Aging and Creativity examines the effects of aging on creative functioning, including age-related changes in cognition, personality, and motivation that affect performance or output. The book reviews and summarizes both lab-based and real-world-based studies. Changes in working memory, speed of processing, learning efficiency, and retrieval from long-term memory are all discussed as factors influencing creativity, as are health changes and changes in social roles with later age. The book concludes with practical implications of age effects on creativity for older people in work and everyday life.

This collection sheds light on diverse forms of collective engagement among young people. Recent developments in youth studies, and the changing global shape of socio-economic conditions for young people, demand new approaches and ideas. Contributors focus on novel processes, practices and routines within youth collectivity in various contexts across the globe, including Indonesia, Spain, Italy, Norway and Poland. The chapters pay particular attention to transitional phases in the lives of young people. Conceptually, the book also explores the strengths and limitations of a focus on collectivity in youth studies. Ultimately, the book makes the case for a focus on forms of collectivity and engagement to help scholars think through contemporary experiences of shared social life among young people. Contributors are: Duncan Adam, Massimiliano Andretta, Roberta Bracciale, David Cairns, Diego Carbajo Padilla, Enzo Colombo, Valentina Cuzzocrea, Carles Feixa, Ben Gook, Izabela Grabowska, Natalia Juchniewicz, Ewa Krzaklewska, Wolfgang Lehmann, Michelle Mansfield, Maria Martinez, Ann Nilsen, Rebecca Raby, Paola Rebughini, Birgit Reissig, Bjorn Schiermer, Tabea Schlimbach, Melanie Simms, Benjamin Tejerina, Kristoffer C Vogt, and Natalia Waechter.

This collection of essays explores the complex relationship between religion and multiculturalism and the role of the state and law in the creation of boundaries. Western secular democracies are composed of increasingly religiously diverse populations. The idea of "multiculturalism" was formed as a constructive response to this phenomenon, but, in many areas of the globe, support for multiculturalism is challenged by attempts to preserve the cultural and legal norms of the majority.
The State of Israel offers a particularly pertinent case study, and is a central focus of this collection. The contributors to this volume address the concepts of religious difference and diversity, as well as the various ways in which states and legal systems understand and respond to them. Mappingthe Legal Boundaries of Belonging shows that, as a consequence of a purportedly secular human rights perspective, state laws may appear to define religious identity in a way that contradicts the definition found within a particular religion. Both state and religion make the same mistake, however, if they take a court decision that emphasizes individual belief and practice as a direct modification of a religious norm: the court lacks the power to change the internal authoritative definition of who belongs to a particular faith. Similarly, in the pursuit of a particular model of social diversity, the state may adopt policies that imply a particular private/public distinction foreign to some religious traditions.
This volume, which includes contributions from leading scholars in the field, will be an invaluable resource to anyone seeking to understand the legal meaning and impact of religious diversity.

What would happen if I accepted an invitation to Bible Study from Jehovah's Witnesses? What would attending a Kingdom Hall meeting involve? And if I invited door-knocking Witnesses into my home? This book introduces Jehovah's Witnesses without assuming prior knowledge of the Watch Tower organization. After outlining the Society's origins and history, the book explains their key beliefs and practices by taking the reader through the process of the seeker who makes initial contact with Witnesses, and progresses to take instruction and become a baptized member. The book then explores what is involved in being a Witness - congregational life, lifestyle, rites of passage, their understanding of the Bible and prophetic expectations. It examines the various processes and consequences of leaving the organization, controversies that have arisen in the course of its history, and popular criticisms. Discussion is given to the likelihood of reforms within the organization, such as its stance on blood transfusions, the role of women and new methods of meeting and evangelizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global Trends of Smart Cities provides integrated analysis of 135 cities that participated in the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge in 2010-2017. It establishes evidence-based benchmarking of city geographies, city sizes, governance structures, and local planning contexts in smart cities. This book uses a combination of descriptive statistical analysis and real-world case study narratives to evaluate the ways in which each individual urban variable or their combination matter in the diversity of smart city approaches around the globe. It is acknowledged that the Smarter Cities Challenge offers a particular set of smart initiatives and is not representative of all smart cities around the world. Nevertheless, the global presence of the Challenge across five continents and its involvement with 135 cities of all size and socioeconomic status provides a solid foundation to conduct comparative research on smart cities. Considering limited comparative research available in the smart city debate, this book makes significant contribution in understanding the state of smart city development in urban governments worldwide.

Disasters undermine societal well-being, causing loss of lives and damage to social and economic infrastructures. Disaster resilience is central to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially in regions where extreme inequality combines with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Disaster risk reduction and resilience requires participation of wide array of stakeholders ranging from academicians to policy makers to disaster managers. Disaster Resilient Cities: Adaptation for Sustainable Development offers evidence-based, problem-solving techniques from social, natural, engineering and other disciplinary perspectives. It connects data, research, conceptual work with practical cases on disaster risk management, capturing the multi-sectoral aspects of disaster resilience, adaptation strategy and sustainability. The book links disaster risk management with sustainable development under a common umbrella, showing that effective disaster resilience strategies and practices lead to achieving broader sustainable development goals.

This multi-disciplinary volume is the first collective effort to explore Istanbul, capital of the vast polyglot, multiethnic, and multireligious Ottoman empire and home to one of the world's largest and most diverse urban populations, as an early modern metropolis. It assembles topics seldom treated together and embraces novel subjects and fresh approaches to older debates. Contributors crisscross the socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental, and spatial, to examine the myriad human and non-human actors, local and global, that shaped the city into one of the key sites of early modern urbanity. Contributors are: Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano , Zeynep Altok, Walter G. Andrews, Betul Basaran, Cem Behar, Maurits H. van den Boogert, John J. Curry, Linda T. Darling, Suraiya Faroqhi, Emine Fetvaci, Shirine Hamadeh, Cemal Kafadar, Cigdem Kafescioglu, Deniz Karakas, Leyla Kayhan Elbirlik, B. Harun Kucuk, Selim S. Kuru, Karen A. Leal, Gulru Necipoglu, Christoph K. Neumann, Asli Niyazioglu, Amanda Phillips, Marinos Sariyannis, Aleksandar Shopov, Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Nukhet Varlik, N. Zeynep Yelce, Gulay Yilmaz, and Zeynep Yurekli.

Divided by the Word refutes the assumption that the entrenched ethnic divide between South Africa’s Zulus and Xhosas, a divide that turned deadly in the late 1980s, is elemental to both societies. Jochen Arndt reveals how the current distinction between the two groups emerged from a long and complex interplay of indigenous and foreign born actors, with often diverging ambitions and relationships to the world they shared and the languages they spoke.

The earliest roots of the divide lie in the eras of exploration and colonization, when European officials and naturalists classified South Africa’s indigenous population on the basis of skin color and language. Later, missionaries collaborated with African intermediaries to translate the Bible into the region’s vernaculars, artificially creating distinctions between Zulu and Xhosa speakers. By the twentieth century, these foreign players, along with African intellectuals, designed language-education programs that embedded the Zulu-Xhosa divide in South African consciousness.

Using archival sources from three continents written in multiple languages, Divided by the Word offers a refreshingly new appreciation for the deep historicity of language and ethnic identity in South Africa, while reconstructing the ways in which colonial forces generate and impose ethnic divides with long-lasting and lethal consequences for indigenous populations.