bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Subtle Art of Not Pointing the Finger
Authors: Feitsma Joram , Schillemans Thomas
Published: July 2024

In crisis times, political leaders face not only agonizing policy choices in uncertain circumstances but also delicate accountability issues and blame games. This chapter highlights the rather sophisticated nature of this blame-management work in the context of COVID-19. It disentangles the Dutch crisis-management discourse based on a qualitative analysis of government press conferences. It specifically zooms in on the interaction between journalists and officeholders in situations where the question of blame is made manifest. It identifies a picture of Dutch blame discourse that is more complex than current studies have revealed. Instead of overt blame-shifting to experts, local government bodies, companies, or citizens, the chapter uncovers two subtler discursive strategies: (1) emphasizing the inevitable uncertainties and risks behind policy decisions made and (2) questioning the appropriateness of playing blame games. Both strategies underscore the important role of ambiguity in how blame is managed in hard times.
Confront or Concede?
Authors: de Ruiter Minou , Kuipers Sanneke
Published: July 2024

Blame-avoidance studies in majoritarian settings demonstrate patterned behaviour—the so-called ‘staged retreat’ coined by Christopher Hood et al.—by politicians consecutively denying severity, responsibility, and punishment in relation to a blameworthy event. The staged retreat implies that executives will gradually accept more responsibility and consequences only if defensive options fail. This chapter scrutinizes the universality of these observations and argues that institutional settings—majoritarian and consociational systems—influence what blame-avoidance behaviour is expected and accepted. An elite interview study using qualitative vignettes in the Netherlands (consociational) and New South Wales (majoritarian) reveals that key actors in these systems have different behavioural expectations and implicit norms in relation to the same blameworthy events. This comparative study finds that the staged retreat only dominates in the majoritarian setting, with formal and informal institutional factors influencing the leeway for executives in majoritarian and consociational systems to dodge, reallocate, or attribute blame.
Varieties of European Blame Games
Authors: Heinkelmann-Wild Tim , Rittberger Berthold , Zangl Bernhard , Kriegmair Lisa
Published: July 2024

Blame games have become a regular feature of European Union (EU) politics. While a fast-growing literature studies political actors’ blame-avoidance and blame-generation strategies in the EU, we still know little about which blame attributions ultimately ‘stick’ in the European public. This chapter shifts the perspective to those blame attributions—and the resulting blame games—that resonate in the public and thereby affect who is held accountable for EU policy failures. It distinguishes three types of European blame games which are characterized by their distinct blame targets and concomitant blame narratives: scapegoat games, where supra-national EU institutions are the main target of public blame attribution; renegade games, where individual EU member states are the predominant target; and diffusion games, where no specific actor emerges as a dominant target. The authors illustrate their typology by analysing public blame attributions reported on in the coverage of EU policy failures in the European quality press.
Blame, Shame, and Regional Organization
Authors: Whitehead Laurence
Published: July 2024

Blaming and shaming are fundamental emotionally charged instruments of social control that can be observed at all levels of collective behaviour. Such techniques are deeply embedded in interpersonal and small-group interactions, and these micro-foundations provide the underpinning to political applications on a larger scale. This upscaling extends to national and even supra-national levels of interaction, and applies to collective actors and agencies as well as to individual political leaders. This chapter directs attention to the rapid diffusion of provisions intended to regulate inter-state regional conduct in large world areas at the turn of the millennium. It traces both the rapid spread of these club-like provisions and their subsequent erosion. Such practices can only flourish under highly restrictive conditions, but they can sometimes gain traction, and do therefore fall within the compass of shaming studies.
Blame, Public Consultations, and the Impact of Gender
Authors: Kevins Anthony , Vis Barbara
Published: July 2024

Can public consultations reduce the blame attributed to elected representatives whose decisions end up backfiring? Using two pre-registered survey experiments fielded in the US, this chapter examines whether blame attribution and generation may be shaped by: (1) consultation characteristics, especially regarding whether or not representatives align their policies, either actively or passively, with constituent opinion; and (2) elected representative and constituent characteristics, especially regarding a representative’s gender and constituents’ gender attitudes. The results suggest that public consultations are indeed liable to decrease blame, just so long as constituent opinion is not explicitly opposed to the representative’s decision. Active alignment with constituent opinion, however, does not appear to be a requirement for decreased blame—and effects related to gender are also largely absent. These findings are important for scholars seeking to better understand blame attribution and generation, clarifying how public consultations might help politicians to pre-empt blame by reducing clarity of responsibility.
Introduction
Authors: Shah Sultan Nazrin
Published: July 2024

The Introduction describes how the waves of economic globalization—the driver of Perak’s long-term rise, relative decline, and its subsequent regeneration—began to influence the outcomes of the state when global trade networks deepened in the first half of the 19th century. Three advances propelled the first wave of globalization, greatly benefiting the rise of tin-rich Perak. First, a steam-enginetransport revolution. Second, the British-led industrial revolution spawned burgeoning demand for raw materials and colonial expansion into territories distant from Britain with major trading ports or with rich natural resource endowments. Third, the move to free trade. Between World Wars I and II, global trade volume fell and the world ‘de-globalized’. The wars made shipping risky and sharply increased costs. Industrialized economies embarked on tariff increases and the Great Depression encouraged trade protectionism globally. After World War II, countries began to reduce tariffs and international trade started to revive in a globalization second wave. The exponential growth of containerization made shipping cheaper and more predictable. The seamless sharing of knowledge and ideas across borders enabled by the Internet allowed firms to shift manufacturing to countries with lower labour and tax costs. Although globalization raised GDP worldwide, it led to the ‘Great Divergence’ between industrialized economies and the rest: the industrialized world took a larger share of global wealth than exporters of primary products. The benefits of globalization have also been unevenly distributed within national borders. Areas where economic activity has remained largely focused on the export of primary commodities have tended to lag.
Globalization and Perak’s Changing Fortunes
Authors: Shah Sultan Nazrin
Published: July 2024

Part 3A analyses the collapse of tin and rubber industries as well as the period of continued British economic dominance in post-independence Malaysia between 1957 and 1970. Perak’s tin industry, which had largely defined its economy, population, and social organization, steadily waned, and by the early 1990s had faded into insignificance. After independence, Perak faired less favourably than other Malaysian states, despite entering nationhood as one of the country’s wealthiest and most urbanized states. Its continued heavy reliance on exports of natural resources, and its exposure to swings in global demand and competing sources of supply of tin and rubber, saw it start to trail some of the peninsula’s other states, which benefited more from the globalization of manufacturing industry. A sequence of six International Tin Agreements to regulate supply and support tin prices dramatically unravelled in 1985, beset by collapsing tin prices and chaos on the international tin market. The once vibrant tin towns of Perak faltered as the fortunes of the mining industry retreated. Economically, some areas stagnated and others went into decline, shedding population through outward migration. Perak’s scattered townships just did not offer the scale, diversity, and connectivity needed to attract new industries. The fallout from the tin collapse was felt globally. In the UK, the surviving high-cost Cornish mines closed. In Perak, as elsewhere in Malaysia, tin-mining companies struggled to survive, and its tin towns were economically and socially devastated, causing widespread suffering with the loss of jobs and incomes among mine workers, their families, and their communities.
Organizing in the Digital Age: A Process View
Authors: Barrett Michael , Vaast Emma , Langley Ann , Tsoukas Haridimos
Published: July 2024

The rise of digital technologies in organizations and societies calls for greater process theorizing to illuminate the mutual relations between technologies and organizing. Recent technological breakthroughs such as those related to machine learning-based Artificial Intelligence as well as geopolitical upheavals and the covid-19 pandemic have led to profound transformations in the ways we connect, communicate, and work. Process theorizing can help make sense of such changes by situating them temporally and by questioning human and technological agency. This chapter provides guideposts for researchers interested in investigating how digital technologies and organizing have evolved by introducing key concepts associated with process theorizing and by posing critical questions related to the growing prevalence upon sophisticated technologies. It also introduces and establishes connections among the contributions of this volume. It finally articulates several aspects that deserve further examination related to the utopian and dystopian aspects of the future of work and the potentials and challenges of digital trace data for process researchers interested in such aspects.
Physics or Archaeology?
Authors: Jones Matthew
Published: July 2024

The proliferation of data associated with the growing digitalization of organizational processes, sometimes designated with the label ‘big data’, offers a potentially rich resource for research. Some management and organization scholars, drawing on claims of the emergence of a data-driven ‘computational social science’, view the new abundance of data, seen as capturing the fundamental elements of organizational processes directly from reality, as contributing to a transformation in our understanding of organizations and the methods by which we study them. The ‘social physics’ envisaged by August Comte in the 1830s, they suggest, can now become a reality. In this chapter, however, a process perspective on data is presented that questions the assumption that data transparently instrument reality. Rather, it is argued, data are always constructed and only ever offer a partial and ambiguous representation of the phenomena they are seen as describing. Archaeology, in which researchers reconstruct phenomena from fragmented evidence, often shaped by their presuppositions, may therefore offer a better model than physics of how the profusion of digital data may contribute to organizational research.
Blockchain and the Performativity of Emerging Technology Theories
Authors: Kleinaltenkamp Moritz J. , Ansari Shaz
Published: July 2024

‘Performativity’ describes the phenomenon of theories not only describing, but at times also producing social reality. Over recent years, the performativity of theories has become an increasingly prominent topic in management research. At the same time, technological developments have motivated new theories ascribing drastic organizational impacts to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. We argue that the performativity of emerging technology theories requires further scholarly attention, as it can be an important driver of organizational change. In this chapter, we synthesize existing literature in order to shed light on how emerging technology theories may become performative. We propose that their performativity is driven by a lack of distinction between technology feature use, affordances, and the respective organizational outcomes of these two categories, specifically theorizing how this lack of distinction may enact generic, effective, and Barnesian performativity. We close by discussing the implications of our insights for management research, practice, and public policy.
How Change Happens
Authors: Green Duncan
Published: July 2024

Society is full of would-be ‘change agents’—campaigners, government officials, enlightened business people, engaged intellectuals—set on improving public services, reforming laws and regulations, guaranteeing human rights, achieving a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, and greater recognition for any number of issues. It is striking, then, that not many universities have a Department of Change Studies, to which social activists can turn for advice and inspiration. Instead, scholarly discussions of change are fragmented, with few conversations crossing disciplinary boundaries, rarely making it onto the radars of those actively seeking change. This book aims to bridge the gap between academia and practice. Drawing on first-hand examples and numerous new case studies and interviews with grassroots activists and organizations around the world, as well as Oxfam’s unrivalled global experience and the author’s forty years as an activist, teacher, and scholar, this second edition of How Change Happens explores the ‘actors and factors’ that drive change. Its starting point is the importance of understanding complex systems and the nature of power and applying this to the institutions that activists seek to influence—social norms, states, politics, the international system, and transnational corporations. It examines the role of civil society organizations, digital activism, leadership, and advocacy in bringing about change, and how we—governments, organizations, businesses, leaders, campaigners, and ordinary citizens—can make a difference.
Systems Thinking Changes Everything
Authors: Green Duncan
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines the importance of systems thinking in navigating the complexities of the future. A ‘system’ here is defined as an interconnected set of elements coherently organized in a way that achieves something. A defining property of human systems is complexity: because of the sheer number of relationships and feedback loops among their many elements, they cannot be reduced to simple chains of cause and effect. The author summarizes a series of notable books that have applied systems thinking to economics, ecology, and the rise of China. In complex systems, change results from the interplay of many diverse and apparently unrelated factors and is often punctuated by sudden shifts such as economic crises or the Covid-19 pandemic that open up windows of opportunity for well-prepared activists. Thus, change agents need to identify which elements are important and understand how they interact. Working in complex systems requires an iterative, collaborative, and flexible approach, demonstrating humility and respect for different systems’ ability to generate their own solutions.
The Power of Advocacy
Authors: Green Duncan
Published: July 2024

This chapter looks at how advocacy works. ‘Advocacy’ here is defined as the process of influencing decision makers to change their policies and practices, attitudes, or behaviours. It typically targets the institutions described in this book, be they formal (states, courts, political parties, corporations, and international bodies) or informal (norms and public attitudes). The chapter analyses advocacy through the systems thinking framework. It argues that getting advocacy right requires political maturity, the right combination of tactics and allies, and making the most of the windows of opportunity provided by shocks and crises. More subtly, good advocacy requires a mindset that finds each different context fascinating, one that embraces ambiguity and complexity, empathizes with how different people see the world, learns from mistakes, and responds to changing events.
Conclusion
Authors: Green Duncan
Published: July 2024

This concluding chapter cautions that progressive change is not primarily about ‘us’ activists: it occurs when poor people and communities take power into their own hands; shifts in technology, prices, demography, and sheer accident can be far more important than the actions of would-be change agents. It argues that activists need humility despite their crucial roles in programmes of change. The chapter reiterates the ideal characteristics of activists on individual and organizational levels mentioned throughout this book, extolling the reader to work in ways that reflect an evolving understanding of power and systems. It is these characteristics that are vital to a successful campaign for change. Finally, the chapter (and the book) ends on an encouraging note by defining activism as a story of human development, as articulated by Amartya Sen’s definition, ‘the freedoms to be and to do’, a story that, despite the grim filter of the evening news, remains overwhelmingly positive.
Operationalising Party Status
Authors: Wentker Alexander
Published: July 2024

Chapter 5 explores key legal implications that flow from identifying collective entities as co-parties to multiparty armed conflicts under the framework developed in Chapters 3 and 4. To do this, it concentrates on one emblematic set of implications of party status specifically for the relationship between multiple co-parties. The central argument is that co-parties have multiple complementary sets of duties to take positive steps vis-à-vis the conduct of their fellow co-parties in an armed conflict. The resulting network of duties reflects the key role of parties to ensure that armed conflicts are carried out in accordance with the protective purposes of international humanitarian law (IHL). Accordingly, this account of the duties of co-parties is built into the established structure of this body of law. It aims to present a more refined conception of allocating obligations under IHL, which may contribute to addressing the protection challenges arising in cooperation settings.
Laws of Nature and Chances
Authors: Loewer Barry
Published: July 2024

Laws of Nature and Chances presents a novel account of the metaphysics of laws, chances, fundamental ontology, and the arena it occupies called “the Package Deal Account” (PDA). The PDA attempts to answer Stephen Hawking’s question “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Its answer builds on David Lewis’s Humean Best Systems Account (BSA) of laws and chances but rejects Lewis’s Humean ontology and instead lets the criteria that physicists employ for evaluating candidate theories of everything, together with reality, determine the universe’s fundamental ontology, space-time, and laws. The PDA takes seriously Quine’s claim that science “begins in the middle” and his epistemological holism and combines it with Lewis’s Humean idea that the role of laws is to systematize to produce a metaphysical account that advances the project of naturalizing metaphysics. It provides a novel metaphysics for the foundations of science. The book first discusses the history of the concept of laws of nature and current philosophical accounts of the metaphysics of laws and arguments for and against each. It then shows how the PDA overcomes objections to each with focus on Lewis’s Humean BSA and why, unlike Lewis’s Humean account and its non-Humean rivals, it can accommodate recent developments in physics, including proposals for theories of quantum gravity that reject the fundamentality of space-time.
The PDA and Chance
Authors: Loewer Barry
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses how chance and objective probabilities fit into the Package Deal Account. The PDA adopts and develops Lewis’s account of objective probabilities by separating it from its reliance on perfectly natural properties. On the PDA laws including chance laws are entailed by a scientifically optimal systematization of the motions of macroscopic objects and whatever other phenomena introduced in this systematization. It is shown how on this understanding objective probabilities are compatible with deterministic dynamical laws. The PDA accommodates probability’s two faces. One face looks at the objective world; and the other at the mind. Lewis’s “Principal Principle” connects the two faces. The PDA modifies this principle and shows how it is rationalized as a principle for how chance laws provide information about events.
The Scandal
Authors: Das Acevedo Deepa
Published: July 2024

This chapter provides a more detailed introduction to the Sabarimala temple and describes the event that precipitated the IYLA litigation and decision. First, the chapter discusses Sabarimala’s prohibition of women aged ten to fifty, the annual pilgrimage tradition with which the prohibition is strongly (but not exclusively) associated, and the temple’s presiding deity, Ayyappan. Second, the chapter describes the 2006 ‘Jayamala Scandal’, which concerned an actress who confessed to having visited Sabarimala in violation of the temple’s rules. News reports of her confession as well as of the investigation that followed inspired the writ petition that eventually produced the Supreme Court’s 2018 IYLA opinion.
Frequency Effects in Recognition and Recall
Authors: Popov Vencislav , Reder Lynne
Published: July 2024

Stimulus frequency, which is often evaluated using normative word frequency, is among the variables that have the most diverse and puzzling effects on memory. Word frequency can either facilitate or impair memory performance, depending on the study and testing conditions. Understanding why and under what conditions frequency has positive or negative effects on performance is crucial for understanding basic properties about the human memory system. As a result, the study of word frequency has led to the development of multiple memory models. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge concerning word frequency effects on item recognition, associative recognition, free recall, cued recall, serial recall, and source memory. It also discusses how word frequency interacts with manipulations concerning presentation rate, list composition, age of the participants, memory load, midazolam injections, response deadlines, and remember–know judgments. Four major classes of empirical findings are identified that can be further subdivided into a total of 21 key phenomena that any theory should account for. Based on these phenomena, the chapter identifies three high-level principles that characterize the diverse effects of frequency on memory: the probe dependency principle, the dual-process principle, and the resource demands principle.
Computational Models of Event Memory
Authors: Cox Gregory E. , Shiffrin Richard M.
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses key features of computational models of event memory, also called “episodic” memory. Models aim to capture the representations and processes that enable us to perform a variety of episodic memory tasks, including recognition and free, cued, and serial recall. The chapter reviews different ways in which models distinguish between the content and context of events; how different models represent event memories, including networks and vectors; and the types of processes that operate on memory representations to accomplish retrieval goals, including matching and search. Finally, the chapter discusses how modeling serves broader scientific goals and can help bridge levels of explanation between the cognitive processes involved in memory and their neural instantiation.
Memory Errors and Distortion
Authors: Schacter Daniel L. , Carpenter Alexis C. , Devitt Aleea L. , Thakral Preston P.
Published: July 2024

This chapter reviews research on memory errors conducted during the past two decades. It is organized around six major themes that have emerged from, or have been strengthened by, recent research: (a) Susceptibility to different kinds of memory distortions involves some common but largely distinct processes; (b) it is important to characterize subjective experiences associated with memory distortions; (c) sensory reactivation can distinguish between true and false memories under limited conditions; (d) memory specificity has multiple effects on memory distortion; (e) reactivation, recombination, and simulation processes can contribute to memory distortion; and (f) evidence is mounting in support of an adaptive perspective on memory distortion. It is argued that the study of memory errors has made significant advances during the past two decades and that these advances have contributed importantly to the understanding of memory as a fundamentally constructive process.
Memory in Frontotemporal Dementia
Authors: Keret Ophir , Lindbergh Cutter , Miller Bruce
Published: July 2024

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an umbrella term for several clinical syndromes resulting from neurodegeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes. These syndromes are hallmarked by progressive deterioration in behavior, language, and motor capabilities leading to severe functional impairment. Although memory impairment is traditionally associated with Alzheimer’s dementia, it is also present to varying degrees in the FTD clinical syndromes. This chapter provides a broad introduction to FTD and summarizes current literature on episodic memory, semantic memory, and working memory performance in the most prevalent FTD clinical syndromes: behavioral variant, semantic variant primary progressive aphasia, and nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia. Characterizing memory performance in FTD provides a unique opportunity to improve understanding of the human memory system and its underlying neuroanatomy. Limitations to the available literature base and future research directions are discussed.
Methodological Notes on the Study of Political Violence
Authors: Nsabimana Natacha
Published: July 2024

Focusing on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, this chapter makes two related arguments. First, it reiterates an earlier argument by scholars in African Studies for expanding the spatial units of analysis in ethnographic studies of political violence beyond the geography of nation-states to include regional dynamics as well as larger organizing logics such as racialization. Second, it proposes that, along with state ideology, we take seriously the memory—sometimes embodied—of prior victimization as an important locus for political mobilization.
Emerson, Energy, Infrastructure
Authors: Insko Jeffrey
Published: July 2024

Drawing upon insights from the Energy and Environmental Humanities and infrastructure studies, this essay situates Emerson’s thought and writings in relation to the transformations of the built environment and the Earth system over the course of his career. Emerson was a keen and enthusiastic—from our view perhaps too enthusiastic—observer of these transformations. For that reason, he may seem like the wrong figure to turn to in order to help us contend with impending ecological catastrophe. Emerson perceived promise, but not failure; fruition, but not ruin; expansion, but not exhaustion; abundance, but not violence. But the aim here is not to indict Emerson. Rather, the essay argues that however much his embrace of progress and national growth may look like smokescreens for ecological exploitation and imperial expansion, he can nevertheless help us understand the roots of our own fraught relation to the energic and infrastructural systems that have made us.
Ellen Tucker Emerson
Authors: Culkin Kate
Published: July 2024

Ellen Tucker Emerson, the eldest daughter of Lidian Jackson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, made critical contributions to her father’s working life as his secretary, housekeeper, caregiver, and editor. Intellectually curious, as a teenager Ellen balanced her education and family responsibilities after relieving her mother as housekeeper at Bush, the Emerson home, and as her responsibilities concerning her father expanded, she became crucial to his ability to function as an author and speaker. Ellen, as recent scholarship has shown, eventually collaborated with James Elliot Cabot in editing her father’s late work, and after her parents’ deaths she shaped the family legacy in multiple ways. This essay argues for the significance of Ellen’s contributions to her father’s working life and the family legacy and examines the reasons her role has remained in the shadows for over a century.
Emerson’s Unoriginality and the Commonplace Books of Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller
Authors: Baker Noelle A.
Published: July 2024

The commonplace books of Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller exposes the ways in which popular, conventional, and unoriginal genres shaped “the Newness”; they likewise invite a reconsideration of the ostensible exceptionality of Transcendentalist approaches to friendship, conversation, and “Verses of the Portfolio.” Fuller and Mary Emerson’s intertextual experimentations shaped Waldo Emerson’s development, heightened his awareness of the value of manuscript miscellanies, and inflected his curation of their own manuscripts. Because commonplace books’ thoroughgoing intertextuality subverts intentionalist models of textual authority in favor of social-text editorial practices, it also prompts fresh assessments of the Transcendentalist corpus, including Waldo’s late-style, collaboratively authored publications. Notably, the affordances of computational analysis can render these intricate references more legible. An example of such an intervention is “Intertextual References in the Almanacks of Mary Moody Emerson: Visualization for Close and Distant Reading,” an NEH-funded, open-access interface that clarifies complicated intertextual gestures and enriches their interpretation.
Emerson and Secularism
Authors: Murison Justine S.
Published: July 2024

Perry Miller argued that the two strands of seventeenth-century Calvinism—the rational strand urging social conformity and the ecstatic strand finding in nature evidences of God and Providence—secularized into Unitarianism and Transcendentalism. Edwards’s ecstasy flowed into Emerson’s “transparent eye-ball,” a mellowing of Calvinism to what would seem infidelity: that we can all be “part or particle of God.” This secularization narrative of “Edwards to Emerson” became, for a long time, the very terms by which the literary history of the United States was narrated. This essay positions Emerson as a participant in and influence on the development of basic tenets of the secularization thesis, the main narrative at the heart of secularism as an ideology of Western modernity. In examining how he articulates the dialectic between religion and the secular, there can be seen the emergence of American forms of “spirituality,” including a category of belief now termed “spiritual but not religious.”
From Iconoclast to Icon
Authors: O'Neill Bonnie Carr
Published: July 2024

How does Emerson, Transcendentalist iconoclast, become Emerson, public intellectual and cultural icon? After initially achieving renown for his nonconformist and unorthodox ideas, Emerson forged a more conventional path in the 1850s, lecturing on popular topics. At the same time, his turn to politically engaged speech responded to an audience that regarded him as the society’s designated intellect. Examining periodical profiles of Emerson as well as more recent critical scholarship, this essay considers Emerson’s dual status as both an iconoclastic dissenter from mainstream Protestantism and also the ideal of politically engaged, nonpartisan intellectualism. Insofar as Emerson embodies fidelity to truth above partisanship, he lives up to Edward Said’s maxim, “Never solidarity before criticism,” and fulfills the modern understanding of the public intellectual. Celebrity studies, moreover, provides a model for understanding the public element of Emerson’s intellectualism, the complex, often conflicting, and perhaps irreconcilable interpretations of the man and his significance.
Experimenting with Emerson
Authors: Rittenhouse Brad , Lee Maurice S.
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines Emerson’s prose publications using BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), a large language model that performs well in Natural Language Understanding tasks. Conventional “distant reading” typically represents a corpus through token frequencies. By contrast, BERT analyzes relationships between words at a granular and contextual level, thus approaching semantic understanding. In applying computational techniques to Emerson’s prose corpus, this chapter considers an array of questions: How do Emerson’s references to people, places, and organizations change over the course of his career? What does the clustering of Emerson’s references to other thinkers reveal about his understanding of intellectual history? How might his references to people and places relate to his views of the slavery crisis and non-Western nations? With an eye toward Emerson’s complex relationship to the rise of quantification in his own era, this chapter tests how well computational methods can illuminate Emerson’s work.
Emerson and the Wildness of Friendship
Authors: Cadava Eduardo
Published: July 2024

Taking its point of departure from Emerson’s 1841 essay “Friendship,” this essay explores Emerson’s insistence on the separation and distance on the basis of which all relation takes place. This is especially legible not only in the fact that the essay is written soon after the death of Emerson’s brother, Charles, but also in the way in which Emerson gradually dissociates the experience of friendship from the possibility of knowing the other. In his hands, friendship has nothing to do with communion or transparency, but rather with incommensurability, antagonism, and the “infinite remove” of the other. This is why friendship is always so surprising and unpredictable, and why it always entertains a relation to an uncertain and nonguaranteed future.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Transfigured
Authors: West Cornel
Published: July 2024

This afterward considers two assessments of Emerson’s career and its meaning offered at the 1903 centenary of Emerson’s birth: the first in a lecture given by William James, and the second an address by John Dewey. Pointing out that both of these public statements, which insisted upon Emerson’s abiding relevance to the justice struggles of the early twentieth century, “both ring true and ring hollow” in light of Emerson’s own limitations as proponent for reform and the potential to outfit Emerson’s works as forms of “weaponry” for social or economic change.
Emersonian Legacies of Black Resistance
Authors: Patterson Anita
Published: July 2024

This chapter explores how Emerson’s writings were foundational to philosophies of Black resistance developed by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Pauline Hopkins. Building on scholarship by Cornel West, Len Gougeon, Henry Louis Gates, Hazel Carby, and others, the chapter discusses how the creative inheritance of Emerson’s legacy presented by these authors challenges narrow conceptions of philosophy and favors a view of knowledge arising from actions directed toward the attainment of freedom, race and gender equality, and social justice. This shared engagement with Emerson sheds new light on possibilities for cross-racial dialogue, intertextual revision, and hidden conceptual commonalities that, taken together, subvert exclusionary boundaries of cultural inheritance.
Agent-Based Technologies for Research and Practical Use in Management
Authors: Leitner Stephan , Wall Friederike
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines the role of agent-based modelling and simulation in advancing theories and addressing operational and design issues within the realm of management science. We specifically explore the potential contributions of agent-based modelling and simulation to abductive and deductive reasoning. Through a theoretical lens, we argue that agent-based modelling and simulation is useful in exploring complex dynamics, and it thereby emerges as a potent tool for generating, refining, and selecting hypotheses. It facilitates a deeper understanding of the behaviours within complex adaptive systems—ranging from organizations to networks—thereby enabling the formulation of causally plausible explanations for observed phenomena. This capability is particularly crucial in environments where traditional analytical methods fall short due to inherent complexities. Furthermore, we discuss the role of agent-based modelling and simulation in operationalizing hypotheses for empirical testing, emphasizing its utility in translating theoretical concepts into testable models and identifying the boundary conditions under which these models hold true. In the context of operational and design issues, we argue that agent-based modelling and simulation supports the exploration of means–ends relations and the operationalization of design choices, thereby contributing to the development of innovative solutions and potentially better decision-making within organizations. Thereby, the method substantially contributes to bridging the gap between theory and practice within the field of management science, presenting it as an essential approach for navigating the complexities of contemporary management challenges.
Register, Genre, Text Type
Authors: Thomas Jenelle
Published: July 2024

This chapter investigates variation in French according to situations of use: register, genre, and text type. Through a comparative examination of the features of newspaper language, recipes, and scientific discourse, the chapter shows how the use of morphosyntactic, lexical, and discourse organizational features varies across and within genres in French. It begins with a definition of register, text type, genre, and associated concepts such as medium and domain, then goes on to describe the linguistic characteristics of each of the three genres. In the final section, the chapter compares representative features and addresses questions of diachronic stability, cross-linguistic similarities and differences, and the potential impact of language contact on genre-specific features.
Semantics and Pragmatics
Authors: Huyghe Richard , Legallois Dominique
Published: July 2024

This chapter presents some characteristic domains of semantics and pragmatics in French: spatial relations, quantification, verb tenses, and politeness. The first section focuses on how spatial relations are expressed, through the analysis of location and motion descriptions. The diversity of spatial prepositions and verbs is examined, as well as the typological peculiarity of French in the expression of motion events. The second section deals with the semantics of quantification through the study of determiners, modifiers, and lexical structures. The different ways of quantifying over objects or situations are described, in their interdependence with the syntactic, semantic, and morphological properties of the words used to denote quantified elements. The third section proposes a detailed account of the semantics of French verb tenses. A precise description is given of the conditions of use of the synthetic and analytic forms in the indicative. The last section deals with tutoiement and vouvoiement, as an illustration of a pragmatic issue related to politeness in French. It explains the circumstances in which one speaker will address another using the pronoun tu or vous.
Early Modern French Language and Literature
Authors: Siouffi Gilles
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines the language of French literary texts in the Early Modern period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). It explores the cultural background against which the literary production of this period took place, especially the evolution of literacy. It shows how literary texts made use of the different varieties (diatopic, diaphasic, diastratic) of the French language of the time. It points out the features of Early Modern French that are distinctive or particularly interesting for current research. The chapter also addresses the way in which literary texts responded to the elaboration of the language that was taking place at that time through dictionaries, grammars, and books of observations and remarks. Finally, the chapter shows how literary texts contributed to the construction of language attitudes and ideologies.
Procedural Environmental Rights
Authors: Mazhuvanchery Shiju
Published: July 2024

Procedural environmental rights (PERs) provide a means for enforcing the substantive right to a clean and healthy environment. Though these rights do not guarantee any particular outcome, they are effective in preventing erosion of the substantive right. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration is the most coherent articulation of PERs at the international level. The three components of PERs are: access to environmental information, public participation in environmental decision-making, and access to environmental justice. PERs in India have evolved and the perception as to their purpose has changed. This change is closely related to the shift in the character of environmental laws in India. From being considered as reasonable restrictions on the fundamental right to carry on trade or business, environmental laws have transformed into tools for the realisation of the fundamental right to a clean environment. An analysis of these laws reveals that PERs are entrenched to various degrees.
Agriculture and Technology
Authors: Kaur Plahe Jagjit , Cornwall Wendell S.C.L.
Published: July 2024

This chapter critically analyses the techno-capitalist neoliberal policies which India has adopted for the country’s agri-food system. The chapter argues that farmers have been caught between two technological approaches to agriculture: the Green Revolution and the Gene Revolution. The authors contend that over time these policies have roped farmers into unsustainable agricultural practices of monoculture, increased their reliance on costly external inputs and heavy irrigation, and plunged them deeper into debt. They have also negatively affected the quality of soils and biodiversity in farms all over the country. The chapter analyses India’s WTO-compliant domestic laws and policies which support the Gene Revolution. It uses the case of genetically modified (GM) cotton to investigate the laws and policies which support the Gene Revolution in India since cotton was the first GM crop to be commercialized in the country in 2002.
Sanitation
Authors: Bhatkal Tanvi , Mehta Lyla
Published: July 2024

Sanitation has been the object of much attention over the past couple of decades. The construction of toilets has been at the centre of policy interest, and given particular emphasis in the context of the Swachh Bharat Mission. There are multiple environmental and public health aspects that arise in the context of sanitation. These include the links between open defecation or the absence of wastewater treatment and contamination of surface and groundwater. Some of these challenges are addressed in part through the construction of toilets but these, in turn, create new challenges, such as concerning the disposal of septage. Sanitation also raises various rights-related issues in a context where there has been a strong link between caste and sanitation, most clearly articulated in the context of the practice of manual scavenging. This chapter highlights the various environment and health-related dimensions of sanitation policy and law.
Hazardous Waste
Authors: Subramanya T.R. , L. Aruna
Published: July 2024

The management, treatment, and disposal of hazardous waste is a growing concern. This chapter addresses issues related to hazardous waste and its management in India. While the 1989 Basel Convention on hazardous wastes is considered as a leap in this direction, its limitations in the Indian scenario are discussed, drawing specific examples from the various rules made by the Government of India, such as the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998 and the Batteries (Management and Handling) Rules, 2001. The role of the judiciary has also been highlighted by shedding light on a few cases which have drawn a beneficial construction in addressing the gaps between the regulatory framework and the practical implication issues which lie with the authorities. The chapter also offers pragmatic workable solutions in order to avoid future problems. A holistic approach is the need of the hour and the chapter highlights all such areas.
Energy and Sustainability
Authors: Shankar Uday , Basu Arindam
Published: July 2024

Energy contributes immensely to the growth of a country and facilitates in improving the quality of life. Energy in the form of electricity has transformed the civilizational outlook of society. Electricity started being regulated since the nineteenth century on the matter of licensing, generation, distribution, consumer interests. While extracting the maximum benefits of electricity, a concern has been raised about the collateral damage cause to the environment on account of its generation from fossil fuels. Consequently, the scientific community introduced greener sources of energy through renewables and attempts are being made to regulate clean energy in every jurisdiction. Cleaner energy promises a better future for the coming generation. In view of this, this chapter examines the interface between energy and sustainability.
Does social embeddedness shape attitudes toward migrants? Evidence from a survey experiment in the United Kingdom
Authors: Igarashi Akira , Creighton Mathew J
Published: July 2024

How does migrants’ social embeddedness influence non-migrants’ attitudes? Although research on intergroup relations has considered the effects of various dimensions of migrants’ lives, often measured by economic and cultural traits, social embeddedness, defined by the composition of interpersonal relationships, has received relatively less attention. We consider two types of social embeddedness and hypothesize that non-migrants will positively view migrants who are more socially embedded with non-migrants. In contrast, theory suggests that co-ethnic social embeddedness will result in a more negative view. Using a conjoint analysis in the UK, results show that non-migrant’s do indeed have more positive attitudes towards a hypothetical migrant who is socially embedded with non-migrants. However, co-ethnic social embeddedness does not result in a more negative perception.