bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Landscapes of Colonial Detention Sites
Authors: Angelo Anaïs
Published: June 2023

Built on the legacy of the goals established during the slave trade, early colonial prisons were essential to the expansion of the colonial conquest. Once slavery had been abolished, the jails it had established continued to provide reservoirs of free, cheap, and forced labor, which were indispensable to the economic exploitation and development of the colonies. Complex networks of detention sites expanded over time and became essential tools for colonizers to mark their authority over their territory and to control, discipline, and punish colonized populations. Leaving aside Eurocentric narratives on the birth of the prison, exploring the genealogy of detention in colonial Africa highlights the multifaceted landscape of detention sites. Penal detention was enforced in prison, detention, internment, concentration, and labor camps; these could be open or mobile, or they could comprise entire villages. Detention also served nonpenal purposes and materialized in asylums, orphanages, penitentiaries, work camps, and sanitary confinement. This multiplicity of detention sites demonstrates that detention cannot be solely defined by its geography or its scope, for colonial detention was profoundly pervasive and knew no clear territorial, legal, and architectural boundaries. In political systems in which everyday life was criminalized in the service of a “civilizing” mission, whole sections of the population were exposed to detention. Beyond the walls, barbed wires, and entry points of detention sites, bodies and minds were the main targets of the policies of confinement and punishment. The genealogy of the detention sites in African colonies reveals the way that the policies of detention nurtured a culture of violence that developed with, within, around, and outside them. For historians, it raises an important question as to the historical reconstruction and conceptualization of detention, freedom, and agency in colonial contexts.
Italy and the Ḥafṣids in the Medieval Period
Authors: Pattison Joel
Published: June 2023

The Ḥafṣids were an Amazigh (Berber) Muslim dynasty who ruled in the territory of Ifrīqiya (including all of Tunisia and parts of Algeria and Libya) for over 300 years, from 1229 to 1574. They transformed the city of Tunis from a small port into a major Mediterranean metropolis and an important node in trade networks connecting the trans-Saharan trade with the central Mediterranean. However, as noted by historians, the family’s authority waxed and waned significantly over that period. Strong rulers were able to assert Tunis’s supremacy over the other cities of Ifrīqiya, appointing and dismissing local officials, and exacting obedience or at least passive acceptance from powerful Arab and Berber tribes in the hinterland. Weak or contested rule from Tunis led to the rise of semi-autonomous dynasties by rival family members in major cities, like Bijāya, Constantine, and Mahdia, and tribal rebellions. Despite the political vicissitudes facing the dynasty, its rulers benefited from and strongly encouraged trade across the Mediterranean, including tight links between Ifrīqiyan ports and Italy, especially with the “maritime republics” of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice but also with the nearby kingdom of Sicily. Such links, particularly with the northern Italian communes, were mostly free of attempts at political coercion or the imposition of tributary status on the local rulers, in contrast to attempts by the Crown of Aragon. By the end of the Ḥafṣid period, Italian merchants and sailors were a common presence across the coast of Ifrīqiya, despite the endemic threat of piracy and violence motivated by religious difference.
Forms of Slavery in the Great Lakes States (East Africa)
Authors: Tuck Michael W.
Published: June 2023

Among the centralized states of the Great Lakes area of East Africa, there was a cultural unity that included certain forms of slavery. The enslaved persons in the region were dishonored, subject to violence, and considered property. The most distinct feature of slavery in the region was the gendered dimension, with common terms among the societies for male and female slaves that were widespread prior to the 18th century. Another common feature was the general use of the labor of the enslaved for household tasks as opposed to for producing products for the market. As the region was incorporated into long-distance commercial networks in the 19th century, the status and treatment of the enslaved changed. The demand for slaves and ivory for coastal East Africa led to a number of changes among the states. The increased enslavement of people for export, primarily through warfare and raiding, led to an increase in violence and instability. The greater numbers of enslaved people passing through the states also led to an increase in slavery within the states, mainly of women. That, in turn, led to an increase in violence within the states and a diminishing of the status of women. The integration into commercial networks not only led to short-term gains for elites but also introduced tensions within the societies which undermined central authority and led to colonial conquest.
Middle Passage
Authors: Rupprecht Anita
Published: June 2023

The term “Middle Passage” invokes the unparalleled experience of dispossession, suffering, community, and resistance associated with the global and globalizing history of forced African transportation and racial enslavement between the 16th and 19th centuries. Over nearly four centuries, an estimated 12.5 million Africans endured this sea passage, and nearly two million Africans died. “Middle Passage” is freighted with multiple allusions, however, having been first popularized in the late 18th century by European abolitionists campaigning against the horrors of the slave trade and latterly appropriated as a powerful political and cultural symbol for the historical travails of African diasporic peoples. It still carries older Eurocentric meanings, even as Black Atlantic cultural memory and Africanist scholars have shifted its historical and cultural references.
Mismatch in Higher Education
Authors: Wyness Gill
Published: June 2023

The first studies of higher education mismatch were motivated by a desire to understand the consequences of affirmative action policies, which lowered academic admission requirements for underrepresented students (typically disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups). This is the so-called “mismatch hypothesis,” which suggests that affirmative action may actually be harmful because it enables students to attend colleges they are academically underprepared for (“mismatched” to) while squeezing out students who would otherwise have enrolled and succeeded. At its heart, the study of mismatch is motivated by the proposed existence of complementarities between students and courses—the assumption that the highest-achieving students would get the most benefit from attending the highest-quality schools, and vice versa. Both undermatch—where high-attaining students attend low-quality universities—and overmatch—where low-attaining students attend high-quality universities—have been studied.

Only a very small number of studies have been able to causally examine the impact of mismatch. A major challenge is that unobserved factors that influence individuals’ decisions to attend a particular college (and for the college to accept them) are likely to affect their likelihood of completion and their probability of doing well in the labor market. Several recent studies have made progress in this area, but the evidence on the impact of mismatch still shows mixed results, suggesting that more research is needed, for example, in studying different policy shocks (e.g., natural experiments such as the use of affirmative action bans, which create exogenous variation in mismatch) for students at different margins. There is also a need to expand the study of mismatch beyond the United Kingdom and the United States, which has been the main focus of studies so far, and also beyond higher education into other contexts such as further education colleges.
Managing the Paradox of Conflictual Policy and Strategy Regarding Health of Irregular Migrants: Perspective From Europe and Africa
Authors: Trummer Ursula , Martini Michela , Mbokazi Sabelo
Published: June 2023

Irregular migrants belong to the most vulnerable migrant groups. Health threats associated with an irregular status are high, and access to health services is severely restricted globally. Concerning migration aspects, a common public narrative for Europe and Africa is that Africa is sending thousands of migrants to embark on an irregular life-threatening journey of migration to Europe every year. Although this is a well documented reality, it is by far not the most important migration pattern in terms of numbers and health threats when looking at Africa. It can be argued that, on the contrary, Africa is mainly characterized by south-to-south migration both for economic and humanitarian reasons, with African nation-states like Uganda being among the top three nations worldwide hosting refugees. In addition, main migration routes from Africa do not target Europe but rather other regions like the Gulf countries.

Existing dialogue between Europe and Africa has great potential to fast track and develop joint policies and strategies for meaningful, affordable legal migration patterns and access to the human right to health for irregular migrants. First, a change of the rhetoric around irregular migration from Africa mainly directed toward Europe is needed. Second, existing policies and strategies regarding the health of irregular migrants need to be examined and evaluated. Within all the huge differences concerning public health systems and capacities in Europe and Africa, a common strategy to discourage irregular migration seems to be restricting the access of irregular migrants to their human right to health through national regulations. This has paradoxically created a simultaneous inclusion on grounds of human rights regulations and exclusion on grounds of national restrictions, with “functional ignorance” (health care organizations and personnel ignore the lack of residence permits and its legal implications) and “structural compensation” (facilities run by nongovernmental organizations take over public health responsibilities and health care provision) as key features. Such strategies put a lot of strain on health care providers and irregular migrants and should not be considered as a sustainable solution.

Instead, action should be taken to overcome the paradox of contradictory migration and health policies by means of firewalls and structural mechanisms. An important step in this direction can be to rethink cooperation between Europe and Africa in this domain, starting with the development of a joint evidence base relevant for Europe and Africa in an interdisciplinary approach and with European and African scholars that can support proactive policy and strategy development to safeguard the human right to health for irregular migrants together with good migration governance.
Global Trends in Life Expectancy and Healthy Life Expectancy
Authors: Cambois Emmanuelle , Duthé Géraldine , Meslé France
Published: June 2023

In the known history of humanity, life expectancy scarcely exceeded 30 years, with half of newborns dying before age five, up to the 18th century. However, from the 18th century onward, major epidemics were combatted more efficiently, famines became less frequent, and life expectancy thus began to increase, first in Northwest Europe, then spreading to North America, Australia, Japan, and to the rest of Europe. The health transition reached Latin America, the rest of Asia, and Africa only in the 20th century.

In 2015–2020, worldwide life expectancy at birth reached 72.5 years. However, differences remained large between regions and countries. The Japanese experienced the highest level at 84.4 years, thanks to their increasingly effective noncommunicable disease (NCD) control and an especially dramatic decrease in cardiovascular mortality. On average, life expectancy was 80.9 years in high income countries, 71.4 in middle income countries and 63.4 in low income countries. It was only 60 years in sub-Saharan Africa, with some countries barely exceeding 50. High mortality countries suffer a heavy burden from both infectious and NCDs.

Due to increasing life expectancy, deaths shifting to older ages, and changing cause-of-death patterns, questions arise concerning the health of populations. The health expectancies made available mainly in high income countries are indicators that combine mortality and health data. Although it seems that severe disability has not increased in the early 21st century, the results for less severe disabilities diverge from one country to the other. Along their longer life expectancy, females live more unhealthy years than males; in some countries they even live fewer healthy years than males.

The future may see life expectancy surpassing 90 years in the most advanced countries, likely before the end of the 21st century. However, achieving this requires that humanity face major challenges, especially in overcoming infectious diseases, impeding NCDs, reducing poverty and socioeconomic inequalities, and combating the deterioration of our environment.
Large Volcanic Channels of the Inner Solar System
Authors: Leverington David W.
Published: June 2023

Many large volcanic channel systems are recognized at the surfaces of rocky bodies of the inner solar system. The more than 200 channels known for the Moon mainly have simple sinuous forms with widths of up to several kilometers and lengths of up to hundreds of kilometers, typically commencing at topographic depressions and extending downslope until they fade into associated volcanic units. The Rima Hadley system was a key target of the Apollo 15 mission and was confirmed as a product of volcanic processes related to the emplacement of lavas in the Palus Putredinis region of Mare Imbrium. The more than 200 channels known for Venus are in many cases morphologically similar to sinuous lunar rilles, but some systems are especially large and complex, with widths of up to tens of kilometers and lengths that can exceed 1,000 km. Such systems typically commence at structural features or in regions of disturbed terrain and possess anastomosing reaches associated with prominent streamlined uplands. In contrast, Venusian canali typically maintain sinuous forms with widths of only a few kilometers but remarkably can be characterized by lengths of thousands of kilometers. Some Venusian channels were involved in the emplacement of fluidized ejecta in the vicinities of impact craters whereas others may have formed in such environments as a result of later volcanic events. The 10 large volcanic channels that are recognized on Mercury have lengths no greater than ~161 km but can have widths of up to several tens of kilometers. These systems developed as conduits for voluminous lavas that extend across adjacent impact basins. Terrestrial komatiitic channels of Archean and Proterozoic ages can have sizes that are comparable to those of lunar rilles, and the formation of these systems is likely to have played an important role in the development of associated Ni-Cu-(PGE) ores. The outflow channels of Mars have widths of up to tens of kilometers and lengths of up to thousands of kilometers and are widely interpreted as aqueous systems formed by catastrophic discharges from aquifers, but the properties and geological associations of these features and numerous other large Martian channel systems are arguably well aligned with those expected of volcanic origins. Overall, large volcanic channels of the inner solar system are mainly ancient products of the emplacement of low-viscosity lava flows of mafic or ultramafic composition, involving eruptions that were characterized by extraordinarily high effusion rates and total lava volumes that in some cases are likely to have been as great as those that characterized some Large Igneous Provinces on Earth. The deeply rooted igneous plumbing systems most favorable to the development of large volcanic channels would have been especially common in the earlier history of the solar system, when the interior temperatures of rocky bodies were greater than today. The early development of large volcanic channel systems is likely typical of the geological histories of large rocky bodies in the universe.
Life in the Deep Subsurface and Its Implications for Astrobiology
Authors: Purkamo Lotta
Published: June 2023

The thin layer known as the Earth’s crust contains an even thinner layer that is suitable for sustaining life. The boundary conditions that define where we can find life in the deep subsurface depend on the physical space and water availability, accessibility to suitable substrates for energy and growth, in addition to tolerable temperature and pressure. The prevailing rather extreme conditions in the deep subsurface dictate that it is mainly inhabited by prokaryotic microorganisms. In fact, most of Earth’s microbial biomass is dwelling in the deep subsurface. Understanding the microbial diversity, dynamics and ecology in the Earth’s crust provides knowledge on the role of microbes in global elemental cycling. These capacities are investigated with cultivation-based experiments or molecular biological methods. Using genetic material of the microbes to reveal insights into metabolic processes, community structure and evolutionary history of microorganisms is state-of the-art in the deep biosphere research. Upgraded cultivation methods, such as those mimicking the physical and chemical conditions of the deep subsurface, and especially the combination of different methodologies have proven to be a useful approach in unraveling the way of microbial life in the depths. Partly the same fundamentals that define the habitability in the deep subsurface, dictate the potential of finding life outside Earth. Thus, studying the deep biosphere may help us to understand and explore the potential of microbial life to survive and thrive in extreme environments and therefore be useful for future space missions trying to find life on other planetary objects. The study can also help us draw conclusions on our own planet’s history and how life originated on early Earth.
Literacy
Authors: Sterponi Laura , Zhang Jenny
Published: June 2023

Literacy has been in the purview of anthropological inquiry since the late 19th century. In fact, while linguistics repudiated written language as derivative and secondary (Saussure), it has been anthropology that has chiefly contributed to the establishment of literacy as a domain worthy of investigation. Whether through historical analysis or ethnographic methods, anthropologists have consistently attempted to elucidate literacy’s effects on human cognition and societal organization. Early formulations conceptualized literacy as a technology and connected the acquisition of writing to a significant enhancement of cognitive capacities at the level of the individual and to the inception of democracy at a societal level. This view was subsequently criticized and, in the 1980s, replaced with a socioculturally situated perspective which theorized literacy as a cultural practice expressed in manifold cultural activities and at the same time shaped by political, economic, and ideological conditions. Attempting to overcome both technological determinism and cultural relativism, theoretical formulations of the last few decades have advanced a techno-cultural articulation and an expansion toward multimodality.

As theories of literacy have come to affirm plurality, complicating linear trajectories and teleological narratives underpinning alphabetic ascendancy, literacy education has turned into a more complex and controversial focus of inquiry. On the one hand, literacy researchers have taken to examining a wide range of contexts beyond schools, thus displacing schooled literacy from center stage. On the other hand, they have acknowledged that schooled literacy continues to have a very powerful function in society. Scholarship at the intersections of literacy and disability and of literacy and race illuminates the functioning of schooled literacy as a mechanism for the maintenance and reproduction of a social order predicated on racial hierarchies and ableism.

The methodological toolkit of cultural and linguistic anthropologists equips them well to achieve rich documentation of literacy practices on the ground and to shed light on the political and economic forces that shape textual activities locally and globally. In advancing the literacy research program, anthropologists can be instrumental in deepening our understanding of literacy as a transnational phenomenon and as an international enterprise. Building on the important work that has brought to light the ways certain conceptualizations and implementations of literacy align with systems of oppression and inequity, anthropologists are also well positioned to advocate refashioning and repositioning literacy as an instrument and objective of social justice and community empowerment.
Slave Conspiracies in the British Colonies
Authors: Dator James F.
Published: June 2023

Slave conspiracies in the British colonies developed alongside the institution of slavery. They were terrifying events for colonists and enslaved people alike. For historians, they are complicated events to study because white British authorities left behind an archival record written from the perspective of the ruling class, which usually comprised slaveholders who were anxious to maintain their power and interpreted alleged plots in ways that accorded with their racialized view of the world. Nonetheless, studying these conspiracies tells us a considerable amount about the social climate of the period. Thus, studying them illuminates not only the emotions of fear and terror that haunted these societies but also the role that culture, economy, and political values played in their development.
Muslims and Literature in North America
Authors: Yaghi Adam
Published: June 2023

Muslim Americans have been producing literature and culture since the arrival of early waves of enslaved Muslims in the New World. Irreducible to a single entity, and yet victims to inexplicable omissions, they and their heterogeneous literary productions cannot be understood without proper historical contextualization. Tracing literary manifestations of Muslim Americans’ presence in the United States from before its inception into the 21st century not only uncovers popular American misrepresentations of Islam but also unveils rich Muslim American narrations that attempt to negotiate an often-contested Muslim America.

Any critical treatment of this body of literature at this early stage can be neither comprehensive nor exhaustive. After all, Muslim American literature is not yet a distinct field or area of study and as such, seeking to authoritatively define the scope of what falls under the phrase “Muslim American literature” might prove a challenging task. Some common parameters, however, range from relying on the declared religious identity of examined authors, the religious themes pervading their texts, and the presence of Muslim sensibilities, to other parameters. In this context, Muslim Americans, Muslims, and Islam are heterogeneous identities; representations therefore vary based on political and other considerations. Indeed, Muslim American literary representations tend to oscillate between narratives and counter-narratives with vast gray areas between.

Nonetheless, Muslim American literary productions demonstrate how a continuous intersection of different forces and currents informs the story of Muslim America: from religion, imperialism, and resistance to belonging, dynamic self-identification, and competing narrations. Muslim American literary texts also frustrate stereotypical misrepresentations, highlight Muslim American anxieties, expose oppressive regimes, debate nationalistic and alternate notions of citizenship, and regularly engage in multiple critiques. Still others ultimately reproduce orientalist, imperialist, or Islamophobic portraits. Muslim American literature therefore allows for and explores the possibility of multiple intersectional identities and critiques that move beyond imagining identity as constructed merely of a cultural, racial, political, religious, or class background. Muslim American literature further provides fertile ground for critiquing Western and hegemonic interests in a complex and transnational form.
Islam in the Caribbean
Authors: Chitwood Ken
Published: June 2023

It is difficult to speak of “Islam in the Caribbean” in any unified sense. Because the story of Islam and Muslims in the Caribbean is characterized by both a long, multifaceted history and modern miscellany, there is no past or present uniformity in progeny, perspectives, or practices. Nonetheless, the classification offers a geographically focused and categorically complex frame of reference to consider often overlooked aspects in the region and of global Islam. Stretching from the long 16th century to the present day, the narrative of Islam and Muslims in and of the Caribbean is one of colonial power and cosmopolitanization, contested history and concurrent heterogeneity, global connectedness, and local complexity.

Across the region, Muslim experience is significantly linked to the complex nexus of relationships and interactions between peoples and powers in the wider Atlantic world since the 16th century. Yet, because the Anglophone, Dutch, Hispanophone, and Francophone Caribbeans are each marked by colonial lineages and created certain networks by which Islam and Muslims arrived in the region, there are multiple assemblages that mark and make up the various socialities in the region. Thus, their stories are sufficiently diverse to warrant distinct recognition and treatment. At the same time, and thanks to this shared Atlantic world, there are shared themes and common concerns that can be identified across the Caribbean, including but not limited to: diaspora dynamics, migration, minoritization, transregional networks, debates over hybridity and purity, religious diversification, notions of space and place, class issues, questions of indigeneity, and the interstices of race and religion in colonial and postcolonial perspectives.

In addition, there have also been enough interactions at, across, and between the various “Caribbeans” to justify—indeed, necessitate—comparing them and putting them into conversation with one another. Aliyah Khan, in her literary study of the significance, influence, and changeability of Muslims in the Anglophone Caribbean, emphasized both the need to decenter the U.S. in the study of Islam in the Americas and further globalize the study of global Islam by putting different regions into comparative perspective (e.g., the Anglophone Caribbean and the Hispanophone Caribbean). This requires putting connected, yet seemingly disparate, contexts such as Trinidad and Puerto Rico, Suriname and Haiti, the Bahamas and Cuba into comparative conversation. The result of such juxtapositions is not only a richer appreciation of the constitutive aspects of Caribbean history and contemporary culture but a more extensive and entangled understanding of global Islam’s constituent communities and representative sites.
Assault Sorcery and Religion
Authors: Stewart Pamela , Strathern Andrew
Published: June 2023

Assault sorcery is a type of aggressive magical action against victims, distinguished from other types of sorcery by its imputed use of physical aggression and associated with intergroup hostility and ritual practices involving cosmological ideas of magical power and performance. Secrecy is the hallmark of the sorcerer’s activity and the means by which the sorcerer attacks a victim. In leavings sorcery, the sorcerer observes victims’ moves and stealthily harvests food leavings, or bits of them, on which spells can be made to kill the victim. Leavings sorcery is a variety of a wider class of magical actions that are based on the idea that people’s vital force exists in anything that has been in close contact with them. The actions must be done in secret, and the sorcerers must take care not to handle the bespelled items themselves so as to avoid being harmed by their own magical actions. In both assault sorcery and leavings sorcery, internal body parts of the victim are targeted. In leavings sorcery, the bespelled item enters the victim’s body, disrupting its normal processes. In assault sorcery, the sorcerer is said to open up the body of the victim directly and replace its vital organs with pieces of rubbish. The body and its internal functioning parts are the locus of action in both cases. These practices may involve the secret invocation of spirits and the performance of actions that imply supernatural powers generated by the sorcerer’s manipulative actions, such as by confronting the victim and reducing the victim to terrified submission in the face of the confrontation by the sorcerer. Reports make it clear that the sorcerer intimidates the victim away from sight of the community and is accompanied by a set of accomplices. The sorcerer’s power is thus to be seen as based in magic rather than as founded simply on physical strength. The same can be said of other categories of sorcery, such as sorcery based on the contamination of food leavings and the magical treatment of such leavings so as to kill a victim. Sorcery beliefs all ultimately depend on the creation of fear; in extreme cases, fear itself can cause a victim’s death. This psychosocial syndrome opens up the possibility of comparing classic assault sorcery with methods of intimidation that appear in the running of academic institutions in which those in power confront enemies with accusations and character assassination that can lead to expulsion or to harassment, which taxes the endurance of the victims and dangerously weakens them. The psychosocial context is also important in all circumstances in which sorcery is feared and its practice is kept secret. The basic cosmology is found in many regions of the world.
Islamic Bioethics: Animal Research
Authors: Dahlan-Taylor Magfirah
Published: June 2023

The current debate on the permissibility of animal research from an Islamic perspective stems from different assumptions on the status of animals. The view that begins with the assumption that humans are vicegerents of the rest of the living world and have the rights to use animals to the benefit of humans would find animal research to be permissible in general. Those on the other side of the debate emphasize the similarities between humans and other animals. It is expected that advances in genetic engineering will further problematize and blur this distinction, bringing up new ethical questions in turn.
Idol and Idolatry
Authors: Boldrick Stacy
Published: June 2023

The concepts of the idol and idolatry are historically critical for many religions, playing fundamental roles in religious conflicts past and present. The word idolatry is from the Greek εἴδωλον “idol” and λατρεία “latria,” “service, worship,” which points to its main meaning: paying service to a material object. In Judeo-Christian religions, idols were the objects of forbidden worship—objects designated as “other”—and idolatry was a sin. Idols in contemporary Western popular culture are also remote figures, but they are revered rather than denigrated. Over the course of the Renaissance to the present, the nature and definition of idolatry have dramatically changed, as the material and conceptual forms of the idol also changed over this period.

The terms idol and idolatry have long and wide geographical histories, and an ever-changing relationship with religion and art in the period from the Renaissance to the present in the West; they are best understood within specific temporal and cultural contexts. For example, during the Reformation in England, changes in how idols and the practice of idolatry were defined and scrutinized in churches and in public space demonstrate the complex and paradoxical nature of these concepts in particular places and times. Additionally, the idol and idolatry are important subjects for artists working in a range of media from the Renaissance to the present. In contemporary art, more secular meanings of the terms appear as political and ideological critiques of conceptual idols: the idols of the market, of authoritarian regimes, or of changing contested perspectives and belief systems.
Muslims and Education in North America
Authors: Al-Fartousi May
Published: June 2023

Although some research mentions the diversity of Muslims in terms of their religion, culture, and race—and the need to be aware of this diversity in order to understand Muslim students’ experiences—the focus is usually on the boundaries that exist between the social world of Muslims and that of non-Muslims . Specifically, most North American research that examines Muslims’ experiences in schools addresses the hidden practices that influence this diverse group to fit in among Canadian and American societies. Some of those hidden practices—which are internalized by individual acts toward minority Muslims or by institutional racism—are part of an ideology connected to historical settler colonization in which religion and race are interconnected and contribute to viewing other religions as inferior or to political agendas represented through the media. Notably, the Islamophobia discourses that have been occurring in light of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacks in the West influence the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims who live there. Given global Islamophobia and the increasing numbers of Muslim youth refugees due to ISIS, research and guidelines have emerged emphasizing the psychological impact of the political and social pressure on Muslim youth as evident in mental health issues related to trauma, anxiety, and depression affecting Muslim youth’s sense of belonging in their schools. In some discussionsrelated to the development of Muslim political identities, both internal and external factors contribute to placing Muslims in vulnerable positions and feeding us-versus-them binary discourse, which adds more injustice for, and discrimination against, minority groups. With such diverse discourses that tackle Muslim experiences within different spaces, there is a need to thoroughly investigate how Muslim educational experiences of everyday religion, with internal personal values and external societal values, are negotiated with the hope of eliminating the misunderstandings that may emerge due to the complex diversity of this group and their different levels of acculturation.
Religious Reflexivities
Authors: Shah Sarah
Published: June 2023

With the dramatic increase of post–9/11 anti-Muslim sentiment, researchers are grappling with studying the impact of Islamophobia on Muslims within and outside Muslim-majority contexts. While diasporic Muslim public experiences have been documented extensively in extant research, the ways in which Islamophobia relates to private family life have received little attention. In addition to the lack of scholarship on diasporic Muslim family life, there is a need to better theorize engagement with Islamic beliefs and practices. Although researchers document the occurrence of Muslim “reflexivity,” or the critical engagement with religious identities, beliefs, and practices, they nevertheless unintentionally reify a uniform Muslim reflexivity. Using the diasporic Muslim household as a site of investigation, this study is the first to theorize and empirically demonstrate the social patterns of multiple forms of Muslim reflexivity. In this article, two patterns of reflexivities are highlighted that relate to different religious approaches: exclusivist and inclusivist. The analysis draws on theories of racialization and gender and utilizes a sample of Pakistani Canadian Muslims to parse differences between exclusivist and inclusivist reflexivities to explore how divergent approaches to religion coincide with contrary patterns in family life. In order to understand these divergent patterns, the concept of Muslim reflexivity is extended by incorporating religious approach. Exclusivist reflexive Muslim participants, who view only one approach as correct, are preoccupied with authority given their identification with a marginalized minority group. Thus, they perceive ethnic boundaries as bright and gender boundaries as rigid. The focus of their reflexivity is dawat, or teaching others about the “true” Islam. This contrasts with inclusivist reflexive Muslim participants, who view multiple approaches as correct. They do not perceive their minority group as being threatened and thus do not seek out authority to legitimize their identity. In turn, they perceive ethnic boundaries as blurred and maintain gender-fluid attitudes and practices. The focus of their reflexivity is akhlaq, or having polite manners and ensuring mutually satisfying intimate relations. By highlighting multiple forms of reflexivity, this article serves to remedy the ways in which researchers reify assumptions about Muslim engagement with Islam: rather than enacting reflexivity in a uniform way, diasporic Muslims engage in a plurality of reflexivities.
Typological Concepts and Descriptive Categories for Chinese Characters
Authors: Wu Jianming
Published: June 2023

The typological concepts of graphemes, morphemes, and words are key to linguistic analyses for many languages. In the Western linguistic tradition, graphemes are generally defined as the smallest written signs that may stand for a consonant, a vowel, or a syllable in speech. Morphemes are typically regarded as the minimal linguistic forms with a meaning or function. And words are commonly identified as the minimal free form in a sentence. However, these typological concepts are closely related to but are critically different from the three descriptive categories in Chinese, namely, 基础构件jī chǔ gòu jiàn ‘basic components’, 字zì ‘characters’, and 字组zì zǔ ‘character groups’. jī chǔ gòu jiàn ‘basic components’ are the smallest functional units in the formation of Chinese characters. zì ‘characters’ are visually and auditorily distinct units in Chinese. They are connected to the concept of morphemes but mean much more than a morpheme. zì zǔ ‘character groups’ are word-like units, which consist of two or more characters that are joined together, primarily in a disyllabic unit, yet the boundary between syntax and morphology is blurred among character groups.
Further Contributions to Romance Dialectometry
Authors: Nerbonne John
Published: June 2023

Jean Séguy and Hans Goebl were the founders both of Romance dialectometry and of dialectometry in general, which focused largely on Romance languages in its early years. While other attention to dialects had appealed to scholarly intuition to adduce the principles behind the geographic distribution of linguistic variation, dialectometry insisted on employing exact methods and on basing analyses on entire large samples of material. The samples may often be found in dialect atlases, which pre-dialectometry scholars had assiduously compiled.

Dialectometry thus continues the work of dialectology but always proceeding from entire large data collections and using methods that are more exact. It would nonetheless be a mistake to regard dialectometry as purely a methodological contribution, for dialectometry enables new research questions as well as sharper versions of traditional ones, which it has also pursued.

Most centrally, dialectometry asks how geography influences linguistic variation, contrasting, for example, the perspective of discrete dialect areas with that of continua or examining the influence of distance or dialect areas on differences among varieties. It further seeks to characterize the sorts of variation involved (i.e., which sounds, words, or grammatical elements are involved) and aspires to characterize linguistic variation in ways that facilitate comparison to variation in other cultural dimensions such as religion, ethnicity, or mobility.

Further work on Romance dialectometry has built on Séguy’s and Goebl’s innovative foundations (see ORE article on the Salzburg school) and has expanded the empirical scope of the research line to include non-geographic influences as well. Further contributions to this area of study have conducted analyses on different Romance language areas and have incorporated novel data collection protocols, new measures of pronunciation differences as encoded in phonetic transcription (edit distance), and novel statistical analyses, notably the application of multidimensional scaling, mixed-effects regression techniques, and generalized additive models.

Emerging questions in dialectometry include attention to linguistic levels beyond phonetics and lexicology, the stricter validation of its techniques, more effective means of identifying the most important linguistic bases exploited in dialectal differentiation, and naturally the continued research into the enormous range of linguistic variation and its geographic distribution.
Raeto-Romance: Romansh, Ladin, Friulian
Authors: Melchior Luca
Published: June 2023

Raeto-Romance languages are spoken in northeastern Italy and (south)eastern Switzerland. They are subdivided into three major groups: Romansh, with about 40,000 speakers in Switzerland; Dolomite Ladin, with about 30,000 speakers in the Italian South Tyrol, Trentino, and Veneto; and Friulian—whose speaker number is estimated between 420,000 and 600,000—in the Italian Friuli and in eastern Veneto. The (supposed) linguistic unity of these subgroups bases on phonological and morphological features like the retention of Lat. clusters C+l, sigmatic noun plural, sigmatic second-person singular ending, palatalization of Lat. c
a, g
a, and syncope of proparoxytones, which separate them from Italian dialects. Other features, such as verb–subject (clitic) inversion in interrogative sentences, are more or less spread, and others like periphrastic future or differential object marking are characteristic only for one or few subvarieties. The unity (and uniqueness) of the Raeto-Romance group is hardly debated.

The three groups do not have a common history and do not correspond to a unique political entity. Therefore, they show different language contact phenomena, whereby Romansh and Dolomite Ladin are characterized by a strong influence from German, while Friulian has been historically influenced by Germanic and Slavic languages, but much more from Venetan and Italian. Standardization efforts do not have the same success in the three areas: rumantsch grischun and Standard Friulian dominate in the official written uses in Grisons and Friuli, whereas the use of ladin dolomitan is more marginal. Romansh and Dolomite Ladin are compulsory subjects in school education while Friulian is only an optional subject.
(Non-)Local Dependencies in Germanic
Authors: Speyer Augustin
Published: June 2023

Dependencies in the Germanic languages are usually established by local configurations in which one element is in the sphere of influence of another. Non-local dependencies are defined as dependencies holding between elements that are not in such a configuration that one element is in the sphere of influence of the other, at least not on the surface. Non-local dependencies can arise as a result of movement, and mostly do so, but there are counterexamples. This article reviews some common non-local dependency phenomena found in the Germanic languages, namely, extraposed relative clauses, predicative adjectives, split topicalization, preposition stranding, long-distance reflexivization, and long wh-movement. For each phenomenon, hints to the analysis are given, and it is checked in which Germanic languages the phenomenon occurs. The focus is on modern Germanic languages, although occasionally the perspective is widened to older stages of Germanic languages. For all cited phenomena with exception of predicative adjectives and long-distance reflexivization, it can be shown that the non-locality of the dependence arises as a result of movement. It is thus spurious non-locality. Predicative adjectives receive their inflectional features by control, whereas for long-distance reflexivization, explanations have been brought forward that center on the question of whether anaphoricity is a sufficient condition on the use of a reflexive pronoun.
Impact of in-hospital postoperative complications on quality of life up to 12 months after major abdominal surgery
Authors: Downey Candice L , Bainbridge Jamie , Jayne David G , Meads David M
Published: June 2023

Background

Postoperative complications are common, but there are limited data regarding their implications on patients’ quality of life. This study aimed to address this gap in the literature by analysing the impact of postoperative complications on patients’ health-related quality of life.

Methods

Data from the Perioperative Quality Improvement Programme were analysed, and included patient-level data for 19 685 adults who underwent elective major abdominal procedures in England since 2016. Postoperative complications were graded using the Clavien–Dindo classification. Quality of life was assessed by responses to the EuroQol five-dimension five-levels-of-response (EQ-5D-5L™) questionnaire before surgery, and at 6 and 12 months after operation. Ordinal logistic regression was used to estimate the association between Clavien–Dindo grades and quality of life. Tobit and ordinary least squares regression analyses were used to estimate the quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) loss resulting from postoperative complications between admission and 12 months after surgery.

Results

At 6 and 12 months after surgery, increasingly severe postoperative complications were significantly associated with poorer health-related quality of life. The effect of postoperative complications on quality of life was sustained until at least 12 months after operation. Between admission and 12 months after surgery, 0.012, 0.026, 0.033, and 0.086 QALYs were lost for those experiencing a grade I, II, III, or IV postoperative complication respectively.

Conclusion

Postoperative complications have a significant and sustained effect on patients’ quality of life after surgery; this effect worsens as the severity of the complications increases.
Evolution of cold tolerance in the highly stress-tolerant samphires and relatives (Salicornieae: Amaranthaceae)
Authors: Cousins-Westerberg Ruben , Dakin Nicole , Schat Laura , Kadereit Gudrun , Humphreys Aelys M
Published: June 2023

Low temperature constitutes one of the main barriers to plant distributions, confining many clades to their ancestrally tropical biome. However, recent evidence suggests that transitions from tropical to temperate biomes may be more frequent than previously thought. Here, we study the evolution of cold and frost tolerance in the globally distributed and highly stress-tolerant Salicornieae (Salicornioideae, Amaranthaceae s.l.). We first generate a phylogenetic tree comprising almost all known species (85-90%), using newly generated (n = 106) and published nuclear-ribosomal and plastid sequences. Next, we use geographical occurrence data to document in which clades and geographical regions cold-tolerant species occur and reconstruct how cold tolerance evolved. Finally, we test for correlated evolution between frost tolerance and the annual life form. We find that frost tolerance has evolved independently in up to four Northern Hemisphere lineages but that annuals are no more likely to evolve frost tolerance than perennials, indicating the presence of different strategies for adapting to cold environments. Our findings add to mounting evidence for multiple independent out-of-the-tropics transitions among close relatives of flowering plants and raise new questions about the ecological and physiological mechanism(s) of adaptation to low temperatures in Salicornieae.