The Janus-Faces of Cross-Border Crime in Europe

Europe is changing rapidly, which may also have a bearing on its criminal landscape. This does not mean that all sorts of new crime are emerging: a large part of the crimes remains profit-oriented and is committed by known modus operandi. That is the old face of crime. Amidst the traditional landscape new faces of crime can be identified. The internet is such a new face which emerges among others in the sex industry. This is as old as the human race, with all the related abuses and exploitation. But the internet gives it also a new face because of its broad reach and related opportunities, negative as well as positive. This volume provides other examples of this two-faced Janus head of crime. Old criminal trades, such as the illegal cigarette market, synthetic drugs and criminal exploitation of human labour, but also new criminal specialisations, new professional and industrial skills developed by ‘old’ ethnic minorities on various crime markets in central Europe. Meanwhile, the on-going illegal migrations continue to exert their influence on the perception of crime: while the actual prevalence of most types of crime decreases, fear of crime continues to increase. The flow of migrants is unrelated to this outcome but it impacts nevertheless on the perception of crime. This volume of the 18th Cross-border Crime Colloquium, held in Bratislava in the spring of 2017, contains the peer-reviewed contributions of 22 European experts and up-and-coming researchers. Their chapters cover a broad field of crime in which the double faced Janus head can be discerned: illegal migrants, criminal markets, corruption, money laundering and organised crime, highlighting many new aspects

Soldiers' Stories

From Skirts Ahoy! to M*A*S*H, Private Benjamin, G.I. Jane, and JAG, films and television shows have grappled with the notion that military women are contradictory figures, unable to be both effective soldiers and appropriately feminine. In Soldiers’ Stories, Yvonne Tasker traces this perceived paradox across genres including musicals, screwball comedies, and action thrillers. She explains how, during the Second World War, women were portrayed as auxiliaries, temporary necessities of “total war.” Later, nursing, with its connotations of feminine care, offered a solution to the “gender problem.” From the 1940s through the 1970s, musicals, romances, and comedies exploited the humorous potential of the gender role reversal that the military woman was taken to represent. Since the 1970s, female soldiers have appeared most often in thrillers and legal and crime dramas, cast as isolated figures, sometimes victimized and sometimes heroic. Soldiers’ Stories is a comprehensive ..

Mobile Robots Navigation

Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described

Exploring the dynamics of knowledge sharing in the online affinity apaces of "Let's Play" Youtube Channels

With this dissertation the goal is to analyze the novel medium of video game streaming and more specifically the “Let’s Play” video format as seen on YouTube and other online platforms. The practice has experienced a rapid growth in popularity over the course of the last decade since its emergence, which means many of its intricacies are yet to be accounted for by academic research. The intent is to engage with it from the perspective of learning and knowledge exchange and see whether such processes take place within the channels dedicated to this type of content, and if so to map out their dynamics, and reflect critically on the picture that emerges from the exploration of these virtual spaces.El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar el nuevo medio para retransmisión de videojuegos y, en particular, el formato de vídeo "Let's Play" como el que está en YouTube y otras plataformas en línea. La práctica ha experimentado un rápido crecimiento de popularidad en el transcurso de la última década desde su aparición, lo que significa que muchas de sus complejidades aún deben tenerse en cuenta por la investigación académica. La intención es abordar este formato desde la perspectiva del aprendizaje y el intercambio de conocimientos y ver si tales procesos tienen lugar dentro de los canales dedicados a este tipo de contenido y, en caso de ser así, trazar la dinámica y reflexionar críticamente sobre el panorama que surge de la exploración de estos espacios virtuales.L'objectiu d'aquesta tesi és analitzar el nou mitjà de retransmissió de videojocs i, més concretament, el format de vídeo "Let's Play" que es veu a YouTube i altres plataformes en línia. La popularitat d'aquesta pràctica ha crescut ràpidament durant l'última dècada des de la seva aparició, cosa que significa que moltes de les seves complexitats encara no han estat considerades per la investigació acadèmica. La intenció és abordar-lo des de la perspectiva de l'aprenentatge i l'intercanvi de coneixements i veure si aquests processos es desenvolupen dins dels canals dedicats a aquest tipus de continguts i, en cas afirmatiu, establir-ne la dinàmica i reflexionar de manera crítica sobre el panorama que es desprèn de l'exploració d'aquests espais virtuals

Hoarding and the Cult of Money

As a category of psychological diagnosis, Hoarding Disorder has spawned a conception of “the hoarder” marked by social exclusion, a habitual urge to possess objects, and an apparent difficulty in disposing them. Against this limited definition, which stems from a lack of long-term historical and social awareness among scholars of hoarding disorder, my work asks, How is hoarding logical? Can we read hoarding as non-pathological or adaptive? What kind of monuments and record have historical hoarders left behind? Proceeding from the longer etymology of the word, hoard, and coupled with oral history interviews drawn from my own life, this thesis recasts “hoarding” as more complex than the current paradigm implies, pertaining to the rise of capitalism, commodity fetishism, and broader forms of socio-economic reciprocity which preceded and responded to formal and informal empire. Supported by historical documents from major thinkers in political economy, classical Liberalism, Marxism, Social Anthropology, and Neoliberalism, alongside periodical documents from nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain and the United States, I argue that hoarding among the poor and socially vulnerable, such as those affected by post-colonialism, deindustrialization, austerity, statelessness, etc., may be reread as a mode of economic survival and social investment, if the economic idiosyncrasies of an individual hoarder’s subjective lifeworld and context are taken into consideration. In tandem with this line of reasoning, I argue that hoarding is a spectrum of behavior that also includes more ‘normative’ behaviors of the super-wealthy, including cash and land hoarding. This thesis uses oral history, with cultural, anthropological, and literary sources, to shift the language around hoarding and to present it as an underlying logic of capitalism, as a mediator of interpersonal and family relationships, and as a dangerous extension of twentieth-century empire, functioning through hegemonic, legal, but deeply unethical institutions and financial tools such as major accountancy firms, central banks, international tax havens, and international corporations. Using sentimental objects from personal collections, I situate myself as embedded within history, and at the cusp of different economic and cultural worlds, wherein objects are read as unique signifiers of memory and meaning

Building Yoknapatawpha: Reading Space and the Plantation in William Faulkner

This thesis is about the Southern plantation in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fiction: how it is represented and constructed, how it is narratively articulated and experienced as both space and symbol. But as its full title suggests, Building Yoknapatawpha is equally about narrative structures and spaces too: about how Yoknapatawpha textually fits together; about how this spreading oeuvre was constructed by Faulkner and how it may equally be reconstructed by the reader. It is about both the reading of space and the space of reading – about how the architectural spaces and social order of the Southern plantation and the narrative structures of the novel inform, complement, and challenge one another, and how their affinity may ultimately be used to generate a new “spatialized” model of literary reading. Foregrounding tensions between narrative “details” and “design” and conceptions of “ruin” and “restoration”, this thesis explores how Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels function simultaneously as “open” and “closed”. It considers how Absalom, Absalom! (1936) attempts to recuperate the repressed historical connections present in Flags in the Dust (1929), only to erase them once more through death, destruction, and narrative closure. It considers how Go Down, Moses (1942) offers models of black domesticity that resist the oppressions of segregation and lynching – but which are dispersed through black diaspora and narrative exclusion. It considers how The Mansion (1959) revises and integrates details from earlier Yoknapatawpha texts to create a richly layered textual space – but which is in constant tension with the process of the historical “whitening” of the Southern post-plantation landscape which it ultimately depicts. Building Yoknapatawpha concludes by attempting to resolve these tensions into a new model of literary reading: deconstructing Yoknapatawpha to reassemble it as a layered “mapping” of multiple parallel narrative paths and connective links, which resist the mastery – and erasure – imposed by linearity and closure