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In recent decades, globalization has led to increased mobility and interconnectedness. For a growing number of people, contemporary life entails new local and transnational interdependencies which transform individual and collective allegiances. Contemporary literature often reflects these changes through its exploration of migrant experiences and transcultural identities. Calling into question traditional definitions of culture, many recent works of poetry and prose fiction go beyond the spatial boundaries of a given state, emphasizing instead the mixing and collision of languages, cultures, and identities. In doing so, they also challenge recent and contemporary discourses about cultural identities, fostering a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of identity-formation processes in diverse transcultural frameworks.This volume analyses how traditional understandings of culture, as well as literary representations of identity constructs, can be reconceptualized from a transcultural perspective. In four thematic sections focusing on migration, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and literary translingualism, the twelve essays included in this volume explore various facets of transculturality in contemporary poetry and fiction from around the world.

The central theme of landscape has long been associated with the construction and expression of Irish national identity, particularly in relation to rural Ireland, which traditionally has been regarded as an important source of national heritage and culture. Associated with this preoccupation is the rural/urban divide that has characterised traditional representations of Ireland, especially since the end of the nineteenth century. The twentieth century saw dramatic changes to both rural and urban Ireland. The Celtic Tiger economy and the post-Tiger context have also seen momentous transformations in the Irish landscape. This book analyses the relationship between the rural and the urban and explores the way it is reflected in Irish literature, culture and language from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Among others, the work of John Hewitt, Liam O'Flaherty, Moya Cannon, Paula Meehan, Thomas Kinsella and Eavan Boland is analysed, through a variety of perspectives including cultural studies, linguistics, literary studies and ecocriticism.

In the last few years, the issue of postnationalism has encouraged an intense debate reflected in the publication of numerous specialised books and articles in various fields of study, including politics, history, philosophy, and anthropology. However, the work produced in Irish literary criticism has been much sparser. This collection of essays aims to fill this gap and provide a new insight into the debate on postnationalism in Ireland from the perspective of narrative writing. The book collects fourteen essays produced by academics from various countries, including Ireland, the United States, and Sweden. It analyses the concepts of the postnational and the postnationalist in relationship to globalisation, the debate this postnationalist discourse has opened in various fields of knowledge, and its definitions and implications in the contemporary Irish historical and literary context. The literary forms under consideration include essay writing, drama, fiction, autobiography, film, and poetry. The authors whose work is analysed here include Hubert Butler, Brian Friel, Dermot Bolger, Conor McPherson, Marie Jones, Frank McGuinness, Nuala O’Faolain, Robert MacLiam Wilson, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Derek Mahon, David Wheatley, and Sinéad Morrissey, Moya Cannon, Paula Meehan and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Water hyacinths are becoming a problem in lakes, ponds and waterways in many parts of the world. This paper contains a literature study of different ways to use water hyacinths, mainly in agricultural or alternative energy systems. The literature review indicated that water hyacinths can be rich in nitrogen, up to 3.2% of DM and have a C/N ratio around 15. The water hyacinth can be used as a substrate for compost or biogas production. The sludge from the biogas process contains almost all of the nutrients of the substrate and can be used as a fertiliser. The use of water hyacinth compost on different crops has resulted in improved yields. The high protein content makes the water hyacinth possible to use as fodder for cows, goats, sheep and chickens. Water hyacinth, due to its abundant growth and high concentrations of nutrients, has a great potential as fertiliser for the nutrient deficient soils of Africa and as feed for livestock. Applying the water hyacinths directly without any other processing than sun drying, seems to be the best alternative in small-scale use due to the relatively small losses of nutrients and workload required. To meet the ever-growing energy demand, biogas production could be one option but it requires investments and technological skills that would impose great problems in developing countries where the water hyacinth is often found. Composting as an alternative treatment has the advantage of a product that is easy to work into the soil compared with dried water hyacinths, because of the decomposed structure. Harvesting and transport of water hyacinths can be conducted manually on a small scale and does not require a new harvesting technique to be introduced. Transporting of fresh water hyacinths means, if used as fertiliser in amounts large enough to enhance or effect crop growth, an unreasonably large labour requirement. Based on the labour need and the limited access to technology, using dried water hyacinths, as green manure is a feasible alternative in many developing countries. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In Borlänge, source separation has been the basis for management of household waste for over five years. This report reviews today?s system and gives a model for further follow-up through waste grouping. In the basic system waste is separated into three fractions: biodegradable, waste to energy and waste to landfill. All waste is packed in plastic bags, put in separate containers for each fraction, and collected from the property. Separate analyses were made of waste from single family houses and apartment buildings. The amount of waste per household and week, number of non-sorted bags, purity, recovery rate and density of each fraction was calculated. The amount of packaging collected together with the household waste is given. Material collected under the Swedish law of Producers? Responsibility is not covered in this report.

Det är nästan fem år sedan Falun införde ett system för källsortering av hushållsavfall som omfattar hela kommunen. Idag finns ett behov av uppföljning och kartläggning av dagsläget: Hur fungerar sorteringen vad det gäller deltagande, renhet och kvalitet på utsorterade fraktioner samt återvinningsgrad. Inom ramen för denna studie har vi tagit fram en modell för plockanalys som kan användas som en del av denna uppföljning samt testat densamma. I grundsystemet finns tre fraktioner: Komposterbart, brännbart och övrigt. Det avfall som dag omfattas av producent ansvaret ska konsumenterna själva transportera till uppsamlingsplats/ återvinningsstation. De krav Falu kommun ställde på provtagningen var: Provtagningsmodellen avser endast material som omfattas av det kommunala ansvaret Provtagningen skall ske vid behandlingsanläggningen Provtagning skall göras så att det är möjlig att jämföra hur en- och flerfamiljshushåll sorterar. Plockanalysen skulle visa hur: rena fraktionerna är och vad ev. föroreningar utgörs av. stor andel av påsarna som var helt osorterade/gravt felsorterade. stor andel av hushållsavfallet som utgörs av material som omfattas av producentansvaret. viktfördelningen mellan elva fraktioner. Prov togs tre ggr per fraktion och områdestyp. Proverna delades ned till lämplig storlek för analys genom rutprovtagning vid behandlingsanläggningen. Skrymdensiteter för källsorterat hushållsavfall beräknade i samband med provtagning. Beräkningarna visade på relativt små skillnader mellan densiteter från en- resp. flerfamiljshus. 126 kg/m3 för avfall från enfamiljshus och 101 kg/m3 för avfall från flerfamiljshus. Hushållen producerade i snitt ca 7 kg avfall per vecka (en- och flerfamiljshus), varav 3.0 (enfamiljshus) och 2.4 (flerfamiljshus) kg organiskt avfall. Det fanns vissa skillnader i (funktionell) renhet mellan en- och flerfamiljshushållen. Den funktionella renheten var högst i den komposterbara fraktionen från enfamiljshus, 98% som skall jämföras med 96% för flerfamiljshushåll. Inom den brännbara fraktionen fanns inga mätbara skillnaderna, den funktionella renheten var 97% för både en- och . flerfamiljshushåll. Restavfallet från flerfamiljshushåll hade en rättsorteringsgrad på 9% och restavfallet från enfamiljshushåll innehöll endast 8% rättsorterat material. Återvinningsgraden för komposterbart material låg mellan 66-78%, för brännbart på mellan 74-80%.

This study presents a multiple case study of systems for collection of recyclables from domestic properties. A model for describing the development process is presented together with six examples from Sweden and one from the UK. Six Swedish systems that have been in operation since 1994, when the Ordinance on Producers' Responsibility was enforced, are presented. They are considered in the light of the driving forces behind their development: co-operation between municipality and producers, collection efficiency through vehicle development, quality of recyclables, Agenda 21 and environmental concerns, service to users and recycling as a marketable product, respectively. The Swedish systems are compared to a recently introduced collection program in Northamptonshire, UK. The results from an evaluation of the Swedish systems shows that what differentiates them is not technical details but how, where, by and for whom they were developed. The conclusion drawn is that a collection system should be adapted to local conditions, both in technical design and social factors. At present the lessons from Sweden are being used to design new recycling strategies in Northamptonshire, demonstrating the importance of international comparisons to develop 'best practice'.

In order to decrease environmental impacts in waste management the choice of treatment method must be based on the characteristics of the waste. Present sampling procedures do not provide statistically representative samples of solid waste and this provides difficulties in characterization. The objective of this study was to develop a procedure for waste component analysis and sampling of waste after collection and at plant level. A further objective was to characterize the waste delivered to an incineration plant for physical and chemical properties and to determine the amounts of delivered waste that could be classified as biofuels and fossil fuels. The proportions of recyclables and hazardous waste were also examined. Samples were taken randomly from waste trucks and divided by square implementation. Statistical analysis of the results showed that the number of sub-samples could be decreased with only a moderate increase in the confidence interval. This means that future waste composition analyses could be made more efficient and thereby less expensive. The analysis of the waste delivered to the Lidkoping incineration plant (Central Sweden) showed that 66.4% of the household waste was composed of biofuels and 21.3% of non-renewable combustibles, of which 40.3% were recyclables. In addition, 11.6% of the household waste was non-combustible and 0.6% hazardous waste. The heat value for the biofuels was 18.0-19.7 MJ kg(-1) dry mass (DM) and for the fossil fuels 28.2-33.9 MJ kg(-1) DM. The industrial waste consisted of 35.9% biofuels, 62.0% fossil fuels, 1.6% non-combustible and 0.5% hazardous waste. The heat value was 19.5 MJ kg(-1) DM for the biofuels and 31.4 MJ kg(-1) DM for the fossil fuels.

Temporalities and Subjectivities in Migration Literature in Europe examines migrant stories through the lens of temporality as seen in the role of such issues as integration, waiting, detention, trauma, crisis, and imagined futures. This book argues that a focus on different time scales and perceptions of time will help us understand how the intimate and affective subjectivities of more complex narratives of migration, as articulated in literature, cross into the public sphere and challenge political ‘bubbles.’ This collection showcases new approaches to and innovative readings of different forms of literary and cultural migration narratives. In addition to developing theoretical tools for the study, the authors present innovative case studies addressing topics such as the European refugee crisis, migration narratives and border crossings in Britain, Spain, and Morocco, as well as experiences of migration in Finland and Norway.

In 2000, the Parekh report foresaw two possible futures for the country, namely, a narrow and inward-looking tendency that would only accentuate the rifts between the nations of the UK and its denizens and, on the other hand, a country that had the potential to develop as “a community of citizens and communities,” provided it underwent a series of transformations, including the “rethinking [of] the national story and national identity” (xiii). The increase in anti-Muslim racism after 9/11 (Poynting & Mason 2006), the perceived crisis of multiculturalism and the increasing dominance in the public sphere of populist, ultra-conservative discourses signal that this transformation of national identity has not occurred in the terms of the report but rather as a consequence of what Appadurai has termed the “fear of small numbers” (2006). Several studies have pointed to the criminalisation of Muslim communities in newspapers, and the way in which media reports on honour killings have “misrepresented ethnic minorities and engendered a sense of mainstream moral superiority” that envisions the Muslim migrant “other” as morally inferior (Gill 2006). In her 2012 novel Honour, British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak questions the “representational violence” (Shapiro 1998) exerted by media by imaginatively engaging with the complexities of the socio-cultural conditions in the home and host countries that lie behind the unreported realities of perpetrators and victims of gender violence against women in a family of Turkish Kurdish migrants to Britain in the 1970s. This paper will contend that Shafak’s Honour embodies a type of ethical engagement with this “representational violence” that fosters a way of imagining the nation differently through the perspective of its Muslim migrant “other.” 

The study of migration literature has often been characterised by the reproduction of Beck’s (2002) “methodological nationalism” due its frequent focus on literature produced by migrant writers as separate, while at the same time challenging the tenets of the literature produced by writers of non-migrant background. Recent critical approaches to the study of literature (Walkowitz 2006) have underscored the significant role of this migration literature, in the context of globalisation and of the increasing “cosmopolitanization of reality” (Beck 2006), to render the logic of the nation state within the discipline of literary studies as “unmeaning” (Damrosch 2003: 1), thus arguing for its “denationalisation” (Dimock 2001: 176). Still, within this context of emergent understandings of national literature as transcultural, migration literature has often maintained the migrant background of the author as the main criterion for inclusion in this system. In the British context, English writer Rose Tremain’s work signifies a challenge both to dominant disciplinary categorisations of migration literature, and to contemporary approaches to the study of migration and collective identities through the re-examination of past national experiences of migration in a context of colonization. By mostly resorting to Rothberg’s “noueds de mémoire”, this paper contends that in her historical novel The Colour (2003) Tremain resorts to re-enacting migration to the British colony of New Zealand during the 1860s gold rush as a way of underscoring the points of contact between different experiences of migration past and present. Thus, Tremain contributes both to de-migranticising (Dahinden 2006) migration literature and to highlighting the role of transnational migration in (re)shaping national narratives of identity. 

The theme of displacement and a view of exile that differs from traditional definitions of the concept and its associations with feelings of loss and nostalgia are a constant in Colum McCann's oeuvre. Images of flight and fleeing are recurrent in his work and underscore the centrality that mobility occupies in his fictional world, in which these flights are, not infrequently, a metaphorical act of escapism from material reality and physical conditioning. However, mobility in Let the Great World Spin is articulated as a characteristically twenty-first century phenomenon in its emphasis on how interconnectivity beyond differences, especially in the form of transnational exchanges, characterizes contemporary societies and shapes individual realities and identities. This essay contends that this transnational interconnectivity is not only foregrounded at the narrative level, thematically and in terms of narrative structure; McCann's tangentially framing of this novel within American post-9/11 fiction, while formally echoing an Irish literature of exile and thematically relating to an Irish literature of migration and fictions of the global, suggests the process in which new imaginative realities and identities are shaped from a cosmopolitan outlook that promotes the synergetic dialogue between national and transnational differences in the creation of a cosmopolitanized reality.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, 8.3 million refugees from Ukraine have been officially recorded across Europe (“Ukraine Data Explorer”). During only the first week of the war 1 million refugees were registered in neighbouring countries, while 3 million sought refuge outside Ukraine in the first three weeks of the invasion, which made this exodus one of the fastest since the Second World War (Garcés Mascareñas; “1 Million Refugees”). It is also the largest displacement of European citizens since the Second World War (ECB), and it prompted the EU to activate the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time since it was passed in 2001. The activation of this directive, which stems from the EU’s concerns about those displaced during the Balkan wars of the 1990s (EUR-Lex), was the official seal of the immediate welcoming response with which Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, had been received not only in bordering European countries, but across Europe. As has been observed, such a response is in line with how the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the 1967 Protocol that lifted the Convention’s temporal and spatial restrictions, should theoretically work for the international protection of refugees, with nation-states offering hospitality and refuge to those suffering persecution elsewhere. However, this ideal response to the Ukrainian crisis is in sharp contrast with the reality on the ground, where discriminatory and violently hostile border controls against Asian, African, and Caribbean residents in Ukraine who were also trying to flee the country were denounced during the first days of the crisis (Akinwotu and Strzyżyńska; Ferris-Rottman). The racism and hostility against refugees of colour from Ukraine echoed the “crisis of solidarity” unfolding on European soil since the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015/2016.

Background and Objectives

Associations of young-old age with successful aging have contributed to relegating negatively perceived aspects of aging to very old age. This has prompted the formation of the social imaginary of the fourth age. Re-examinations of the fourth age foreground the diversity of aging experiences among the oldest old. In this sense, literature is in a privileged position to contribute individual narratives of aging to this field. The main aim of this article is to analyze Irish writer Jennifer Johnston’s later fiction and how particularly two of her later fictional works contribute a nuanced re-examination of the fourth age through the narrativization of individual aging experiences of the oldest old in the contemporary Irish context.

Research Design and Methods

The work of sociologists and social theorists on re-examinations of the fourth age functions as the framework to analyze the selected fictional texts.

Results

The analysis of the oldest old characters in Truth or Fiction and Naming the Starsshows the contribution of literary texts to rethinking the fourth age as a time characterized by the inextricable combination of gains and losses, with emphasis on the diversity of the aging experiences of the oldest old and on the importance of sociocultural influence on individual aging.

Discussion and Implications

Combining longitudinal analyses with case studies, such as the ones suggested by these fictional texts, can provide a more accurate knowledge of the experience of advanced old age and the fourth age.