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The societal dimension of music in urban life in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Although early modern urban musical life has been the object of investigation with several researchers, little is known about the ways in which musical cultures were integrated within their broader urban environments. Building upon recent trends within urban musicology, the authors of this volume aim to transcend descriptive overviews of institutions and actors involved with music within a given city. Instead, they consider the urban environment as the constitutive context for music making, and music as a significant aspect of urban society and identity.Through selected case studies and by focusing on three 'musical circuits'-opera and theatre music, sacred music, and secular songs-this book contributes to a more effective understanding of music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century urban societies in the southern Netherlands and beyond. Musicological and historical research perspectives are fruitfully integrated, as well as insights from theatre scholarship and literary criticism. With attention to the musical life behind the traditional institutions, the circulation of repertoires, and musical cultures in peripheral urban environments or in cities 'in decay', 'Music and the City' sheds new light on the societal dimension of music in urban life.

The balance sheet of 50 years of development aid. Over the past 50 years the West has invested over 3000 billion euro in development aid and already tackled many problems. Now more and more countries and organisations present themselves on the development aid scene, including China, India, and foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Companies, trade unions, co-operatives, schools and towns set up their own projects in remote African regions. But can each and everybody become a development worker? Who decides what is acceptable and what is not? What is the role of the developing countries themselves? Who can tell what is good aid and what is bad aid? Is it a free market allowing everybody to do what he wants? A market without rules, with a lot of competition and little cooperation? This book draws up the balance sheet of 50 years of development aid and provides an overview of all relevant players, of opportunities and obstacles, of successes and failure. It details numerous examples and information on development projects from all over the world. Readers may be tempted to get involved in development aid, but they will also be more cautious than before.

The concerns of the people, whose experiences are explored in this book, rarely make it through to the academic discourse and political praxis in Central and Eastern Europe. In the public discourse and in many sociological accounts, manual workers tend to be represented as disoriented victims of post-socialist transformation. But how can such an approach explain the diversity of the actual ways of coping with social change adopted by workers in the new capitalist reality? To address this question the author turns to workers themselves, to their life strategies and personal experiences. He reconstructs the processes of adapting to and resisting structural changes in working-class milieus in one of the industrial regions of Poland (Silesia). Through this in-depth analysis of 166 personal interviews with blue-collar workers, Mrozowicki reaches general conclusions. The workers rarely resemble the passive puppets of historical forces. Their ability to reflect upon their lives, upon their deeply-ingrained moral ethos, and upon their social circumstances emerge as the foundation of their efforts to overcome socially imposed limitations. Exploring the life strategies of the socially disadvantaged, this book is of interest not only to those interested in post-socialism and working class theory, but also to anybody inclined to think critically about workers' empowerment in late capitalist societies.

Gilles Deleuze is among the twentieth centurys most important philosophers of difference. Reading and appreciating his work requires an unusual degree of openness and willingness to enter a complicated but extremely rich system of thought. His oeuvre is marked by abundant debates with and references to a variety of authors of many different domains, the sophisticated conceptual framework, the creation of new concepts, and the injection of existing concepts with new meanings. Deleuze and Psychoanalysis is both a guide to reading Deleuze and a direct confrontation with issues at stake in his work, particularly the debate with and against psychoanalysis. This debate not only offers the occasion to find an entrance to Deleuzes basic thought but also throws the reader into the middle of the dispute. Offering different points of view, the authors of this book provide a clear and perspicuous overview of subject matter of interest to all psychoanalysts, Deleuzean orotherwise.

Within the framework of the Forum A. & A Leysen, several experts from in and outside the Muslim world contributed to this book. In Islam and Europe: Crises Are Challenges they discuss how dialogues between Islam and the West, with a focus on Europe, can be achieved. The various authors (legal scholars, political theorists, social scientists, and psychologists) explore in these collected essays such interrelated questions as: How much diversity is permissible within a liberal pluralistic democratic society? How strong are the implications of citizenship? What are equitable accommodations of contested practices? They argue for an adequate understanding of how Western Muslim communities in Europe experience their minority position and what needs to be done to improve their participation in European society. The second part of this volume is a collection of papers written around the work of Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, who also makes his own contribution to the book. The Catholic University of Leuven awarded An-Na'im an honorary doctorate in 2009 on the theme of multiculturalism, intercultural relations and diversity. An-Na'im is recognized the world over as a leading expert in the area of religion and law, and as a human rights activist. Islam and Europe: Crises Are Challenges reinforces our sense that a better knowledge and awareness of the growing diversity of our society, and striving for harmonious relations between Islam and the West, are among the most important challenges of our time. With contributions by: Ahmed Aboutaleb, Durre S. Ahmed, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Shaheen Sardar Ali, Mohamed Benzakour, Jean-Yves Carlier, Marie-Claire Foblets, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Fouad Laroui, Bettina Leysen, Rashida Manjoo, Bhikhu Parekh, Mathias Rohe, Cedric Ryngaert, Prakash Shah. Other publication: Islam and Europe, Challenges and Opportunities

Innovative research of 'Islam at work' in geographical and social contexts.'Modern Islamic Thinking and Activism' presents a series of scholarly papers in relation to Islamic thinking, activism, and politics in both the West and the Middle East. The reader will apprehend that Islam is not the monolithic religion so often depicted in the media or (earlier) in the academic world. The Islamic world is more than a uniform civilization with a set of petrified religious prescriptions and an outdated view on political and social organization. The contributions show the dynamics of 'Islam at work' in different geographical and social contexts. By treating the working of Islamic thinking and of Islamic activism on a practical level, 'Modern Islamic Thinking and Activism' includes innovative research and fills a significant gap in existing work.

The fascinating history of bell music. The carillon, the world¿s largest musical instrument, originated in the 16th century when inhabitants of the Low Countries started to produce music on bells in church and city towers. Today, carillon music still fills the soundscape of cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. Since the First World War, carillon music has become popular in the United States, where it adds a spiritual dimension to public parks and university campuses. Singing Bronze opens up the fascinating world of the carillon to the reader. It tells the great stories of European and American carillon history: the quest for the perfect musical bell, the fate of carillons in times of revolt and war, the role of patrons such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Herbert Hoover in the development of American carillon culture, and the battle between singing bronze and carillon electronics. Richly illustrated with original photographs and etchings, Singing Bronze tells how people developed, played, and enjoyed bell music. With this book, a fascinating history that is yet little known is made available for a wide public.

Magritte¿s interarts dialogue with literature. The Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte (1898¿1967) is well known for his thought-provoking and witty images that challenge the observer¿s preconditioned perceptions of reality. `Magritte and Literature¿ examines some of the artist's major paintings whose titles were influenced by and related to works of literature. Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Goethe's Elective Affinities, and Poe's The Domain of Arnheim are representative examples of Magritte's interarts dialog with literary figures. Despite these convergences the titles subvert the images in his paintings. It is the two images together that express the aesthetics of Surrealism¿for example, the juxtaposition of unrelated objects whose purpose is to spark recognition. Magritte's challenge to representation compares with metafiction's challenge to classic realism, Les Chants de Maldoror for example, and the intersecting space between art and writing, sometimes referred to as the iconotext, manifests itself whenever Magritte borrows a literary title for a painting. His strategy is to paint visible thought, and this reverse ekphrasis, the opposite of a rhetorical description, undermines the written text. When he succeeds, the effect is poetry.