bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Structural-Level Approaches for HIV Prevention and Care in US Prisons
Authors: Fullilove R. E
Published: December 2018

Given the vast potential to intervene in prison settings, this chapter provides the background and a corresponding case study as to how structural-level approaches might be used to prevent HIV acquisition/transmission in prison settings. A peer-based model that empowers inmates to be the change agents is described. The chapter offers a compelling case that peer education programs created, managed, and administered by incarcerated persons have significant and often unrecognized potential. It begins with an overview of HIV in US prisons, followed by a description of peer education programs and HIV prevention and World AIDS Day in Prison using three correctional facilities as examples. Implications and conclusions close out the chapter.
Language Creates a New Reality
Authors: Froerer Adam S. , Walker Cecil R. , Kim Johnny S. , Connie Elliott E. , von Cziffra-Bergs Jacqui
Published: December 2018

This chapter discusses current theory of change of SFBT and will look at how using SFBT questions that elicit coping, resources, and a description of a preferred future starts creating a new reality for clients that have experienced trauma. It discusses the theoretical framework for how SFBT works and its compatibility with other postmodern approaches and social constructivism. The tenets of introducing positive emotion after a trauma situation and expanding the trauma experience with positive emotion will also be discussed. Neurobiology and neuroplasticity are discussed in connection with the notion that the more one discusses the details of the positive emotion, coping, resilience, strength, and pride, the more one will build/reinforce neural pathways of a different and more hopeful reality.
Vicarious Resilience
Authors: Froerer Adam S. , von Cziffra-Bergs Jacqui , Kim Johnny S. , Connie Elliott E.
Published: December 2018

This chapter serves as the conclusion for the book. A summary of the book and its contents is included and general themes are highlighted. The unique contributions of SFBT with clients who have experienced trauma are discussed. In addition, the benefits (for both the client and the clinician) of this kind of work is discussed. A review of the literature related to resilience and vicarious resilience is included and integrated with the assumptions of the SFBT framework. The editors each share how SFBT has shaped their clinical work and teachings. This chapter serves as a hopeful conclusion to this book.
Homeless Risk Among Post-9/11 Era Veterans
Authors: Metraux Stephen , Smith R. Tyson
Published: December 2018

Media and advocacy outlets have expressed alarm about homelessness among post-9/11–era Veterans, with little systematic research available to evaluate these claims and to offer an empirically based profile of the nature and extent of homelessness. In this chapter, the authors draw on research, media, and advocacy accounts to identify the factors that are particular to homelessness among this most recent cohort of Veterans, with a particular focus on defining military-based factors of this era and broader systemic forces that were formative to Veterans’ experiences after returning to civilian life. These factors, the authors argue, interact to create a set of circumstances that do not appear to currently create substantially elevated rates of homelessness among post-9/11 Veterans but that potentially warrant policy attention and interventions in specific areas, as well as further monitoring of homelessness risk over the cohort’s collective life course.
Homeless Veterans and Use of Information Technology
Authors: McInnes D. Keith , Cutrona Sarah L.
Published: December 2018

Persons experiencing homelessness, including homeless Veterans, increasingly use cell phones, computers, and other digital devices. In this chapter, the authors discuss use of technology by homeless Veterans, exploring ways that technology can facilitate access to information on resources including housing, job opportunities, health care, and personal health management. Also addressed is the role of technology in supporting development and maintenance of social networks and social capital for these marginalized Veterans. There have been several research reports specifically on homeless Veterans’ access to and use of information technologies. One study found that 89% of homeless Veteran survey participants had a cell phone. Like housed cell phone users, homeless Veterans use cell phones to stay in touch with family and friends and to complete specific tasks and transactions. Special challenges exist regarding technology use among homeless Veterans, including loss and theft of phones, keeping phones charged, and affording the service costs. The discussion in this chapter is informed by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which states that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness affect attitudes toward use, intention to use, and ultimately, actual use in light of contextual, external variables. External variables for homeless Veterans include tenuous living arrangements, significant financial challenges, military culture, diverse experiences during military service, and complex medical and mental health conditions. The chapter concludes by looking at advances in technology that may be beneficial for homeless Veterans and also the challenges, related to technology, that are likely to continue for this population.
Conspiracy Theories and Philosophy
Authors: Dentith M R. X.
Published: December 2018

There has been a recent spate of academic work concerning these things called conspiracy theories. Part of that debate concerns the apparent irrationality of belief in conspiracy theories. I argue that what is missing in the literature is a fulsome analysis of how we define what counts as a conspiracy theory. It turns out that many of our working definitions of conspiracy theory are at odds with one another. The consequence of this definitional diversity is unfortunate for the academic project at large, as—as I will demonstrate—not all definitions of conspiracy theory turn out to be equal. Looking at a broadly representative set of contemporary academic work on conspiracy theories, I argue that we scholars of conspiracy theory often skew the results of our research programs by working with problematic definitions. This can be demonstrated by showing how often the problems associated with belief in conspiracy theories are the result of scholars working with—wittingly or unwittingly—definitions of what counts as a conspiracy theory that presuppose their irrationality. As such, much work on belief in conspiracy theories begs the question. However, there is an easy solution to this endemic problem: we can choose to work with a simple, non-pejorative definition—one which happens to be championed in philosophy—which, in turn, allows us to get to the heart of the question of whether belief in conspiracy theories is, in some sense, problematic.
Conspiracy Theories and Religion
Authors: Robertson David G. , Dyrendal Asbjørn
Published: December 2018

Religious ‘beliefs’ are more often situational than propositional. Reading reported conspiracy beliefs the same way deepens our understanding of their function and appeal. Ideas shared by both religion and conspiracy theories—including the paranormal, esotericism, millennialism, and prophecy—are varieties of the rejected knowledge of the “cultic milieu.” The distrust of epistemic and institutional authority in these fields leads to a profusion of syncretic “grand explanatory narratives,” which make meaning and explain away the apparently anomalous or morally perplexing. A religious studies perspective not only clarifies the social function of such ideas, but also offers tools for understanding the people who believe in conspiracy theories in a more human and productive light.
Punishment and Citizenship
Authors: Tripkovic Milena
Published: December 2018

The book develops a normative theory of criminal disenfranchisement and determines which offenders may justifiably lose electoral rights after criminal conviction. Having examined the historical development of the practice and contemporary electoral restrictions—which reveal that disenfranchisement is still widespread in European democracies—the book goes on to explore the nature of this sanction and its normative foundations. Diverging from common understanding, the book proposes that criminal disenfranchisement is not a form of punishment, but a citizenship sanction that aims to reduce membership entitlements of disenfranchised criminals and deplete their citizenship status. To determine whether criminal disenfranchisement can be justified, it is necessary to understand the substance of membership in a polity and the requirements that a citizen ought to satisfy to enjoy a full range of rights attached to this status. To account for possible differences in citizenship requirements between diverse types of polities, the book develops three ideal-typical models, which are loosely tied to the liberal, republican, and communitarian forms of political organization. The book contends that, regardless of internal differences, only one kind of criminal offender fails to satisfy citizenship requirements in all three types of polity and may thus incur electoral restrictions—a person who has seriously and irreversibly severed citizenship ties with her polity owing to an incorrigible lack of moral conscience. The book concludes by specifying additional conditions that ought to be satisfied before restrictions can be enacted, but also suggests reasons for which polities may abstain from imposing them.
Contemporary Dimensions of Criminal Disenfranchisement
Authors: Tripkovic Milena
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines European disenfranchisement policies, aiming to uncover their characteristics and use them as models for the normative discussion. It considers the legislation in 43 European countries along four dimensions: the prevalence of restrictions; dominant notions of “disenfranchise-able” offender; extent of restrictions; and timing, length, and manner of imposition of restrictions. The analysis uncovers a great deal of diversity across Europe: while the rights of many criminal offenders remain intact, most countries nevertheless believe that some instances of criminal offending warrant restrictions. The chapter finds that three-quarters of European countries impose some restrictions, one-third disenfranchise all prisoners, one-half restrict both active and passive electoral rights, one-third employ post-penal disenfranchisement, while one-quarter permit a permanent ban. Comparing these data to the US states—which are often considered incomparably strict—the chapter suggests that the difference is only in the degree of restrictions and not in the kind of existing policies.
The Nature of Criminal Disenfranchisement
Authors: Tripkovic Milena
Published: December 2018

This chapter sets up the frame for the subsequent normative analysis by seeking to establish the nature of criminal disenfranchisement. Departing from the common notion that criminal disenfranchisement is a form of punishment, the chapter first contrasts the traits of these two sanctions. A significant discrepancy between them is uncovered, which is based on the finding that disenfranchisement may never be considered a principal or sufficient response to crime, that it stands against the principle of ultima ratio, and that it fundamentally targets the offender rather than the offense. Moving away from punishment, the chapter next establishes that, due to its non-penal aims, disenfranchisement is more akin to security measures but nevertheless lacks the preventive, “risk-based” element that characterizes these sanctions. Ultimately, the chapter proposes that criminal disenfranchisement is a sui generis sanction that—rather than pursuing penal goals—targets the equal citizenship of criminal offenders.
What Does It Mean to Live on the Poverty Threshold? Lessons From Reference Budgets
Authors: Goedemé Tim , Penne Tess , Hufkens Tine , Karakitsios Alexandros , Bernát Anikó , Franziskus Anne , Simonovits Bori , Álvarez Elena Carillo , Kanavitsa Eleni , Cussó Parcerisas Irene , Romaní Jordi Riera , Mäkinen Lauri , Matsaganis Manos , Arlotti Marco , Kopasz Marianna , Szivós Péter , Ritakallio Veli-Matti , Kazepov Yuri , Van den Bosch Karel , Storms Bérénice
Published: December 2018

This chapter makes use of the first effort to construct cross-country comparable reference budgets in Europe to show what the large cross-national differences in living standards imply in practice for the adequacy of incomes at the level of the at-risk-of-poverty threshold. The budgets show that, in the poorest EU Member States, even adequate food and housing are barely affordable at the level of the threshold, whereas a decent living standard is much more in reach for those living on the threshold in the richer EU Member States. The reference budgets also suggest that the poverty risk of some groups (for instance, children) is underestimated relative to that of other age groups, while the poverty risk of homeowners is probably relatively overestimated.
A Pan-European Perspective on Low-Income Dynamics in the European Union
Authors: Goedemé Tim , Trindade Lorena Zardo , Vandenbroucke Frank
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines trends at the lower tail of the EU-wide distribution of disposable household incomes. Using EU-SILC data from 2008 to 2014, it compares income levels across countries, after accounting for average price differences, focusing on levels and trends of the EU-wide low-income proportion and the EU-wide low-income gap. The analysis reveals that living standards in the new EU Member States have improved in comparison with the EU-wide median, while living standards in the crisis-hit Southern European countries have deteriorated. This indicates an important change in the composition of the bottom of the pan-European income distribution. It is also observed that no country succeeded in reducing the EU-wide low-income proportion while also reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate. The results emphasize the need of a dual perspective on solidarity, a national and a pan-European, and the importance of reflecting further on the need of mutual insurance and true solidarity across borders.
The End of Cheap Talk About Poverty Reduction
Authors: Collado Diego , Cantillon Bea , Van den Bosch Karel , Goedemé Tim , Vandelannoote Dieter
Published: December 2018

Available evidence suggests that social investment and employment strategies are important but not sufficient for poverty reduction. Thus, European Union countries must not only develop effective employment policies but also ensure adequate social protection. This would require increasing social transfers for working and nonworking households, while protecting work incentives. In this chapter, we show that this is not an inexpensive option. We calculate the hypothetical cost of closing the poverty gap while maintaining the existing average labor-market participation incentives at the bottom of the income distribution. We do so in three types of welfare regimes, namely those of Belgium, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Results show that this would require around two times the budget needed just to lift all disposable household incomes to the poverty threshold. The cost would obviously be lower in countries with smaller poverty gaps and with weaker participation incentives.
A Proper Blending
Authors: Light Paul C.
Published: December 2018

Chapter 4 begins with a review of presidential proposals for reblending the government-industrial complex. The chapter starts with brief comparisons of presidential campaign promises and reform. This section argues that recent presidents have focused on “one-sided” reforms designed to show their commitment to smaller government. However, this opening discussion also argues that Obama was the first president since Eisenhower to understand the government-industrial complex and call for reform on both sides of the complex. Chapter 4 then introduces a sorting system for reblending the federal, contract, and contract workforces to guarantee that the right people are in the right positions at the best value with the highest performance and greatest accountability. Chapter 4 outlines a six-step iterative process for blending that starts with (1) resolving ambiguities, (2) taking social responsibility, (3) tracking the movement of functions between government and industry, (4) sorting functions, (5) resetting the cap, and (6) reinforcing the dividing line between government and industry.
Iliad, Part 1
Authors: Gregory Justina
Published: December 2018

The Iliad concerns not only heroic war but also heroic education. This chapter begins by considering the poem’s treatment of the relationship between natural aptitudes and acquired skills and discusses the lengthy scene of instruction (Iliad 23) in which Nestor coaches his son Antilochus on winning a chariot race. It describes the normative heroic curriculum, which includes training in public speaking, warfare, and the value system underpinning warrior culture: fathers repeatedly drive home to their sons the importance of enhancing familial glory and avoiding the shame that is associated with cowardice on the battlefield. The chapter also considers the motives underlying parental tenderness, including the project of inculcating habitus (Pierre Bourdieu’s term), and analyzes Iliadic instances of instruction via injunctions (hupothēkai), general reflections (gnōmai), and exemplary tales (paradeigmata).
Iliad, Part 2
Authors: Gregory Justina
Published: December 2018

While restricting its main narrative to the tenth year of the siege of Troy, the Iliad broadens its temporal horizon by alluding to themes more at home either earlier or later in the war. Similarly, Achilles is portrayed simultaneously as a youthful hero and as an experienced warrior. Achilles’ childhood instructors included both Cheiron the centaur, whose role is downplayed in the poem, and his father’s retainer Phoenix, who serves to normalize the hero’s educational experience. In the course of the Iliad Achilles progresses from a naive, impetuous hero who experiences a crisis of disillusionment with a value system that has let him down, to a withdrawn warrior who rethinks the assumptions that governed his education, to a mature figure who experiences a crisis of empathy for King Priam of Troy, and who becomes an instructional figure in his turn as he offers his aged adversary consolation and advice.
Philoctetes
Authors: Gregory Justina
Published: December 2018

Although Neoptolemus’ trajectory in Philoctetes is often described as a rite of passage, this chapter argues that it is better understood in terms of a different topos, the Biou Hairesis, or Choice of Life. Having received a conventional heroic upbringing, Neoptolemus comes under the influence of two additional instructors, Odysseus and Philoctetes. Odysseus urges the young man to join him in duping and victimizing Philoctetes, while Philoctetes appeals to the noble nature Neoptolemus presumably inherited from his father Achilles. At first repelled but then persuaded by Odysseus’ sophistic argumentation, Neoptolemus ultimately defies the older man and refuses him his cooperation. While empathy for Philoctetes plays a role in his change of mind, his decisive concern is for his own reputation. The end of the play, however, raises the disquieting possibility that Neoptolemus has not made a lasting ethical choice.
Finally, Diplomacy Backed by Force July–August 1995
Authors: Scheffer David
Published: December 2018

In July 1995 genocide in Srebrenica led to efforts to forge a new peace plan. The Principals received a “Bosnia Endgame Strategy” paper, which proposed shoring up UNPROFOR, pushing for a political settlement with Slobodan Milošević, supporting Bosnia’s survival if UNPROFOR withdrew, providing additional support to the Bosniaks, and offering sanctions relief to induce Milošević to stay out of Bosnia. Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger initiated strategizing that Madeleine Albright used to “examine how to shift from a European-led plan to an American-led plan.” Albright proposed using air power to compel the Bosnian Serbs to negotiate a peace settlement and training Federation forces. Bill Clinton endorsed this. The Croatian Army successfully regained their lands in Croatia. Discussions in the Situation Room focused on creation of a post-settlement Peace Implementation Force. Another bombing of the Markale market in Sarajevo unleashed NATO air power, and Milošević began to negotiate seriously.
Forging Peace September–December 1995
Authors: Scheffer David
Published: December 2018

The final months of the search for peace in Bosnia and Croatia left everyone scrambling to reach the next stage of diplomatic and military engagement. Richard Holbrooke reported no progress. The Principals approved continued NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets. Planning proceeded for the NATO-led force that would be inserted into Bosnia following a peace agreement. The Deputies bickered over plans for the Bosniaks. The Principals and Deputies strategized how to roll out peace talks, and consultations in Europe prepared the groundwork for the upcoming Dayton peace talks. Kofi Annan consulted in Washington about the U.N. role. Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke clashed over sanctions relief for Serbia. Holbrooke’s memorandum to Warren Christopher illuminated the turbulence in the Dayton talks near their conclusion. Holbrooke concluded that Slobodan Milošević had carried the day in Dayton and that Alija Izetbegović had been the most unreasonable, and, concludes the author, for understandable reasons.
Gravity
Authors: Cooper Albright Ann
Published: December 2018

This chapter weaves an in-depth discussion of the physical function of releasing our bodies into the support of gravity with an analysis of how that experience can serve as an important stability in our daily lives. It begins by reviewing the crucial distinction between collapsing and yielding in order to demonstrate how the same force that draws us to the ground can also sponsor our action in the world, helping us find a sense of resistance and agency. In addition, gravity can provide a useful counterbalance to the ubiquitous presence of two-dimensional screens in our lives. By allowing us to experience weight, gravity is key to our sense of grounding, linking inhalation with exhalation, sky to earth, as well as the sympathetic and parasympathetic aspects of our autonomic nervous system.
Connection
Authors: Cooper Albright Ann
Published: December 2018

This chapter investigates the question of reciprocity in touching and being touched and takes up current debates about the effects of media use on interpersonal relationships and empathy, especially in teenagers. How do we connect with another person? What physical practices help us live in a historical moment in which regional, ethnic, religious, racial, and bodily differences have (once again) become intensely politicized? The chapter explores these questions and posits that interpersonal experiences such as Authentic Movement and the practice of witnessing are forms of a corporeal generosity that can change the terms of our social economy. Hope is a physical commitment. Our being-together in the world is a living, breathing practice that must remain grounded in our flesh and bones, even as it is increasingly conducted across virtual communities.
Introduction
Authors: Félix Adrián
Published: December 2018

The opening chapter of Specters of Belonging introduces the theoretical framework informing the ethnography presented throughout the book—namely, the thickening of transnational citizenship and diasporic dialects across the arch of the migrant political life cycle. Just as the US and Mexican states have thickened their borders, escalating the racialized policing of migrants, so too have migrants thickened their transnational claims of political belonging. These specters of belonging are best captured by the concept of diasporic dialectics—the process by which migrants are in constant political struggle with the state and its institutions of citizenship on both sides of the border. Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody these diasporic dialectics in the face of imperial citizenship in the United States and clientelistic citizenship in Mexico, facing the ever-present danger of domestication. Thus, the introduction raises the political potentialities and pitfalls of diasporic dialectics as migrants negotiate transnationalism in life and death.
Embodiments of Transnational Citizenship
Authors: Félix Adrián
Published: December 2018

Chapter 4 turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México. Far from being a strictly private transnational practice, migrants’ desire for a posthumous return and burial in their homelands is collectively expressed in the memories, music, and everyday exchanges of the Mexican diaspora. Drawing on a transnational ethnography of migrant mourning between Los Angeles, California, and Zacatecas, México, this chapter documents how the Mexican state has institutionalized this practice at the transnational, national, state, and municipal levels of governance. Next, the chapter discusses the role of migrant family and social networks in these repatriations. As an intimate ethnography, the chapter also critically reflects on my accompaniment of Mexican migrants as they navigate transnationalism in life and death.
The Role of Religion in Liberal Democratic Politics
Authors: Hertzberg Benjamin R.
Published: December 2018

This chapter introduces the book’s main claims by analyzing three examples where religion inspired political controversy in recent US politics: Amina Wadud’s decision to lead a mixed-gender Friday prayer in New York City in 2005, the protests outside an Islamic Circle of North America fundraiser in Yorba Linda, California in 2011, and Mormons Building Bridges’ inaugural march in the Salt Lake City Pride Parade in 2012. Public discussions of these cases exemplify the dominant approaches American citizens use to evaluate religion’s roles in democratic politics. The chapter contrasts these approaches with the alternative defended in this book: a way-of-life conception of democracy. The way of life-conception implies a framework for evaluating religion in politics that is democratic, liberal, and pluralistic. Approaching religion in politics with this conception avoids prominent concerns about evaluating religion: that extant perspectives flatten and deform religious phenomena.
Assessing the Consequences of Religious Inclusion
Authors: Hertzberg Benjamin R.
Published: December 2018

Many fear including religion in democratic politics because they think religious-political participation is likely to undermine public policies they value, from sexual freedoms to science education. This chapter uses a form of instrumental justification of democracy—John Dewey’s informational approach—in order to develop criteria that can determine when religious inclusion is likely to undermine crucial democratic purposes and when it will enhance them. These criteria include religion’s likely effect on the cognitive and identity diversity of the public sphere, and the public sphere’s openness and fallibility. They require analysis of the role that religious institutions play in the public sphere, demanding that citizens consider when and under what conditions religious activism publicizes relevant political information, and when it acts to prevent democratic institutions from gathering the information required to make good policy.
Hearing and Being Heard
Authors: Cunningham David S.
Published: December 2018

This introduction addresses the question of how the language of vocation and calling, with its historically Christian roots, might be redeployed in the increasingly multi-faith environment of higher education today. Colleges and universities have become more diverse, including with respect to the religious life of their students; however, these institutions have not always found ways of addressing this diversity in ways that avoid privileging the faith traditions from which particular institutional practices arise. Vocation can avoid this fate if its contours can be reshaped for the contemporary academic context. The authors seek to contribute to this outcome by examining a wide range of themes relating to vocation, working from their own particular faith tradition or lifestance. The introduction concludes with a description of the 13 chapters that are spread across the four parts of the book.
The Change a Difference Makes
Authors: Mikva Rachel S.
Published: December 2018

This chapter offers a detailed description of the many ways that college students encounter difference, demonstrating how this tends to shape their understanding of their future directions in life. The author emphasizes the communal and reciprocal aspects of reflection and discernment on our callings, drawing especially on Jewish traditions in sacred texts and in modern thought. The chapter includes a description of the author’s own encounter with difference, which made for a significant change in her own vocational journey. This chapter introduces the term lifestance, which is used here (and by a number of contributors of other chapters in the same volume) to account for a wide range of perspectives, without necessarily assuming that these will always be connected with “religion.”
Called by Our Conflicting Allegiances
Authors: Silverman Noah J.
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines our allegiances to a variety of communities (including those devoted to differing faith traditions), exploring how tensions and conflicts among these allegiances are narrated. How are such conflicts resolved, and how is vocational judgment affected by these encounters? The author suggests that we should not seek to dissolve the tensions too quickly, since our allegiances typically spring from genuine commitments to communities that we hold dear. Nevertheless, a commitment to interfaith work may offer new insights, encouraging us to tell the stories of our lives and our vocational reflections in ways that acknowledge not only these various commitments but also the potential tensions among them. The chapter includes a detailed engagement with Peter Berger’s The Heretical Imperative and with texts from the Jewish tradition; it also draws on the author’s own experience of religious difference in Israel/Palestine and the interfaith work that grew from that encounter.
Attentiveness and Humor
Authors: Ziad Homayra
Published: December 2018

This chapter focuses on two important practices that are essential to the work of shaping the stories of a human life: the cultivation of attentiveness and of humor. College students who are committed to a particular religious tradition face not only the usual distractions and demands that all undergraduates face, but also cultural, social, and institutional pressures to “perform” their beliefs in a certain way. If students are to narrate their own lives in ways that make space for these complexities, they will need to engage in certain kinds of spiritual practices that will help them re-center themselves and tell their stories in their own voices. Drawing on the Sufi tradition, the author suggests that by cultivating the practice of attentiveness, and by maintaining a lightness of perspective and a dose of humor, students may be able to navigate their undergraduate years more successfully.
Engineering Eden in Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India”
Authors: Yandell Kay
Published: December 2018

Walt Whitman wrote odes to Morse’s telegraph that present it as a cultural “monument” speaking its nation’s mythic history in the making. His telegraph poems imagine the electromagnetic telegraph to perform a spiritual purpose: for Whitman, the disembodied nature of telegraphy’s virtual realm allows settlers’ voices, and the nation’s mythic origin stories that those voices carry, to spread across, and eventually to soak into, newly colonized American lands. In so doing, telegraphy births a new and specifically American sort of electric oral tradition, which Whitman poetically links to the power of this land’s previous Native American oral traditions to construct spiritual connections to American earth and environments. His poems imagine for American settlers a new type of indigeneity through telegraphy.
Conclusion
Authors: Yandell Kay
Published: December 2018

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the emblem of the telegraph-railroad system alongside other new technologies to present, then dispute, his era’s common vision of American history as destined to create social progress. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne invokes technotopias of manifest destiny in order to dispute their claims of moral, intellectual, or social progress and to insist that unless we decide otherwise, human use of technology provides only new means to unimproved ends. Hawthorne’s avowedly romantic telegraph, rather than enacting a progress narrative, works cyclically, to return Americans to the moral burdens of having stolen land from its previous inhabitants, and to demand that they redress that wrong.
The New World in Salvation History
Authors: Matovina Timothy
Published: December 2018

Readers of Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María, which contained the first published account of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s acclaimed apparitions to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego, rarely recognize that he was trained in the theology of the church fathers, particularly in the writings of Saint Augustine. Interpretations of Sánchez have ranged from positivist condemnations for his lack of historical documentation to laudatory praise for his defense of pious tradition to emphases on his criollo patriotism as expressed through his adulation of Guadalupe and the baroque culture of New Spain. This chapter assesses Sánchez’s work as well as the origins and formative phase of Guadalupan devotion over the century preceding his publication. It illuminates the influence of patristic thought and theological method on Sánchez, as well as the frequently ignored but foundational role of his theology and that of the church fathers on the Guadalupe tradition.
The Age of Motion
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

The introduction provides a historical motivation for undertaking an ontology of motion. The major historical events of global migration, the digital image, and quantum physics are part of a larger shift taking place toward the increasing importance of motion at the turn of the twenty-first century. The exceptions to the rules of the previous static paradigms have now themselves become the rules in a whole new kinetic paradigm. We have entered a new historical era, defined in large part by the primacy of movement and mobility, and are now in need of a new ontology appropriate to our time.
Sensation
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

This chapter puts forward a kinetic theory of sensation. Sensation occurs at the period where a flow folds back over itself and touches itself. It is the ambiguous kinetic structure of the period itself—the double or split affect of periodicity. Sensation is the kinetic difference between sensibility and the sensed. The two are identical in the period of sensation (the sensed) but differentiated in the continuous movement of the flow across its cycle (sensibility). Sensation is the kinetic differentiation internal to existence that makes possible self-affection or self-sensation. In short, sensation is the sense of the sensed as the kinetic identity of the kinetically different.
Circulation
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

This chapter argues that being flows and folds, but is also distributed by a field. Flows join into stable folds, and folds are conjoined into things, but things are also arranged or ordered together through a field of circulation. This is the third concept in the theory of motion. A field is a single continuous flow that has a kinetic vector for each period on its surface. If flows intersect and folds periodically cycle, fields organize them all in a continuous feedback loop. This chapter provides a kinetic theory of how conjoined flows become organized according to distinct regimes or fields of motion.
Prehistoric Mythology
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

The dominant description of being as space coincides roughly with the historical period called the Neolithic. This ontological description was articulated not in written language or an alphabet, which would not be invented for several thousand more years, but through another language altogether—one of images. This chapter argues that there are three interrelated sign groups that rise to mythological dominance across almost all European Neolithic groups: the Venus, the egg, and the spiral. These graphic signs are not like the others—dogs, goats, combs, tools, lunar images, and so on—but have a privileged status not just in the sheer number of their creation and geographical ubiquity across Neolithic Europe during this time, but also in the primacy of their ontogenetic function to explain how being comes to be what it is.
Ancient Cosmology I
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

In this chapter (and the next three) we look at how the kinetic description or logos of eternity emerged historically as the dominant name for being. The thesis of these four chapters is to show that the dominant ancient ontological description of being implicitly and explicitly relies on a description of centrifugal motion. The argument of this chapter is that the dominant determination of being as eternity coincided roughly with the historical period of ancient cosmologies found in the writings of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Semitic peoples, and the Greeks beginning around 5000 bce and lasting to around 500 ce, although traces of it certainly began earlier in some areas and lingered later in others.
Ancient Cosmology IV
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

This chapter argues that after the preceding account of the early Greek philosophers, it is now possible to appreciate the truly incredible but hardly original cosmological synthesis of centrifugal motion and spherology achieved by Plato (with the help of Socrates, who was the contemporary of many early Greek philosophers) and Aristotle. This chapter shows the cosmology of the sphere at work in Plato and Aristotle. In Plato’s work, the single clearest exposition of the kinetics of eternity occurs in his dialogue The Timaeus. Similar accounts are given throughout Plato’s work, but since the focus of The Timaeus is on cosmology, it provides the most robust account.
The Book I
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

This chapter argues that medieval and early modern ontological descriptions made use of a new material technology of inscription with the same tensional regime: the book. Without assuming any direct causation, the following two chapters show a clear similarity of kinetic structure in both theological description and its technology of inscription during this time. The new kind of kinography that rose to dominance in the West around the fourth and fifth centuries was called “bibliography”. The rise of bibliography, or book writing, functioned according to two major kinographic operations: the binding of the book, and the comprehension (or kinetic tension between author and the reader) of the book. Between the fifth and eighteenth centuries, two major book technologies were used in theological descriptions: the manuscript codex, from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, and the printed codex, from the fifteenth up to the eighteenth century.
Modern Phenomenology III
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

This chapter argues that after Marx’s analysis of capitalist temporality, Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) introduced an even more radical elasticity into transcendental temporality in the form of an “absolute flow of time.” This move set him apart from both Hume and Kant. Hume had to explicitly presuppose the continuous passing of time, but he could not defend this thesis on the basis of our experience of successive moments. Husserl’s remarkable innovation therefore was to multiply and stretch the temporal field itself such that any given temporal field can become a subcirculation or conjunction within an even larger field. This is possible, as we will see, because the flow of time is absolutely elastic.
Conclusion
Authors: Nail Thomas
Published: December 2018

Being and Motion puts forth a new conceptual and ontological framework of analysis that begins with the primacy of motion. Indeed, the early twenty-first century has already shown itself to be an age defined increasingly by motion—by migration and global mobility, by kinetic theories of quantum fields, and by the mobility of the digital image. This short conclusion highlights the main theses put forward by this book and reviews what we have gained from them, their limitations, and what directions they have opened for future research. The conclusion looks at the five main theses of the book, the consequences of these theses, the limitations of the book as a whole, and the areas of future research.
Introduction
Authors: Verhaegh Sander
Published: December 2018

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a “naturalistic” approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. This chapter sketches the history of naturalism, distinguishes between different types of naturalism, and shows that contemporary naturalists in the analytic tradition typically view Quine as the intellectual father of their position. Furthermore, this chapter introduces Quine’s naturalism and examines the status of contemporary Quine scholarship, arguing that although many excellent papers have been written about Quine’s philosophy, little work has been devoted to reconstructing Quine’s naturalism and/or its historical development. The chapter ends with an overview of the structure of the book.
Naturalizing Epistemology
Authors: Verhaegh Sander
Published: December 2018

Quine’s naturalism admits of both a positive and a negative characterization. Positively, naturalism can be defined as the view that reality is to be identified and described within science. Negatively, Quine defines naturalism as the rejection of first philosophy. This chapter offers a reconstruction of Quine’s argument against first philosophy, an argument which is routinely perceived as an argument from despair. According to this standard conception, Quine rejects first philosophy because all attempts to reconstruct our scientific theories in terms of sense experience have failed. This chapter shows that this picture is inaccurate and that Quine’s argument against first philosophy is considerably stronger and subtler than this received view suggests. For Quine, the first philosopher’s quest for transcendental foundations is useless; there is no science-independent perspective from which to validate science.
Naturalizing Metaphysics
Authors: Verhaegh Sander
Published: December 2018

Quine’s negative characterization of naturalism as the rejection of first philosophy invites the question of why he believes that first philosophy ought to be dismissed. This chapter discusses Quine’s position vis-à-vis traditional metaphysics. It concludes that Quine’s views on metaphysics are subtler than is often presupposed; both the received view that Quine saved metaphysics and the opposite view that Carnap and Quine are on the same antimetaphysical team are too one-sided if we take seriously Quine’s own pronouncements on the issue. The chapter offers a detailed reconstruction of Quine’s naturalistic perspective on metaphysical existence claims and shows how he is able to both blur the boundary between scientific sense and metaphysical nonsense and to argue that we cannot ask what reality is really like in a distinctively philosophical way.
Sign and Object
Authors: Verhaegh Sander
Published: December 2018

Although Quine was always a science-minded philosopher, he did not adopt a fully naturalistic perspective until the mid-1950s. This chapter examines the evolution of Quine’s epistemology and metaphysics in the first twenty years of his career. Whereas Quine’s published work in the 1930s and 1940s was primarily technical, the Quine archives reveal that he was already working on a philosophical book during the Second World War, a project entitled Sign and Object. This chapter argues that Sign and Object sheds new light on the evolution of Quine’s ideas. Not only does Quine’s book project show that his views were already fairly naturalistic in the early 1940s, Sign and Object also unearths the steps Quine had to take in maturing his perspective.
Globalizing the Underground
Authors: Appert Catherine M.
Published: December 2018

This chapter outlines the early history of Rap Galsen (Senegalese hip hop), showing the emergence of two originating schools: internationally circulating groups like Positive Black Soul (PBS), Daara J, and Pee Froiss, and hardcore groups like Rap’Adio, Waa BMG 44, and Yatfu. It problematizes the ghetto, the street, and the underground as globally circulating hip hop myths, and argues for local specificity when linking hip hop to urban marginalization. In Dakar, the street and the ghetto represent a particular experience of urbanity tied up in colonization and underdevelopment, and the hip hop underground defines itself not only through lyrical and linguistic content, but through musical aesthetics. Ultimately, this chapter highlights the extent to which Rap Galsen’s own origin story has been produced and finessed over decades to better align with globally circulating hip hop myths.
Be Careful What You Ask For
Authors: Corn Geoffrey S.
Published: December 2018

Aleppo, Syria—a city that will join the infamous likes of Nanking, Stalingrad, Manila, Berlin, Hue, Panama City, Mogadishu, Grozny, and Donetsk as one of modern history’s worst urban war zones. Much of the destruction in this city is the result of indirect fires and air-delivered munitions. Indeed, this is the case in Aleppo; the now-infamous “barrel bomb” has become synonymous with indiscriminate Syrian government attacks against rebel-held areas of the city. In response to the humanitarian dangers associated with the use of such weapons in urban and built-up areas, there is a growing trend among international humanitarian law advocates to severely restrict—or even ban outright—the use of fires, high-explosive munitions, and associated weapons systems in built-up civilian population centers. These humanitarian initiatives reveal that for proponents of such restraint, the “problem” of high explosives in populated areas, whether delivered by indirect fire systems or air assets, is critical. The core premise of this chapter is that new restrictions on urban fires may actually exacerbate civilian risk and that fires in support of urban operations are not only operationally essential, but may, when properly employed, actually reduce risk to civilians and civilian property. Accordingly, civilian risk mitigation efforts should continue to focus on enhancing commitment to and compliance with already existing attack precautions and law of armed conflict (LOAC) targeting obligations.