Party, U.S.A., in order to examine how these individuals confronted the tensions between their roles as workers, wives, mothers, and consumers. Combining critical analysis, Marxist and feminist theory, and labor history, Mary E. Triece analyzes the protest tactics employed by working class women to challenge dominant ideologies surrounding domesticity. She details the rhetorical strategies used by women to argue for their rights as workers in the paid labor force and as caregivers in the home. Their overtly coercive tactics included numerous sit-ins, strikes, and boycotts that won tangible gains for working poor and unemployed women. The book also gives voice to influential figures in the 1930s labor movement (many of whom were members of the Communist Party, U.S.A.), such as Ella Reeve Bloor, Margaret Cowl, Anna Damon, Ann Burlak, and Grace Hutchins. Triece ultimately argues that these confrontational protest tactics of the 1930s remain relevant in today’s fights for more humane workplaces and better living conditions.
In Tender Consideration: Women, Families, and the Law in Abraham Lincoln's Illinois
by Daniel W. StowellFrom debt to divorce, from adultery to slander, cases with women as plaintiffs, defendants, or both appeared regularly on docket books in antebellum Illinois. Nearly one-fifth of Abraham Lincoln's cases involved women as litigants, and during the twenty-five years of his legal career thousands of women appeared in Illinois courts, as litigants, criminal defendants, witnesses, and spectators. Drawing on the rich resources of The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, a DVD version of Lincoln's complete legal papers, In Tender Consideration scans the full range of family woes that antebellum Americans took to the law. Deserted wives, destitute widows, jilted brides with illegitimate children, and slandered women brought their cases before the courts, often receiving a surprising degree of sympathy and support. Through the stories of dozens of individuals who took legal action to obtain a divorce, contest a will, prosecute a rapist, or assert rights to family property, this volume illuminates the legal status of women and children in Illinois and their experiences with the law in action. Contributors document how the courts viewed children and how they responded to inheritance, custody, and other types of cases involving children or their interests. These cases also highlight Lincoln's life in law, placing him more clearly within the context of the legal culture in which he lived and raising intriguing questions about the influence of his legal life on his subsequent political one.
Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration (Studies of World Migrations)
by Janet W. Salaff Siu-lun Wong Arent GreveHalf a million Hong Kong residents fled their homeland during the thirteen years before Hong Kong's reversion to China in 1997. Nearly half of those returned within the next several years. Filled with detailed, first-hand stories of nine Hong Kong families over nearly two decades, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers is a multifaceted yet intimate look at the forces behind Hong Kong families' successful, and failed, efforts at migration and settlement. Defining migration as a process, not a single act of leaving, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers provides an antidote to ethnocentric and simplistic theories by uncovering migration stories as they relate to social structures and social capital. The authors meld survey analysis, personal biography, and sociology and compare multiple families in order to give voice to the interplay of gender, age, and diverse family roles as motivating factors in migration.
Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, volume 18 number 2 (Spring 2024)
by Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary JournalThis is volume 18 issue 2 of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal (EMW) is the only journal devoted solely to the interdisciplinary and global study of women and gender spanning the late medieval through early modern periods. Each volume gathers essays on early modern women from every country and region by scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines including art history, cultural studies, music, history, languages and literatures, political science, religion, theatre, history of science, and history of philosophy.
The China Journal, volume 91 number 1 (January 2024)
by The China JournalThis is volume 91 issue 1 of The China Journal. The China Journal is a cutting-edge source of scholarship, information and analysis about China and Taiwan. TCJ has published informed and insightful commentary from China scholars worldwide and stimulated the scholarly debate on contemporary China for more than thirty years. With its reputation for quality and clarity, the journal has proven itself invaluable for instruction and research about one of the most significant regions in the world. Interdisciplinary in scope, TCJ provides deep coverage of important anthropological, sociological, and political science topics. In addition to a wide range of articles, TCJ also publishes high-quality reviews of recent books published on modern China.
Signs and Society, volume 12 number 1 (Winter 2024)
by Signs and SocietyThis is volume 12 issue 1 of Signs and Society. Signs and Society is an open-access, multidisciplinary journal in the humanities and social sciences focusing on research that examines the role of sign processes (or semiosis) in social interaction, cognition, and cultural formations. Focusing directly on semiosis in its multiple dimensions, the journal aims to promote collaborative translation across analytical categories and technical vocabularies already established in anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, and related disciplines, and to uncover unanticipated parallels in the ways semiosis is manifest in diverse empirical domains.
Aquatische Biopolymere: Verständnis ihrer industriellen Bedeutung und ihrer Umweltauswirkungen
by Ololade OlatunjiDieses Buch gibt einen umfassenden Überblick über die jüngsten Entwicklungen bei industriellen Anwendungen, Verarbeitungstechniken und Modifikationen von Polymeren aus marinen Quellen. Es führt den Leser systematisch in die Biomaterialien Chitin, Kollagen, Alginate, Cellulose und Polyester ein und stellt eine Verbindung zwischen ihrer industriellen Bedeutung und ihren Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt her. Das Buch verdeutlicht die Auswirkungen der industriellen Nutzung des aquatischen Systems für organische und anorganische Stoffe auf die Umwelt und vertieft das Verständnis der industriellen und wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung aquatischer Biopolymere. Darüber hinaus geht es um die Frage, wie die Erhaltung des aquatischen Lebens und das industrielle und wirtschaftliche Interesse an der Entwicklung biologisch abbaubarer Alternativen für Kunststoffe in Einklang gebracht werden können. Das Buch richtet sich daher an Wissenschaftler:innen aus den Bereichen Chemie, Material- und Polymerwissenschaften sowie Ingenieurwesen.
Chinese Path to Modernization: Economic Analysis with Chinese Characteristics (Understanding China)
by Jun YinThis book exploratively reviews and refines the theoretical system of economics with Chinese characteristics and the analytical framework of Chinese path to modernization. This book aims to reveal answers to the three questions: what has the theoretical system of economics with Chinese characteristics inherited and developed? What are the experiences and lessons of all countries’ modernization in the world? What is the universality and particularity of Chinese Path to Modernization? As conclusion, the author draws a clue to understand Chinese path to modernization, which is neither “making up for the lessons” nor a “convergence”, but an “innovation” built upon the general principles of modernization. Its universality lies in the overall patterns and trends of modernization, that is, the consistent process of the country's pursuit of national economic growth and people's prosperity. The distinctiveness of this path lies in the concurrent transformation of Chinese economic system and the institutional innovations with Chinese characteristics that unfold throughout this ongoing economic process.
Data and the Built Environment: A Practical Guide to Building a Better World Using Data (Digital Innovations in Architecture, Engineering and Construction)
by Ian Gordon Neil ThompsonThis book takes a data-first approach to framing the built environment sector’s unique challenges and how industry can address them through better use of data. It describes how the sector has failed to derive value from data, and the common causes underlying this failure. It then provides practical guidance on how to use data to construct and operate built environment assets in a manner that better meets society’s needs. The book examines how industry norms, organizational culture, and our personal behaviours contribute to the successful use of data. It sets out a philosophy and vision for the use of data in the built environment, and how this in turn might help the sector realise better outcomes in terms of cost, schedule, quality, and sustainability. Data is a valuable asset, one that the built environment sector must generate, protect, manage, and exploit. The book works as a holistic primer to data and the built environment, written both for those who are new to data or the built environment, and including deep-dive material that will provide insight to experienced professionals.
Strategische Wahrheiten: Desinformation und Postfakten in der strategischen Kommunikation
by Olaf Hoffjann Lucas Seeber Ina von der WenseStrategische Kommunikation zielt mit ihren kontingenten Wirklichkeitsbeschreibungen seit jeher auf gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle. Wie häufig gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle auf strategische Kommunikationsbemühungen zurückgehen, auf Unwahrhaftigkeit beruhen und damit zumindest zeitweise zu strategischen Wahrheiten werden, zeigen eindrucksvoll zwischenzeitlich geglaubte Wahrheiten, die sich als Lüge entpuppt haben: von Walter Ulbrichts „Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten“ über Hitlers Tagebücher bis hin zu den Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak. Die erfolgreichen Kampagnen der Brexiteers und von Donald Trump 2016 haben diesem Thema zu neuer und bislang ungeahnter Aufmerksamkeit verholfen. Während die Themen Desinformation und postfaktische Gesellschaft die Journalismus-, politische Kommunikations- und Medienethikforschung aktuell zu dominieren scheinen, ist das Schweigen der deutschsprachigen und internationalen PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung auffällig. Dies ist umso bemerkenswerter, weil die PR-Wissenschaft in der Vergangenheit immer wieder versucht hat, ihren Gegenstand zu schärfen, indem sie sich am Begriff der Propaganda abgearbeitet hat. Daraus müsste eigentlich eine Affinität für das Thema Desinformation resultieren. Aber genau das Gegenteil ist offensichtlich der Fall: Hat sich die PR-Wissenschaft gerade deshalb nicht mit Desinformation beschäftigt, weil sie sich so dezidiert von Propaganda und darin eingeschlossenen desinformierenden und manipulativen Techniken abgrenzen will? Was sind die Gründe hierfür? Glauben wir, bereits alles zum Thema gesagt zu haben? Liegt dies daran, dass sich die PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung seit jeher vor allem für Unternehmen und weniger für politische und Non-Profit-Organisationen interessiert? Oder fühlen wir uns hier schlicht und ergreifend nicht zuständig? Es scheint offenkundig höchste Zeit zu sein, sich wieder eingehend mit Fragen der Desinformation aus der Perspektive der strategischen Kommunikationsforschung zu befassen. Die Beiträge des Tagungsbandes fokussieren hierzu auf neue theoretische Perspektiven, normative Bewertungen und empirische Befunde.
Phenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances In the Pulsatile Imaginary: Rites of Disimagination
by Nicoletta IsarPhenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances In the Pulsatile Imaginary: Rites Of Disimagination brings together scholars from art history and image theory, literary studies and philosophy. Chapters of this volume engage with the overarching theme of imagination as a pulsatile force embedded in words, images, and all imaginative modes of instantiation of the work of art in their elemental aspects, expressed in visual arts, and literature, as well as bodily schemata of choreographic and musical performances. The papers employ contrasting and complementing methods from literary studies and image theory, especially phenomenology and new materialism, such as G. Bachelard and M. Merleau-Ponty, G. Bataille, J. Kristeva, P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J. Sallis, G. Didi-Huberman, H. Belting and A. Warburg, J. Bennett and Jason M. Wirth, as well as performance studies. Chapters in this volume inquire into the imaginative forces that disrupt and disinhibit the traditional habits ofimagination to create pulsatile imaginaries, i.e., a dynamic process of “emergence-resurgence” of image manifested in the act of creation and in perception. This process does not properly imply a destruction of image, but rather a withdrawal of image from the realm of representation to give way to new images and new imaginative experiences. The newly coined term “rite of disimagination” points out to this operation, consecutively implying imagining and disimaging that both denies, as well as validates image – it valorizes matter. The affirmation of the materiality of image is “the re-incarnation of image.”
Studies on Moral Competence: Proposals and Dilemmas for Discussion
by Patricia Unger Raphael Bataglia Cristiane Paiva Alves Elvira Maria P. Pimentel Ribeiro ParenteThis book shows how to use discussions of moral dilemmas as a strategy to develop moral competence in children and youth in educational environments using the Konstanz Method of Dilemma Discussion (KMDD). This method was developed by the German psychologist Georg Lind (1847-2021), who defines moral competence as an ability to solve problems and conflicts based on moral principles or values, through reflection, dialogue and deliberation, instead of using force, violence, deception and manipulation. According to Lind, this ability can be developed in children and youth through KMDD. The book has two parts. The first part brings together an original chapter written by Georg Lind about his decades of research on assessment and education of moral competence, and other 13 chapters written by different authors analyzing the theoretical foundations of moral development and moral competence as psychological constructs and their applications to different aspects of social life,as well as empirical research analyzing the application of different methods of dilemma discussion in educational contexts. The second part presents 20 moral dilemmas to be used in dilemma discussion sessions.Studies on Moral Competence: Proposals and Dilemmas for Discussion is the English edition of a book originally published in Portuguese for the Brazilian market and will be of interest to teachers and researchers interested in learning about the theoretical foundations and possible applications of an effective method to develop moral competence in educational environments. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.
Ubiquitous Security: Third International Conference, UbiSec 2023, Exeter, UK, November 1–3, 2023, Revised Selected Papers (Communications in Computer and Information Science #2034)
by Guojun Wang Haozhe Wang Geyong Min Nektarios Georgalas Weizhi MengThis book constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Conference, UbiSec 2023, held in Exeter, UK, during November 1–3, 2023.The 29 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. They were organized in following topical sections: Cyberspace Security, Cyberspace Privacy, Cyberspace Anonymity
Wozu braucht man eigentlich Mathematik?: Was Sie zu Routenplanung, Klimawandel, Erdbeben und Quiz-Shows schon immer wissen wollten, aber sich nicht zu fragen trauten
by Volker MichelWozu braucht man eigentlich Mathematik? Haben Sie sich das auch schon gefragt oder sind Sie selbst Mathematiker/-in und hören dies oft?Mathematik ist weit mehr als die Suche nach der nächsten Primzahl oder dem x-ten Beweis des Satzes von Pythagoras. Mathematik ist eine zentrale Schlüsseltechnologie für viele Wissenschaftsbereiche. Die Frage, ob es einen Klimawandel gibt und wie man Veränderungen im Klima beobachtet, kann ohne Mathematik genauso wenig beantwortet werden wie die Frage, wie sich eine Pandemie ausbreitet. Viele weitere Beispiele werden in dem Buch angesprochen.In einem lockeren Erzählstil erläutert der Autor, wo überall Mathematik verborgen ist und wie man mit einfachen Mitteln schon verstehen kann, wie brisante Probleme gelöst werden. Vorausgesetzt werden (je nach Kapitel) teils gar keine Mathematik-Vorkenntnisse bis maximal zum Abitur-Wissen.
Generative KI als neues Teammitglied im Marketing: Ein Leitfaden für Marketingmanger:innen (essentials)
by Bernhard WeckeGenerative Künstliche Intelligenz bringt die digitale Transformation im Marketing auf eine neue Ebene und stellt Marketingverantwortliche vor unbekannte Herausforderungen. Erfahren Sie, wie sich die Rolle von Marketingmanager:innen in Zeiten von Generativer KI verändert und welche neuen Kompetenzen gefragt sind. Darüber hinaus gibt das Buch einen Überblick über die Auswirkungen von Generativer KI auf Marketingorganisationen und einen konkreten Leitfaden zu den Handlungsfeldern. .
Environment, Agency, and Technology in Urban Life since c.1750: Technonatures in the Global North
by Mikkel Thelle Mikkel HøghøjThis book explores the historical relationship between ‘technonatures’ and urban transformations in the Global North. In recent years, various interdisciplinary movements such as Urban Political Ecology, STS and New Materialism have affected urban history and generated new scholarly insights into the formation of cities and urban life based on notions of hybridity, entanglement and metabolism. While scholars have increasingly attempted to grasp the socio-natural and technical complexity of cities, studies dealing with urban transformation within urban history have, however, mostly concentrated on political actors or broader social and economic changes. Seeking to introduce the concept of technonatures to the field of urban environmental history, this book instead takes its empirical and analytical starting point in the technonatural fabric of cities. Focusing on urban rivers, dumps, railways, flood walls and housing, the chapters of the book thus examines how different entanglementsof environment, technology and agency have shaped cities and processes of urbanization in the Global North from the seventeenth century onwards. By foregrounding the transformative role of urban natures, materialities and technologies in shaping the politics of urban life and cities more broadly, the book aspires to probe the potentiality of technonatures as a conceptual and analytical strategy for urban environmental historians.