An investigation into farming practices throughout a period of seismic change. WINNER of the British Agricultural History Society's 2022 Thirsk Prize WINNER of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award "This meticulously researched book gives a detailed and authoritative history of agricultural change in the second half of the twentieth century. The book skilfully weaves together the hitherto underexplored individual returns of the Farm Management Survey with oral histories of the farmers who enacted change on the ground to offer an incisive account of the complex technological, political and cultural developments which gave rise to some of the greatest changes in English farming history. It will stand as the key reference point for those with an interest in the history of agricultural change in Britain." Professor Mark Riley, University of Liverpool At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 British agriculture was largely powered by the muscles of men, women, and horses, and used mostly nineteenth-century technology to produce less than half of the country's temperate food. By 1985, less land and far fewer people were involved in farming, the power sources and technologies had been completely transformed, and the output of the country's agriculture had more than doubled. This is the story of the national farm, reflecting the efforts and experiences of 200,000 or so farmers and their families, together with the people they employed. But it is not the story of any individual one of them. We know too little about change at the individual farm level, although what happened varied considerably between farms and between different technologies. Based on an improbably-surviving archive of Farm Management Survey accounts, supported by oral histories from some of the farmers involved, this book explores the links between the production of new technologies, their transmission through knowledge networks, and their reception on individual farms. It contests the idea that rapid adoption of technology was inevitable, and reveals the unevenness, variability and complexity that lay beneath the smooth surface of the official statistics.

The 2016 referendum resulted in a vote for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union. This has led to frenzied political debate across the whole spectrum of policy, and agriculture is no exception. For the first time in a generation, the future of agriculture is unclear and unfettered by the constraints and incrementalism of the Common Agricultural Policy. This book makes an empirical contribution to the Brexit debate, bringing a social dimension to agri-Brexit and sustainable agriculture discourses. Understanding the social in the context of farmers is vital to developing a way forward on food security and agricultural sustainability. Farmers are the recipients of the market and policy signals that link to global uncertainties and challenges. This book is a commitment to understanding farmers as occupiers and managers of land. Chapters in this book explore farmers' own aspirations and knowledge about patterns of land use and production, which underpin discussions around the environment and sustainability. There is a deficit in understanding what kind of agricultural industry we now have, following years of restructuring and repositioning. This book is an attempt to address that deficit and will appeal to students and researchers exploring agriculture, food politics and rural sociology.

The sixteenth century was a watershed in Egyptian his- tory. After being the center of powerful Islamic empires for centuries, Egypt was conquered in 1517 and made an outlying province of the Ottoman Empire. This study illuminates aspects of Egypt's social, intellectual, and religious life in the sixteenth century, as described by the Egyptian Sufi 'Abd al-Wahhb al-Sha'rn, one of the last original writers before cultural decadence permeated the Arab world in the late Middle Ages. A prominent social commentator, Sha'rn reflected the intense Turkish-Egyptian struggle of the period and provided a vivid and intimate account of the Muslim world during the later medieval stage. Now in paperback, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt attempts to give a comprehensive analysis of Shaaerani writings.

The structure and future of Britain's agriculture sector are the central concerns of this volume, first published in 1986. It critically examines the mystique surrounding agriculture which has done much to underpin the special support the industry had enjoyed. The papers collected here address many of the key questions: What is distinctive about the social and economic organisation of agricultural production? What are the main factors which have influenced policy formation? And how are the policy makers likely to respond to widespread concern about the economic and environmental impact of those policies?

The sixteenth century was a watershed in Egyptian his- tory. After being the center of powerful Islamic empires for centuries, Egypt was conquered in 1517 and made an outlying province of the Ottoman Empire. This study illuminates aspects of Egypt's social, intellectual, and religious life in the sixteenth century, as described by the Egyptian Sufi 'Abd al-Wahhb al-Sha'rn, one of the last original writers before cultural decadence permeated the Arab world in the late Middle Ages. A prominent social commentator, Sha'rn reflected the intense Turkish-Egyptian struggle of the period and provided a vivid and intimate account of the Muslim world during the later medieval stage. Now in paperback, Society and Religion in Early Ottoman Egypt attempts to give a comprehensive analysis of Shaaerani writings.

An investigation into farming practices throughout a period of seismic change. WINNER of the British Agricultural History Society's 2022 Thirsk Prize "This meticulously researched book gives a detailed and authoritative history of agricultural change in the second half of the twentieth century. The book skilfully weaves together the hitherto underexplored individual returns of the Farm Management Survey with oral histories of the farmers who enacted change on the ground to offer an incisive account of the complex technological, political and cultural developments which gave rise to some of the greatest changes in English farming history. It will stand as the key reference point for those with an interest in the history of agricultural change in Britain." Professor Mark Riley, University of Liverpool At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 British agriculture was largely powered by the muscles of men, women, and horses, and used mostly nineteenth-century technology to produce less than half of the country's temperate food. By 1985, less land and far fewer people were involved in farming, the power sources and technologies had been completely transformed, and the output of the country's agriculture had more than doubled. This is the story of the national farm, reflecting the efforts and experiences of 200,000 or so farmers and their families, together with the people they employed. But it is not the story of any individual one of them. We know too little about change at the individual farm level, although what happened varied considerably between farms and between different technologies. Based on an improbably-surviving archive of Farm Management Survey accounts, supported by oral histories from some of the farmers involved, this book explores the links between the production of new technologies, their transmission through knowledge networks, and their reception on individual farms. It contests the idea that rapid adoption of technology was inevitable, and reveals the unevenness, variability and complexity that lay beneath the smooth surface of the official statistics.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203169239

In recent decades agricultural commodity surpluses in the developed world have contributed to a mantra of 'land surplus' in which set-aside, extensification, alternative land uses and 'wilding' have been key terms in debates over land. Quite suddenly all this has changed as a consequence of rapidly shifting commodity markets. Prices for cereals, oil seeds and other globally traded commodities have risen sharply. A contributor to this has been the shift to bioenergy cropping, fuelled by concerns over post-peak oil and climate change. Agricultural supply chain interests have embraced the 'new environmentalism' of climate change with enthusiasm, proudly proclaiming the readiness of the industry to produce both food and energy crops, and to do so with a neo-liberal confidence in markets to determine the balance between food and non-food crops in land use. But policy and politics have not necessarily caught up with these market and industry-led changes and some environmentalists are beginning to challenge the assumptions of the new 'productivism'. Is it necessarily the case, they ask, that agriculture's best contribution to tackling climate change is to grow bioenergy crops or invest in anaerobic-digesters or make land over for windfarms? Might not there be an equally important role in maximising the carbon sequestration or water-holding properties of biodiverse land? What is Land For? tackles these key cutting-edge issues of this new debate by setting out a baseline of evidence and ideas.

Michael Winter's book presents a panoramic view of Ottoman Egypt from the overthrow of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517 to Bonaparte's invasion of 1798 and the beginning of Egypt's modern period.

Drawing on archive material, chronicle and travel accounts from Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew and European sources as well as up-to-date research, this comprehensive social history looks at the dynamics of the Egyptian-Ottoman relationship and the ethnic and cultural clashes which characterised the period. The conflicts between Ottoman pashas and their Egyptian subjects and between Bedouin Arabs and the more sedentary population are presented, as is the role of women in this period and the importance of the doctrinal clash of Islam both orthodox and popular, Christianity and Judaism.

Winter's broad survey of a complex and dynamic society draws out the central theme of the emergence, from a period of ethnic and religious tension, of an Egyptian consciousness fundamental to Egypt's later development.

The rural areas of Britain, Europe and the developed world are undergoing massive changes, with increasing concern about productivity, agricultural methods and environmental policy. Rural Politics examines the issues affecting rural areas, such as water pollution, forestry, and the greening of agricultural policy. It looks in particular at the political parameters to these issues and how concern for the countryside is essentially a part of a wider set of political processes. Rural Politics provides a much needed examination of the evolution and content of policies affecting today's countryside, both in terms of major land uses and economic and social development.

The structure and future of Britain's agriculture sector are the central concerns of this volume, first published in 1986. It critically examines the mystique surrounding agriculture which has done much to underpin the special support the industry had enjoyed. The papers collected here address many of the key questions: What is distinctive about the social and economic organisation of agricultural production? What are the main factors which have influenced policy formation? And how are the policy makers likely to respond to widespread concern about the economic and environmental impact of those policies?

The 2016 referendum resulted in a vote for the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union. This has led to frenzied political debate across the whole spectrum of policy, and agriculture is no exception. For the first time in a generation, the future of agriculture is unclear and unfettered by the constraints and incrementalism of the Common Agricultural Policy. This book makes an empirical contribution to the Brexit debate, bringing a social dimension to agri-Brexit and sustainable agriculture discourses. Understanding the social in the context of farmers is vital to developing a way forward on food security and agricultural sustainability. Farmers are the recipients of the market and policy signals that link to global uncertainties and challenges. This book is a commitment to understanding farmers as occupiers and managers of land. Chapters in this book explore farmers' own aspirations and knowledge about patterns of land use and production, which underpin discussions around the environment and sustainability. There is a deficit in understanding what kind of agricultural industry we now have, following years of restructuring and repositioning. This book is an attempt to address that deficit and will appeal to students and researchers exploring agriculture, food politics and rural sociology.

This book introduces and develops new algebraic methods to work with relations, often conceived as Boolean matrices, and applies them to topology. Although these objects mirror the matrices that appear throughout mathematics, numerics, statistics, engineering, and elsewhere, the methods used to work with them are much less well known. In addition to their purely topological applications, the volume also details how the techniques may be successfully applied to spatial reasoning and to logics of computer science. Topologists will find several familiar concepts presented in a concise and algebraically manipulable form which is far more condensed than usual, but visualized via represented relations and thus readily graspable. This approach also offers the possibility of handling topological problems using proof assistants.

"Rethinking Virtue Ethics" offers a model of Aristotelian virtue ethics based on a deductive paradigm. This book argues that, contrary to what many contemporary thinkers are inclined to believe, Aristotelian virtue ethics is consistent with at least some action-guiding moral principles being true unconditionally, and that a justification for general moral principles can be grounded in fundamental concepts within Aristotle's theory. An analysis of ethical propositions that hold for the most part is proposed that fits well within the deductive paradigm developed.

This unique interpretation of virtue ethics has implications for recent discussions of the virtues in social psychology, issues about how fundamental moral principles are known, questions about the justification of inalienable rights, debates about moral particularism and generalism, and discussions of moral realism and anti-realism.

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Goguen categories extend the relational calculus and its categorical formalization to the fuzzy world. Starting from the fundamental concepts of sets, binary relations and lattices this book introduces several categorical formulations of an abstract theory of relations such as allegories, Dedekind categories and related structures. It is shown that neither theory is sufficiently rich to describe basic operations on fuzzy relations. The book then introduces Goguen categories and provides a comprehensive study of these structures including their representation theory, and the definability of norm-based operations. The power of the theory is demonstrated by a comprehensive example. A certain Goguen category is used to specify and to develop a fuzzy controller. Based on its abstract description as well as certain desirable properties and their formal proofs, a verified controller is derived without compromising the - sometimes - intuitive choice of norm-based operations by fuzzy engineers.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint postproceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Relational Methods in Computer Science, the 3rd International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra, and the Workshop of COST Action 274. The 17 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers address foundational and methodological aspects of the calculi of relations and Kleene algebra, and their application in various areas of computer science and information processing.

The Little Bird Writing Contest is an international contest exclusively for innovative, emerging short fiction writers. The contest opens each spring when the birds come back and showcases the excellent stories that come from Sarah Selecky Writing School. The 2018 Little Bird contest winners responded to the writing prompt: Start your story with a balloon that has an unusual message. Use the words "lemon" and "ecstasy" somewhere in the story. End the story with an electrical storm. Volume 8 features winning stories chosen by Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Michelle Winters BR>"Sorry I was such a Dick" by Esther Griffin BR>"Things Float Away" by Tracey McGillivray BR>"To Weather a Storm" by Shoshana Gertler Proceeds from anthology sales go towards the Peelee Island Bird Observatory and the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory to help protect the real little birds out there.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science, RAMiCS 2021, which took place in Marseille, France, during November 2-5, 2021. The 29 papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. They deal with the development and dissemination of relation algebras, Kleene algebras, and similar algebraic formalisms. Topics covered range from mathematical foundations to applications as conceptual and methodological tools in computer science and beyond.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science, RAMiCS 2020, which was due to be held in Palaiseau, France, in April 2020. The conference was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 20 full papers presented together with 3 invited abstracts were carefully selected from 29 submissions. Topics covered range from mathematical foundations to applications as conceptual and methodological tools in computer science and beyond.

"Rethinking Virtue Ethics" offers a model of Aristotelian virtue ethics based on a deductive paradigm. This book argues that, contrary to what many contemporary thinkers are inclined to believe, Aristotelian virtue ethics is consistent with at least some action-guiding moral principles being true unconditionally, and that a justification for general moral principles can be grounded in fundamental concepts within Aristotle's theory. An analysis of ethical propositions that hold for the most part is proposed that fits well within the deductive paradigm developed.

This unique interpretation of virtue ethics has implications for recent discussions of the virtues in social psychology, issues about how fundamental moral principles are known, questions about the justification of inalienable rights, debates about moral particularism and generalism, and discussions of moral realism and anti-realism.

"

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science, RAMiCS 2015, held in Braga, Portugal, in September/October 2015. The 20 revised full papers and 3 invited papers presented were carefully selected from 25 submissions. The papers deal with the theory of relation algebras and Kleene algebras, process algebras; fixed point calculi; idempotent semirings; quantales, allegories, and dynamic algebras; cylindric algebras, and about their application in areas such as verification, analysis and development of programs and algorithms, algebraic approaches to logics of programs, modal and dynamic logics, interval and temporal logics.