bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Early Expansion of the Kingdom of Mithridates VI
Authors: Roller Duane W.
Published: April 2020

Mithridates VI the Great began his solidified rule by expanding his kingdom, seemingly with the goal of encircling the Black Sea. He gained possession of the ancient territory of Colchis and then strengthened his predecessors’ control of the Bosporos, on the north side of the sea. He also established a presence on the west side of the sea. The locals on the north side of the sea welcomed the king because they were constantly subject to barbarian pressures. There were also economic benefits to the Pontic kingdom in acquisition of the new territories. Mithridates also established a Pontic presence south and west of his kingdom, in Paphlagonia and Galatia. Yet such aggressive actions by the king were noticed by the Romans, even though the northern Black Sea was not in any region of their direct interest.
Lucullus and Mithridates VI
Authors: Roller Duane W.
Published: April 2020

The third and final war between Mithridates VI and Rome began in 73 bc and was to last for a decade. The alliance with Sertorius came to nothing because of the death of the adventurer in 72 bc, but Mithridates embarked on the most extensive of his campaigns, with movements into the Roman territories of western Asia Minor. The proconsul L. Licinius Lucullus, formerly one of Sulla’s legates, was sent against him. After initial successes on the part of the king, fortunes began to turn against him, exemplified by a disastrous and lengthy siege of the Greek city of Kyzikos on the Propontis. But the war dragged on for several years, and in the summer of 67 bc Lucullus was recalled, accused of prolonging the war for his own aggrandizement.
The Art of Pure Cinema
Authors: Isaacs Bruce
Published: April 2020

Alfred Hitchcock’s notion of a “pure cinema” has continued to fascinate and perplex film audiences, critics, and theorists alike. The concept first emerged loosely in the 1920s, as European avant-garde artists and intellectuals grappled with the essence of the moving image as an aesthetic form. But what, precisely, was pure cinema as an artistic philosophy and style? How did it evolve within Hitchcock’s body of work, and how was a pure cinema artistic style then developed by the filmmakers who came after Hitchcock, such as Dario Argento and Brian De Palma? The Art of Pure Cinema connects film history and philosophies of image and sound to better understand the legacy of this aesthetic tradition.
The Fragmented Frame 1
Authors: Isaacs Bruce
Published: April 2020

The aesthetic of the fragment is examined in detailed analyses of the Hitchcockian frame. The frame is both the formal composition underpinning mise en scène and the opening into the infinite play of fragmented images within visual, aural, and narrative form. The frame is a site of formal “expressivity,” “abstraction,” “topographic representation,” and “schematization.” The fragmented frame is revealed in the modernist experimentation of form through color, line, and shape in North by Northwest, the topographic frame in The Birds, and the canting of the visual frame in Shadow of a Doubt. The chapter concludes that the representational image forming the diegesis is overwhelmed in Hitchcock’s experimental works by the formal potential of abstract shape and pattern.
The Fragmented Frame 2
Authors: Isaacs Bruce
Published: April 2020

In this central chapter in Part II of the book, the aesthetic of the fragment is analyzed in its purest form: the split-screen image. The split-screen image crosses mise en scène, montage, and narrative relational systems. While Hitchcock did not use a split-screen effect in his work, the chapter analyzes several Hitchcockian sequences as split-screen compositions. The split-screen effect is intensified in the cinema of Argento, Lucio Fulci, and De Palma, materializing in these works as a literal rent within the frame. The chapter presents close formal analyses of Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, Psycho, Marnie, Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling, and De Palma’s Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out.The aesthetic of the fragment is further read through De Palma’s intensification of the split-screen effect, culminating in the abstraction of space and time in the split diopter lens composition.
Into Russian Nature
Authors: Roe Alan D.
Published: April 2020

Into Russian Nature examines the history of the Russian national park movement. Russian biologists and geographers had been intrigued with the idea of establishing national parks before the Great October Revolution but pushed the Soviet government successfully to establish nature reserves (zapovedniki) during the USSR’s first decades. However, as the state pushed scientists to make zapovedniki more “useful” during the 1930s, some of the system’s staunchest defenders started supporting tourism in them. In the decades after World War II, the USSR experienced a tourism boom and faced a chronic shortage of tourism facilities. Also during these years, Soviet scientists took active part in Western-dominated international environmental protection organizations, where they became more familiar with national parks. In turn, they enthusiastically promoted parks for the USSR as a means to reconcile environmental protection and economic development goals, bring international respect to Soviet nature protection efforts, and help instill a love for the country’s nature and a desire to protect it in Russian/Soviet citizens. By the late 1980s, their supporters pushed transformative, and in some cases quixotic, park proposals. At the same time, national park opponents presented them as an unaffordable luxury during a time of economic struggle, especially after the USSR’s collapse. Despite unprecedented collaboration with international organizations, Russian national parks received little governmental support as they became mired in land-use conflicts with local populations. While the history of Russia’s national parks illustrates a bold attempt at reform, the state’s failure’s to support them has left Russian park supporters deeply disillusioned.
Communication Processes
Authors: Wray Alison
Published: April 2020

This chapter begins part 2 of the book, in which a new model of communication is developed. The chapter asks how impact is achieved through communication and proposes that the core driver of communication with others is the desire to enlist their cooperation in making beneficial change to our experiential world. The Communicative Impact model has three components: Context, Resources, and Processing, with Context, including shared knowledge, playing the central role in enabling speakers to pitch their communication appropriately for the intended effect. The role of the hearer is also considered, and discussion commences on why hearers tolerate being used by speakers in this way.
Conceptualizing Communication
Authors: Wray Alison
Published: April 2020

This chapter provides theoretical justification for the model described in the previous chapter. The evolutionary drive to create and sustain a comfortable personal world is first explored, giving consideration not only to the imperatives of physical survival and procreation but also social ‘survival.’ Altruism is discussed, as a potential countercase to the model’s claim that interaction always pursues outcomes beneficial to the speaker. The model’s concept of ‘context’ is considered in relation to pragmatic theory and theories of persuasion and formulaic language, before various issues directly relating to the Context, Resources, and Processing components are explored, including the management of explicitness.
After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy
Authors: Dirksen Rebecca
Published: April 2020

Haitian carnival offers a lens into popular power and politics. Political demonstrations in Haiti often manifest as musical performances. Studying carnival and political protest side by side brings insight to the musical engagement that ordinary citizens and celebrity musicians often cultivate and revere in contemporary Haiti. This book explores how the self-declared president of konpa Sweet Micky (Michel Martelly) rose to the nation’s highest office while methodically crafting a political product inherently entangled with his musical product. It provides deep historical perspective on the characteristics of carnivalesque verbal play—and the performative skill set of the artist (Sweet Micky) who dominated carnival for more than a decade—including vulgarities and polemics. It moreover demonstrates that the practice of leveraging the carnivalesque for expedient political function has precedence in Haiti’s history. Yet there has been profound resistance to this brand of politics led by many other high-profile artists, including Matyas and Jòj, Brothers Posse, Boukman Eksperyans, and RAM. These groups have each released popular carnival songs that have contributed to the public’s discussions of what civic participation and citizenship in Haiti can and should be. Author Rebecca Dirksen presents an in-depth consideration of politically and socially engaged music and what these expressions mean for the Haitian population in the face of challenging political and economic circumstances. After the Dance, the Drums Are Heavy centers the voices of Haitian musicians and regular citizens by extensively sharing interviews and detailed analyses of musical performance in the context of contemporary events well beyond the musical realm.
Locatives in Shona and Luganda
Authors: Caha Pavel , Pantcheva Marina
Published: April 2020

At a general level, Chapter 1 is concerned with the categorization of expressions in natural languages. The authors approach this question with a relatively new tool in hand: phrasal spellout (Starke 2009). If phrasal spellout exists, a single item may correspond to several terminals, where each terminal has a distinct label. As a consequence, the approach predicts the existence of expressions whose behavior corresponds to a mixture of prototypical categorical properties. The chapter applies this relatively new analytical option to locative markers in Shona and Luganda. It contrasts them with more familiar Indo-European adpositions, in order to show that their behavior is distinct from ordinary adpositions and other word classes. The behavior of the new class, however, is not explained by positing a new category in the decomposed projection, but by proposing that it corresponds to a combination of several existing categories.
Cross-Linguistic Variation in the Layered Structure of PP
Authors: Takahashi Hisako
Published: April 2020

This chapter provides a novel observation concerning cross-linguistic variation regarding NP-ellipsis (henceforth NPE) inside articulated PPs and considers its theoretical implications. It first shows that although NPE is equally available in nominals in English, Chinese, and Japanese, the parallel pattern breaks down when NPE takes place within PPs. This study proposes a principled account of the cross-linguistic variation in question on the basis of (i) the layered internal structure of PPs, (ii) the syntactic reflection of fusional/non-fusional case morphology, and (iii) a phase-based analysis of ellipsis. The proposed analysis correctly predicts not only the availability of NPE within PPs but also one without PPs in English, Chinese, and Japanese. This chapter also provides theoretical implications for the role of phases in ellipsis and the cross-linguistic differences in nominal morphology.
The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History
Authors: Chittick Andrew
Published: April 2020

This work offers a sweeping reassessment of the Jiankang Empire (third to sixth centuries CE), known as the Chinese “Southern Dynasties.” It shows how, although one of the medieval world’s largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of “ethnic Chinese,” and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains–based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research reorients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.
Making Hierarchy
Authors: Chittick Andrew
Published: April 2020

Chapter 6, “Making Hierarchy: Garrison, Court, and the Structure of Jiankang Politics,” analyzes the contrasting political cultures of two functional/occupational groups: garrison and court. While garrison culture emphasized relatively fluid patron-client ties, personal honor, violence, and vengeance, court culture emphasized rigid status hierarchy, calm restraint, and skillful deployment of the Sinitic paideia. The imperial household played a key brokerage role between the two cultures, but the garrisons dominated the process of imperial succession, which did not follow the rules of primogeniture and was always contested. The chapter then uses the Churen group (jituan) of the early fifth century as a case study to demonstrate that the strong regional basis of patron-client cliques, though similar in many ways to the rise of military groups such as the Tabgatch Compatriots in the north, did not result in significant ethnogenesis. The chapter offers as an alternative the model, taken from studies of Southeast Asian regimes, of the “man of prowess.”
Managing Prosperity
Authors: Chittick Andrew
Published: April 2020

Chapter 7, “Managing Prosperity: The Political Economy of a Commercial Empire,” looks at the policy choices of the Jiankang regime that contributed to commercial prosperity, including the design of the capital city, the fiscal system, the remittance system, and monetary and trade policies. It shows that these policy decisions were closely tied to the interests of key groups within the ruling class, particularly the imperial house and leading military figures, who frequently had considerable private commercial interests. It also explores the link between these policies and the patronage of Buddhism. The system is compared to that of the Roman Empire and South and Southeast Asian regimes. Widely criticized as “corruption” by historians trained in the Sinitic tradition (as well as by modern ones), the pro-commercial political economy would be better understood as a normalized part of the empire’s operations.
Youth Participation in Europe
Authors: Cuconato Morena
Published: April 2020

In the European context, there is no one accepted definition of youth participation either in the political arena or in academic debates. This chapter analyzes whether the current discourses consider reshaping youth involvement in both public and individual spheres. It presents empirical findings on youth participation’s discourses as they emerge in exemplary interviews with experts, contrasting them with comments from young people collected through focus groups conducted in different youth social spaces in eight European cities. The goal is to analyze whether the claim for youth inclusion and engagement is inspired by the socio-pedagogical principle of participation as an empowering tool for young people, groups, and communities or by an adult-driven agenda focused on young people’s future as adults rather than their actual way of living, their needs, and their desires.
Transitions from Care to Work for Vulnerable Young People in Spain, England, and Argentina
Authors: Melendro Miguel , Dixon Jo , Incarnato Mariana
Published: April 2020

This chapter describes different experiences of social and labor market inclusion through socio-educational action for a specific group of vulnerable young people from Spain, England, and Argentina—namely care leavers. The chapter explores these interventions from the perspective of several research studies that contribute important information to evaluating the effects and social impact. Along with different models of intervention, reference is made to the legislative and social policy changes and the organization of resources that have taken place in the three countries to improve the transition to work for care-experienced young people. In this way, experiences, theory and research are considered an interactive system that in recent decades has managed to modify complex realities of people and collectives. This has contributed to an emerging and shared system that turns transitions to the world of work for vulnerable young people into a commitment to transforming societies.
Youth Inclusion and Cultural Diversity
Authors: Pàmies Jordi , D’Angelo Alessio
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses a range of theoretical and practical issues concerning processes of inclusion of young people from “culturally diverse” backgrounds. It first presents some of the main available indicators of young people’s exclusion and reviews policy frameworks and interventions at the European level. Next, it problematizes the current conceptualization of youth inclusion, highlighting the importance of adopting an intersectional perspective and arguing that any meaningful approach to inclusion must be accompanied by the promotion of social cohesion and anti-discrimination. On this basis, the chapter discusses how social pedagogy can be used to celebrate cultural diversity, enhancing the opportunities of those otherwise at risk of marginalization, promoting their empowerment, and combating deficit models. Finally, the chapter presents an overall framework to identify good practices of inclusion, which informed the selection of a range of experiences and practices on the ground throughout Europe.
“Here Are Materials Strewn Along the Ground”
Authors: Sheehan Rebecca A.
Published: April 2020

This chapter investigates the philosophy of the ordinary and the everyday proposed in the films of Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, and Phil Solomon. It places their work in the context of an interest in ordinary experience and language that, for philosopher Stanley Cavell, unifies the thinking of Emerson and Wittgenstein. By pursuing Brakhage’s explicit interest in Wittgenstein and Mekas’s engagement with Transcendentalism through Thoreau, the chapter looks at how these filmmakers construct their films from overlooked means or in-betweens (for Brakhage and Solomon, the materials of the filmstrip itself; for Mekas and Brakhage, everyday happenings). This practice reflects these filmmakers’ collective investment in the ethical philosophy of “finding as founding” that locates ends in means to privilege the contingencies of individual experience over an authoritative truth that is found rather than made.
The American Avant-Garde’s Landscape Philosophy
Authors: Sheehan Rebecca A.
Published: April 2020

This chapter considers how the American avant-garde utilizes landscape as a site in-between the subject and the world, one which negotiates skepticism’s dilemma of the perceiving subject’s simultaneous distance from and conflation with the world. Examining the films of James Benning, Sharon Lockhart, David Gatten, and Ernie Gehr, as well as Phil Solomon’s machinima and the figure of the border in Chick Strand’s work and recent work by Peggy Ahwesh, the chapter argues that these cinematic takes on landscape forge multiplicity within a singularity of space, staging a paradoxical plurality of encounters with the “same.” Taking up the figure of geological strata prevalent in Benning’s and Gatten’s work, the chapter theorizes the function of the interstitial where re-encounters invited by extreme long takes (Lockhart, Benning) or the obsessive review of “missable” details (Gatten, Solomon) yield forking conceptions of historical time and meaning rather than linear ones. Similarly, the chapter turns to how films by Benning, Gatten, Strand, and Ahwesh use the figure of the in-between to undermine the authority of man-made borders.
Disassembling Vision Through DimensionalIn-Betweens
Authors: Sheehan Rebecca A.
Published: April 2020

This chapter examines films that suspend the spectator between dimensional poles (flat and deep, left and right, up and down, still and moving, animate and inanimate). Denying the spectator dimensional certainty, films by Marie Menken, Pat O’Neill, Ray and Charles Eames, Ernie Gehr, Maya Deren, and Sara Kathryn Arledge emphasize presentation and the contingencies of reception over the continuities and fidelities of representation. The chapter argues that these filmmakers privilege the contingencies of individual vision by creating and occupying a space in-between the perception and the apprehension of an image. Leaving the image’s dimensional status uncertain and unresolved interrupts the usually transparent means of cinematic representation and charts a preference for autonomy and diversity over universalizing or totalizing vision. Pat O’Neill, for example, uses the optical printer to suspend the spectator between two and three-dimensional images simultaneously, performing Wittgenstein’s aspect theory. The contingency of this mode of reception simultaneously borrows from Surrealism’s elevation of an individual’s subconsciousness over reason and Transcendentalism’s interest in the “intuition” of experience over the “tuition” of institutional learning.
The Autonomy of Justification
Authors: Audi Robert
Published: April 2020

This chapter clarifies similarities and differences between justification and knowledge. Justification is characteristically produced in ordinary perceptual experiences, but similar sensory justification can occur without any external object as cause. Here the justifying elements remain accessible to the subject by introspection or reflection, and they are adducible in a process of justifying beliefs about ostensibly perceived objects. Knowledge is not process-relative in the same way. Perceptual knowledge can indeed arise where justificatory processes are not possible for the knower. It is also external in requiring actual causal connections to relevant truthmaking facts. This external causal grounding may yield a reliable route to truth without providing, as is normal, internally accessible grounds of justification. Justification, then, is autonomous in a certain way relative to knowledge, as the latter is autonomous in a certain way relative to the former. Their similarities and common co-occurrence must not be allowed to obscure our view of their differences.
Knowledge, Belief, and Action
Authors: Audi Robert
Published: April 2020

Action is guided by belief, motivated by desire, and expressive of intention. This chapter outlines how belief, partly by embodying information received from perception, indicates routes to the ends our intentions express. Beliefs, reflecting the world as we perceive it, provide our map of that world; intentions, reflecting our predominant desires, determine our destinations as we see them on that map. This teleological picture must not be intellectualized. Much action is shown to be automatic, in part because of the rich content a single action-governing intention can have, and we need not form intentions for every act constituting a familiar activity, any more than we must form beliefs for every property in our visual field. Action-guiding beliefs, moreover, need not constitute knowledge in order to guide us to our goals, but such beliefs commonly do constitute knowledge. This is shown to be expectable when those beliefs are well-grounded in perception.
Blackstone’s and Mansfield’s Narrow Liberties of Press and Speech, and Broad Crimes of Seditious Libel and Seditious Words
Authors: Bird Wendell
Published: April 2020

The narrow understanding of freedoms of press and speech, adopted by Sir William Blackstone and Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, defined those freedoms as no more than liberty from a government-issued license or other prior restraint, with no liberty from punishment of sentiments once printed or spoken. In doing that, the last volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1769 summarized a narrow common law definition of freedoms of press and speech that did not exist in common law. Mansfield’s decisions introduced a similar definition into the common law for the first time the year after that. Besides describing a new definition as ancient, both Blackstone and Mansfield described the related framework for prosecuting sedition as being ancient and universally accepted, when in fact it was a collection of unique rules adopted and manufactured seventy years before and recently revised. Blackstone and Mansfield were not declaring ancient law but were creating new law.
The Emergence of Expansive American Views of Freedoms of Press and Speech, Before the Colonial Crisis
Authors: Bird Wendell
Published: April 2020

In New York in 1735, the trial of printer John Peter Zenger challenged narrow definitions of those freedoms by proclaiming “a right—the liberty—both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power . . . by speaking and writing truth.” However, Zenger’s counsel did not press further to challenge the legitimacy of seditious libel, settling instead for a sympathetic jury ignoring the judges’ instructions and acquitting the printer. During the Zenger controversy, several writers defined liberty of the press as “a liberty for every man to communicate his sentiments freely to the publick.” Others as well advocated a broad concept of freedoms of press and speech, such as “John Pompey Wilkes,” who just before the escalation of the colonial crisis protested that, by seditious libel prosecutions, “liberty of the press . . . had been scandalously infringed.”
Key Concepts
Authors: Hanretty Chris
Published: April 2020

This chapter sets the structure for the remainder of the book. The chapter sets out three categories of factors capable of explaining judicial behavior: legal factors, organizational factors, and political factors. The principal legal factors are “opinion below,” or the adjusted proportion of judges who have found for the appellant, and specialization. The main organizational factors are workload and case importance. The political factors are the rates of agreement between Supreme Court judges, and the types of litigants before the court and in particular whether governmental litigants are represented. This same division into legal, organizational, and political factors is used to structure the chapters that follow.
Panel Size
Authors: Hanretty Chris
Published: April 2020

This chapter explains the Supreme Court’s decisions to sit in panels of five, seven, or nine judges. The main findings are that the Supreme Court sits in larger panels in cases that involve the government; cases that involve human rights claims; and cases that are important, judged on the basis of the number of law reports that reported the decision that is being appealed. There is limited evidence to suggest that the Supreme Court sits in larger panels in cases where lower court judges have been divided. The key factors identified in this chapter thereforematch the Court’s own description of how it approaches panel size.
Who Writes?
Authors: Hanretty Chris
Published: April 2020

When half of all of the cases decided by the Supreme Court have a single substantive opinion, it matters a great deal who writes that lead opinion. This chapter looks at lead opinion authorship. It finds that specialization in the relevant area of law is the single most important factor, but that this effect is dampened down in more important cases. Judges with greater workloads are slightly less likely to write lead opinions. In the most important cases, small-p politics does matters: judges who have in the past agreed more with other judges are more likely to write the lead opinion
Who Dissents?
Authors: Hanretty Chris
Published: April 2020

This chapter looks at rates of dissent on the court—occasions where one or more judges disagrees with the outcome proposed by a majority of the court. Although this definition of dissent isn’t the only definition (some authors like also to focus on disagreement concerning the reasoning), it is the most tractable, and is used here. The explanation of dissent given in this chapter turns out to be deceptively simple. First, judges are more likely to dissent if they are sitting on a case with more judges. This gives them more opportunity to disagree, and they take it: nine-judge panels are much more likely to feature dissent than are five-judge panels. Second, judges are more likely to dissent if there are other specialists on the panel. If there are no other specialists, then specialists judges will end up writing the lead opinion, and face little disagreement. With multiple specialists, however, the possibilities for informed disagreement grow.
Diversity, Violence, and Recognition
Authors: King Elisabeth , Samii Cyrus
Published: April 2020

When considering strategies to address violent conflict, an enduring debate concerns the wisdom of recognizing versus avoiding reference to ethnic identities. This book asks: Under what conditions do governments manage internal violent conflicts by formally recognizing different ethnic identities? Moreover, what are the implications for peace? Introducing the concept of “ethnic recognition,” and building on a theory rooted in ethnic power configurations, the book examines the merits, risks, and trade-offs of publicly recognizing ethnic groups in state institutions as compared to not doing so, in terms of sought-after outcomes such as political inclusiveness, the decline of political violence, economic vitality, and the improvement of democracy. It draws on both global cross-national quantitative analysis of post-conflict constitutions, settlements, and institutions since 1990, as well as in-depth qualitative case studies of Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Findings show that recognition is adopted about 40 percent of the time and is much more likely when the leader is from the largest ethnic group, as opposed to an ethnic minority. On average, countries that adopt recognition go on to experience less violence, more economic vitality, and more democratic politics, and countries under plurality ethnic rule drive these effects. These findings should be of great interest to social scientists studying peace, democracy, and development, and of practical relevance to policymakers attempting to make these concepts a reality around the world.
Under What Conditions Is Recognition Adopted?
Authors: King Elisabeth
Published: April 2020

This chapter tests a theory that emphasizes ethnic power configurations to explain the adoption or non-adoption of ethnic recognition in conflict-affected countries from 1990 to 2012. The analysis focuses on the adoption of ethnic recognition in constitutions or comprehensive political settlements. The main finding is that minority ethnic rule strongly predicts non-adoption. When a country is under minority rule, recognition is adopted only 24 percent of the time, as compared to plurality rule, under which recognition is adopted 60 percent of the time. This relationship is robust to controlling for a large number of potential confounding factors related to both domestic and international conditions. The relationship is strongest in countries where ethnic fractionalization is low, in which case minority groups differ most in their demographic share from plurality groups. The findings support the idea that ethnic power configurations are crucial for understanding the adoption of ethnic recognition.
What Are the Effects of Ethnic Recognition on Peace?
Authors: King Elisabeth
Published: April 2020

This chapter studies the effects of adopting ethnic recognition on implementation of recognition-based policies, political inclusion, and indicators for peace, focusing on conflict-affected countries between 1990 and 2012. Adopting recognition in constitutions or political settlements greatly increases the rate at which recognition-based policies are adopted in the executive, legislative, security, justice, civil service, education, and language policy domains. Recognition leads to large increases in ethnic inclusion, measured by the population share of ethnic groups whose members have access to state power structures. On average, countries that adopt recognition go on to experience less violence, more economic vitality, and more democratic politics, and countries under plurality ethnic rule drive these aggregate effects. The latter finding reaffirms the importance of ethnic power configurations in explaining not only the adoption of ethnic recognition but also its effects on peace.
The Promise of Recognition
Authors: King Elisabeth
Published: April 2020

The key conclusion of this book is that ethnic recognition strategies can be a crucial bridge from ethnic polarization to more inclusive and peaceful societies. Whether this happens depends on the interplay of the assuring versus mobilization effects of recognition. A key structural factor that affects this interplay is whether the society is under minority or plurality ethnic rule. Cross-national and case study evidence supports this thesis. The chapter reviews implications for designing post-conflict constitutions and peace agreements. Further research should investigate longer-term effects, the mechanisms giving rise to these effects, the ways in which recognition policies work together as a system, and how the book’s theory applies to a broader set of political conflicts.
Treating Laura
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter looks at how one’s health today is a product of one’s past, and the conditions of one’s upbringing. For example, a 42-year-old woman named Laura is treated for her asthma, osteoarthritis, and for being overweight. The doctor prescribes inhaled steroids for her asthma, anti-inflammatories for her arthritis, and recommends weight loss through better diet and exercise. Later, he guides Laura through the process of getting a knee replacement. There is nothing wrong with this course of treatment. However, it overlooks one key question: why did Laura get sick in the first place? The answers lie in the circumstances of Laura’s life. So, while Laura needs treatment in the present, her medical conditions are a product of her past, of the world in which she grew up. Not everyone is born to high-income, well-educated parents who live in good neighborhoods, with access to all the resources that create health. As such, people should make a collective choice to build a world that generates health. Instead of spending more and more money on health care, people should invest in a world that produces, promotes, and supports health.
Denying Climate Change Is Denying Health
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter explores the politics of climate change and how politics can affect people’s health. In recent years, global environmental climate change has become a third rail in American culture, dividing people along political lines. The Republican Party espouses a range of positions, from the denial of climate change to denial of people’s role in causing the problem. The Democratic Party falls more in line with the science on this issue, which is largely settled. There is little disagreement among scientists that the earth is getting warmer. Hence, the political argument is not really about the science as much as it is about priorities. The Republican Party prioritizes deregulation and corporate interests over the potential disruption of these interests caused by the structural changes necessary to address climate change. The Democratic Party, for its part, has increasingly chosen to prioritize the future of the planet over the unfettered primacy of markets. Ultimately, climate change threatens health. When people recognize that climate change matters for health, they open the door for health to become an organizing principle in addressing this issue. Indeed, if people do not act on climate change, they are compromising their health.
The Partisan Divide over a Soda Tax
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter looks at research which examined public health messaging in the context of partisan responses to a public health initiative—a sugary drink tax. The tax is controversial, facing opposition fueled and funded by the soda industry. The study then measured the effect of three messaging tactics. The pro-tax approach conveyed the message that sugary drinks should be taxed because they contribute to obesity. The two-sided message stated that sugary drinks cause obesity, but taxes will not help to reduce it. The refutation message said that soda companies are promoting anti-tax sentiment for their own gain, even though soda contributes to obesity. The refutation message resulted in the largest difference of opinion about soda taxes for Democrats and Independents, in contrast to Republicans—who were not influenced by negative messaging about company motives. No significant political party difference was observed for the pro-tax message, and the two-sided message reduced support from all parties. The chapter then suggests that perhaps it is time to look outside the conventional arguments when policymakers attempt to pass soda taxes.
We Cannot Have It All
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses health gaps by giving an example of a campaign for flu vaccination. To improve the town’s flu vaccination rate, the mayor tasks the health commissioner to develop a strategy that communicates, primarily through doctors’ offices, the importance of flu vaccinations. The strategy works; the flu vaccination rate increased from 45% to 65%. This success is not as complete as it looks, however. At the level of what the mayor intended—that more residents would be vaccinated—the campaign worked. However, the health gaps in town between the rich and the poor residents also increased—substantially. Health inequities like these are the result of systematic injustice—in this case, the injustice of unequal access to health care settings where vaccine marketing and delivery take place, and the broader socioeconomic inequality this reflects. These inequities matter. After all, if a pocket of the town’s population remains unvaccinated, it puts the whole area at risk, even if vaccination rates go up among the rich. Public health must recognize that a healthy society is one where health is accessible to all—not some, or even most, but all.
Immigrants and Private Insurance
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter assesses the accusation that immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, take advantage of societal resources at the expense of native-born citizens. Between 2002 and 2009, immigrants paid an estimated $115.2 billion more into Medicare than they used. Meanwhile, a 2018 Health Affairs study used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to measure both premiums and expenditures from private health insurance. Both documented and undocumented immigrant groups had positive net contributions, meaning they paid more toward their private insurance coverage than they spent in receiving health services. In contrast, US natives had a negative net contribution, meaning that, per capita, their expenditures on health care were greater than their premiums. Thus, these findings upend the common belief that immigrants are a drain on the US health care system. In reality, immigrants who contribute to Medicare and to private health insurers are subsidizing the health care of US citizens.
Can CEOs Save the Health of Americans?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter examines the assumption that CEOs may transform health care more quickly and thoroughly than the public sector has, or perhaps can. Over the past 50 years, the cultural reputation of the corporate CEO has soared. The “right” CEO can dramatically improve a private company’s performance. However, the evidence that the CEO and the private sector can actually be a force for good health remains dubious. The problem with a CEO takeover of health care is that achieving better health depends on much more than the conditions that drive the fiscal well-being of a single organization, that is, the conditions over which the CEO has the most influence. The truly important conditions are social, economic, and environmental. Improving these conditions as a means of improving health takes time and effort across a range of sectors, both public and private. A good CEO can be a welcome and important part of these efforts, but best functions as a supporting player, rather than as the focal point of what is, at heart, a collective effort.
The Poor People’s Campaign
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter assesses Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign and the effects of poverty on health. In 1968, Dr. King had encouraged the civil rights movement to broaden its mission and demand full employment, housing, guaranteed basic income, and “an economic bill of rights.” Dr. King knew that poverty, like civil rights, is a moral issue and should be addressed with the same urgency as other forms of societal injustice. However, taking the political steps to address poverty as a moral crisis remains controversial, polarizing Americans. This is likely, in part, because people have trouble conceptualizing the effects of poverty. The key to discussing poverty lies in addressing its effect on health. If people can agree that poverty is a public health problem, they can address it with public health solutions.
The Story We Are Not Talking about Enough
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter highlights the importance of talking about the declining life expectancy and poor health in the United States. In 2018, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that, between 2016 and 2017, US life expectancy dropped from 78.7 to 78.6 years—the third consecutive year life expectancy in the United States has declined. Yet, somehow, these data were not headline news every day for weeks after their release. They did not move instantly to the center of national discourse. If people continue to ignore, even accept, their collective poor health, it is in part because they have accepted changes in the past 30 years—such as growing income inequality—that have made their health worse. It has lulled people into thinking their poor health is somehow inevitable, rather than a relatively recent development that can be linked to certain political policies, the reversal of which could change the trajectory of their health. Making this change means first talking honestly about where Americans are, and how they got here, so they can eventually get their health to where it should be.
Pain Drain
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter examines chronic pain. Pain starts as a symptom—associated, for example, with arthritis or neuropathy—and, for one in five Americans, this symptom becomes “chronic,” that is, it lasts for weeks, or months, or even years. Chronic pain has its own reliable neurobiology and its own brain activation signature—although it cannot be localized in any specific “pain area” like other sensory perceptions, such as smell or sight. Still, pain changes the brain’s structure, its neuronal configurations. Moreover, pain’s significance in a person’s life is highly individualized. The experience of chronic pain can be altered by mood, sleep quality, distraction, suggestion, or even anticipation of new pain. This implies that pain may be exacerbated by social conditions—by violence, by anxiety. Living in poverty, for example, increases the odds of living with chronic pain. Although pain is real, it is still doubted and disputed. In the legal system, it is the subject of arguments over payment for disability claims and personal injury suits. The lack of an objective measure of pain means that some who might deserve compensation miss out because they cannot “prove” their discomfort. Assessing and treating pain, recognizing the pain of others, coping with its presence, and limiting its ruinous effects without misusing opioids or taking one’s own life remain central tests of people’s empathy and their efforts to promote health.
Mental Health and Mortality
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter details how efforts to promote health continually deprioritize mental health. There are many reasons for this, starting with the historical stigma around mental illness and continuing with the limited understanding of the brain processes—at the cellular and molecular level—that underlie people’s behavior. Then there is the sheer scope of deaths associated with mental health disorders. Most obvious are deaths due to suicide. However, suicide is not the only form of mortality linked to mental health. Deaths caused by cigarette smoking, for example, are really deaths due to nicotine addiction. In addition, more than 3 million deaths a year linked to alcohol stem from misuse of the substance—a mental health problem. Indeed, it is important to remember that any time people talk about substance use disorder, they are actually talking about mental health. As such, people must include the consequences of mental illness in any discussion of the health burden of noncommunicable disease. Only then will people give mental health the attention it deserves.
The Smoking Gap
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses the smoking gap. Fifty years ago, smoking prevalence for all education groups was clustered at the 40%–45% mark. Five decades later, 6.5% of college-educated individuals continue to smoke, while the prevalence is more than triple that among those with a high school education or less (23.1%). These smokers tend to be disadvantaged socially and economically, and bear the majority of morbidity and premature mortality. As such, in the process of lowering smoking overall, people have created a smoking gap between those who are well-educated and those who are less educated, between those with higher and lower incomes. However, the smoking gap is not restricted only to socioeconomic status. Geography is also at play. “Tobacco Nation”—a swath across the American Southeast where 700 million pounds of tobacco are harvested annually, and rates of smoking remain higher than elsewhere—suggests that policy, culture, and the persistent influence of the tobacco industry in this region has shaped who smokes and who does not in the United States. Other studies have documented the high tobacco retailer density in neighborhoods with larger proportions of African Americans, the ethnic group with the highest smoking prevalence. The chapter then details what people can learn from the smoking gap and the best public health approach to reduce the smoking rate.