bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Postcolonial Media Theory
Authors: Llamas-Rodriguez Juan , Saglier Viviane
Published: August 2021

The postcolonial intellectual tradition has proved crucial to articulating cultural, film, and media formations from the geographical and theoretical perspective of (formerly) colonized people and countries. The object of media studies has expanded significantly beyond the screen in the past decades, including a renewed attention to non-visual media and an emerging attention to the material conditions of possibility for media representations. In this new mediascape, postcolonial theories and concepts potentially repoliticize media theory by questioning Western assumptions about technological progress and innovation. Postcolonial theories of media force a rethink of the tenets of traditional media theories while, at the same time, media theories demonstrate the centrality of media, in all its forms, to understanding the postcolonial condition.
The Globalization of Superheroes: Diffusion, Genre, and Cultural Adaptations
Authors: Hammonds Kyle
Published: August 2021

Superheroes are a global phenomenon. The superhero genre has been proliferated through modern industrial societies by way of movies, television, comics, and other forms of popular media. Although virtually every nation in the world has heroic myths, the modern superhero, as marked by the inception of recent American comics heroes in 1929, is a uniquely Western invention. Superheroes are “Western” insofar as they embody and exhibit Western civic values, such as democracy, humanism, and retributive justice. These characters have been communicatively incorporated into globalization processes by means of diffusion and thereby enact aspects of cultural imperialism. Even so, superhero figures have been in high demand across many populations for their entertainment value. As superheroes have diffused in non-Western cultures, they have not only been absorbed by new cultures but also refigured and adapted. These non-Western adaptations have had a recursive influence, such as the global popularity of Japanese manga. The recursive relationship between Western superheroes and their non-Western adaptations implies superheroes are an important aspect of cultural fusion in global popular culture.
Queer Migration and Digital Media
Authors: Shield Andrew DJ
Published: August 2021

Migration—whether international or internal, forced or voluntary—intertwines with digital media, especially for sexual minorities and trans people who seek out platforms catering to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Online networks foster transnational flows of ideas and information, which can enable international travel. The ways that queer people interact on digital media in the 21st century have emerged not only from decades of online subcultures—such as 1990s chatrooms and profile sites—but also from predigital media cultures, such as printed personal ads in gay and lesbian journals. The internet accelerated the growth of media platforms and queer international networks, both of which continued to develop with the advent of mobile phone apps and the proliferation of social media. Online media—from blogs to hashtags to “hook-up” apps—can relate to all aspects of the migration process. Before, during, and after a move, queer migrants access online media for information about LGBTQ laws and norms or for help with the logistics of migration. When in a new country, queer migrants use online media to try to connect with locals. During these interactions, migrants might encounter forms of xenophobia, racism, and exclusion. In spite or because of these experiences, queer migrants utilize digital media to build new networks, such as queer diasporic communities aimed at social or political activities.
Sexual Communication Between Queer Partners
Authors: Parrillo Brandon T. , Brown Randal D.
Published: August 2021

Effective communication is vital to any relationship, and sexual communication is no different. Given its importance, sexual communication and its relation to a variety of topics has been studied in recent years. Included among these are its relation to safer sex behaviors, sexual and relationship satisfaction, and fertility and family planning among heterosexual partners. Yet, for queer partners, the data reflect interest in sexual communication as it relates to safe sex behaviors such as condom use and HIV status. Further, the current base of published literature on sexual communication among queer partners focuses almost exclusively on men who have sex with men and leaves out other types of queer partnerships. To be truly inclusive, it is imperative that sexual communication research broaden its focus to include topics that do not medicalize queer couples, such as sexual pleasure, satisfaction, and relationship well-being.
Same-Sex Couple Relationship Maintenance
Authors: Haas Stephen M.
Published: August 2021

Same-sex couple relationship maintenance involves the exchange of communication and relational behaviors to sustain these romantic relationships. In communication studies, same-sex couple relationship maintenance began in the late 1990s, and while it remains understudied, research in this area continues to grow and illuminate understanding of how communication plays a central role in the maintenance of same-sex couple relationships. Social exchange, along with minority stress, have been the predominant theoretical frameworks in studies of same-sex couple relationship maintenance. Overall, evidence suggests that relational maintenance behaviors (assurances, shared tasks, openness, positivity, conflict management, advice, and shared networks) are associated with positive relational functioning and quality in same-sex couple relationships. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+)-specific relational behaviors, such as being “out” as a couple and seeking out LGBTQ+-supportive environments, also have been highlighted. Research also points to the positive impact of partner social support and same-sex marriage on same-sex couple commitment and satisfaction, and a negative relational impact from concealing LGBTQ+ identity and same-sex relationship status. Future research is needed to continue to illuminate the evolving impact of increasing social legitimacy (e.g., same-sex marriage) on same-sex couple relationship maintenance.
History of the Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus
Authors: Danilovich Irina , Auchynikava Raisa , Slonosky Victoria
Published: August 2021

The first weather observations within the modern territory of Belarus go back to ancient times and are found as mentions of weather conditions in chronicles. Hydrometeorology in those times was not a defined science but connected to the everyday needs of people in different regions. In the period from 1000 to 1800, there were first efforts to document outstanding weather conditions and phenomena. They are stored in chronicles, books, and reports.

The first instrumental observations started in the early 1800s. They have varying observing practices and periods of observations. The hydrometeorological network saw the active expansion of observations in the following century, but the network was destroyed at the beginning of the civil war (1917–1922). Five years later, hydrometeorological activity resumed, and the foundation of meteorological services of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was initiated. The next years saw a complicated Belarusian hydrometeorological service formation and reorganization.

The meteorological bureau was formed in 1924, and this year is considered the official date of the Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus foundation, despite multiple changes in title and functions during its course. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) people’s courage and efforts were directed to saving the existing network of hydrometeorological observations and providing weather services for military purposes. The postwar period was characterized by the implementation of new methods of weather forecasting and new forms of hydrometeorological information. Later decades were marked by the invention and implementation of new observational equipment. The Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus in this period was a testing ground within the Soviet Union for the development of meteorological tools and devices.

The current Hydrometeorological Service of Belarus is described as an efficient, modern-equipped, and constantly developing weather service.
Crisis Coordination in First Responder Organizations
Authors: Renå Helge
Published: August 2021

Crisis coordination as process can be understood as the adjustment of actions and decisions among interdependent actors to achieve specified goals. Coordination during crises typically involves a broad variety of first responder organizations, from professionals, such as emergency agencies and nongovernmental organizations like the Red Cross, to nonprofessional organizations and individuals, who often play a decisive role in crisis response. Traditionally, research on crisis coordination in first responder organizations seemed to be, broadly speaking, divided into two camps. One strand of literature focused on the formal structures of the government and the established first responder organizations and how they are interdependent via hierarchical relations and unity of command. The other strand of literature, with a long history in the field of disaster sociology, has taken a primary interest in the actual coordination that occurs “on the scene” in the immediate aftermath of crises and disasters. From this perspective, the actors involved in crisis coordination are conceptualized as a network of actors that are interrelated via novel structures and relations that emerge and develop as the crisis response unfolds. In the broader literature on coordination, there has been a shift in focus from explaining why coordination mechanisms work to a growing interest in how coordination happens by focusing on the emergent nature of the process of coordination. Following this shift and the scholarly work on organizational improvisation, there seems to be a growing consensus that crisis coordination is enabled by a combination of routinized practices and improvised action. More generally, recent scholarly work builds on the extant perspectives and literatures by seeing them in combination rather than as opposites. Instead of focusing primarily on the formal hierarchical relations in the established first responder organizations or the collaborative networks that emerge at the incident scene, current research tries to theorize how they are intertwined, and when, how, and why they sometimes reinforce each other and sometimes not.
The United Kingdom: Increasingly Fractious Civil–Military Relations
Authors: Dorman Andrew M.
Published: August 2021

Civil–military relations in the United Kingdom have traditionally not been a major issue. This is partly a reflection of its history. The U.K. mainland has not been invaded since 1066. Since the civil war in the 17th century and the union of Scotland with England at the beginning of the 18th century, there has not been a need to maintain significant land forces at home. The Royal Navy has provided the first and main line of defense. The civil war in many ways set the tone for subsequent civil–military relations. Most powers related to the armed forces have been retained under the royal prerogative, effectively in the hands of the prime minister, but Parliament has retained a degree of oversight and controls the purse strings.

However, beneath this veneer there are increasing tensions between the military and political authorities as the former have sought an increasing role in policymaking, particularly in terms of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the armed forces themselves have struggled to come to terms with adapting to the society from which they are drawn. Since the 1990s they have had to give ground on the issues of gender and sexuality, and they are increasingly criticized for their lack of diversification—an issue that they have sought to mask by recruiting from the Commonwealth.
Red Teaming and Crisis Preparedness
Authors: Ackerman Gary , Clifford Douglas
Published: August 2021

Simulations are an important component of crisis preparedness, because they allow for training responders and testing plans in advance of a crisis materializing. However, traditional simulations can all too easily fall prey to a range of cognitive and organizational distortions that tend to reduce their efficacy. These shortcomings become even more problematic in the increasingly complex, highly dynamic crisis environment of the early 21st century. This situation calls for the incorporation of alternative approaches to crisis simulation, ones that by design incorporate multiple perspectives and explicit challenges to the status quo.

As a distinct approach to formulating, conducting, and analyzing simulations and exercises, the central distinguishing feature of red teaming is the simulation of adversaries or competitors (or at least adopting an adversarial perspective). In this respect, red teaming can be viewed as practices that simulate adversary or adversarial decisions or behaviors, where the purpose is informing or improving defensive capabilities, and outputs are measured. Red teaming, according to this definition, significantly overlaps with but does not directly correspond to related activities such as wargaming, alternative analysis, and risk assessment.

Some of the more important additional benefits provided by red teaming include the following:

▪ The explicit recognition and amelioration of several cognitive biases and other critical thinking shortfalls displayed by crisis decision makers and managers in both their planning processes and their decision-making during a crisis.

▪ The ability to robustly test existing standard operating procedures and plans at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels against emerging threats and hazards by exposing them to the machinations of adaptive, creative adversaries and other potentially problematic actors.

▪ Instilling more flexible, adaptive, and in-depth sense-making and decision-making skills in crisis response personnel at all levels by focusing the training aspects of simulations on iterated, evolving scenarios with high degrees of realism, unpredictability through exploration of nth-order effects, and multiple stakeholders.

▪ The identification of new vulnerabilities, opportunities, and risks that might otherwise remain hidden if relying on traditional, nonadversarial simulation approaches.

Key guidance in conducting red teaming in the crisis preparedness context includes avoiding mirror imaging, having clear objectives and simulation parameters, remaining independent of the organizational unit being served, judicious application in terms of the frequency of red teaming, and the proper recording and presentation of red-teaming simulation outputs. Overall, red teaming—as a specific species of simulation—holds much promise for enhancing crisis preparedness and the crucial decision-making that attends a variety of emerging issues in the crisis management context.
Nociceptors and Chronic Pain
Authors: Walters Edgar T.
Published: August 2021

Chronic pain lasting months or longer is very common, poorly treated, and sometimes devastating. Nociceptors are sensory neurons that usually are silent unless activated by tissue damage or inflammation. In humans their peripheral activation evokes conscious pain, and their spontaneous activity is highly correlated with spontaneous pain. Persistently hyperactive nociceptors mediate increased responses to normally painful stimuli (hyperalgesia) in chronic conditions and promote the sensitization of central pain pathways that allows low-threshold mechanoreceptors to elicit painful responses to innocuous stimuli (allodynia). Investigations of rodent models of neuropathic pain and hyperalgesic priming have revealed many alterations in nociceptors and associated cells that are implicated in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. These include chronic nociceptor hyperexcitability and spontaneous activity, sprouting, synaptic plasticity, changes in intracellular signaling, and modified responses to opioids, along with alterations in the expression and translation of thousands of genes in nociceptors and closely linked cells.
High-Density Electrophysiological Recordings to Assess the Dynamic Properties of Attention
Authors: Gaillard Corentin , Ben Hamed Suliann
Published: August 2021

The brain has limited processing capacities. Attention selection processes are continuously shaping humans’ world perception. Understanding the mechanisms underlying such covert cognitive processes requires the combination of psychophysical and electrophysiological investigation methods. This combination allows researchers to describe how individual neurons and neuronal populations encode attentional function. Direct access to neuronal information through innovative electrophysiological approaches, additionally, allows the tracking of covert attention in real time. These converging approaches capture a comprehensive view of attentional function.
Regulating Systems in Neuroimmunology
Authors: Walker II William H. , DeVries A. Courtney
Published: August 2021

Neuroimmunology is the study of the interaction between the immune system and nervous system during development, homeostasis, and disease states. Descriptions of neuroinflammatory diseases dates back centuries. However, in depth scientific investigation in the field began in the late 19th century and continues into the 21st century. Contrary to prior dogma in the field of neuroimmunology, there is immense reciprocal crosstalk between the brain and the immune system throughout development, homeostasis, and disease states. Proper neuroimmune functioning is necessary for optimal health, as the neuroimmune system regulates vital processes including neuronal signaling, synapse pruning, and clearance of debris and pathogens within the central nervous system. Perturbations in optimal neuroimmune functioning can have detrimental consequences for the host and underlie a myriad of physical, cognitive, and behavioral abnormalities. As such, the field of neuroimmunology is still relatively young and dynamic and represents an area of active research and discovery.
Physical Education, Sports, and Gender
Authors: Watson Beccy , Caudwell Jayne , Wheaton Belinda , Mansfield Louise
Published: August 2021

Researching gender across physical education (PE), sport, and physical activity (PA) has firm associations with feminism. As a political movement for gender justice, feminist research examines the ways in which active bodies are dynamic and evolving. This feminist scrutiny is underpinned by scholarship that explores both formal educational and sporting contexts as well as informal activities. The term sport incorporates a range of physical practices, and a review of extant literature demonstrates the persistence of gendered power relations and the consequences this has for PE, sport, and PA. While the disengagement of girls in formal PE has been recognized as a longstanding and ongoing challenge, PE remains narrowly conceived and defined, often with negative consequences for the young people involved. Attempts to be inclusive in research practice expose a persistent dominance of the Global North in knowledge production in sport, PE, and PA scholarship and highlight prevailing discourses that impact negatively on engaging with complex issues in different contexts. Empirical research studies inform praxis whereby feminist researchers analyze barriers to participation across a wide range of contexts that are not limited to young people and that extend to policy matters far beyond PE, such as public health and numerous sites of negotiation for access at community level and to a vast array of informal activity. Key themes for researching active bodies include space and alternative contexts, shifting gender boundaries and disrupting binaries, intersections and difference, exclusion and inequalities, healthism and wellbeing agendas.
Sexual and Reproductive Justice for LGBTQI Youth in Policy Responses Across Eastern and Southern Africa
Authors: Lynch Ingrid , Reygan Finn
Published: August 2021

Both significant progress and profound backlash have occurred in the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity across eastern and southern Africa. This includes the decriminalization of homosexuality in Mozambique in 2015 and the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (later annulled) in Uganda in the preceding year. Simultaneously there is increased pressure on Ministries of Education to engage more robustly with sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) education in education systems across the region. Emerging regional research points to a narrow, heteronormative focus in comprehensive sexuality education; access barriers to sexual and reproductive health services; and pervasive school-related gender-based violence, including homophobic and transphobic violence. Civil society organizations (CSOs) play a key role in developing best practice in advancing the SRHR of sexual and gender minority youth and are therefore a valuable resource for government SRHR policies and programmatic responses.

The regional SRHR education policy landscape is underpinned by two policy narratives: that of young people’s SRHR as a public health concern and a focus on young people’s human rights. These policy narratives not only underpin SRHR policy in the region but also in many instances are drawn on in CSO advocacy when positioning the SRHR of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) young people as an important policy concern. These two dominant policy narratives, however, have a narrow focus on young people’s risks and vulnerabilities, may inadvertently perpetuate stigma and marginalization of LGBTQI youth, and may limit youth voice and agency. These narratives also do not sufficiently engage local sociocultural and structural conditions that drive negative SRHR outcomes for young people in the region.

Research, advocacy, and policy development toward the full realization of the SRHR of sexual and gender minority youth can address some of the limitations of health and rights-based policy narratives by drawing on a sexual and reproductive justice framework. Such a framework expands the policy focus on health risks and individual rights to include engagement with sociocultural and structural constraints on young people’s ability to exercise their rights. A sexual and reproductive justice framework provides a more robust toolkit when working toward full inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in regional school-based SRHR policy and programs.
Gender and Sexuality in Taiwan Schools
Authors: Shen Lien Fan
Published: August 2021

Issues of sexuality and gender equity in schools are often entangled with education reforms in Taiwan. Since 1949, when martial law was enacted by the Chinese Nationalist Party, schools had exercised disciplinary power over and exhibited forms of gendered oppression on students’ gender and sexuality. Since martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwan has undergone several educational reforms. Taiwan’s education system was criticized for its focus on standardization, memorization, and lack of creativity, thus reformers pushed a more holistic approach, and gender equity education was included through the implementation of the Gender Equity Education Act in 2004. In general, gender equity education reforms were catalyzed by a series of social events, including two honor students’ suicide; students’ protesting a hair ban (how it is referred to in Taiwan) and gender-specific uniforms; a gender-nonconforming boy’s accidental death on campus; and anti-LGBTQ cases in a 2018 referendum to eliminate gender equity education in schools. These events exemplified the complexity of discursive practices that encompass struggles of gender and sexual minority individuals in schools, negotiations between the legislative process and public opinion, and media attention on and representation of adolescent gender and sexuality in Taiwan. Taiwan’s movements and progression of gender equity education may be seen as a magnifier through which issues of gender and sexuality are revealed not only in schools but also in society at large.
Online Education and Women’s Empowerment
Authors: Amina Tabassum
Published: August 2021

Formal and informal online learning spaces have evolved into important sources of knowledge that are accessible to many, require limited mobility, and provide ubiquitous learning opportunities. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has led to a major jump in the increase of online learning to make learning available, accessible, and possible to the diverse learner population globally. Reducing the gender divide in access to knowledge and information has been the goal of many initiatives, and understanding how access has evolved and improved women’s opportunities to learn and be empowered is key to analyze the changing society. Women are empowered when they have access to learning and access is enhanced through the use of formal and informal online learning spaces and programs. With the knowledge gained, women’s capability is boosted with informed choices, active roles in the workforce, advancement in academics, and increased participation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Online learning can encourage and motivate women to actively participate in social or cultural movements as well as modify their roles as childbearers, caregivers, and home managers. Women empowerment and gender equality has been the focus of research for decades, but with the rise and availability of ubiquitous learning possibilities, women empowerment through the utilization of online learning opportunities is becoming an area that has much need for understanding. In the past, women were more passive about their marginalized position in society. However, women in the 21st century are more aware and active, and are disrupting their marginalized status with their increased use of digital spaces and online learning possibilities. They explore different sources of knowledge and information and join in different online education opportunities for formal and informal learning. Women not only empower themselves with the exploration of online resources but also others when they teach online, actively share information on social media, and participate in online discussion forums.
The Norwegian Case of School Reform, External Quality Control, and the Call for Democratic Practice
Authors: Gunnulfsen Ann Elisabeth , Larsen Eivind
Published: August 2021

Traditionally, the Norwegian education system has been built on equality and democracy as core values, but the disappointing results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) introduced the perception of a “crisis in education” and increased the occurrence of national reform initiatives. New assessment policies with an emphasis on performance measurement and emerging accountability practices have characterized the transition processes over the last decade. With increasing focus on monitoring based on performance indicators, there is a risk that the purpose of promoting democracy in schools will be downplayed by instrumental and managerial regulations. However, the Norwegian school reform of curriculum renewal in 2020 also highlights democracy and participation as separate interdisciplinary themes and includes a concrete elaboration of this topic, which strongly emphasizes that schools should promote democratic values and attitudes as a counterweight to prejudice and discrimination. To obtain more knowledge about how school professionals deal with possible tensions and dilemmas in their work with the contemporary reform, it is important to unpack the interplay between managerial accountability based on performance indicators and identify how educators legitimize their work on promoting democracy in schools. To capture the dynamic nature of educational leadership and the daily subtle negotiation, a micropolitical perspective and theory on democratic agency were used to analyze theoretical and empirical material from two larger studies focusing on certain aspects of school reforms in Norwegian lower secondary schools. The findings suggest that educational professionals respond to the policy of inclusion through negotiating and translating tensions between equalizing students’ life chances and being subjected to collective monitoring and control. The findings also illuminate stories characterized by a predominantly individualistic interpretation of the democratic purpose of education and the challenges and opportunities involved in balancing academic achievement with students’ well-being.
Imaginaries of Inclusion in Swedish Education
Authors: Magnússon Gunnlaugur , Pettersson Daniel
Published: August 2021

Traditionally, Swedish education has been built on, and enhanced by, notions and priorities of democracy, equity, and inclusion. In fact, Sweden’s education system has often, during the 20th century, been raised as a beacon of inclusion. However, from the 1990s onwards Swedish education is gradually transmogrified into a heavily marketized system with several providers of education, an emphasis on competition, and an escalating segregation, both as regards pupil backgrounds, need for special support, educational attainment, and provision of educational materials and educated teachers. This shows that traditional educational ideals have shifted and been given new meanings.

These shifts are based on desires to improve performance and new ideas of control and predictability of educational ends. The historical development of education reforms illustrates how priorities have shifted over time, dependent on how the public and private are conceptualized. In particular, education reforms from the 1990s and onwards have gradually been more attached to connotations on market ideals of competition, efficiency, and individualization, making inclusion a secondary and de-prioritized goal of education, creating new educational dilemmas within daily life in schools.

An empirical example of principals’ experience—seen as mediators of educational desires—illustrates these dilemmas and how the marketization of education affects both the political understanding of how education is best organized and the prioritization of previously valued ambitions of coherence and inclusion.
Archaeology of the Kerma Culture
Authors: Schrader Sarah , Tyson Smith Stuart
Published: August 2021

Kerma was a Bronze Age culture (c. 2500–1500 bce) located in what is today Sudan and southern Egypt. It is one of the earliest complex societies in Africa and, at its height, rivaled Ancient Egypt. The ancient Kerma culture spans the Pre-Kerma, examining the settlements and cemeteries of this ancient culture during the Pre-Kerma (3500–2500 bce, included here as a precursor to the Kerma civilization), Early Kerma, Middle Kerma, Classic Kerma, and Recent Kerma periods. Much of what is known comes from the capital city and type site, Kerma. However, other urban centers such as Sai, as well as hinterland communities, are also discussed. An archaeological approach is crucial to the examination of Kerma’s past because an indigenous writing system had not yet been developed. Interaction with Egypt is discussed, but only as it relates to Kerma’s historical context. Chronological changes to craft production, religious practices, domestic spaces, and funerary rituals are framed by larger sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues, including inequality, political authority, and economic development.
The Crusades in North Africa
Authors: King Matt
Published: August 2021

Although Jerusalem was the ultimate target of many of the largest crusading expeditions during the medieval period, North Africa nonetheless played a crucial role in this movement. Following the establishment of the Crusader states at the end of the 11th century, Latin Christians clashed with the Fatimids of Egypt for regional control of the Levant and Nile River delta. This conflict gave way in the 13th century to the “Egyptian strategy,” through which crusaders thought the most likely way to retake Jerusalem was by attacking the rich and fertile lands of the Nile. The crusades of King Louis IX, which were directed at Egypt and Tunis, were motivated in part by the idea that seizing these lands in North Africa would ultimately lead to the reconquest of the Holy Land. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, crusading fervor reached the shores of North Africa via the Reconquista. Beginning in the 13th century and extending through the early modern period, Christian leaders in Iberia viewed campaigns in northwest Africa as an extension of their earlier repulsion of Muslims from the peninsula. These crusades, which were theorized as dynastic enterprises that served to both spread Christianity and expand the borders of empires, persisted into the 16th century as the papacy marshaled the assistance of European Christian powers against the Ottomans. The response of Muslim dynasties in North Africa to these expeditions was never uniform, as some preferred diplomacy with the aggressing Franks and others conflict. However, there gradually developed in the Islamic world the idea that a persistent jihad against Mediterranean-wide Frankish aggression was an appropriate response. The memory of medieval crusades was a particularly potent one in France, where Louis IX’s expeditions were evoked during France’s conquest of Algeria in the 19th century.
Christianity in Kongo
Authors: Almeida Carlos
Published: August 2021

On the Atlantic coast of Africa, the Polity of Kongo, situated around the Congo River and to the south, constitutes a unique case of a secular lasting relationship with Christianity. In 1491, following Diogo Cão’s travels, Mwene Kongo Nzinga Nkuwu accepted the baptism offered him by the Portuguese priests. This set off a complex process of integration and appropriation of Christianity’s ritualistic and symbolic forms, accelerated, in particular, during the reign of Afonso Mvemba Nzinga (1504–1542).

From the beginning, the incorporation of Christianity into Kongo resulted from an autonomous decision by local political leaders. The complicated process of cultural translation of the Christian theological world to the Kongo cosmology, heterogeneous and discontinuous, full of ambiguities and misunderstandings, depended on the active participation of members of the Kongo aristocracy who were sent to Portugal to study or trained locally in the precepts of the faith.

Different religious orders established themselves in the region between the 15th and 19th centuries, Jesuits and Capuchins most prominent among them. In addition to countless reports and descriptions about the social reality of the region, some printed at the time, their presence resulted in a set of linguistic sources, including booklets, catechisms, and vocabularies that determine the way different concepts and rituals were translated into the Kongo frame of reference.

Christianity and the related process of acquiring and using the written communication reinforced the tendency of the political entity for agglutination around its center Mbanza Kongo. At the same time, they opened a diplomatic channel that Kongo manipulated in order to counter the political, economic, and religious pressure of the Portuguese Crown and its colony in Luanda, and to defend its own sphere of interests on an Atlantic scale.

After the fragmentation of the Kongo following the battle of Mbwila in 1665, Christianity, or at least the consolidated forms of its appropriation and the local agents of that process, continued to play a relevant political and social role, even when the presence of different European religious orders had become either scarce or virtually nonexistent. This pattern of establishing roots is well reflected in the successive prophetic movements that broke out throughout the 17th century, echoes of which were still visible at the turn of the 20th century, when new religious protagonists emerged on the scene.

The voluminous and diversified documentary archive continues to raise important theoretical and methodological debates about the nature of the processes of appropriation, reframing, and cultural hybridity generated in the context of this historical relationship.
Colonial Agricultural Development Schemes
Authors: van Beusekom Monica
Published: August 2021

The period from the 1920s to the end of colonial rule saw increasing government intervention in agricultural production and the adoption of ambitious agricultural development schemes. These development schemes often aimed to increase and control the production and marketing of cash crops such as cotton and peanuts, essential to European industries. Examples include the Gezira Scheme (Sudan), the Office du Niger (French Soudan), the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme, the Compagnie Générale des Oléagineux Tropicaux (CGOT, Senegal), as well as a host of other schemes. Confident in their agricultural expertise, colonial planners often sought radical transformations in African agricultural systems, away from extensive hoe cultivation toward intensive plow agriculture following a strict crop rotation. Worries about environmental degradation and population growth, as well as the need to manage social dislocation and maintain political stability, framed colonial strategies. Encountering African farmers with priorities and practices that were often at odds with their own, colonial planners failed to transform agriculture in the ways they intended. Nonetheless, development still wrought significant change as farmers considered whether to circumvent, resist, adapt, or adopt new technologies and farming methods. If at first agricultural development schemes were localized and mostly ineffective efforts to make empire profitable, by the 1940s and 1950s, agricultural development interventions became more widespread and intrusive. This helped generate rural support for anticolonial movements. Nonetheless, by the last decades of colonial rule, the idea of planned development as desirable became commonplace, not just within colonial governments, but also in international institutions and among nationalist leaders. Thus, state-led agricultural development would remain a powerful force in independent Africa.
Festac 77: A Black World’s Fair
Authors: Apter Andrew
Published: August 2021

From January 15 to February 12, 1977, Nigeria hosted an extravagant international festival celebrating Africa’s cultural achievements and legacies on the continent and throughout its diaspora communities. Named the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (or Festac 77), it was modeled on Léopold Senghor’s inaugural Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (World Festival of Black Arts, or Fesman) held in Dakar in 1966 but expanded its Atlantic horizons of Africanity to include North Africa, India, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. Festac’s broader vision of the Black and African world was further bolstered by Nigeria’s oil boom, which generated windfall revenues that accrued to the state and underwrote a massive expansion of the public sector mirrored by the lavish scale of festival activities. Festac’s major venues and events included the National Stadium with its opening and closing ceremonies; the state-of-the-art National Theatre in Lagos, with exhibits and dance-dramas linking tradition to modernity; the Lagos Lagoon featuring the canoe regattas of the riverine delta societies; and the polo fields of Kaduna in the north, celebrating the equestrian culture of the northern emirates through their ceremonial durbars.

If Festac 77 invoked the history of colonial exhibitions, pan-African congresses, Black nationalist movements, and the freedom struggles that were still unfolding on the continent, it also signaled Nigeria’s emergence as an oil-rich regional and global power. Festac’s significance lies less in its enduring impact than in what it reveals about the politics of festivals in postcolonial Africa.
Cliometrics: Past, Present, and Future
Authors: Diebolt Claude , Haupert Michael
Published: August 2021

Cliometrics is the application of economic theory and quantitative methods to the study of economic history. The methodology rose to favor in economics departments in the 1960s. It grew to dominate the discipline over the next two decades, culminating in the awarding of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics to two of its pioneers, Robert Fogel and Douglass North. Cliometrics has always had its share of critics, and some have blamed it for the diminished role that economic history has had in economics programs in the 21st century.
Willingness to Pay in Hedonic Pricing Models
Authors: Wolf David , Klaiber H. Allen
Published: August 2021

The value of a differentiated product is simply the sum of its parts. This concept is easily observed in housing markets where the price of a home is determined by the underlying bundle of attributes that define it and by the price households are willing to pay for each attribute. These prices are referred to as implicit prices because their value is indirectly revealed through the price of another product (typically a home) and are of interest as they reveal the value of goods, such as nearby public amenities, that would otherwise remain unknown.

This concept was first formalized into a tractable theoretical framework by Rosen, and is known as the hedonic pricing method. The two-stage hedonic method requires the researcher to map housing attributes into housing price using an equilibrium price function. Information recovered from the first stage is then used to recover inverse demand functions for nonmarket goods in the second stage, which are required for nonmarginal welfare evaluation. Researchers have rarely implemented the second stage, however, due to limited data availability, specification concerns, and the inability to correct for simultaneity bias between price and quality. As policies increasingly seek to deliver large, nonmarginal changes in public goods, the need to estimate the hedonic second stage is becoming more poignant. Greater effort therefore needs to be made to establish a set of best practices within the second stage, many of which can be developed using methods established in the extensive first-stage literature.
Spatial Models in Econometric Research
Authors: Anselin Luc
Published: August 2021

Since the late 1990s, spatial models have become a growing addition to econometric research. They are characterized by attention paid to the location of observations (i.e., ordered spatial locations) and the interaction among them. Specifically, spatial models formally express spatial interaction by including variables observed at other locations into the regression specification. This can take different forms, mostly based on an averaging of values at neighboring locations through a so-called spatially lagged variable, or spatial lag. The spatial lag can be applied to the dependent variable, to explanatory variables, and/or to the error terms. This yields a range of specifications for cross-sectional dependence, as well as for static and dynamic spatial panels.

A critical element in the spatially lagged variable is the definition of neighbor relations in a so-called spatial weights matrix. Historically, the spatial weights matrix has been taken to be given and exogenous, but this has evolved into research focused on estimating the weights from the data and on accounting for potential endogeneity in the weights.

Due to the uneven spacing of observations and the complex way in which asymptotic properties are obtained, results from time series analysis are not applicable, and specialized laws of large numbers and central limit theorems need to be developed. This requirement has yielded an active body of research into the asymptotics of spatial models.
Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Effectiveness: Measurement, Uses, and Limitations
Authors: James Jessalynn , Loeb Susanna
Published: August 2021

Since the turn of the 21st century, an abundant body of research has demonstrated that teachers meaningfully contribute to their students’ learning but that teachers vary widely in their effectiveness. Measures of teachers’ “value added” to student achievement have become common, and sometimes controversial, tools for researchers and policymakers hoping to identify and differentiate teachers’ individual contributions to student learning. Value-added measures aim to identify how much more a given teacher’s students learn than what would be expected based on how much other, similar students learn with other teachers. The question of how to measure value added without substantial measurement error and without incorrectly capturing other factors outside of teachers’ control is complex and sometime illusory, and the advantages and drawbacks to any particular method of estimating teachers’ value added depend on the specific context and purpose for their use. Traditionally, researchers have calculated value-added scores only for the subset of teachers with students in tested grades and subjects—a relatively small proportion of the teaching force, in a narrow set of the many domains on which teachers may influence their students. More recently, researchers have created value-added estimates for a range of other student outcomes, including measures of students’ engagement and social-emotional learning such as attendance and behavioral incidences, which may be available for more teachers. Overall, teacher value-added measures can be useful tools for understanding and improving teaching and learning, but they have substantial limitations for many uses and contexts.
Education and Economic Growth
Authors: Hanushek Eric A. , Woessmann Ludger
Published: August 2021

Economic growth determines the future well-being of society, but finding ways to influence it has eluded many nations. Empirical analysis of differences in growth rates reaches a simple conclusion: long-run growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is largely determined by the skills of a nation’s population. Moreover, the relevant skills can be readily gauged by standardized tests of cognitive achievement. Over the period 1960–2000, three-quarters of the variation in growth of GDP per capita across countries can be accounted for by international measures of math and science skills. The relationship between aggregate cognitive skills, called the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run growth rate is extraordinarily strong.

There are natural questions about whether the knowledge capital–growth relationship is causal. While it is impossible to provide conclusive proof of causality, the existing evidence makes a strong prima facie case that changing the skills of the population will lead to higher growth rates.

If future GDP is projected based on the historical growth relationship, the results indicate that modest efforts to bring all students to minimal levels will produce huge economic gains. Improvements in the quality of schools have strong long-term benefits.

The best way to improve the quality of schools is unclear from existing research. On the other hand, a number of developed and developing countries have shown that improvement is possible.