bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘The Human Situation’
Authors: Loumagne Ulishney Megan
Published: November 2022

Chapter 3 examines critiques of aspects of Augustine’s thought in a more contemporary key. Valerie Saiving’s article ‘The Human Situation: A Feminine View’ (1960) is arguably the most influential treatment of the relationship between sexual difference and sin. Saiving critiques a tendency she perceived in Christian theology in the 1960s to define sin as pride and dominating self-assertion. She argues that this description of sin does not adequately encompass women’s experience. This chapter analyses Saiving’s argument, and it illuminates the anthropological context that shaped her thought. This chapter offers a fresh consideration of Saiving’s work as it illuminates the reality that ‘The Human Situation’ is an interdisciplinary project that integrates the work of prominent anthropologists of her time with theology. Her contribution is thus also important for this project as it is an example of an early effort in feminist theology to consider sin and sexual difference from the perspectives of both science (anthropology) and theology. Saiving’s influence remains pervasive today, even as her thought has been critiqued and expanded.
Conclusion
Authors: Loumagne Ulishney Megan
Published: November 2022

The conclusion provides a summary of the central insights of this book in order to indicate some implications for future thinking about soteriology, Christology, Mariology, and ecclesial practices. This project establishes a foundation for the development of a Christian Feminist Materialism that can be used as a generative framework for re-examining other areas of Christian theology in a way that is attuned to the material/biological insights from the natural sciences and the theological resources of the Christian tradition. This Christian Feminist Materialism is grounded in the Incarnation, and its understanding of the Incarnation is developed in a Mariological (as well as a Christological) key. Indeed, Christology and Mariology are intrinsically interconnected, and a robust Mariology is necessary for a complete Christology. However, the Christological implications for theologies of matter have been much more extensively developed in the theological literature than the Mariological implications.
Interventions in Central Europe I: c.1500–1618
Authors: Milton Patrick
Published: November 2022

This chapter analyses several interventions in other states which were justified—at least in part—by the need to protect other rulers’ subjects. The geopolitical goals of these interventions are identified, along with their public and private justifications and legitimations. Whether or not they were successful in terms of the interveners’ goals and the consequences for the subjects will also be assessed. The chapter takes a look at the interventions that took place in the context of the rivalry between Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France, King Henry II of France’s intervention in the Empire in 1552, interventions during the Dutch Revolt of 1568–c.1600, and interventionist trends in the Empire c.1570–1615.
Interventions in Defence of Mediate Subjects
Authors: Milton Patrick
Published: November 2022

Here we consider interventions within the Empire, carried out as judicial executions. This chapter will outline some of the cases of regular judicial interventions, implemented mainly in the smallest and small territories of the Reich under the Emperor’s authority, that were aimed at protecting subjects against their rulers. Cases that are examined include the intervention in the territory that is today called Liechtenstein which was aimed in part at protecting the subjects from mass executions during spurious witchcraft trials in the 1680s; an intervention in the small county of Bentheim in 1722 which was aimed at rescuing the territory from corrupt and abusive councillors who took advantage of the ruling count’s mental illness to enrich themselves at great cost to the local subject population.
TheHow,Why, andHow Wellof Minority Governments
Authors: Field Bonnie N. , Martin Shane
Published: November 2022

This chapter reviews the existing literature on minority governments, details our research questions, and provides a summary of the country case studies. Three core research questions guide this endeavor, and the chapter introduces each in the context of the existing literature, and unanswered questions. First, we ask why minority governments form. This includes whether the formation of minority governments (as distinct from majority coalitions) is related to political institutions (such as legislative rules and organization), electoral incentives, the shape or composition of the party system, or something else. Second, we explore how minority governments govern once in office. After all, government formation is normally a relatively short-lived process compared to the actual time the government will spend in office. Questions here include whether minority governments operate with formal agreements with other parties in parliament, their alliance-building strategies within parliament, and the motivations of the non-governing political parties or individual legislators that provide support to minority governments. Third, we explore how well minority governments perform, cross-nationally and, where useful, compared to periods of majority government in the same country. This includes common indicators of performances—such as the legislative productivity and rates of survival in office of minority governments, and what citizens think of the performance of the minority government—as well as more nuanced assessments that contextualize performance in the particular national context.
Minority Governments in India
Authors: Nikolenyi Csaba
Published: November 2022

India is a puzzling case for the study of minority governments because of the dramatic shift from four decades of single-party majority governments (1952−1989) to two decades under minority cabinet rule (1989–2014). Moreover, unlike other adversarial Westminster democracies, where hung parliaments normally lead to the formation of a single-party minority governments, almost all of India’s minority governments were multiparty coalitions that were often formed by an extremely large number of parties. Although the era of minority governments seems to have come to an end with the general elections of 2014 and 2019, multiparty coalitions still remain the norm. The chapter highlights the importance of party system federalization and the development of contract parliamentarism in understanding the development and functioning of India’s multiparty minority governments.
Ireland
Authors: Weeks Liam
Published: November 2022

Minority governments are a common feature of the Irish political landscape, but they do not occur for the typical reasons. Such governments in Ireland are unusual in that they tend to control more parliamentary seats than the opposition parties—they are, in effect, majoritarian. This outcome is the product of an exceptional presence of independent parliamentarians, who play a role both in the formation and maintenance of these administrations. This role has varied from that of external support to seats at the cabinet table, and this chapter details both the nature of independents’ involvement and the reasons for the variation. As the party system has begun to fragment, making the government formation process more difficult, minority administrations involving parties have also become a feature of the political landscape. It is quite noticeable that these latter arrangements can attract more instability and can be less majoritarian than those involving independents.
Minority Governments in Portugal
Authors: Fernandes Jorge M.
Published: November 2022

This chapter explores the institutional incentives and behavioral motivations for the formation of minority governments in Portugal. My argument is that the roots of the prevalence of minority governments in Portugal rest on the transition to democracy. Elites chose a proportional electoral system and no requirement for a vote of confidence during government formation to curtail the Communist’s access to power and to prevent a one-party dominance in the newly democratic regime. The chapter marshals empirical evidence suggesting that minority governments fulfill as many electoral pledges and deliver the same public policy outcomes as their majoritarian counterparts. Evidence suggests, however, that minority governments tend to be less stable and face early termination more frequently. This chapter adds to the literature on minority governments by linking their prevalence with the hard choices elites had during the transition to democracy.
Minority Government in Australia
Authors: Crowley Kate , Hughes Cath
Published: November 2022

In Australia’s two-party dominant Westminster system, federal minority government is rare, however this chapter argues that, as the two-party vote declines, there will be more frequent incidences. It explains minority government in the Australian political context, where single-party federal majority government has been the norm. Crucially, the major parties expect to win elections and govern alone, and, at the federal level, have offered only policy tradeoffs rather than cabinet posts to their supporters. In Australia, the formation of a minority government is affirmed by testing the will of the house with a parliamentary vote, and by the endorsement of the Crown, represented by the Governor General. The minority government is sustained by independents, and at times by minor parties, backing all budget (supply) bills, and by not partaking in votes of no confidence sufficient to bring it down. This chapter reviews the experience of the 2010–13 Labor minority government, the most substantive federal minority government to date. It never lost a vote, ran full term, and was a reformist government, and Australia’s most legislatively successful federal government; but it failed to be re-elected and its supporters largely suffered in its aftermath. Nevertheless, the lessons offered in this chapter are that, while Australian federal minority government is rare, it can form, govern, and deliver, and may in future include power sharing despite its Westminster context.
Conclusion
Authors: Watroba Karolina
Published: November 2022

The Conclusion revisits the methodological discussion in the Introduction and recaps the ‘closer reading’ of The Magic Mountain as a work of ‘world literature’ performed in this study. It argues that it is the connections between life and literature, provisionally and contingently established in each individual meeting between a reader and a text, that constitute culture. These connections must be the central object of study for literary scholarship, which can and should attend more seriously to the question of its own value—in practice, not just in theory. An evocative anecdote about Thomas Mann, Konstantin Fedin, and an anonymous Russian steamship machinist is recounted to illustrate this thesis.
Michels and German Social Democracy
Authors: Bonnell Andrew G.
Published: November 2022

This chapter provides the most complete reconstruction to date of Robert Michels’ involvement with the German Social Democratic Party. It is this practical experience of a modern democratic mass party which is often seen as having informed Michels’ analysis in Political Parties. The chapter shows how Michels’ involvement in writing for the Social Democratic Party press came into conflict with his academic ambitions to a degree he had not anticipated. Drawing on largely overlooked archival and newspaper sources, the chapter goes on to reconstruct Michels’ participation as an activist in the Social Democratic Party in the atypical environment of the small university town of Marburg, and demonstrates that Michels held a view of his political work that was primarily ethical in its focus. The conviction of his superior ethical qualities and his experience of party organization in a quiet area with little industrial working-class population arguably coloured his view of the party. The chapter goes on to trace Michels’ sympathies with the left of the Social Democratic Party, even while he continued to hope for a university position and wrote for non-socialist journals, and it traces his progressive disillusionment with the party and estrangement from it.
Internationalism, Patriotism, Nationalism
Authors: Bonnell Andrew G.
Published: November 2022

Robert Michels’ writings on the complex of issues around nationalism, patriotism, and internationalism have continued to attract scholarly interest. There was a strong situational element to Michels’ views on these topics. From his earliest writings, Michels demonstrated an allergy to the kind of nationalism that prevailed in Wilhelmine Germany. This allergy may have had a combination of sources—the aversion of his Francophile Rhineland family background to the Prussian-dominated empire, generational revolt against the repressive official culture of Wilhelmine Germany, and an aversion to German militarism fed by his own negative experiences of military service. On the other hand, Michels always evinced a warmer attitude to Italian nationalism, even when it took on more aggressive imperialist forms after 1910. For Michels, Italian nationalism, as represented by figures such as Mazzini and Garibaldi, was more democratic and fed by more positive national characteristics than its German counterpart. Even while Michels’ attitudes to nationalism, patriotism, and internationalism evolved as he moved away from an embrace of the concept of class struggle to a more elitist attitude, his strong aversion to German militarism remained a consistent feature of his writing.
The Legal Status and Limitations on Investor–State Arbitration in Africa
Authors: Dagbanja Dominic Npoanlari
Published: November 2022

Chapter 3 critically analyses how investment treaty arbitration affects the exercise of judicial authority of the courts in Africa. Investor–state arbitration permits foreign investors to bypass municipal courts and thereby make foreign investors less accountable to the host state through established state institutions. Yet, African constitutions studied vest original, appellate, and final jurisdiction over legal disputes to municipal courts. The chapter establishes that foreign investors do not have an automatic and direct right in customary international law to access international dispute resolution. In this regard, the chapter challenges the capacity of African states to agree to investment treaty arbitration in light of national constitutions and customary international law. The principles of constitutional governance, especially on accountability of governments through the judiciary, transparency, rule of law, and the need to put citizens first prohibit an automatic, absolute substantive and procedural preferential treatment to foreign investors. The chapter makes a case for African states to reconsider the role of domestic courts and state-state dispute settlement mechanisms for both investment and trade disputes that are consistent with constitutional governance, the rule of law and democracy.
The Environment, Human Rights, and the Investment Treaty Regime in Africa
Authors: Dagbanja Dominic Npoanlari
Published: November 2022

Chapter 4 focuses on human rights and environmental regulation of foreign investment. The environment and human rights are protected, in part, by the enactment or making and enforcement of environmental and human rights laws and policies. The African constitutions studied and the international human rights treaties and international environmental treaties to which African states are parties guarantee, recognise, and provide for the protection of fundamental human rights and the right to a healthy environment and impose corresponding obligations on African states to fulfil these rights. This chapter also analyses arbitral cases challenging environmental and human rights protection measures in order to assess how investment treaties restrict or might constrain the adoption of measures aimed at protecting the environment and human rights in Africa. It argues that African states’ duties to protect the environment and human rights emanate from national constitutions and international environmental and human rights treaties. Therefore, fundamental human rights and the right to a clean and safe environment and corresponding duties of African states place legal limitations on the standards of investment protection the states can undertake depending on their constraining effects on regulatory autonomy. It suggests that investment treaty terms must be made to be consistent with environmental and human rights obligations of African states.
Rather Reduce than Accommodate? Coping with Territorial Diversity in Multilevel Polities
Authors: Freudlsperger Christian
Published: November 2022

All multilevel polities have developed institutional strategies to cope with the challenge of territorial diversity. This chapter focuses on two such strategies: the accommodation of territorial diversity via policy opt-outs or its reduction by regulatory or redistributive means. In a comparison with Canada, Switzerland, and the United States, the chapter argues that federal states govern territorial diversity differently than the European Union. Federal states reduce diversity by a joint recourse to looser regulation and fiscal incentives. Solely in identity-sensitive areas deemed vital for the preservation of cultural diversity, federal states accommodate diversity. The EU, on the other hand, lacks the fiscal capacities necessary to reduce diversity by redistributive means. Consequently, it has to reduce and accommodate diversity by rigid regulation and an extensive recourse to sectoral opt-outs in areas of core state powers. Recent attempts to build a European investment state could thus point towards a novel stage in the EU’s systemic development, heralding a gradual shift from accommodating to reducing territorial diversity.
Governing by Judicial Fiat? Over-Constitutionalization and Its Constraints on EU Legislation
Authors: Schmidt Susanne K.
Published: November 2022

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been an important driver of the integration project, being able to rely on the Treaty’s policy aims, such as the four freedoms, citizenship, and competition law. These allow parallel venues of judicial and legislative policymaking, where the Court can establish important policy principles based on the Treaty, as for instance the Cassis judgment did for the single market. The implications for the legislative process have received too little attention by law and political science alike. Case law of the ECJ accumulates, constraining European secondary law in multiple ways. The chapter analyses the interaction of judicial and legislative policymaking on the basis of different case studies, constructing a typology to show the repercussions on EU policymaking.
Forging Identity-Based Constructive Constitutional Conflict in the European Union
Authors: Bobić Ana
Published: November 2022

EU’s economic governance is characterized by the tension in the relationship between member states’ preservation of national budgetary autonomy embedded in the no-bailout clause and the prohibition of monetary financing, on the one hand, and the need to manage a shared currency area through a common and independent central bank, on the other. Accordingly, the aim of this contribution is to present the ways in which this tension materializes itself in constitutional conflict between national constitutional courts and the Court of Justice in the monetary field. The analysis will be based on the premise that, taking into account the EU’s constitutional set-up, constitutional conflict is a regular occurrence: not a bug, but a feature of the system’s functioning. In that sense, this contribution will look at the ways in which identity-based constitutional conflict between the EU and the national level can contribute to and improve legal accountability of the ECB in the monetary field.
Goodbye New Orleans
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter assesses how Margaret Walker left New Orleans in August 1932. All she could think about now was going to the place that would make her a writer. In later talks and remembrances about her time in Chicago, she routinely referred to it as “the place where I found my voice.” Walker then attended Northwestern University with her sister. She had begun school during the campaign for the presidential election of 1932. The New Deal politics that Franklin Delano Roosevelt promoted was her introduction to American political culture. Witnessing this shift of power at the national level and getting an introduction to the nature of political participation was one of the advantages of living in one of America’s major Northern cities. Without knowing it, Walker was getting her orientation to the work she would later do in Jackson, Mississippi, at the local and state level. The political activity that accompanied her arrival to Chicago also made Walker aware of the larger world.
Brave New World
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter talks about Margaret Walker’s decision to stay in Chicago. Perhaps because she had come to know the South through her symbolic imagination as a child and through the imaginary world her grandmother created for her, Walker came to understand the Black experience in two ways: both tragic and romantic, a sacred spirituality and a secular humanism, filled with anguish and exultation. Or perhaps because she was seldom witness to the severe degradation that so often described life in the South, she could more easily transmute those feelings. In any case, coming to Northwestern University as a child and leaving as a young poet opened up new possibilities. She began to think of herself as a “struggling artist.” Not for an instant did she regret her decision to stay in Chicago, even when she found it impossible to get work. She found a dynamic Black culture, with Negro artists, writers, actors, painters, dancers, sculptors, and musicians who, like her, were young and filled with a sense of limitless possibilities, talking endlessly about a future of fame and fortune.
Dear Dick
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter discusses Margaret Walker’s relationship with Richard Wright. What is remarkable about this period is the way she revealed—mainly in the letters to Wright—her taste and judgment on virtually everything. Her attention to detail in reporting to Wright suggests an intense relationship where language was supremely important. The passionate banter and mutual criticism made them allies in creating each other’s work, and their participation in a movement focusing on the relationship between race and society made them comrades who wanted and needed to find a common space in which to share and learn together. Their social and emotional experiences, on the other hand, caused them to react quite differently to the political and ideological landscape they encountered. The instant attraction to each other’s intellectual and creative gifts could easily have concealed an elaborate masquerade that both carried on while avoiding getting drawn into a sexual relationship. Wright’s conflicted sexual attitudes toward Black women, which presented themselves very early, and Walker’s dormant and repressed sexual impulses were easily transmuted during the year they spent together and the two additional years in which they corresponded.
Time Is a Mighty Healer
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter details how Margaret Walker’s existence within a group of New Negroes whose early achievements defied the norm for Black America brought with it a heightened sense of duty that often wrestled with feelings of desire. Walker had pushed open a space for an education of a new type, and her expanding political awareness brought a distinct set of abilities. None of this changed fundamentally who she was. The public Margaret Walker could live in a world of political action and exhibit a radical identity; she was a professional poet and a credit to her race. The private Margaret Walker never diverted from her introspective moods, the tendency toward self-analysis and reflection. She had mastered the art of interiority, relying upon herself alone to know what to do and who to become. The voice that she had found while living in Chicago affirmed her existence as a poet, and she could not let that go. As part of Walker’s routine practice of using poetry as personal reflection, one can see the same group of unpublished Chicago poems as both looking forward and back at her life.
October Journey
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter focuses on Margaret Walker’s NCAC tour. On October 15, 1943, Walker left New York for Fort Valley State College by Pullman. She did not want to forget what it felt like and she recorded her perceptions. It was the beginning exercises of a volume of poetry that would not appear until 1973 as October Journey, but the descriptions would also ready her for Jubilee, whose principal settings are Georgia and Alabama. The contrast between what was and what could have been, were it not for systems of oppression, makes clear that Walker’s sense of historical timing was always on point. Her first stop at Fort Valley State College was a reminder of how intentional those oppressive practices were as Southern states put in place a rigid two-tier educational system. Blacks nonetheless could take full advantage of them, especially in the 1940s as they became concentrated and exclusive sites for the social and intellectual development of that new generation who would envision a new world through some of the most sweeping social changes in twentieth-century America.
Every Child Is a Book I Didn’t Write
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter addresses how, by midsummer 1945, Margaret Walker’s life was moving forward rapidly. She had become widely known as a poet, completed a whirlwind tour of ten states, embarked upon a lifelong career as a teacher, fallen in love, given birth to her first child, and weathered several personal storms. The Margaret Walker who emerged from this period was radically different from the one who had lived in the world of possibilities. “Growing Out of Shadow,” an essay invited by the editor of Common Ground, was the first publication that indicated a major shift in Walker’s thinking and publishing activity. Its appearance in 1943, written in an autobiographical voice, offers a useful summary of life as she had known it. “Growing Out of Shadow” gave her ownership of the self she had learned to articulate, and an alternative view of the life of an artist coming-of-age in the Black South and urban North. In “How I Wrote Jubilee,” another autobiographical essay that appeared in 1972, she gave an updated account of her literary journey.
The Walls of My Prison House
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter describes how, even though she made her public and private declarations of renewal each January, Margaret Walker’s growing dependency on her husband Alex, the creative lull, and endless domestic responsibilities combined into emotions that not only overburdened her but also aggravated whatever ailment she had, even if it was a simple cold. Post-partum depression accounted for some of her mood swings, for which she received ineffective treatment, but she refused to ask her parents for help, not wanting to admit failure. The physical compatibility and love that she and Alex felt drew them closer, but too often she concluded that “this dulls my creative and religious impulses otherwise but my love will not let me leave.” The result was that they fought often and in different ways. On one occasion, Alex’s abuse was so severe that she considered taking out a warrant for his arrest, but she could not face the options: leave right away or lose face. Walker’s routine of self-therapy steeled her during these years. Even if she exaggerated in those moments of acute distress, equating her marriage with slavery, for example, she took marriage and motherhood as a given rather than an option.
Politics and Possibilities
Authors: Graham Maryemma
Published: November 2022

This chapter focuses on Margaret Walker’s more direct engagement with politics, about which she always had a lot to say in her journals. The more she watched the unfolding of Ronald Reagan’s political agenda, the more strongly she felt a sense of imminent danger for the country and for its people. Her first opportunity to express her sentiments publicly came at a rally in support of Lesley McLemore’s US Senate bid. She was not only one of the people: she was the people’s voice in a new way. She easily adopted the homespun style that Mississippians had grown accustomed to. Walker’s ability to connect with people had earned her success in another way: election as a delegate-at-large for the Democratic National Convention in 1984. She rarely let go of her identity as a New Deal Democrat.
Introduction
Authors: Kosterich Allie
Published: November 2022

This chapter introduces the book’s central argument: the profession of journalism has undergone institutional augmentation, an alternative to the process of institutional change that results in neither the displacement of an existing institution nor the failure of the new one. Instead, an existing institution (e.g., traditional journalists) is augmented to allow for the coexistence of a qualitatively and quantitatively distinct, supplementary institution (e.g., news nerds). To whit, news organizations increasingly integrate news nerds into the newsroom and the relevance and legitimacy of news nerds is pervasive throughout the industry; however, news nerds are not fully diffused such that they work in every newsroom, nor have they displaced traditional journalists. In other words, not every traditional journalist is a news nerd; instead, journalism has augmented to allow for the space and coexistence of news nerds. The process of institutional augmentation has profound implications for news organizations, journalism, and society at large.
When I’m 54
Authors: Truesdale Beth C. , Berkman Lisa F. , Mitukiewicz Alexandra
Published: November 2022

Abstract: Those who are not employed during their 50s – and who may not be candidates for working into their 60s – are frequently invisible in the working longer discussion. In this chapter, we bring these individuals back into the conversation by examining who is and is not working in their 50s, the stability of individuals’ employment in their 50s, and their likelihood of working into their 60s. We find that those who lack stable employment during their 50s are disproportionately non-white, women, and those without college degrees. While disadvantaged groups start from a lower base of employment around age 50, working longer appears to be a challenge across the board: employment rates fall by about 20 percentage points for all groups between ages 50 and 60. We also find that continuous employment during one’s 50s appears to be a critical foundation for working longer, but about half of Americans do not have continuous employment during their 50s. Policies that improve the quality and consistency of employment in late middle age may increase rates of working longer.
The Geography of Retirement
Authors: Coile Courtney C.
Published: November 2022

Abstract: As Americans work longer in response to a changing retirement landscape, it is important to ask whether there are groups being left out of this trend. Geography is a natural lens through which to examine this question, given regional disparities in the employment of prime-age individuals. In this chapter, we explore the geography of retirement. We find large differences across U.S. commuting zones in employment rates at older ages, with a gap of about 20 percentage points between areas at the 90th and 10th percentiles of employment. Low-employment areas are systematically different, with a less educated and more diverse population, more low-wage jobs and import competition from China, poorer health outcomes and health care access, lower government spending, and more income inequality. Although these correlations are not necessarily causal, these factors collectively can explain about four-fifths of the geographic variation in employment at older ages.
Working Longer in an Age of Rising Economic Inequality
Authors: Burtless Gary
Published: November 2022

Abstract: In the past four decades, rising earnings inequality has substantially widened income disparities among working-age families. This chapter investigates the relationship between rising inequality during Americans’ prime working years and the simultaneous trend toward longer work lives. I find that both trends have increased inequality in the population past age 65. Higher earned income inequality before 65 pushes up inequality after 65, because high-wage workers accumulate greater wealth and more pension credits than workers who earn less. Moreover, the trend toward later retirement is more pervasive among high-wage than among low-wage workers, a pattern that tends to boost the relative incomes of the high-income elderly. Despite the factors driving up old-age inequality, income disparities in old age have increased notably less than disparities in the working-age U.S. population. This is primarily the result of much stronger government social protection for Americans past age 65 compared with the population under 65.
The Biased Politics of “Working Longer”
Authors: Hacker Jacob S. , Pierson Paul
Published: November 2022

Abstract: Why has there been such a limited response to the strains facing older Americans? The answer can be found in America’s “organized political economy,” the interaction of organized political actors and the distinctive structure of U.S. political institutions. This interaction has created three biases that have reduced responsiveness to older voters’ policy concerns, despite these voters’ centrality to the electoral coalition of the Republican Party: (1) a bias toward economic elites hostile to social spending and taxation; (2) a bias toward legislative gridlock caused by the “asymmetric polarization” of the parties, as Republicans have become a much more conservative force; and (3) a bias toward racial and cultural appeals, rather than ones addressing economic risks, as the GOP’s main means of gaining and holding power in a diversifying society. These three biases have pulled both parties toward the concerns and attitudes of the affluent. Their most profound effects, however, have been on the Republican Party. All three of these biases have encouraged Republicans to pursue hard-right positions unpopular even among their own base, hamstringing collective efforts to address the challenges facing older Americans.
What Is the Way Forward?
Authors: Berkman Lisa F. , Truesdale Beth C. , Mitukiewicz Alexandra
Published: November 2022

Abstract: While aging populations are inevitable in most countries around the world, policy responses to these aging populations are a matter of choice. Our central argument is that policies affecting work – those that shape labor markets for workers of all ages – must be considered in tandem with policies affecting retirement. Rising inequalities make it much harder to respond effectively to population aging. For U.S. policy design, large gaps in economic and social conditions – gaps defined by socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender, family configuration, geography, and more – mean that one size will not fit all when it comes to work and retirement. We offer five main conclusions. (1) Working longer is an important but incomplete response to population aging. (2) High and rising social and economic inequalities put working longer in jeopardy for many Americans. (3) Robust retirement and disability policies are essential complements to working-longer policies. (4) Working-longer policies must be supported by “good jobs” policies to succeed. (5) Responses to population aging must take into account the needs of today’s middle-aged Americans, who are the retirees of the future, as well as today’s older Americans. In this closing chapter, we propose an array of policies to improve the well-being of older Americans as they work and retire.
Why Does Public Space Matter?
Authors: Low Setha
Published: November 2022

Chapter 1. Why Does Public Space Matter? is an introduction to the concepts of flourishing, social contact, public culture, and affective atmosphere. Six domains—social justice, health, play and recreation, informal economy, cultural identity, and ecological sustainability—structure the presentation of ethnographic evidence. The social dislocation and emotional loss caused by closing public spaces during COVID-19 and the significance of city streets for Black Lives Matter protests reveal the centrality of public space in everyday life. Public spaces enable people to encounter those they would not normally come across and transform “others” into individuals who are recognized and engaged in social interaction and political activities. Public culture develops as strangers watch and converse acquiring new ways of being. A park atmosphere of mutual affinity for a place creates opportunities for social encounters and promotes an “indifference to difference” that encourages an openness to others. Together these processes create the context for human flourishing.
Playing in the Fields of Lake Welch, New York
Authors: Low Setha
Published: November 2022

Chapter 5. Playing in the Fields of Lake Welch focuses on the role of public space in children’s play, youth team building, and creative development. The ethnography of Lake Welch reflects how a natural environment encourages children’s exploration and adventure while simultaneously providing relaxation and retreat for the entire family. It highlights the importance of cultural context in the socialization of children and offers a place where the family can be together outside of their small apartments and the busy streets of New York City. Play for children and “re-creation” are essential aspects of psychological flourishing that this green public space encourages. The informal settlement of Dandora in Nairobi, Kenya, demonstrates how recovering public spaces contributes not only to the creativity of children, but to the local community as a site of inspiration for what urban life for children, youth, and families should and can be.
Living for Pleasure
Authors: Austin Emily A.
Published: November 2022

Pleasure feels amazing! Anxiety, however, does not. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Epicurus rolled these two strikingly intuitive claims into a simple formula for happiness and well-being—pursue pleasure without causing yourself anxiety. But wait, is that even possible? Can humans achieve lasting pleasure without suffering anxiety about failure and loss? Epicurus thinks we can, at least once we learn to pursue pleasure of the right kinds in the right ways. Living for Pleasure offers a lively, jargon-free account of how Epicureanism can help us make and keep good friends, prepare for suffering, combat imposter syndrome, build trust, recognize personal limitations, value truth, develop healthy attitudes towards money and success, manage political anxiety, cultivate gratitude, savor food, and face death.
Maybe We’re Doing It Wrong
Authors: Austin Emily A.
Published: November 2022

This introductory chapter motivates the Epicurean view that living well is living for pleasure. Uncharitable critics have long misrepresented Epicurus as advocating the indiscriminate, wanton pursuit of bodily pleasure. In the spirit of charity, some defenders of Epicurus have overcorrected, transforming Epicurus instead into a kind of abstemious killjoy, a hedonist in name only. The truth lies somewhere in between. Epicurus thinks life offers a rich array of joyful pleasures, but fully appreciating those pleasures requires first achieving the greatest pleasure—tranquility, a stable state resulting from the absence of psychological pain and anxiety. If the best pleasure depends on freedom from anxiety, though, it seems we are often very, very bad at being pleased. This book explores what Epicurus thinks most contributes to our anxiety and unhappiness, both theoretically and practically, and how we can change our beliefs, desires, and physical circumstances to put the greatest pleasure within reach.
Living Unnoticed: The Tyranny of the “Like”
Authors: Austin Emily A.
Published: November 2022

This chapter explores the relevance of the Epicurean advice to “live unnoticed” to current discussions about the psychological and political effects of social media. Epicurus thinks anything that facilitates meaningful friendships and social trust without increasing anxiety conduces to tranquility, our natural good. Some people on social media are tranquil; many are not. Epicurus, of course, could not have anticipated the internet at all, much less the many ways we have devised to turn it against ourselves, but here his enigmatic advice to “live unnoticed” has perhaps its greatest contemporary resonance. Epicurus thinks we increase our anxiety when we pander or seek approval indiscriminately and from strangers. In addition, social media can sap the joy from our pleasant experiences by encouraging us to flatten and frame them for the edification and admiration of others. The chapter entertains a mitigated defence of some uses of social media as a practical necessity or as a mechanism of political change.
The Public/Private Sector Mix in Healthcare Delivery
Authors: 9780197571118  , Palley Howard A.
Published: November 2022

This volume examines the public/private sector mix in a number of national healthcare systems and their interface with the goals of health equity and quality of healthcare. Moreover, there is a consideration of public accountability. The unique significance of this collection of national studies involving the public/private sector mix of healthcare services and/or finances is that it provides insights into the factors that enhance the public/private sector mix in fulfilling the goals of health equity and the quality of healthcare services as well as an understanding of the circumstances in which elements of the public/private sector mix may be harmful for the achievement of such goals in a variety of national settings. The contributions to this volume provide a variety of perspectives for dealing with these objectives.
The Public/Private Sector Mix in the Italian Healthcare System
Authors: Toth Federico
Published: November 2022

This chapter focuses on the Italian healthcare system. Special attention is paid to the mix of public and private (at the level of both financing and service provision) and the consequences in terms of the equity and quality of healthcare. The concept of health equity is analyzed with respect to four dimensions: (1) equity in financing; (2) equity in resource allocation; (3) equity in access to healthcare; and (4) equity in healthcare utilization. The aim of the chapter is to evaluate the extent to which the Italian National Health Service succeeds in guaranteeing the equity and quality of healthcare in actual practice.
Critical Philosophy of Race
Authors: Bernasconi Robert
Published: November 2022

The fifteen essays collected here set out to demonstrate why the critical philosophy of race needs to take a historical turn. Genealogies of the concepts of both race and racism are deployed to clarify why some of the dominant strategies for combatting racism tend either to miss the target altogether or give it only a glancing blow. For example, relying on biology to reject the concept of race as a way of disarming racism misses the fact that racism precedes the biology of race. It also ignores the prevalence of forms of racism, such as cultural racism, that do not take their starting point in biology. Drawing on the work of Frantz Fanon, the late Sartre, and Michel Foucault, Robert Bernasconi argues for a holistic approach that integrates the concrete experience of racism faced by individuals into the study of institutional, structural, and systemic racism. Studying the interventions of such Black philosophers as Ottobah Cugoano, Anténor Firmin, and W. E. B. Du Bois shows the value of allowing them to set the terms of the debate, instead of trying to fit them into debates shaped by other areas of philosophy. If race is indeed a social construct, then it is necessary to uncover the different forces, material as well as intellectual, that at different times shaped the various forms the concept of race has taken and the value then placed on preserving racial purity. Critical philosophy of race has a role to play in rendering both the material and psychological effects of slavery and segregation more intelligible as forms of systemic racism. When critical philosophers of race ignore the history of racism, they are in danger of being complicit with that part of society that seeks to erase that history.
Crossed Lines in the Racialization Process
Authors: Bernasconi Robert
Published: November 2022

Race is often discussed as though it were tied to a rigid racial essentialism, but, for long periods of time, race has functioned predominantly as a border concept. That is to say, it has served as a dynamic fluid concept whose core lies not at the center but at its edges—hence the focus throughout much of modern racial thinking on policing the boundaries between the races where racial mixing has occurred. The focus falls especially on the legal, scientific, and philosophical discussions of racial classification in the United States, ranging from the definitions found in laws passed in Colonial Virginia at the turn of the eighteenth century through Virginia’s 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity. Consideration is also given to the way in which the United States imposed its own rigid systems of classifications on Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.
A Haitian in Paris
Authors: Bernasconi Robert
Published: November 2022

While embracing a Comtean positivism of progress, the Haitian philosopher Anténor Firmin in The Equality of the Human Races (1885) took on the establishment of French anthropology, including Paul Broca, Paul Topinard, and Armand de Quatrefages. He explored the impact of Charles Darwin on the discussion of the human races, particularly through a critical examination of one of his French representatives, Clémence Royer. He also attacked the new orthodoxy of polygenesis. Although some of his own views strike us as strange, such as his conviction that the shapes of faces indicated stages on the path of the progress of civilization, by exposing the prejudices of many of the leading scientists of his day, his work challenges those scholars who seek to defend them as “children of their time.”
Frantz Fanon and Psychopathology
Authors: Bernasconi Robert
Published: November 2022

The core of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks lies not in the famous fifth chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” but in the sixth chapter, “The Negro and Psychopathology.” Fanon there does much more than clarify his critique of certain tendencies within psychoanalysis. In accord with what he called the book’s “progressive infrastructure,” he advanced the argument far beyond what he had arrived at earlier in the book. So, for example, he significantly modified some of the criticisms of Sartre that he had introduced in the fifth chapter, while recognizing that some of those criticisms would stand against him if he continued to maintain them. Furthermore, he clarified what Fanon called “the solution” to the Black’s alienation.