bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Social Innovation and Agency
Authors: Jacobi Nadia von , Chiappero-Martinetti Enrica , Ziegler Rafael , Linden Martijn van der , Beers Cees van
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides empirical insights of agency and empowerment in social innovation across Europe. We apply portions of the theoretical framework developed in CrESSI to investigate whether social innovation is potentially able to reduce the marginalization of specific groups. We depart from the hypothesis that social innovation enhances participants’ agency and test this through the collection of primary data. Our investigation is based on a mixed-method strategy combining qualitative interviews with social innovators, focus groups, and surveys to which beneficiaries and control groups respond. The case studies comprise Solidarity Purchasing Groups in Italy, interest communities that fight for decentralized drinking-water supply and wastewater removal in Germany, and complementary currencies in The Netherlands. Our results suggest that social innovation produces mainly intangible effects by modifying knowledge and social ties, which tend to improve the agency of participants.
Social Innovation Policy in the European Union
Authors: Nicholls Alex , Edmiston Daniel
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides a detailed overview of the development of social innovation policy in the European Union. It makes an important analytical distinction between policy for social innovation and policy as social innovation. In the context of these two policy agendas, not only has social innovation been understood as a means to achieve an end in this regard, it has also been recognized as an end in itself. These agendas have been advocated by the European Commission and across various individual states. This chapter establishes how the concept of social innovation has been understood, applied, and managed in pan-European policy agendas over recent years. It examines the key policy agendas from the perspective of institutions, cognitive frames, and networks: the Europe 2020 strategy (2010–20), the Social Business Initiative and the Social Investment Package.
Islands on the Horizon
Authors: Riquet Johannes
Published: January 2020

Chapter 2 explores the mediation of perception across the border of the tropical island. It initially discusses how the accounts of European explorers in the Pacific turned islands into discrete, highly aestheticized images. It then traces the multimedial paths along which these island-images travelled from the Pacific journals into the American cultural imaginary, manifested by Hollywood’s island films in the 1920s and 1930s, which transform the (proto-cinematic) visual strategies of the journals. While the chapter discusses the ideological needs Western island-images have been made to serve, it is especially interested in how these texts and films resist the freezing of the island into a bounded image and ask readers and viewers to reflect on their own aesthetic experience of islands. Accordingly, it complicates the cinematic gaze from the water to the island in three films: White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), The Hurricane (1937), and, finally, King Kong (1933).
From Insularity to Islandness
Authors: Riquet Johannes
Published: January 2020

Chapter 3 draws on (post-)phenomenology, ecocriticism, and Benoît Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry to examine a set of diaries and memoirs from the US–Canadian border region in the Pacific Northwest that express a permeable conception of islands and the islanded self. It argues that memoirs like Helene Glidden’s The Light on the Island (1951), Muriel Wylie Blanchet’s The Curve of Time (1961), and David Conover’s Once Upon an Island (1967) imagine islands as spaces inserted within larger ecological and geological continuities. Their reimagination of islands in multiple interconnectedness disrupts arbitrarily drawn political borders, yet they also have a tendency to construct a unified ecological landscape with its own exclusions. Conversely, George Vancouver’s North Pacific journal—the foundational text for this chapter—and the geological diary of George Gibbs inadvertently offer a more radical island poetics: in these texts, the unfamiliar islandscapes aesthetically resist the cartographic drive to fix them.
Political Leadership and the European Commission Presidency
Authors: Müller Henriette
Published: January 2020

The EU’s pluralistic, nonhierarchical system of multilevel governance lacks clear structures of both government and opposition. According to the EU treaties, the presidency of the European Commission is thus not explicitly expected to exercise political leadership. However, the position cannot effectively be exercised without any demonstration of such leadership due to its many leadership functions. Examining this curious mix of strong political demands, weak institutional powers, and need for political leadership, this book systematically analyzes the political leadership performance of the presidents of the European Commission throughout the process of European integration. The basic argument is that Commission presidents matter not only in the process of European integration, but that their impact varies according to how the different incumbents deal with the institutional structure and the situational circumstances, and thus their available strategic choices. The primary research question is thus: What makes political leadership in European governance successful and to what extent (and why) do Commission presidents differ in their leadership performance? In addressing this question, this book departs from existing research on EU leadership, which has to date often analyzed either the EU’s institutional structure and its potential for leadership or mainly focused on only the most recent incumbents in case study analyses. Focusing on the multiterm European Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, Jacques Delors, and José Manuel Barroso, this book conceptualizes their political leadership as a performance, and thus systematically analyzes their agenda-setting, mediative-institutional, and public outreach performance over the entire course of their presidential terms.
Liberal Nationalism and the Challenge of Essentialism
Authors: Moore Margaret
Published: January 2020

One of the criticisms that is sometimes made of liberal nationalism is that it is essentialist. The assumption seems to be that essentialism is a problem for any theory that relies on or appeals to the idea of cultural groups. This chapter considers two conceptions of culture that claim not to be essentialist—Miller’s family resemblance conception, and Patten’s social lineage conception. It evaluates both of these, arguing that they share a similar difficulty in individuating between cultural groups, and then proposes an amendment to these accounts, which addresses this problem, while remaining non-essentialist.
Beyond National Identity
Authors: Banting Keith , Harell Allison , Kymlicka Will , Wallace Rebecca
Published: January 2020

This chapter explores the sources of an inclusive solidarity in diverse societies, building on the intuition in liberal nationalism that solidarity is rooted in a sense of shared membership in a national community, but moving beyond the focus on the national identity of the majority population which dominates existing research. The chapter examines the public’s perceptions of the deservingness of minorities for social support. If nationhood entails an ethic of membership, the public’s judgements of deservingness will depend on whether these groups are seen as committed to the national community, as willing members of ‘us’. Empirical support is drawn from a custom-designed survey in Canada, which explored majority perceptions of immigrants and ethnic minorities. The findings confirmed that judgements of deservingness for social support reflect whether the majority thinks newcomers and minority groups identify with the national community, accept the community’s rules, and are prepared to contribute to thesharing of resources when they can. The chapter reflects on the empirical issues and normative dilemmas raised by these findings.
Aberrations
Authors: Guenther B. D.
Published: January 2020

Using simple ray tracinig technliques presented in Chapter 6, we demonstrate that a general ray is not focused to the position predicted by paraxial theory. The aberration displayed is spherical aberration. Two methods of measuring aberration: the use of optical path difference to characterize wavefront aberration. The transverse ray coefficients to generate a ray intercept plot. Experimental examples of all the third order aberrations are given. In addition to spherical aberration, they include coma, astigmatism, field curvature, and distortion Only two types of aberration correction are discussed, removal of spherical aberration in the Hubble Space telescope and chromatic aberration. A detailed example of chromatic aberration is given.
Guided Waves
Authors: Guenther B. D.
Published: January 2020

Use a one-dimension theory based on the normal to a plane wave to evaluate the propagation of light in a dielectric layer. If the ray strikes the walls of the guide it must meet the condition for total reflection. The theory, called the zigzag model, is not a “pure” geometric theory because we use the properties of interference and of phase change upon total reflection that we derived using wave theory. The theory predicts that the rays propagating down the guide can only strike the walls at discrete angles. These angles are the modes of the guide. The theory allows us to calculate the number of bounces/unit length the ray can make. We show limitaitons on coupling energy into the guided modes and the numerical aperture of a mode. We discuss losses and dispersion in the guide and introduce photonic crystals that allow hollow guides to be constructed.
Fraunhofer Diffraction
Authors: Guenther B. D.
Published: January 2020

We will develop a simple derivation of the Huygens-Fresnel integral based on an application of Huygens’ Principle and on the addition of waves to calculate an interference field starting with two apertures as in Young’s two slit experiment extending to N apertures and then a continuum distribution. A detailed look is made of the obliquity factor and a constant value is derived to be used in the simple derivation. We use one dimensional theory for most of the discussion but do present the results of diffraction from a circular aperture as it will be needed in our later discussion of imaging. A second description of the propagation of light, useful when using laser light sources, the gaussian wave, is introduced and examples are given of the use of the theory in geometrical optics and laser design.
An Ancient Dream Manual
Authors: Thonemann Peter
Published: January 2020

Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (‘The Interpretation of Dreams’) is the only dream-book which has been preserved from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Composed around ad 200, it is a treatise and manual on dreams, their classification, and the various analytical tools which should be applied to their interpretation. Artemidorus travelled widely through Greece, Asia, and Italy to collect people’s dreams and record their outcomes, in the process casting a vivid light on social mores and religious beliefs in the Severan age. This book aims to provide the non-specialist reader with a readable and engaging road-map to this vast and complex text. It offers a detailed analysis of Artemidorus’ theory of dreams and the social function of ancient dream-interpretation; it also aims to help the reader to understand the ways in which Artemidorus might be of interest to the cultural or social historian of the Graeco-Roman world. The book includes chapters on Artemidorus’ life, career, and worldview; his conceptions of the human body, sexuality, the natural world, and the gods; his attitudes towards Rome, the contemporary Greek polis, and the social order; and his knowledge of Greek literature, myth and history. The book is intended to serve as a companion to the new translation of The Interpretation of Dreams by Martin Hammond, published simultaneously with this volume in the Oxford World’s Classics series.
Artemidorus and the Oneirocritica
Authors: Thonemann Peter
Published: January 2020

This chapter sketches out what little is known of Artemidorus’ life (largely confined to what he tells us in the Oneirocritica). His social standing as a member of the civic elite at Lydian Daldis is explored in the light of recently discovered bronze coins of Daldis that seem to mention Artemidorus or his homonymous son. The chapter includes discussion of the date (Severan rather than Antonine), structure, and purpose of the Oneirocritica; it also addresses the question of its relationship to earlier Greek books on dream-interpretation (many of which are cited in passing by Artemidorus), with the aim of determining which aspects of the Oneirocritica were original to Artemidorus, and which parts are simply paraphrases of earlier oneirocritical literature.
How to Interpret a Dream
Authors: Thonemann Peter
Published: January 2020

This chapter analyses Artemidorus’ theory of predictive and non-predictive dreams (oneiroi and enhypnia), his distinction between allegorical and ‘directly predictive’ dreams, and his methods for interpreting particular dream-elements. Artemidorus claimed that his system of dream-interpretation depended on practical empirical experience, rather than logical conjecture or analogy; this chapter explores how far this position is an accurate reflection of Artemidorus’ actual practice. His theory of the six stoicheia or ‘elements’, to which dream-elements may or may not conform, and which largely determine whether a dream is auspicious or malign, is described in detail. The remarkable absence of a developed metaphysics of dreams in Artemidorus is emphasized, and a general assessment is offered of the internal consistency of Artemidorus’ approach, along with some possible analogies to the modern concept of ‘intuition’.
Cities of Dreams
Authors: Thonemann Peter
Published: January 2020

The civic life of Greek poleis in the eastern Roman empire is very prominent in the Oneirocritica (particularly in Book 4). This chapter will discuss the absence of the Classical Greek polis from Artemidorus’ conception of the Greek city (an aspect in which he differs profoundly from other Greek authors of his day), and the rich and detailed picture that he gives us of Greek civic institutions and hierarchies in the Severan period. The role of civic elites and the social expectations placed upon them is a major theme of the chapter, as is the degree to which the Oneirocritica reflects the distinctive social and political conditions of his two native cities, Ephesus and Daldis.
The Gods
Authors: Thonemann Peter
Published: January 2020

Artemidorus has long been recognized as an important source for epiphany-dreams, local Greek cult-practices, and ideas about the Greek pantheon. This chapter serves as a companion to his account of dreams about the gods in Book 2 of the Oneirocritica, with extended discussion of his classification of the gods (intelligible and sensible; ethereal, celestial, terrestrial, marine, subterranean, encircling), his curious lack of interest in deities outside the ‘standard’ Greek pantheon (including most local Anatolian deities), and his views on the alleged divine origin of dreams. His attitude towards incubation-sanctuaries seems to have been ambivalent at best, for what may have been rather practical professional reasons.
Romania
Authors: Ștefan Laurențiu
Published: January 2020

In Romania, a highly segmented and extremely volatile party system has contributed to a predominance of coalition governments. Alternation in power by coalitions led by either left-wing or right-wing parties used to be a major feature of Romanian governments. Thus, until a short-lived grand coalition in 2009, ideologically homogeneous coalitions were the general practice. Since then, parties from the right and left of the political spectrum have learned to work together in government. Given the semi-presidential nature of the political regime and the exclusive power to nominate the prime minister, the Romanian president plays an important role in coalition formation. The president also plays a pivotal role by shadowing the prime minister and therefore influencing the governance of coalitions. She has the power to veto ministerial appointments and therefore she can also shape the cabinet line-up. Pre-election coalitions are a common feature, more than two-thirds of Romanian coalition governments have been predicated on such agreements. Coalition agreements dealt with both policy issues and coalition decision-making bodies and the governance mechanisms that have been in most cases enforced and complied with—until the break-up of the coalition and the downfall of the respective government. One very common decision-making body is the Coalition Committee, which has been backed on the operational level by an inner cabinet made up of the prime minister and the deputy prime ministers, which usually are the heads of the junior coalition parties.
The Chorus in New Tragedy
Authors: Jackson Lucy C. M. M.
Published: January 2020

This chapter brings together known and possible fourth-century choral tragic texts, analysing and evaluating the chorus’ dramatic activity in the later Classical period. Beginning with the Rhesus once attributed to Euripides, it examines the innovations and dramatic potential of this tragedy’s chorus in performance. In particular it highlights the unique instances of a fragmented choral voice, a striking independence in the chorus’ character, and the use of separated strophic pairs for dramatic structure. There follows an evaluation of the possible fragments of fourth-century tragic choral speech or song, and closer consideration of three such fragments all incidentally linked to the tragedian Astydamas. In these fragments the chapter views further signs of activity, choral interaction with actors, and literary play. A final section introduces a comparison with lyric poetic composition in the fourth century, taking Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus as an illuminating example of sophisticated and potent choral performance in the fourth century.
An Interlude
Authors: Jackson Lucy C. M. M.
Published: January 2020

There are two phenomena that are most frequently mentioned in discussions of the fourth-century dramatic chorus: the presence of a scribal mark, χοροῦ‎ or χοροῦ μέλος‎, in the traditions of textual transmission of later classical drama, and Aristotle’s criticism of choral odes, labelling them embolima. Chapters 1 to 4 displayed all the positive evidence for the presence and activity of the chorus in fourth-century drama, and Chapter 5 considers these two phenomena in a new light. Returning to the very basics of how both χοροῦ‎ and embolimon might be understood, and noting how and why traditional interpretations of the terms have come about, this chapter seeks to reconfigure current understanding of the development of the fourth-century dramatic chorus. It is seen that it is possible to reinterpret the two phenomena and align their use in antiquity with the rest of the book’s positive evidence.
Peacekeeping in the Midst of War
Authors: Hultman Lisa , Kathman Jacob D. , Shannon Megan
Published: January 2020

Are United Nations peacekeeping missions effective at reducing violence in civil wars? Although UN peacekeeping is a notable intervention tool, the international community lacks systematic knowledge of how well it mitigates civil war violence. Given that UN peacekeeping is increasingly used in the midst of war, this is a significant research gap with direct policy relevance. This book systematically explores if and how the capacity and constitution of UN peacekeeping missions affect the amount of violence in civil conflicts. It argues that peacekeeping effectiveness needs to be assessed in relative terms, theorizing that more robust missions are increasingly capable of addressing combatant incentives for employing violence. The authors conduct large-n analyses of the number of combatants and civilians killed during each month for all civil wars globally from 1992 to 2014, measuring the capacity and constitution of UN missions with unique data on the number and type of peacekeeping personnel deployed. The analyses reveal that increasing UN military troop and police personnel deployed to a conflict significantly reduces violence against civilians, and increasing UN military troop personnel significantly mitigates battle-related violence. By contrast, smaller missions and missions composed of observers are not associated with reduced violence. The book complements the large-n analyses with qualitative explorations of peacekeeping mechanisms on violence in Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors conclude that while peacekeeping is not without detriments, it is an effective tool of violence reduction.
Mechanisms of Peacekeeping Effectiveness
Authors: Hultman Lisa , Kathman Jacob D. , Shannon Megan
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides the book’s theoretical foundation, establishing that civil war violence results from incomplete information and commitment problems between government and rebel forces. UN peacekeeping reduces violence by making combatants’ use of violence more costly and helping factions commit to peaceful forms of conflict resolution. The two characteristics of peacekeeping missions that best enable them to mitigate violence are capacity and constitution. These characteristics can vary dramatically within and across missions. Capacity is conceptualized as the number of personnel deployed and constitution as the type of personnel deployed. Missions with larger amounts of appropriate personnel better perform violence reduction activities, as do missions constituted with substantial armed troops and police. The capacity and constitution of peacekeeping missions should be considered critical components of peacekeeping’s ability to reduce violence.
Reducing Violence against Civilians
Authors: Hultman Lisa , Kathman Jacob D. , Shannon Megan
Published: January 2020

This chapter studies the effect of UN peacekeeping on violence against civilians in civil wars, proposing that peacekeepers reduce civilian targeting by making violence more costly and helping belligerents commit to giving up the use of violence. Peacekeeping missions with greater capacity are better able to stop violence against civilians. Among types of UN peacekeeping personnel, armed troops and police are best positioned and able to mitigate violence against civilians. Thus, missions constituted of greater amounts of armed troops and police should be more likely to reduce civilian targeting by combatants. The chapter presents a global quantitative analysis of peacekeeping deployments on deaths resulting from anti-civilian violence in all civil wars from 1992 to 2014. The analyses reveal that as the number of armed peacekeeping troops and police deployed to a civil war increases, fewer deaths occur from civilian targeting. The chapter concludes that UN peacekeeping missions with greater capacity and constituted of armed troops and police are effective in reducing violence against civilians.
The First Person in Cognition and Morality
Authors: Longuenesse Béatrice
Published: January 2020

The book is the revised version of two lectures presented, in the spring 2017, as the Spinoza lectures in the University of Amsterdam. Both lectures explore the contrast and collaboration between two types of standpoint on the world, each of which finds expression in a specific use of the first-person pronoun “I.” One standpoint is the particular standpoint we have on the world insofar as we are spatially and temporally located, biologically unique, socially and culturally determined individuals. The other is the universally communicable standpoint we share or can hope to share with all other human beings, whatever their particular biological, social, or cultural determination. The book explores the degree to which using the first-person pronoun “I” is the expression of one or the other standpoint. The first lecture explores this question in relation to the exercise of our mental capacities in abstract reasoning and knowledge of objective facts about the world. The second lecture explores this question in relation to what we take to be our moral obligations.
Fall Down Seven Times Get Up Eight?
Authors: Bollard Alan
Published: January 2020

The chapter opens in 1936 with rebel soldiers of the Japanese Army creeping through the snow to assassinate the elderly Japanese Minister of Finance, Takahashi Korekiyo. He was a remarkable self-taught Japanese, many times Minister of Finance, who learned his economic and financial skills raising funding in European markets to finance the Japanese-Russian War. He managed bank crises and saved his country from the Great Depression with an innovative range of pre-Keynesian macroeconomic policies. However his attempts to cut military spending ran into intense opposition from the Japanese military who were intent on invading Manchuria, and a group of fanatic soldiers ultimately assassinated him.
Richest Man in the World?
Authors: Bollard Alan
Published: January 2020

The assassination sent shockwaves through China, and soon led to the 1937 invasion by Japan. H. H. Kung was an American-educated Minister of Finance in the turbulent China of the 1930s. He was a member of the famous Soong family—both Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were brothers-in-law, and his wife was the richest woman in China. As the Japanese invaded, the economy in China progressively worsened. With little regard for the law, Kung proved adept at raising revenue by forcing Chinese to pay taxes, by bank fraud, by manipulating the currency, always with something on the side for him and his family. As the war worsened, he extracted aid dollars from the American taxpayer. When the Communists took power Kung reinvented himself as a wealthy Wall Street banker.
‘If They Say Bomb at One O’clock …’
Authors: Bollard Alan
Published: January 2020

In Japan conventional bombing had not proved sufficient: it was the atom bomb that ultimately brought surrender. The brilliant Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann had worked on the Manhattan Project and identified Hiroshima as a bombing target. He went on to design computers that helped build bigger bombs. In addition he developed an original mathematical approach to modelling a dynamic economy that helped economists advance their modelling. With the Cold War looming, he and colleague Oskar Morgenstern pioneered the new subject of game theory which the big powers used to model their post-war defence tactics, and led to the classic 1950s strategy of ‘mutually-assured destruction’.
Economists in the Cold War
Authors: Bollard Alan
Published: January 2020

The last chapter covers the transition from World War II to the decade of the Cold War. The new divide was between East and West, and new tasks for economists included civilian reconstruction, a return to consumer economies, military expenditure, strategic deterrence, and the economic possibilities for peace. Von Neumann’s game theory provided an influential way of viewing the Communist threat, while in the USSR Kantorovich emerged from Stalin’s dark shadow to help develop Soviet computing and teach the new subject of management science. Both these Cold War geniuses died early of cancer. In the meantime Leontief was using his input-output analysis to build scenarios for world peace.
The Working Day
Authors: Wadiwel Dinesh Joseph
Published: January 2020

In Chapter 10 of Capital Vol. 1—‘The Working Day’—Karl Marx reveals at least one central concern within his project: namely the relationship between labour time and free time as a site of antagonism under capitalism. In this chapter I offer a perspective on the politics of animal labour that takes the working day as a main site of problematization and contestation. I argue that while a concept of a ‘working day’ is applicable to some animal labourers, a defining characteristic of most animals labour under capitalism—particularly that of animals in intensive forms of agriculture—is the reality that the working day never stops: all time is labour time for these animals. I further argue that a focus on labour time offers a different and productive base for pro-animal politics, and for alliance building. At least one curious set of resonances here are the strong demands being made by other social movements—such as environmental justice movements—to ‘slow down capitalism’ through reduced work, reduced production, and reduced consumption.
Animal Labour in a Post-Work Society
Authors: Donaldson Sue , Kymlicka Will
Published: January 2020

Labour has been associated historically with a cluster of values, including individual security, self-development and freedom, social standing and recognition, and meaning. Insofar as these values are also relevant to animals, this suggests that we should seek to include animals into the world of labour. We should recognize that animals, as well as humans, are workers, and deserve access to the security, self-development, status, community, and purpose wrapped up in the role of being a worker. The reality, however, is that work life fails to deliver many of these goods, much of the time, for many people. Moreover, given technological development, there is no necessity for everyone to be a producer, and indeed the cultural expectation that everyone should be ‘productive’ is culturally pernicious and environmentally unsustainable. As a result, we see increasing discussion of a ‘post-work’ society. This chapter explores how animals fit into the emerging debate about the post-work society. It argues that animals can in fact be major beneficiaries of, and indeed exemplars of, this shift, engaging in socially beneficial activities that do not fit standard models of wage labour and economic production. Instead of bringing animals into our current work society, this chapter explores the possibility that animals could exemplify the ethics of a post-work world—one in which the values traditionally tied to ‘productive’ work are instead realized through new conceptions of community—being, doing, and taking care together.
Innovative Enterprise Solves the Agency Problem
Authors: Lazonick William , Shin Jang-Sup
Published: January 2020

This chapter uses innovation theory to provide both a general theoretical critique and a selective empirical critique of the use of agency theory to rationalize the looting of the U.S. business corporation as enhancing economic efficiency. It focuses on three empirical works, Bebchuk and Fried, Pay Without Performance (2004); Bebchuk, Brav, and Jiang, “The Long-Term Effects of Hedge-Fund Activism” (2015); and Fried and Wang, “Short-Termism and Capital Flows” (2017). The chapter contends that MSV ideology as promulgated by agency theorists has contributed to inferior corporate and economic performance. It then argues that, for analyzing the operation and performance of the economy, innovation theory should replace agency theory.
Imagining Nuclear War in the British Army, 1945-1989
Authors: Moody Simon J.
Published: January 2020

The primary mission assigned to the British Army from the 1950s until the end of the Cold War was deterring Soviet aggression in Europe by demonstrating the will and capability to fight with nuclear weapons in defence of NATO territory. This ‘surreal’ mission was unlike any other in history, and raised a number of conceptual and practical difficulties. This book provides the first comprehensive study on how the British Army imagined the character of a future nuclear land warfare, and how it planned to fight it. Based on new archival evidence, the book analyses British thinking about the political and military utility of tactical nuclear weapons, the role of land forces within NATO strategy, the development of theories of tactical nuclear warfare, how nuclear war was taught at the Staff College, the Army’s use of operational research, and the evolution of the Army’s nuclear war-fighting doctrine. The book argues that the British Army was largely successful in adapting to its new nuclear mission in Germany, but that it displayed a cognitive dissonance when faced with some of the more uncomfortable realities of nuclear war.
Spinoza on Reason, Passions, and the Supreme Good
Authors: Sangiacomo Andrea
Published: January 2020

This book offers a new narrative about Spinoza’s moral philosophy and his account of reason, passions, and social cooperation. Spinoza’s views evolved significantly over time. In his early writings, his account of ethical progress towards the Supreme Good relies mostly on the idea that the mind can build on its innate knowledge to resist the power of the passions. Although appropriate social conditions might support the individual’s pursuit of the Supreme Good, achieving it does not depend essentially on social factors. In Spinoza’s later writings, however, the emphasis shifts towards the mind’s need to rely on appropriate forms of social cooperation. Reason becomes the mental expression of the way by which the human body interacts with external causes on the basis of some degree of agreement in nature with them. The greater the agreement, the greater the power of reason to adequately understand universal features as well as more specific traits of external causes. In the case of human beings, certain kinds of social cooperation are crucial for the development of reason. This view has crucial ramifications for Spinoza’s account of how individuals can progress towards the Supreme Good, and how a political science based on his principles can contribute to this goal.
Introduction
Authors: Grethlein Jonas , Huitink Luuk , Tagliabue Aldo
Published: January 2020

This volume aims to pursue a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies, focusing on the phenomenal and experiential dimension of our response to narrative and triangulating ancient narrative with ancient criticism and cognitive approaches. The introductory chapter offers an overview of the theoretical frameworks in play and briefly encapsulates how each chapter seeks to contribute to a multifaceted picture of narrative and aesthetic experience. Immersion and embodiment emerge as central concepts and common threads throughout, helping to establish a more comprehensive understanding of ancient narrative and ancient reading habits, as manifested in Greek criticism and rhetorical theory, though the individual chapters tackle a wide range of narrative genres, broadly understood, from epic, historiography, and the novel to tragedy and early Christian texts, and other media, such as dance and sculpture.
Narrative Immersion
Authors: Allan Rutger J.
Published: January 2020

A well-known psychological effect triggered by narrative texts is the reader’s (or listener’s) experience of being mentally drawn into the storyworld, a feeling which is often referred to as immersion. The intensity of the experience of being immersed is not only dependent on various cognitive and emotional propensities of the immersed subject but also determined by particular features of the narrative text. The more a text enables the reader to construct an embodied simulation of the described situation, the more intense the immersive experience will be. Linguistic phenomena relevant to immersion are tense-aspect, modality, deixis, discourse markers, and subjective-evaluative vocabulary. Narrative techniques contributing to immersion include descriptions rich in sensorimotor information, scenic spatial and temporal organization, character focalization, narratorial covertness, and the creation of empathy and suspense. This chapter explores the wide range of linguistic and narratological features brought into play to effect an immersive experience, discussing a number of immersive (and non-immersive) passages from Homer and Thucydides.
Pathos with a Point
Authors: Hau Lisa I.
Published: January 2020

This chapter discusses accounts of violence in so-called tragic history and suggests that this Hellenistic subgenre may better be understood as an attempt to write experiential history. It begins with defining what characterized ‘tragic’ or ‘sensationalist’ accounts of violence and atrocities, taking Diodorus Siculus’ account of the sack of Selinus (Diod. Sic. 13.57) as its case study, comparing it with passages of Thucydides and Polybius to illustrate the differences. The second part of the chapter examines the possible purpose with such experiential representations of atrocities. It proceeds by examining Polybius’ famous criticism of Phylarchus for confusing history and tragedy (Plb. 2.56) as well as fragment 21 of Agatharchides’ On the Red Sea, which discusses the correct way to write about disasters, and finally some of Diodorus’ many remarks on the didactic purpose of historiography. It concludes that the ‘tragic’ historiographers, like Thucydides and Polybius, considered their works (moral-)didactic and believed that certain things can best be learned through an experiential representation. In the third and final part of the chapter, this ideal is compared with modern history writing and parallels are drawn both with the presentist/experientialist movement and with the call from some quarters for historians to take a moral stand on their subject matter, particularly when writing about atrocities.
Dancing the War Report in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes
Authors: Gianvittorio-Ungar Laura
Published: January 2020

This chapter reconsiders in its theatrical and narrative-related implications a testimony by Athenaeus (1,22 A), according to whom, at some point in Seven against Thebes, a dancer called Telestes danced the events so skilfully as to make them manifest. Departing from previous views on the subject, the chapter argues that, in Seven, the most suitable moment for Telestes’ dance to take place was not during the spoken lines of the Redepaare but during the lyric parodos, and that therefore Telestes did not perform a pantomime but in all likelihood a war dance. Accordingly, the parodos would consist of two interplaying dances. One was the solo war dance by Telestes, which made visible on stage the military manoeuvres of the Argives beyond the city walls. The other was the choral song and dance of the Theban maidens, who, while expressing the terror of the attacked, also described the siege with visual details and as a real-life experience. By assuming that the lyric parodos was accompanied by a war dance, we gain a new understanding not only of the chorus’ claims to see what is going on beyond the city walls, but also of the classical sources describing Seven as a drama which left the spectators with a craving for fighting.
Possessing the City
Authors: Vanaik Anish
Published: January 2020

This book is a social history of the property market in late-colonial Delhi; a period of much turbulence and transformation. It argues that historians of South Asian cities must connect transformations in urban space and Delhi’s economy. Utilizing a novel archive, it outlines the place of private property development in Delhi’s economy from 1911 to 1947. Rather than large-scale state initiatives, like the Delhi Improvement Trust, it was profit-oriented, decentralized, and market-based initiatives of urban construction that created the Delhi cityscape. A second thematic concern of Possessing the City is to carefully specify the emerging relationship between the state and urban space during this period. Rather than a narrow focus on urban planning ideas, it argues that the relationship be thought of in triangular fashion: the intermediation of the property market was crucial to emerging statecraft and urban form during this period. Finally, the book examines struggles and conflicts over the commodification of land. Rents and prices of urban property were directly at issue in the tussles over housing that are examined here. The question of commodification can, however, also be discerned in struggles that were not ostensibly about economic issues: clashes over religious sites in the city. Through careful attention to the historical interrelationships between state, space, and the economy, this book offers a novel intervention in the history of late-colonial Delhi.
Partisan Activism in the Age of Individualization
Authors: Wolkenstein Fabio
Published: January 2020

This chapter addresses the following question: How do contemporary party members view themselves, their party, and their role in it? This question is important because the success of party reforms depends centrally on whether the newly-created channels of participation and engagement are recognized as meaningful and valuable by those who engage in parties (or are generally inclined to engage in them); and to find out what could be considered meaningful and valuable by these individuals we need to understand what they expect from a party in terms of participation and opportunities to make one’s agency felt. The basis of the study, as will be explained in detail, are focus group interviews held with party members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), two parties that were chosen as empirical cases because Social Democratic parties are arguably on top of the list of the parties that may be considered ‘victims’ of the trend of shifting participatory norms, having lost much of their once-great electoral support across most of Europe. An important finding the chapter presents is the tendency of party members to demand (not more direct participation like membership ballots or the like but) more face-to-face contact and two-way communication with party elites and their fellow activists—which strengthens the general case for a more deliberative understanding of parties that the book advances.
Failures of Partisan Deliberation
Authors: Wolkenstein Fabio
Published: January 2020

Although the picture of intra-party deliberation that emerges in Chapters 4 and 5 is generally very positive, it is important to note that some of the party groups that were studied for this book proved to be less deliberative than others. Those groups provided good preconditions for deliberation, yet their actual deliberations displayed numerous shortcomings. This chapter examines these shortcomings, looking closely at three types of ‘deliberative failure’—(a) group splits and defection; (b) cases where deliberation does not arise, or only seldom arises; and (c) polarizing tendencies. The chapter also sketches a number of institutional devices for making deliberative failures tractable and concludes that even though deliberative failures will be difficult to avoid in an internally deliberative party, their most harmful effects can be limited through institutional design; so, the fact that deliberation sometimes fails does not speak against a deliberative model of intra-party democracy as a whole. This is important as the proposal of a more deliberative and thus democratic party the book advances is meant to be feasible and functional even under difficult conditions.
Petrified Unrest
Authors: Davis Alex
Published: January 2020

In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne from Richard II. This chapter examines the crisis of legitimacy that marked the rule of Henry IV and his successors as it plays itself out in two key poems of the period: John Lydgate’s Troy Book, and Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes. These texts aim to praise and legitimate the new Lancastrian regime and to efface the facts of Richard II’s deposition. They also make key moves in the establishment of an English literary canon, in particular through Hoccleve’s influential invention of the figure of ‘Father Chaucer’. These are texts that want to claim that succession is a matter of nature, blood, or kind; of some principle of precedence woven through the fabric of created things. At the same time, they are shot through with moments of ambivalence that suggest their uncertainty about the project of Lancastrian regime change.
Epilogue
Authors: Davis Alex
Published: January 2020

I keep getting flashbacks to provincial streets. You’re driving. We’re touring the big civil engineering projects, looking for dead Royals. We found a minor Plantagenet earlier today, crouched in bad cement beneath a Midlands motorway pier for all the world as if he’d been garrotted on the lavatory. Yesterday it was a previously unknown illegitimate Stuart, two meters under the floor of an HS2 station with her two children, some scraps of religious writing and an older man (he’s related, maybe a brother or cousin, molecular biology will sort it out). She’s no longer the fairest of them all....
Pythagoras' Legacy
Authors: Danesi Marcel
Published: January 2020

The history of mathematics starts in earnest with one of Pythagoras’ most important proofs, the Pythagorean theorem. This proof was the first link in a chain of ground-breaking ideas, all interconnected with each other, that turned mathematics into an “art of the mind.” The chain continues to be extended today. There would be no computers, science, engineering, or philosophy without Pythagoras’ legacy. This book sketches an outline of that legacy by presenting and discussing ten of the greatest ideas in the mathematical chain. Its aim is to illustrate why mathematics can be designated an intellectual art, a creative enterprise that mirrors any art, from music to painting. Pythagoras actually connected music and mathematics into a theory of the world called the Harmony of the Spheres. The book is intended for a general audience, and especially those who may think that mathematics is uninteresting or boring. Each of its ten chapter ends with five exploratory puzzles that will allow readers to become engaged in some of the ideas treated in the chapter without any technical knowledge. This will allow readers to use this book as well as a collection of fairly easy math problems.
e
Authors: Danesi Marcel
Published: January 2020

The number e, which is equal to 2.71828…, might seem like something trivial—a play on numbers by mathematicians. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is defined as the limit of the expression (1 + 1/n)n as n becomes large without bound. What possible connection does this number have with other areas of mathematics? As it turns out, it forms the base of natural logarithms; it appears in equations describing growth and change; it surfaces in formulas for curves; it crops up frequently in probability theory; and it appears in formulas for calculating compound interest. It is another example of how the ideas in mathematics are not isolated ones, but highly interrelated. The purpose of this chapter is, in fact, to link e to other great ideas, showing how mathematical discovery forms a chain—a chain constructed with a handful of fundamental ideas that appear across time and space, finding form and explanation in the writings and musings of individual mathematicians.
i
Authors: Danesi Marcel
Published: January 2020

What kind of number is √−1? In a way that parallels the unexpected discovery of √2 by the Pythagoreans, when this number surfaced as a solution to a quadratic equation, mathematicians asked themselves what it could possibly mean. Not knowing what to call it, René Descartes named it an imaginary number. Like the irrationals, the discovery of i led to new ideas and discoveries. One of these was complex numbers—numbers having the form (a + bi), where a and b are real numbers and i is √−1. Incredibly, complex numbers turn out to have many applications. They are used to describe electric circuits and electromagnetic radiation and they are fundamental to quantum theory in physics. This chapter deals with imaginary numbers, which constitute another of the great ideas of mathematics that have not only changed the course of mathematics but also of human history.