bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Historicizing the Elephant in the Room
Authors: McCutcheon Russell T.
Published: November 2018

This chapter retraces the genealogy of the well-known parable of the “blind men and the elephants,” which is often cited by scholars who want to champion religious pluralism or inclusivism. While this parable is allegedly based on an ancient Indian text, this chapter shows persuasively that it is in fact a relatively modern invention used to promote a particular brand of multiculturalism and rather uncritical scholarship. As an alternative, the chapter suggests that a critical study of religions would follow Bruce Lincoln’s approach by interrogating such truth claims and situating them in their specific historical and political contexts.
Afterword
Authors: Urban Hugh B. , Johnson Greg
Published: November 2018

The Afterword includes an interview with Bruce Lincoln, in which he is asked to reflect on the current study of religion, methods of comparison, and the political implications of academic discourse. In addition to responding to specific points in these chapters, Lincoln also fleshes out what he thinks it would mean “to do better” in the critical study of religion amid the ongoing crises of higher education today. Perhaps most importantly, he reflects upon and clarifies what he means by “irreverence” in the study of religion; an irreverent approach, he concludes, entails a rejection of the sacred status that other people attribute to various things, but not of the people themselves.
Defining and Constraining the Sovereign
Authors: Fried Charles
Published: November 2018

Kant noted two problem to which he believed, because “out of the crooked timber of humanity no completely straight thing can be built,” there is no perfect solution: (1) how to keep the necessary sovereign authority in line with principles of right—quis custodiet ipsos custodes, and (2) how to assure that a large and populous nation will remain faithful to republican ideals. The framers of the U.S. Constitution, through a concatenation of practical genius, favorable circumstances, and good luck came up with a solution to both conundrums, which—while not “completely straight”—has stood up for 240 years and offered examples to other democratic republics.
Locating Sovereignty in Systems of Divided and Limited Government
Authors: Lloyd S.A.
Published: November 2018

Thomas Hobbes famously mounted a regress argument intended to show that unless sovereignty is undivided and unlimited, stable and effective government is impossible. This chapter examines the implications of that argument for complex systems of government such as that of the United States and makes the case that such systems may evade the dilemma Hobbes poses if they are determinately rule-governed. The discussion covers such elements of Hobbes’s view as the sovereign as an artificial person, the puzzle of the sovereign assembly, Hobbes’s arguments against both divided sovereignty and limited sovereignty, and the location of sovereignty in complex systems. It also notes that enforcement power must follow the location of decision authority, and asks who bears moral responsibility for the sovereign’s actions in complex systems.
The Publian President in the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Levinson Sanford
Published: November 2018

Many Americans place special emphasis on the arguments presented by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, under the name “Publius,” in The Federalist. Often, these are presented in the context of debates about “constitutional interpretation,” that is, the best way to give meaning to disputed passages of the U.S. Constitution. And, often, these are linked with “originalist” approaches that give distinctive weight to the views expressed by Publius. One of the central themes of The Federalist is the necessity of creating a strong national government, with potentially “unlimited” powers, sufficient to meet the challenges, often described as “exigencies,” that will inevitably face the nation. Most obvious, of course, are what we would today describe as “national security” challenges. The question is not only the possession of potentially unlimited powers by the national government as an abstract (and complex) entity. Much of the discussion necessarily involves the degree to which one person, that is, the president, should instantiate this basically unlimited power. There is also a question of “constitutional design”: that is, if one recognizes the necessity for occasional “constitutional dictatorships,” does the United States Constitution present a desirable model for such a powerful executive, especially if we take Publius seriously with regard to the ubiquitous presence of political “ambition” attached to institutional power?
The Imperial Presidency and the Rule of Law
Authors: Finkelstein Claire
Published: November 2018

The Presidency of Donald Trump poses a deepening challenge to democratic theory: How could a democracy designed so carely around rule of law governance be so lacking in resources against a president who seems determined to dismantle the rule of law? The country seems to be largely helpless in the face of Trump’s repeated challenges to the limits of executive authority and his rejection of both legal and customary constraints on presidential power. The challenge is perceived as so serious that some have charged we are in the process of instituting an “imperial presidency,” an accusation that at present seems compelling. The mistake, however, lies in thinking that this presents a new situation. The current expansion of executive authority did not start with the current administration. Since 9/11, there has been a steady augmentation of presidential power relative to the other two branches of government, with the result that the other branches have become steadily weaker relative to the executive branch. As the drama of the Trump presidency unfolds, we are additionally confronted with the impact of personal character traits on the rule of law. We struggle to disentangle the person of the president from the office of the presidency and to discern those aspects that are critical to the preservation of democratic values. This chapter will attempt to diagnose current challenges to the rule of law in light of both history and character, as well as to present recommendations for preserving rule of law values in a constitutional democracy.
Contract, Treaty, and Sovereignty
Authors: Lister Matthew
Published: November 2018

It is a common charge that treaties, perhaps especially recent treaties relating to economic activity, provide unreasonable restrictions on the sovereignty of the state parties. When a tribunal judging a dispute on an economic treaty tells a state that it may no longer make decisions such as to accept or reject genetically modified foods, allow internet gambling, or produce generic drugs, the citizens of the state may rightfully think they have lost important aspects of sovereignty to bodies that do not have legitimate authority to govern. This, in turn, makes negotiating treaties, despite their obvious value, much harder than it otherwise would be, leading to decreased cooperation and the forgoing of potentially significant gain. This chapter argues that these worries may be dealt with by importing certain ideas from contract theory and using them to interpret treaties. Contracts have the seemingly paradoxical ability to increase the autonomy of the signers by allowing them to bind themselves to perform certain future actions. But, the ability of contracts to perform this function would be greatly reduced if the only possible remedy for breach were specific performance. Yet, an analogous approach to treaties is common among many important theorists of international law, who demand the equivalence of specific performance in the case of treaties. This chapter will show how importing ideas from contract law can help ensure that treaties, especially economic treaties, are sovereignty-enhancing for states in a way that is similar to the way that contracts may be autonomy-enhancing for individuals.
Contemporary International Tribunals
Authors: Augusto Antônio , Trindade Cançado
Published: November 2018

More recently, jurisprudential cross-fertilization has kept on being pursued in particular by international human rights tribunals and international criminal tribunals. This is reassuring, as, despite their distinct jurisdictions, their work is complementary, in their common mission of imparting justice, in distinct domains of international law. Jurisprudential cross-fertilization fosters cohesion and the unity of law. Particularly attention is currently devoted to the preservation of the legacy of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals.
Human Dignity as the Foundation for the Democratic Rule of Law
Authors: Grover Sonja C.
Published: November 2018

The notion of human dignity has in recent years come under attack from sectors of the interdisciplinary and legal academic community as vacuous and of little or no utility in judicial reasoning. This author holds instead that human dignity is the sine qua non of all human life and correlated with certain inviolable human rights that speak to human beings as other than property, as having legal personality and the right to be heard. The notion of human dignity then serves, it is argued here, as essential guidance in judicial reasoning on issues of individual and group fundamental human rights. Neglect in honouring the principle of respect for human dignity in judicial decision-making serves to erode the democratic rule of law and the interests of justice as will be illustrated through examination in particular of the U.S. Supreme Court case of J.C. Hernandez et al v. J. Mesa Jr.
Introductory Note
Authors: Merrills John G.
Published: November 2018

In 2016 the ICJ gave five judgments and made two significant orders. All five judgments concerned various issues of jurisdiction, while the orders concerned respectively the appointment of experts and provisional measures of protection. Three new cases were begun in 2016. These related to the status and use of a river, the alleged immunity of a minister and the legal status of an embassy building, and the alleged violation of a treaty between Iran and the United States. The Court was also able to hold public hearings on the preliminary objections in one case with a view to giving judgment in 2017. The Court's record in 2016 underlines the importance of jurisdictional issues in its work and shows that states continue to value its assistance in resolving their disputes peacefully.
Russia
Authors: Sanovich Sergey
Published: November 2018

The Russian government’s digital propaganda seeks to insulate Putin’s leadership from any domestic challengers and aid in his foreign policy ventures, which increasingly set Russian interests off against the West. Yet the propaganda tools, including trolls and bots, were conceived and perfected in the pockets of political competition and a globally integrated market economy still left in Putin’s Russia. This chapter discusses how the vibrant Russian blogosphere, left unattended by the government and laser-focused on taking over the traditional media, created the demand for sophisticated online propaganda and censorship tools. It also discusses how the advanced Russian online media and tech sector helped to meet this demand. It concludes with a preliminary report on the detection and exposure of government propaganda online, which could be applicable beyond Russia.
Poland
Authors: Gorwa Robert
Published: November 2018

This chapter provides the first overview of political bots, fake accounts, and other false amplifiers in Poland. Based on extensive interviews with political campaign managers, journalists, activists, employees of social media marketing firms, and civil society groups, the chapter outlines the emergence of Polish digital politics, covering the energetic and hyper-partisan “troll wars,” the interaction of hate speech with modern platform algorithms, and the recent effects of “fake news” and various sources of apparent Russian disinformation. The chapter then explores the production and management of artificial identities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks—an industry confirmed to be active in Poland—and assesses how they can be deployed for both political and commercial purposes. Overall, the chapter provides evidence for a rich array of digital tools that are increasingly being used by various actors to exert influence over Polish politics and public life.
Taiwan
Authors: Monaco Nicholas J.
Published: November 2018

Taiwan is a country with a rich history and cultural ties to mainland China. Though there has been much research and effort dedicated to propaganda and censorship in the People’s Republic of China over the years, less attention has been paid to the digital propaganda sphere in Taiwan. This report explores computational propaganda in Taiwan and finds that digital propaganda in Taiwan can be divided into two types: (1) internal propaganda on domestic political issues and campaigns, and (2) cross-Strait propaganda—emanating from the mainland and promoting reunification of the two countries. Furthermore, recent computational and social research points to manual propaganda being the main method used in campaigns in both countries. The use of two political bots in Taiwan, an anti-fake news bot and an intelligence-gathering crawler bot used in a 2014 electoral campaign, is explored in detail.
Germany
Authors: Neudert Lisa-Maria N.
Published: November 2018

As concerns over misinformation, political bots, and the impact of social media on public discourse manifest in Germany, this chapter explores the role of computational propaganda in and around German politics. The research sheds light on how algorithms, automation, and big data are leveraged to manipulate the German public, presenting real-time social media data and rich evidence from interviews with a wide range of German Internet experts—bot developers, policymakers, cyberwarfare specialists, victims of automated attacks, and social media moderators. In addition, the chapter examines how the ongoing public debate surrounding the threats of right-wing political currents and foreign election interference in the Federal Election 2017 has created sentiments of concern and fear. Imposed regulation, multi-stakeholder actionism, and sustained media attention remain unsubstantiated by empirical findings of computational propaganda. The chapter provides an in-depth analysis of social media discourse during the German parliamentary election 2016. Pioneering the methodological assessment of the magnitude of automation and junk news, the author finds limited evidence of computational propaganda in Germany. The author concludes that the impact of computational propaganda, nonetheless, is substantial in Germany, promoting a dispersed civic debate, political vigilance, and restrictive countermeasures that leave a deep imprint on the freedom and openness of the public discourse in Germany.
Challenges in American Elections
Authors: Norris Pippa , Cameron Sarah , Wynter Thomas
Published: November 2018

Electoral integrity faces many challenges in America. To understand these issues, the first part of this chapter starts by identifying the major concerns arising during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, including issues about fraud, fakery, and meddling. To place these issues in a broader perspective and establish whether systematic evidence justifies these sorts of anxieties, the second part clarifies the core concept of electoral integrity as the key yardstick used to evaluate elections around the world and outlines the sequential steps in the electoral cycle, as well as how this concept can best be measured. The third part demonstrates that many countries face multiple challenges in meeting international standards of electoral integrity. Compared with similar affluent democracies, American contests perform particularly poorly. The analysis also uses expert and public evaluations to diagnose the electoral performance of all 50 U.S. states. To understand the reasons for these ratings in more depth, the fourth part outlines the chapters contained in the rest of the book. Contributors analyze evidence for a series of contemporary challenges facing American elections: the weaknesses of electoral laws, photo ID requirements for electoral registers, gerrymandering district boundaries, fake news, the lack of transparency, and the hodgepodge of inconsistent state regulations. The conclusion sets these challenges in comparative context and draws out the broader policy lessons for improving electoral integrity and thereby strengthening American democracy.
Gerrymandering
Authors: Magleby Daniel B. , McDonald Michael D. , Krasno Jonathan , Donahue Shawn J. , Best Robin E.
Published: November 2018

Chapter 5 analyzes the contentious issue of partisan gerrymandering—a process of designing the boundaries of electoral districts to favor either Republican or Democratic candidates. The chapter argues, and then shows, that coming to a standard of what constitutes a partisan gerrymander revolves around the concept of how, when, and where a districting plan dilutes some people’s votes. Manipulated district boundaries, often with bizarre shapes and associated with seemingly excessive wins by one party, receive more attention than they are due. More states than not choose to manipulate district boundaries in ways that are out of line with what could be expected from any sort of partisan blind process. The chapter presents a valid and reliable indicator that can be used to distinguish between manipulations that violate electoral integrity and those that do not.
Thresholds
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

This chapter draws connections between the kōlam on the threshold and the pottu (or bindi) on the forehead. These ritual marks indicate the presence or absence of auspiciousness (or mangalam) and help prevent ritual pollution. The kōlam is an elaborate system of communication that provides clues to the powerful roles of female domesticity and householders living the moral and “good life.” Bringing together Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, good luck, and prosperity, and Mūdevi, the goddess of poverty, bad luck, and misery, the kōlam reflects auspiciousness and is a mapping of auspicious states of accepted forms of sexuality and reproduction as well as states of inauspiciousness and ritual pollution. The author analyzes how thresholds of time and space are punctuated in Tamil Nadu through menstruation and death.
Designs
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

This chapter focuses on types of kōlam designs. The basic categories are katta (squares) and pulli (dots). The highly ritualized forms are the navagraha (nine heavenly bodies, including the five planets) and yantras. The symbolic meanings of geometric, figurative, and landscape kōlams, whether they are itheegam (traditional) and nagareegam (modern), are discussed. Kōlam-making tools are explained, such as the traditional personal notebooks and printed pamphlets and more modern stencils and plastic stick-on decals. A discussion of an 1884 kōlam chapbook and other chapbooks from the 20th century gives a historical perspective. The 20th-century Indian choreographer Chandralekha gave kōlam designs a central position in her work.
Embedded Ecologies and the Earth Goddess
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

This chapter explores the relationship between the kōlam art ritual and the earth goddess Bhūdevi. One of the main reasons the kōlam is performed is to ask for forgiveness to the earth goddess for trampling on her throughout the day. This chapter analyzes the multiple subtexts in which Hinduism relates to the natural world as sacred. Two new concepts, “embedded ecologies” and “intermittent sacralities,” are introduced to help analyze some of the paradoxes between the deferential attitude toward natural forms and the demanding practicality of everyday life in India. Bhūdevi is examined more closely through the concepts of waste, sin, and pollution in order to understand the dynamic between the Hindu worshipper, the belief in the earth goddess, and the subsequent ecological consequences.
Marrying Trees and Global Warming
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

This chapter expands the earlier discussion of embedded ecologies and argues that the daily ritual act of the kōlam is a symbol of generosity and hospitality and an act of reciprocity between the natural and cultural worlds. The auspiciousness of the kōlam is analyzed in relation to the auspiciousness of certain plants and trees, especially coconuts, bananas, mangoes, and figs. The ritual act of tree marriage is explained. Tree marriage is a reminder of our kinship to the natural world and id intended to create “positive intentionalities” in order to assuage suffering. The author explores the similar themes involved in tree marriages, global warming, and ritual hospitality and illuminates the ways in which they echo each other in Tamil culture.
Endings
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

This in-depth life work on the kōlam ends as it began, in the Tamil diaspora. From suburban Maryland at the beginning of the book, this work ends with a narrative about a kōlam competition in Fremont, California. In this concluding chapter, the author looks back on the lengthy process of researching and writing the book and how her understanding and appreciation for the kōlam and all it represents deepened with time and life experience. She reflects on the way that her research encompassed an unexpectedly broad range of disciplines: aesthetics, art history and design; ancient, medieval, and contemporary Tamil literature and ancient Sanskrit literature; anthropology and ethnography; and even ethno-mathematics. She concludes that even though the ancient ritual of the kōlam has undergone changes during modern times, it is still very much alive.
The Spains of Paris, Mérimée, and Bizet’s Carmen
Authors: Christoforidis Michael
Published: November 2018

The Prelude briefly situates the creation of Carmen within a long tradition of Spanish entertainment in Paris, from its incarnation as a novella by Prosper Mérimée (in the 1840s) to the opera by Georges Bizet and his librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy (1875). The fashions of the Second Empire; the influence of the Spanish-born Empress Eugénie, who fostered a taste for Spanish music and dance; and the growing community of Spanish performers and artists in Paris formed a cultural landscape that informed the local color of the opera. This Hispanic milieu in the French capital also conditioned and shaped Bizet’s musical depiction of Spain in Carmen.
Impersonating Carmen in Victorian London
Authors: Christoforidis Michael
Published: November 2018

Chapter 2 considers the importance of Carmen’s early productions in London in light of long-standing local interest in Spanish-themed song and dance. The success of the opera’s 1878 debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre, starring the young American singer Minnie Hauk in a dramatic interpretation of the title role, led to numerous stagings, including translation into English, and A delina Patti’s failed impersonation of Carmen. These productions were accompanied by a proliferation of parodies over the ensuing decade, most notably the two-act Gaiety burlesque, Carmen Up to Data (1890). This successful comic entertainment illustrates how the opera’s distinctive characters, plot, and Spanish color could become a vehicle for localized humor on the popular stage.
Gypsy Primitivism and the Rise of Emma Calvé
Authors: Christoforidis Michael
Published: November 2018

Carmen entered a new phase when its productions began to integrate elements of dramatic trends that came to the fore in the 1890s. Part III, “Authenticating Carmen in the Age of Verismo (1889–1908),” proposes that these changes occurred in tandem with the emergence of new modes of staging Spain, in particular following the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, which featured Spanish gypsies from Granada performing flamenco. Emma Calvé, the great Carmen of the Belle Époque, takes center stage in Chapter 5, and her compelling reinterpretation of Bizet’s protagonist is examined in light of her development of a newly dramatic performance style in Italy and her personal research into Spanish culture (especially fashion and dance). From around 1900 Carmen productions began to reflect an image of Spain that drew on Granada’s unique history and gypsy culture, displacing an earlier emphasis on Seville.
Transatlantic Carmens in Dance and Drama
Authors: Christoforidis Michael
Published: November 2018

In the early 1890s Emma Calvé’s emergence coincided with the ascent of Spanish dancing stars, Carmencita Dausset and Carolina “la Belle” Otero, on the international music-hall circuit. All three enjoyed careers and celebrity that took them from Paris across the English Channel and the Atlantic. Their influence can be seen in the two major adaptations that form the subject of Chapter 6. Famed in both London and New York, English dramatic actress Olga Nethersole starred in a lurid adaptation of the opera for the legitimate stage in the mid-1890s, while the young Spanish dancer Rosario Guerrero reinterpreted Carmen in mime and dance in a ballet version devised for London’s Alhambra Theatre in 1903, the dramatic intensity of her performance inflected by newly emerging flamenco styles.
Emergent and Adaptive Spiritualities in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Lord Andy
Published: November 2018

This chapter points to the ‘pluralization of the lifeworld’ involved in globalization as a key context for changing dissenting spiritualities through the twentieth century. These have included a remarkable upsurge in Spirit-movements that fall under categories such as Pentecostal, charismatic, neo-charismatic, ‘renewalist’, and indigenous Churches. Spirit language is not only adaptive to globalized settings, but brings with it eschatological assumptions. New spiritualities emerge to disrupt existing assumptions with prophetic and often critical voices that condemn aspects of the existing culture, state, and church life. This chapter outlines this process of disruption of the mainstream in case studies drawn from the USA, the UK, India, Africa, and Indonesia, where charismaticized Christianity has emerged and grown strongly in often quite resistant broader cultures.
The Manufacture of Dissent
Authors: Duncan Graham A.
Published: November 2018

This chapter notes that increased pluralism, movement, and transnationalism have meant inevitable change for dissenting Protestantism. A result of experiential transculturality has been the rise of religious practice marked by hybridity, and scholarship intended to explain it. This chapter unpacks the meanings of terms such as ‘inculturation’ as ‘adaptation’, ‘innovation’, and ‘reflexivity’, and explores the ways in which these emerge in the intercultural settings of Protestant Christian mission in the Majority World. A result of this analysis is to point to the ways in which secularity and transnationalism actually ‘manufacture’ dissent from dominant orthodoxies, sparking religious revitalizations and new identities. The chapter quotes E. W. Blyden’s prescient observation that Africa would be the ‘spiritual conservatory of the world’. The term ‘dissent’ needs to be revalued to include growth, reinterpretation, resilience, redefinition, and revitalization. This keeps it true to the semper reformanda principle of Reformational Dissent.
Dissenting Traditions and Missionary Imaginations
Authors: Livingstone Justin D.
Published: November 2018

This chapter follows the long arc of the ‘missionary novel’, from the exhortation and promotion emanating from a missionary culture embraced by a Protestant Christendom to a dissenting literary culture under siege from imperial servants, secularists, and postcolonial independence movements. It notes that the African missionary novel in particular provides fertile material for the investigation of Dissenting Protestantism as it engaged with the twentieth century. Many ‘humanitarian’ novels disseminated knowledge about mission fields and ‘new’ peoples, and so were part of (and criticized for) the globalizing imagination of early twentieth-century Europe and the spread of the professions. Case studies include Elsie Milligan, Arthur E. Southon, Ambrose Haynes, Marion Percy Williams, Arthur Chirgwin, Harry H. Johnston, and Joyce Cary, among others. The chapter extends the debate on mission and empire by directing attention to issues of postcolonial reception, disclosing the ways in which the so-called ‘dissidence of Dissent’ was both challenged and appropriated by anti-colonial authors in the mid to late twentieth century.
Communications, New Technologies, and Innovation
Authors: Asamoah-Gyadu J. Kwabena
Published: November 2018

This chapter outlines the discussion over the influence of new media and communications technologies on the spread of (particularly charismaticized) Protestantism in Africa. It links the contemporary debate to the debate about the origins of Protestantism in the sixteenth-century communications revolution sparked by the invention of the printing press. Building on the work of scholars such as Lamin Sanneh, the chapter addresses issues of translation, the nature of modern media technologies and their semiotic impact on mediated messages; the construction of the public square and the ‘re-publicization of religion’. Particular attention is given to the rise of charismatic media empires, involving integrated print, digital, and satellite/television media, often in support of pentecostal/charismatic prosperity-preaching megachurches and their celebrity pastors.
Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100-1300
Authors: Oldfield Paul
Published: November 2018

This study offers the first extensive analysis of the function and significance of urban panegyric in the Central Middle Ages, a flexible literary genre which enjoyed a marked and renewed popularity in the period 1100 to 1300. In doing so, it connects the production of urban panegyric to major underlying transformations in the medieval city and explores praise of cities primarily in England, Flanders, France, Germany, Iberia, and Italy (including the South and Sicily). The study demonstrates how laudatory ideas on the city appeared in extremely diverse textual formats which had the potential to interact with a wide audience via multiple textual and material sources. When contextualized within the developments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries these ideas could reflect more than formulaic, rhetorical outputs for an educated elite, they were instead integral to the process of urbanization. This study assesses the generation of ideas on the Holy City, on counter-narratives associated with the Evil City, on the interrelationship between the city and abundance (primarily through discourses on commercial productivity, hinterlands, and population size), on landscapes and sites of power, and on knowledge generation and the construction of urban histories. Urban panegyric can enable us to comprehend more deeply material, functional, and ideological change associated with the city during a period of notable urbanization, and, importantly, how this change might have been experienced by contemporaries. This study therefore highlights the importance of urban panegyric as a product of, and witness to, a period of substantial urban change. In examining the laudatory depiction of medieval cities in a thematic analysis it can contribute to a deeper understanding of civic identity and its important connection to urban transformation.
Introduction
Authors: Oldfield Paul
Published: November 2018

The introduction establishes the importance of works of urban panegyric as sources for understanding urban transformation in the period 1100 to 1300. It details how the study categorizes and identifies works of panegyric, demonstrating that praise of cities appears in many and diverse textual forms and does not conform to a formulaic template. The introduction also provides an overview of the scholarship on urban panegyric and establishes some of the study’s key criteria (definitions of a city, geographical and chronological coverage). It also provides a contextual overview of the sociopolitical development of the medieval city in the Central Middle Ages as initial background for the thematic analyses that will follow in subsequent chapters. Finally, it provides an overview plan of the arrangement of the book and the content of its chapters.
The Sources
Authors: Oldfield Paul
Published: November 2018

This chapter provides a brief overview of the main sources used in the study. The purpose is twofold. First, to provide the key information germane to each source so that the reader is aware of these when encountering them later in the study. Second, in providing such an overview, the chapter aims to demonstrate the diversity and heterogeneity of the sources within which urban panegyric is found. Praise of the city was disseminated via hagiographies, poems, chronicles, epistles, charters, encyclopaedia, and works of compilation, texts focused directly on one city and its history, vernacular texts, and sermons. It will highlight those formats of praise which were particularly innovative post-1100 (especially sermons, vernacular works, and compilation texts). The survey will commence also with a short discussion on pre-1100 material to remind the reader at this point that the later works did not exist in a historical vacuum.
Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power
Authors: Oldfield Paul
Published: November 2018

This chapter assesses how works of praise valued urban buildings and layouts, and places this type of praise into the context of a boom in construction activity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which changed the visage of many cities. It explores some of the built structures that dominate panegyric, like circuit walls, gates, and towers. Religious infrastructure is also central to these works of praise, but they are examined in Chapter 3 and so here we look primarily at ‘secular’ buildings. The chapter will finally consider how urban panegyric engaged with the development of cities as they crystallized into metropolises and asserted their political function as centres of public power both within wider polities (as ‘quasi-capital’ cities) and as autonomous entities in their own right.
Metascience and Better Science
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Central to science is a set of norms for the correct, systematic acquisition of empirical knowledge, such as that data should be objective, results repeatable, and that theories should bring predictive success. These norms remain contested, however. Science cannot evaluate its own norms since doing so is a distinctly philosophical enterprise. This tells us that scientism is wrong: the idea that science can answer every question. A question that it cannot answer is what justifies science. We will answer this and other questions philosophically with a focus on the causal sciences. Science and metascience may then achieve a reflective equilibrium.
Evidence of Causation Is Not Causation
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Philosophers draw a distinction between ontology and epistemology: a distinction between what is and what we know. What counts as evidence of causation will be fixed by our choice of methods of discovery, and our choice of methods will be fixed by what we take causation to be. Nevertheless, causation cannot be identified with its methods of discovery. Hume argued that causation was not directly observable. If this is the case, we need methods that can reliably latch on to the signs of causation. But we cannot automatically judge there to be no causation if we find no sign of it.
Under Ideal Conditions
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

In this chapter, we discuss how reality is messy. Most events are not causally connected. Those that are, though, are important because they are a basis for prediction. It is useful, then, to have causal laws. The problem is that they all seem to have exceptions, and thus need to be ceteris paribus qualified. We might still think that if we could put a cause in ideal conditions, such as in a laboratory, its effect would follow as a matter of necessity. We find, however, that even this cannot be empirically proven. Any perfect regularity thus remains a philosophical postulate.
One Effect, One Cause?
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

We saw the notion of regularity-posited causation as a one–one relation: a cause was ‘one object, followed by another’, etc. But, as well as the same cause being able to produce different effects, one effect can have several causes. The ceteris paribus approach treated background conditions as incidental, taking them out of the regularity and making them supplementary. Instead, we accept the complexity of causes as essential to them, as allowed by Mackie, Martin, and Mill’s total cause. In this way, context is not an inconvenience to be explained away; it is what allows a cause to do its work.
Is the Business of Science to Construct Theories?
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Science is concerned with empirical knowledge, and because of this there is some reluctance to construct theories as they go beyond the observed evidence. But there is only so much that the data can do on their own. For explanation and prediction, for instance, we need a theory in addition, and the difficulty here is that no amount of data will completely dictate the truth of such a theory. In any case, there are some grounds to believe that theory is needed in order to generate the data in the first place. We cannot start with a mythical ‘raw data’.
Are More Data Better?
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

A plausible candidate for a norm of science is that the more data the better, for theory generation, for example. Such a norm would be supported if causal inferences were inductive, for instance. This view is in tension, however, with the thesis that causation is singular and intrinsic, relying on no repetition elsewhere even though in some cases it is capable of producing it. From a singularist perspective, there are at least some instances where causal understanding comes from deep knowledge of single cases rather than superficial knowledge of many cases. At the same time, it seems clear that there can be a diminishing epistemic return in the gathering of more and more evidence of the same kind.
Making a Difference
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

One view of what links a cause to an effect is that causes make a difference to whether or not the effect is produced. This assumption is behind comparative studies, such as the method of randomized controlled trials, aimed at showing whether a trial intervention makes a positive difference to outcomes. Comparative studies are regarded as the gold standard in some areas of research but they are also problematic. There can be causes that make no difference and some difference-makers that are not causes. This indicates that difference-making should be taken as a symptom of causation: a feature that accompanies it in some, though not all, cases. Symptoms can be useful in the discovery of causes but they cannot be definitive of causation.
Making Nothing Happen
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Not all causation is causation of change. Stability can be just as important in the sciences, such as when two variables are kept in equilibrium. This can be called causation of absence, where the effect is a non-event or non-change. The challenge it presents is that it indicates a productive mechanism that might not be manifest in the traditional sense, in which events are the relata of causal relations. Instead, we have a model of stability-through-change in which contrary powers are evenly counterbalanced. Even more problematic is causation by absence, for this depends on nothingness having its own causal power.
It All Started with a Big Bang
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

There can be causal chains that are extended through time, where A causes B, B causes C, and so on. There is a further question as to whether causation admits transitivity, such that A causes C, in this example. Causal chains could be depicted as the vehicle of determinism but not necessarily so. There are other ways in which determinism might work and causes cannot provide determinism unless causes somehow necessitate their effects. Indeterminism should be taken as the default starting assumption of our enquiries since it is so much easier for it to be true than determinism. We can see that causation should then be classed as non-transitive.
Does Science Need Laws of Nature?
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

There is a view that as well as causation, science invokes general laws of nature. In one account, the universe is law-governed, but it is not clear whether this is to be understood literally or not. The generality of laws is useful in prediction and explanation. Laws provide also systematicity and simplicity. But it is questionable what the real being of laws is. Their being might reduce to singular powers or tendencies of individual things. While laws could be used in prediction and explanation, it is not clear that laws are indispensable for this purpose. Singular powers might be able to play the same role: or play it better.
Risky Predictions
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Prediction is often seen as explanation’s poor relation. Yet prediction can be more useful than explanation because it is often future-directed and a reason for action. Predictions can still be useful even with a degree of fallibility, which is important since there is no necessity in nature upon which infallible prediction could rest. Indeed, it is an evident weakness of any theory of prediction if it cannot account for the possibility that the very best theory, given the evidence, could still be false.
What RCTs Do Not Show
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

In this chapter we discuss how it is an uncontroversial norm of science that decisions should be based on evidence. There can be debate, however, on what counts as evidence and how we get from evidence to decision. The method of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is now prominent in medical and social science. However, the method also has a number of weaknesses that are inherent to the design. There are some things that RCTs cannot test, while other interventions are well suited for the method. Among other consequences, it can be shown that the method structurally favours certain causal interventions over others.
Getting Involved
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Science is an activity and this creates some tension with one of its perceived norms, namely its objectivity. We do not simply record data in a detached way. We perform experimental interventions, which is a matter of choice, informed by our interests. There are interventionist accounts of causation that clearly cannot be used to define causation, since intervention is already a causal notion. However, the idea shows what is important about causal knowledge: it allows us to manipulate the world to our own ends, or at least to have good fallible reasons for what would happen if a certain sort of intervention were to occur. We are causally involved in the world that we study; indeed, our study of it depends on that.
Uncovering Causal Powers
Authors: Anjum Rani Lill , Mumford Stephen
Published: November 2018

Science concerns not only discovery about the world but also has an application and allows us to change the world through technology. Technology can be understood in terms of uncovering causal powers and using them. Powers are thus the grounds of real possibility that are to be used in technological development. Not all such powers are naturally occurring, however, and some of them are created by us. Even with naturally occurring powers, it still often requires some technology to unleash it. There is a complex relationship between artefacts and functions. The question of how a thing’s function can be separated from its other, ‘accidental’ properties seems in many cases to rely essentially on our interests.
Nation-State Building and its Alternatives
Authors: Trencsényi Balázs , Kopeček Michal , Lisjak Gabrijelčič Luka , Falina Maria , Baár Mónika , Janowski Maciej
Published: November 2018

The end of the First World War saw a shift in the political expectations of the national elites in East Central Europe from autonomy to national sovereignty. The acceptance of democratic values and promise of social improvement informed the debate over the meaning of national self-determination and forms of its implementation. In this context, the reality of an ethnically mixed population presented a challenge. While cultural autonomy continued to occupy an important place in the political thought of especially Jewish and German communities, generally the vision of a unitary nation became dominant, with minorities’ territorial demands perceived as a threat. Discourses of regionalism, democratic decentralization, and intrastate federalism kept challenging this model. Federalist projects and visions of regional cooperation addressed the issue of the sustainability of order based on small nation-states. It was in this context Nationalism Studies emerged as an academic subdiscipline, studying nationalism from legal, sociological, and political perspectives.
Liberalism on the Defensive
Authors: Trencsényi Balázs , Kopeček Michal , Lisjak Gabrijelčič Luka , Falina Maria , Baár Mónika , Janowski Maciej
Published: November 2018

The apparent dominance of liberal-democratic ideas in the 1920s was replaced in the following decade by explicitly anti-liberal and anti-democratic political trends. Nevertheless, liberalism retained some of its intellectual potential: “national liberalism” continued the pre-1918 projects of national emancipation and modernization incorporating also the feminist agenda; “bourgeois liberalism” focused on the defense of the political, social, and economic position of the bourgeoisie; and “economic liberalism” centered on the issue of free markets, while criticizing state involvement. Cultural modernism emerged as an influential intellectual current, and in the 1930s the subculture of “progressivist modernism” also represented liberal values, even though it was ill-disposed toward economic liberalism. The period also saw the reconfiguration of feminism. Lastly, East Central European critiques of totalitarianism developed under the pressure of the proximity of Soviet Russia, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. They singled out the dark aspects of the “total state,” dehumanization, and the cult of violence, often in a comparative way.
The Many Faces of Leftism
Authors: Trencsényi Balázs , Kopeček Michal , Lisjak Gabrijelčič Luka , Falina Maria , Baár Mónika , Janowski Maciej
Published: November 2018

The success of the Bolshevik Revolution confirmed that economic backwardness was not necessarily an obstacle for socialism, as it triggered the radicalization of leftist movements in the region. Yet this also led to polarization of the left on questions of Soviet-Russian developments and possible cooperation with non-socialist parties, as well as agrarian and national questions. While in many countries social democracy entered the political mainstream in the 1920s, its position was undermined by the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. In turn, the Great Depression made the communist position more plausible, but the Stalinization of communist parties and the imposition of socialist realism alienated most intellectual supporters. Eventually, some radical leftists turned against the communist movement attacking its dogmatism and the Stalinist show trials. At the same time, the rise of Nazism forced leftist groups to seek a common ground, first in the form of “Popular Front” ideology, and, during the war, in the form of armed partisan movements.