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Dikes and Society in Rural China: The Jianghan Plain, 1788-2010s /
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To feed an ever-growing population in a water-rich region, the people of the Jianghan Plain in Central China constantly built dikes and polders. As China's political system changed dramatically from 1788 to the 2010s, the governance of Jianghan's dikes and polders also changed, moving from indirect supervision by the state to direct management. This shift has dramatically improved the security of the dike systems and has had a profound impact on the Jianghan people's lives. Based on rarely used local gazetteers and newly available archival materials, this book uses a multidimensional interactive approach to explore water control and state-society relations in rural China over the past three centuries.
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1 online resource (428 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004739482
Divining Disaster. Signs of Catastrophe in Ancient Greek Culture /
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In a world riddled with earthquakes and plagued by epidemics, how did the ancient Greeks cope with, and make sense of, disaster? As our present-day environment is perceived to be increasingly perilous, this book includes the ancient Greek world in the longue durée of disaster discourse. Drawing on anthropological disaster studies, ecocriticism, and cognitive studies, this study considers disaster as a semiotic phenomenon marked by uncertainty. Divining disaster, then, functions as a hermeneutic form of disaster management that alleviates uncertainty and assigns agency, not only in religious practices such as oracle consultation but also in historical and mythological narratives.
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1 online resource (408 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004739581
Pause and effect : an introduction to the history of punctuation in the West /
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"Over the centuries punctuation has become an essential component of written language. Its primary function is to resolve structural uncertainties in a text, and to signal nuances of semantic significance. The importance of the study of punctuation to a number of disciplines will be widely recognised as a result of the publication of this first definitive history." "The first part of Pause and Effect identifies the graphic symbols and deals with their history. It covers the antecedents of the repertory of symbols, as well as the ways in which the repertory was refined and augmented with new symbols to meet changing requirements. The second part offers a short general account of the principal influences which have contributed to the ways in which the symbols have been applied in texts, focusing on the evidence of the practice itself rather than on theorists. The treatment enables the reader to compare usages in different periods, and to isolate the principles which underlie the use of punctuation in all periods." "The examples and plates which are at the core of the book provide the reader with an opportunity to test the author's observations. The examples are taken from a wide range of literary texts from different periods and languages. Latin texts are accompanied by English translations intended to illustrate the use of punctuation in the originals in so far as this is possible.". "Pause and Effect is destined to be a standard work. It will stimulate interest and scholarly debates among writers, literary critics, philosophers, linguists, rhetoricians, palaeographers and all those who study the use of language."--BOOK JACKET.
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xvi, 327 p. : ill. ; 28 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-327) and indexes. :
0520079418
9780520079410