Dating back to antiquity, semiotics is both a "technique" and a "science" that aims to understand the nature of meaning. An academic discipline in its own right, semiotics uses signs, such as words and symbols, to think, communicate, reflect, transmit, and preserve knowledge. Since the initial publication of The Quest for Meaning in 2007, the world has changed dramatically with the advent of online culture, new technologies, and new ways of making signs and symbols. Updated to reflect these many changes, the second edition includes a comprehensive chapter on the use of semiotics in the Internet age. Written in a student-friendly style, featuring examples from everyday life, the book explains what semiotics is all about and why it is so important for gaining insights into our elusive and mysterious human nature.

An extensive one-volume guide covering some 1,900 international and regional entities, this title gives detailed and accurate information on a wide spectrum of international organizations, from the International Monetary Fund to NATO.

Fully revised and updated, this new 13th edition includes background material as well as useful contact details to offer a complete understanding of the role of international organizations in the framework of modern global politics.

Users will benefit from brand new introductory essays covering the international humanitarian system and international environmental governance, as well as biographical details of leading officials within international organizations.

Following mounting political and social pressures to increase public accessibility to higher education in Israel, in 1994 Israel's academic arena was transformed from a monolithic system consisting exclusively of research universities to a binary one comprised of both research universities and academic colleges. Within the system's expansions plans, Israel's Council for Higher Education prioritized the increased accessibility of higher education to peripheral populations, defining this as a central aim. This transformation was achieved in a short period of time through regional colleges that operated in the periphery and offered professional academic courses. In addition to these institutions, a number of University Extensions operated in Israel, founded based on the American Protestant Colleges model, introduced in Israel in the 1960's by Bar Ilan University. In 2000 all these institutions were officially included in the country's higher education system, resulting in a huge increase in the total number of students in academia, with higher education becoming accessible to the country's social and geographic periphery. This book reviews the evolution of Israel's academic system and examines the ways in which it has met the national aims defined by the Council for Higher Education in its plans.

College-university relationships, the role of examinations, the politics of curriculum: papers amplify the picture of developments in Cambridge during the century. It was in the 19th and early 20th centuries that Cambridge, characterised in the previous century as a place of indolence and complacency, underwent the changes which produced the institutional structures which persist today. Foremost among them was the rise of mathematics as the dominant subject within the university, with the introduction of the Classical Tripos in 1824, and Moral and Natural Sciences Triposes in 1851. Responding to this, Trinity was notable in preparing its students for honours examinations, which came to seem rather like athletics competitions, by working them hard at college examinations. The admission of women and dissenters in the 1860s and 1870s was a majorchange ushered in by the Royal Commission of 1850, which finally brought the colleges out of the middle ages and strengthened the position of the university, at the same time laying the foundations of the new system of lectures and supervisions. Contributors: JUNE BARROW-GREEN, MARY BEARD, JOHN R. GIBBINS, PAULA GOULD, ELISABETH LEEDHAM-GREEN, DAVID McKITTERICK, JONATHAN SMITH, GILLIAN SUTHERLAND, CHRISTOPHER STRAY, ANDREW WARWICK, JOHN WILKES.

As individual institutions of education at all levels respond to the call for greater accountability and assessment, those who teach literacy face the challenging task of choosing what to measure and how to measure it. Both defining literacy clearly and tying that definition to strategies for assessment are two of many challenges faced by educators, theorists, and members of the public who assume responsibility for assessing literacy as well as developing and improving literacy programs. In a pluralistic and democratic society sensitive to multicultural variation, we need to find our way between the competing needs for inclusiveness and for clear and useful standards. Multiple definitions of literacy raise the issue of whether there can be a standard or set of standards and if so, what they are in an environment of multiple literacies. Indeed, the downside of the defeat of older monolithic notions of literacy is the undermining or at least the questioning of well-established methods of literacy assessment. To some extent, the older methods of assessment have been revised in the light of more expansive definitions of literacy. But will this kind of revision be enough? How are the criteria for judgment to be known and applied? Thus, this volume addresses the problems of assessing literacy development in the context of multiple and inclusive definitions. Each section consists of chapters that deal with the issue of definitions per se, with standards in postsecondary settings, with the K-12 situation, and with alternative, non-school environments where literacy is critical to human functioning in a democratic society.

An extensive and unequalled one-volume guide covering over 1,700 international and regional organizations, this title provides detailed and accurate information on a wide spectrum of international organizations from the UN to the International Council for Science.

Features include:

• introductory articles: An Introduction to International Organizations and Challenges Facing the International System in the Twenty-First Century
• a chronology charting the historical development of international organizations
• texts of significant international charters, treaties and documents
• lists of key UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, plus information about peace-keeping activities
• a who's who of leading officials within international organizations
• a directory and further information on each organization including contact information, details of membership, leading officials, activities, finance, publications and subsidiary organizations
• an extensive, alphabetically-arranged index.

Canadians are beginning to learn about the negative effects of residential schools on Aboriginal people in Canada. More hidden in the written record, but bearing a similar powerfully destructive role, are Indian Agents, who were with very few exceptions White men who 'ruled the reserves' in Canada from the 1870s to the 1960s. This book is the first to present a discussion of Indian Agents in general. It provides an introductory look at the control Indian Agents exercised over Aboriginal communities throughout the period in question. The primary intent is to spark discussion in Indigenous studies courses. This book is built upon a discussion of the lives and impact of five Indian Agents: Hayter Reed, William Morris Graham, John McIver, William Halliday, and Fred Hall. However, the practices and views of 39 other Indian Agents are interwoven throughout the text. Although there was a readily detectable sameness in the way that Indian Agent power was imposed on Aboriginal communities based on the institutional racism of the Indian Agent System, one of the points to be made is that not all Indian Agents were the same. Some were more oppressive than others. Also frequently pointed out is the fact that Aboriginal peoples were not merely helpless victims to Indian Agent control, but resisted that control, sometimes successfully. The book concludes with a chapter comparing the Indian Agent System in Canada, with similar systems in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

An extensive and unequalled one-volume guide covering over 1,700 international and regional organizations.
This title provides detailed and accurate information on a wide spectrum of international organizations from the UN to the International Council for Science.
Features include:
* Introductory articles such as: An Introduction to International Organizations and Challenges Facing the International System in the 21st Century
* A chronology charting the historical development of international organizations
* Texts of significant international charters, treaties and documents
* Lists of key UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, plus information about peace-keeping activities
* A who's who of leading officials within international organizations
* A directory and further information on each organization including contact information, details of membership, leading officials, activities, finance, publications and subsidiary organizations
* An extensive, alphabetically arranged index.

This book focuses upon the Institute of Accounts (IA), an organization to which the modern United States accounting profession can trace its roots. The IA was organized in the early 1880s in New York City and, as discussed in this book, attracted a diverse membership that included some of the leading accounting thinkers of the period. The Institute of Accounts describes the association's early development, its usefulness to the needs of bookkeepers and accountants in the late nineteenth century, and its historical importance.

The notion of microfoundations has received growing interest in neo-institutional theory (NIT) along with an increasing interest in microfoundational research in disciplines such as strategic management and organizational economics. However, despite reference to the same term, there are decisive differences in how microfoundations have been addressed across different disciplines. The aim of this double volume is to explore in more depth what the microfoundations of institutions are and what it takes to actually develop sound microfoundations. To this end, this double volume sets off by exploring the recent well-spring of micro-level research in NIT (i.e., research on the individual, practice and group level). While intimately related, micro-level research and microfoundations are not necessarily the same thing. Hence, the double volume seeks to bring to the fore different perspectives in micro-level research in order to tease out what these perspectives imply for building microfoundations, where they converge and where they diverge.

The notion of microfoundations has received growing interest in neo-institutional theory (NIT) along with an increasing interest in microfoundational research in disciplines such as strategic management and organizational economics. However, despite reference to the same term, there are decisive differences in how microfoundations have been addressed across different disciplines. The aim of this double volume is to explore in more depth what the microfoundations of institutions are and what it takes to actually develop sound microfoundations. To this end, this double volume sets off by exploring the recent well-spring of micro-level research in NIT (i.e., research on the individual, practice and group level). While intimately related, micro-level research and microfoundations are not necessarily the same thing. Hence, the double volume seeks to bring to the fore different perspectives in micro-level research in order to tease out what these perspectives imply for building microfoundations, where they converge and where they diverge.

The value of the book lies in its reassessment of the distinctive features of the Chicago School, of its contributions in the theoretical and methodological fields and of its influence on the growth of sociology throughout the world and in America in particular. The book pays particularly close attention to the eclectic nature of the research methods used by the Chicago sociologists as they sought to integrate subjective and objective aspects of human life. It demonstrates that this eclecticism formed an integral part of their theories but also emphasises that empirical observation, too, was important, although not as an end in itself. While, for example, they were working on the concepts of organization, marginality and interaction, they did not consider these as ends in themselves but as additions to the development of a more general theoretical approach. Often in the past, and wrongly, Chicago's theoretical contribution has been restricted to the urban sector. The book clearly and unequivocally reveals how the tendency to see the Chicago School as a 'theoretical' is the result of misinterpretation and of a failure to realize that, for the sociologists of the period, understanding the social dynamics of the city of Chicago was tantamount to interpreting the central tendencies of modern society itself. The book analyzes how empirical observation was important but not an end in itself. The Chicago School developed a profusion of sociological theories in many areas of inquiry and never opted for any one particular approach. The various essays in the book also make it clear that the School decisively contributed to the development of qualitative and quantitative techniques.

For managers, students and conference professionals this timely new book will provide a firm foundation for understanding and operating in one of the UK's fastest growing business areas. Conferencing forms a large and expanding part of the UK economy and is now attracting serious analysis as the key techniques and principles of good practice become established. This unique book, one of the first written by an expert educator and consultant in the field, considers the background and nature of the UK conference industry and looks at the management issues involved in professional and competitive conferencing.Providing clear, up to date and detailed information on every aspect of the management and organization of conferences and conference centres it will be an essential text for students on hospitality and tourism courses- from GNVQ to undergraduate level. It will also be a vital reference for practitioners in any part of the conference business who want to grasp the key elements for success in the future.

Infrastructures are complex networks dominated by tight interdependencies between technologies and institutions. These networks supply services crucial to modern societies, services that can be provided only if several critical functions are fulfilled. This book proposes a theoretical framework with a set of concepts to analyse rigorously how these critical functions require coordination within the technological dimension as well as within the institutional dimension. It also shows how fundamental the alignment between these two dimensions is. It argues that this alignment operates along different layers characterized successively by the structure, governance and transactions that connect technologies and institutions. These issues of coordination and alignment, at the core of the book, are substantiated through in-depth case studies of networks from the energy, water and wastewater, and transportation sectors.

Yuri Andrukhovych is one of Ukraine’s preeminent authors and cultural commentators. In recognition of his literary writings and his role as a public intellectual he has received numerous awards including the Herder Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Goethe Medal. My Final Territory is a collection of Andrukhovych’s philosophical, autobiographical, political, and literary essays, demonstrating his enormous talent as an essayist to the English-speaking world. This volume broadens Andrukhovych’s international audience and will create a dialogue with anglophone readers throughout the world in a number of fields including philosophy, history, journalism, political science, sociology, and anthropology. In their introduction, Mark Andryczyk and Michael M. Naydan reveal a somewhat lesser-known side of Andrukhovych’s writings that places him alongside such writers as recent Belarusian Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. Eleven of the fourteen essays in this volume, including his seminal work "Central-Eastern Revision" and a brand-new essay on the Russo-Ukrainian War, appear here for the first time in English. My Final Territory showcases Yuri Andrukhovych’s unique voice and provides insight into the Ukrainian experience of nationality and identity.

What is the relationship between philosophy and organization theory (OT)? While at first glance there might appear to be little, a closer look reveals a rich pattern of connections. More than any other type of human inquiry, philosophy helps make us self-aware of critical assumptions we tacitly incorporate in our organizational theorizing; it creates a deeper awareness of the 'unconscious metaphysics' underpinning our efforts to understand organizations. This volume includes papers that explore connections between several streams in philosophy and OT. As the titles of the papers suggest, most authors write about a particular philosopher or group of philosophers that make up a distinct school of thought, summarize important aspects of his/their work, and tease out the implications for OT. The central question authors explore is: 'what does a particular philosophy contribute to OT?' Either addressing this question in historical or exploratory terms, or in a combination of both, the end result is similar: particular philosophical issues, properly explained, are discussed in relation to important questions in OT.

This is the first full-length biography of Dorothy Morland (1906-99), to date the only female director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. Based on unpublished letters and other archival sources, as well as interviews and personal recollections, this book traces her busy private and public life from the 1930s up until the 1990s. It tells the story of one of the unacknowledged contributors to the success of the ICA and to the understanding of the international avant garde in post-war Britain. As a female arts administrator, Dorothy Morland's work has been largely overlooked, and this book aims to highlight her significant contribution to the public understanding of modernism. She was part of a network which included the Surrealist Roland Penrose, art critic Herbert Read, architect Jane Drew and wealthy philanthropists, Peter Gregory and Peter Watson. She was also the protector and advocate for the Independent Group. Dorothy Morland always mixed business with pleasure (dancing with Picasso in Antibes while there on ICA business), and tirelessly oversaw the chaotic organisation that was the ICA in Dover Street from 1950 until 1968. After leaving the ICA she worked hard on assembly the organisation's archives and securing their safekeeping at Tate.

Drawing on research from across Canada and beyond, education policy expert Sue Winton critically analyzes policies encouraging the privatization of public education in Canada. These policies, including school choice, fundraising, fees, and international education, encourages parents and others in the private sector to take on responsibilities for education formerly provided by governments with devastating consequences for the democratic goals of public education. Unequal Benefits introduces traditional and critical approaches to policy research and explains how to conduct a critical policy analysis. Winton explains the role policy plays in supporting and challenging inequality in the pursuit of a strong democracy and the public school ideal. In these idealized education spaces, policy decisions prioritize collective needs over private interests, which are made in public by democratically elected officials, and, more importantly, every child is able to access high quality education programs and enjoy their benefits at no cost. Written for parents, educators, policymakers, and other interested citizens, Unequal Benefits sheds light on how to participate in efforts to resist educational privatization and achieve the public school ideal across Canada.

Drawing on research from across Canada and beyond, education policy expert Sue Winton critically analyzes policies encouraging the privatization of public education in Canada. These policies, including school choice, fundraising, fees, and international education, encourages parents and others in the private sector to take on responsibilities for education formerly provided by governments with devastating consequences for the democratic goals of public education. Unequal Benefits introduces traditional and critical approaches to policy research and explains how to conduct a critical policy analysis. Winton explains the role policy plays in supporting and challenging inequality in the pursuit of a strong democracy and the public school ideal. In these idealized education spaces, policy decisions prioritize collective needs over private interests, which are made in public by democratically elected officials, and, more importantly, every child is able to access high quality education programs and enjoy their benefits at no cost. Written for parents, educators, policymakers, and other interested citizens, Unequal Benefits sheds light on how to participate in efforts to resist educational privatization and achieve the public school ideal across Canada.

Indigenous Epistemology problematizes the self-reflexive inquiry between two researchers engaged in transnational collaboration that asserts experiential pedagogy as a tool to decolonize research methodology and honor the inter-generational stories that empower Indigenous people across the globe. The authors demonstrate the direct connection between Black Lives Matter, SOSBlakAustralia and the Maroons of Jamaica as examples of contemporary Indigenous people disrupting hegemony through agentive action that inspires global awareness and pushes for systemic change. In elevating the critical epistemologies of the ancient cultures of the Aboriginals of Australia and the African Diaspora, the authors assert that the legacies and current operations of colonialism must be disrupted and replaced with an emancipatory epistemology.

The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making comprehensively surveys theory and research on organizational decision-making, broadly conceived. Emphasizing psychological perspectives, while encompassing the insights of economics, political science, and sociology, it provides coverage at the individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational levels of analysis. In-depth case studies illustrate the practical implications of the work surveyed. Each chapter is authored by one or more leading scholars, thus ensuring that this Handbook is an authoritative reference work for academics, researchers, advanced students, and reflective practitioners concerned with decision-making in the areas of Management, Psychology, and HRM.

Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907), co-founder of the Theosophical Society, was a versatile man. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of American agricultural education and also served in the U.S. War Department. Later Olcott was admitted to the New York Bar and became interested in psychology and spiritualism, travelling to India and Sri Lanka with Madame Blavatsky to explore eastern spiritual traditions, especially Buddhism. This volume covers the period 1883-1887: Olcott tells of his meetings with many of the 'Masters' of the Society and considers what has been achieved since he and Madame Blavatsky met in Vermont in 1874. He is invited to Burma by its king, who is interested in hearing about Olcott's work; Madame Blavatsky resigns as Corresponding Secretary of the Society and goes into exile in Europe. The author, however, is determined to give a fair assessment of her invaluable contribution to the Society.

Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2015, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) is the largest professional society devoted to the science of ecology. A Centennial History of the Ecological Society of America tells the story of ESA's humble beginnings, growing from approximately 100 founding members and a modest publication of a few pages to a membership that exceeds 10,000 with half a dozen important journals, in print and online. It is the story of a successful scientific society that set an example for the world. Beginning with the society's inception, the book describes the difficulties faced early on and ways in which it expanded. It tracks the society's progress from the early years when female ecologists were few and inconspicuous to today when they are equally conspicuous as men, and there are as many or more female graduate students in ecology as male. ESA now has members from all around the world, and its journals contain contributions from around the world. Like all sciences, ecology began with simple questions that led to fairly simple answers. But, as ecological sciences progressed, complexity emerged in both questions and answers and the ESA has documented that process along the way. This book describes important initiatives such as the International Biological Program, the Long Term Ecological Research Network, and establishing new journals, as well as recent programs including the National Ecological Observation Network. With numerous illustrations, photographs, charts, and diagrams, the book lets you explore the early beginnings of ESA as if in conversation with its founders and appreciate the early work and achievements in the field.

This book gives an inside view of real engineers communicating in a modern aerospace engineering environment. Using many authentic texts and language examples, the author describes the writing of specifications and requirements, engineering proposals, executive summaries and other communication tasks.

This book explores the ways in which professional groups develop specific interactional procedures for conducting and representing their activities, all of which contribute to a distinctive collaborative identity. It highlights the drawbacks as well as the advantages of collaborative talk, pointing to ways of improving professional performance.