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Instances of innovation are not always limited to a single point in time. In some cases, innovations can be repurposed over time to address multiple issues and/or solve multiple problems. The functionality of particularly influential innovations can extend over time, settings, and conditions, in which case a legacy is established. In the current chapter, the concepts of repurposing and legacy are discussed using as a primary example the Greco-Roman arch.

Although it is often assumed that the study of human group life as “something in the making” is a product of the more distinctive emphasis of 20th century American pragmatist scholarship, the roots of the analysis of the social construction of activity run much deeper.

Whereas poetics (i.e., fiction) represents only one arena in which earlier scholars have more explicitly addressed the matters of human knowing and acting, Horace, Longinus, and Plutarch, three authors from the classical Roman era (c. 200 BCE-500 CE) contribute notably to an understanding of the ways in which people accomplish activity. While Horace and Longinus focus primarily on the production of poetic texts, Plutarch addresses the matter of reading, comprehending, and utilizing fictional materials within instructional contexts.

The texts of Horace, Longinus, and Plutarch are generally valued for the insight that they cast on the Roman and Greek life-worlds in the classical Roman era, but they also assume considerable importance as detailed reference materials for developing a more informed, comparative (i.e., transhistorical) analysis of the study of human knowing and acting in contemporary contexts.

Because of the particular subject matter they address, their extended levels of involvements in the communication process and their detailed analysis of people's roles as authors, instructors, and readers, Horace, Longinus, and Plutarch provide much valuable insight in the production and use of written texts. Moreover, given their associated attentiveness to the matters of authenticity and misrepresentation, persuasion and intrigue, and interpretation and inference, these statements should have considerable value to a wide range of scholars and educators.

Officially, of course, the world is now post-imperial. The Q’ing and Ottoman empires fell on the eve of World War I, and the last Leviathans of Europe's imperial past, the Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires, lumbered into the grave soon after. Tocsins of liberation were sounded on all sides, in the name of democracy (Wilson) and socialism (Lenin). Later attempts to remake and proclaim empires – above all, Hitler's annunciation of a “Third Reich” – now seem surreal, aberrant, and dystopian. The Soviet Union, the heir to the Tsarist empire, found it prudent to call itself a “federation of socialist republics.” Mao's China followed suit. Now, only a truly perverse, contrarian regime would fail to deploy the rhetoric of democracy.

How was I going to engage the students in my ancient Roman Art and Architecture course, especially the five football players who had signed up in the fall of 2015? In this chapter, I will discuss the commitment I made to the students and myself to ensure that each class period was one in which an active learning technique was used, often paired with some lecture, and sometimes not, to engage students and help them learn about Roman Art and Architecture. I will discuss what assignments I chose based on research and my own observation, as well as the results of a focus group held with the football players a year later about what they remembered. Football players tend to be kinetic learners and thus were chosen as the follow-up to see how the active learning techniques in this class met objectives. Specifically, this chapter will discuss the inclusion of a Reacting to the Past role-playing game, a research project on “Daily Life in Ancient Rome,” and presentations on different methodologies of interpreting an image from a Pompeiian tavern.

This chapter studies the tourism cluster of Majorca and its connection with collective entrepreneurship. To this end, the authors review the history of four world leading Spanish hotel companies, from their beginnings, in Majorca, in the 1950s, to their internationalization, in the 1980s and 1990s: Barceló, Meliá, Riu, and Iberostar. This allows us to identify common patterns of behaviour among them over time, which in turn illustrate the dynamics of the tourism cluster and the role played by its context. This qualitative and historical research allows us to make the following contributions: first, in line with other studies in the economic history of Spanish tourism, the four cases support the identification of Majorca as a tourism cluster. Second, the authors highlight several important characteristics of the island which reinforced and strengthened the cluster and boosted collective entrepreneurship, through an intense flow of information between the companies. Third, the authors illustrate coopetition as the key nature of the relationship between the clustered companies in a simultaneous process of competition and cooperation. Finally, the authors show how the strength of the tourism cluster, in Majorca, drove the companies to replicate the same dynamics and structures abroad.

Healthcare practitioners, according to legislations in most Western countries, may refuse to perform some medical activities that conflict with their moral and religious values. The Roman Catholic Church has declared in official documents that doctors should not perform or facilitate activities considered immoral such as abortion and euthanasia. The goal of this paper is to suggest new options for regulating conscientious objection of Roman Catholic healthcare practitioners.

A descriptive model for assessing the impact of specific innovations on the human condition is outlined. This framework provides an alternative to conventional approaches for demonstrating the value of innovation according to monetary figures that are often subjective and arbitrary.