bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Engaged Pluralism
Authors: Parsons Craig
Published: December 2023

This chapter argues that a certain kind of deep methodological pluralism is desirable and feasible in political science. Political scientists today all advocate political pluralism, where we show respect and tolerance for diverse perspectives, but that worthy agenda does not tell us why it makes sense to engage substantively across deep scholarly divides. This is a thorny problem: political scientists approach their work within hugely varied philosophies of science and concomitant methods, each built around arguments that imply to some degree that other approaches cannot make similarly useful contributions. Ecumenical engagement thus seems to come at a cost in each approach’s understanding of scholarly rigor. Two moves solve this problem, justifying at least some engagement across our deepest divides. One is to highlight that all conceptions of scholarly rigor share the idea that rigorous work engages with the widest possible range of alternative views. The other is to highlight that this “widest possible” range is wider than we think. Prior to our philosophy-of-science divides, which mainly concern the truth or use value of our accounts, we share the common goal of formulating distinctive claims (hypotheses, narratives, accounts) about the political world. We formulate those distinctive claims within different scholarly “languages,” but sometimes claims formulated in other “languages” may contain substantive alternatives that, once “translated,” become useful contrasts to increase the distinctiveness of our own arguments. Together these points imply that the pursuit of rigor itself drives us to explore scholarship across deep divides.
The Exogeneity Question(s)
Authors: Linn Suzanna , Webb Clayton
Published: December 2023

Exogeneity assumptions are critical to applied time series analysis, but the topic is under-discussed and under-explained in econometric texts and often assumed away in applied work. The central misunderstanding is that there is not an exogeneity assumption; there are many exogeneity assumptions. Weak exogeneity, strong exogeneity, and super exogeneity are more or less likely to hold in different applications and the type of exogeneity that can be assumed tells us what we can learn from a given model. This chapter explains the importance of exogeneity in applied time series analysis, defines the different exogeneity concepts, highlights the different forms of time series analysis they are relevant for, and provides a strategy for evaluating the different exogeneity assumptions. Theory and data must support the exogeneity assumption necessary given the purpose of an analysis and analysts must be transparent in the claims they make about exogeneity.
Measuring Color
Authors: Yadon Nicole , Ostfeld Mara
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines the meaning and assessment of skin color and charts the evolution of the measurement of race and skin color over time, including the use of text-based and picture-based skin color scales, biases inherent to these measures and any human assessments of skin color, as well as the use (and misuse) of machine-assessed skin color ratings. The Yadon-Ostfeld Skin Color Scale is also introduced as an advancement in picture-based skin color scales given its validation as an interval-level scale that moves evenly from lighter to darker skin color shades. Finally, the chapter concludes by noting future directions toward more fully understanding the multidimensional and evolving nature of the American racial landscape.
Linking Theory and Empirics
Authors: de Marchi Scott
Published: December 2023

This chapter argues that cumulative knowledge is possible in the social sciences, but that our research culture is limiting the effort. In part, researchers are hampered by an inability to coordinate on shared questions; this problem is worsened by claims of methodological exceptionalism which limit interaction between empiricists and theorists. The research community has also largely ignored the defining characteristic of much of the progress in the natural sciences: the ability of theory to make sharp predictions about the world. To increase the possibility that social science produces cumulative knowledge, we must shift our focus to real-world puzzles and spend less time on pure theory or methodological innovation disconnected from empirical puzzles.
Parties and Party Systems
Authors: Ladner Andreas , Schwarz Daniel , Fivaz Jan
Published: December 2023

For decades, Swiss political parties provided remarkable stability to both the party system in particular and Swiss politics in general. Their organizations were weak and lacked resources. The fragmented party system forced parties into cooperation if they wanted to secure majorities for their policy proposals. Since the early 1990s, Swiss politics and subsequently the party system and party organizations have been experiencing significant changes. New lines of conflict emerged: nationalist and conservative issues, the question of European integration, and environmental issues as the most important. These political shifts broke up traditional political structures, forced parties to reposition, and created opportunities for new parties. Additionally, they significantly increased the level of polarization and brought party competition to new heights. This intensified party competition led national topics to dominate political debates at the cantonal and even local level. Party leaderships put more emphasis on closing ranks and taking unified political positions. In conjunction with the general trend towards the mediatization of politics, these are major driving factors that led to a strengthening and professionalization of party structures. Finally, the ongoing digitization led to challenges for party organizations by providing new ways of digital organization and communication. At the same time, it lowered thresholds for non-partisan actors, such as political action committees and citizen movements, to enter the political arena in competition with the traditional parties. After decades of relative calm, the Swiss parties and the party system are strongly in motion, but it is not entirely clear where the journey is heading.
Media and Political Communication
Authors: Hänggli Fricker Regula , Feddersen Alexandra
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses the process of political communication—generating, promoting, disseminating, and receiving information—in Switzerland by looking at the interactions between political actors (politicians, parties, and political institutions), the media (editors and journalists), and citizens, and provides an overview of the Swiss media landscape, including from an international perspective. While the Swiss communication landscape can be considered a latecomer in terms of digitalization, important changes have occurred in Switzerland as elsewhere in the world. The chapter examines the consequences of increased online media consumption, media concentration, and platformization on the role and interactions of the different actors involved in the political communication process.
Economic Policy
Authors: Emmenegger Patrick
Published: December 2023

Swiss economic policy mostly relies on a pragmatic muddling-through approach. This approach, which is relatively free of ideology and lacks any regulatory consistency, is an emergent trait of its negotiation democracy, which grants all major interest groups a say in shaping economic policy. Hence, usually arising from protracted negotiations, Swiss economic policy reforms often have the character of broad compromises. This approach proved highly successful for most of the twentieth century, although it has shown signs of erosion in recent decades. However, the approach is not without weaknesses. Politically well-connected groups with strong mobilization power are often able to protect their interests, which eventually translates into high consumer prices and protectionist economic policies. In addition, Swiss economic policy has proven to be less proactive as a result of complex decision-making processes. Necessary reforms are often initiated only in response to emerging or erupting crises.
Banking and the Swiss Financial Centre
Authors: Gava Roy
Published: December 2023

Highly developed and diverse, the Swiss financial centre contributes substantially to the national economy. This chapter depicts the regulation and governance of the industry. The introduction situates the discussion in the broader study of business and politics. The second part presents the economic structure, importance, and diversity of market participants. The segmentation of the banking sector is discussed to highlight differences in size and business models. The third part outlines the main actors that shape the regulatory environment, such as specialized public bodies and business associations representing the industry. The fourth part provides an overview of the regulatory framework, mapping the evolution of legislation and discussing business self-regulation. The final part explores how parliament and political parties have treated financial regulation since the Global Financial Crisis.
Infrastructure Policy
Authors: Sager Fritz , Kaufmann David
Published: December 2023

Infrastructure is the physical and technical structures and facilities, such as transport networks and power supplies, that are necessary for the operation of a society and economy to enable connectivity, communication, and exchange. Infrastructure policy refers to the provision, maintenance, and regulation of these services and facilities. The construction and maintenance of infrastructure is often protracted, complicated, and expensive and defines the landscape for decades. This underlines the high importance and immediacy of infrastructure policy. The chapter covers two core sectors of infrastructure policy in Switzerland: transportation and energy. The two respective sections cover the main challenges in the two policy sectors and the development of the respective legislation over time before presenting the main actors relevant for design and implementation of the policies. The final section provides an overall discussion and draws conclusions about the perspectives of future infrastructure policy in urbanizing Switzerland in an international context.
Social Policy
Authors: Bonoli Giuliano , Fossati Flavia
Published: December 2023

This chapter presents the historical development of the Swiss welfare state, which in international comparison has long been lagging behind in terms of how generous and encompassing social protection is. This initial delay is mainly due to the strength of the institutional veto points that are present in the country (in particular, federalism and direct democracy). Paradoxically, today, Switzerland is among the most generous welfare states precisely because these veto points prevent the dismantling of the welfare state as is instead systematically taking place in other Western welfare states. It discusses the different developmental stages of the main social policies and illustrates new trends (e.g. social investment). Then, it explores the preferences of the different actors involved in this policy field (parties, unions, employer organizations, etc.) and the resulting conflict lines (economic and cultural) that arise in a modern welfare state. Moreover, the chapter discusses how this policy field is coordinated and which actors play relevant roles. The chapter closes with an overview of new challenges and prospects for welfare state research in Switzerland and embeds the Swiss case in the international literature on welfare research.
The Promise and Problems of Policy-Minded Developmental Research
Authors: Lyon Thomas D. , Lamb Michael E.
Published: December 2023

Children come into contact with the legal system for myriad reasons, including as suspected victims of maltreatment, in divorce cases when custody is at issue, as unaccompanied minors in immigration hearings, or as suspected offenders of crime. Considerable scientific research has been devoted to identifying how this involvement may adversely affect children and how the system might be altered to reduce those effects. In order to maximize the value of this research, it is imperative that scientists recognize both the value judgments that sometimes underlie their work and how their work’s focus on outcomes often clashes with a legal focus on rights. This recognition, along with a clear articulation of the limitations of the direct policy implications of the work, will lead to stronger legal-oriented research with children.
Alternatives to Traditional Court Processing
Authors: Fountain Erika , Ducat Christina , Lloyd Allison
Published: December 2023

Informal processing is essential to juvenile courts. It directs youth away from the formal legal system and the consequences of involvement. Many youth are informally processed and placed into diversionary programs or specialty courts, yet relatively little is known about their outcomes. Youth must admit guilt to be eligible for many programs, and failure to succeed can result in youth returning to the formal court process. As a result, scholars caution that while informal processing is intended to reduce the footprint of the juvenile courts, it may actually increase the number of justice-involved youth and racial disparities in juvenile court. This is likely due, at least in part, to the fact that youth considering diversion programs are often doing so without legal counsel. This chapter describes informal processing, diversion, and specialty courts, before discussing the potential benefits and risks to youth. Recommendations for practice, policy, and research are discussed.
Rethinking the Age of Majority
Authors: Hamilton Vivian
Published: December 2023

Young people today come of age in a cultural and economic milieu that prolongs their attainment of the traditional markers of adulthood. Their subjective conceptions of the transition to adulthood depart radically from the traditional conception, with its emphasis on discrete transition events (e.g., marriage and entry into the workforce). Instead, the modern transition to adulthood is a gradual process consisting of the acquisition of general capabilities, rather than the achievement of externally constructed events. The state-established age of legal majority stands in marked contrast to this gradual and prolonged process. Thus, the legal construction of adulthood is starkly at odds with its social and cultural constructions. This chapter argues that abandoning the presumptive age of legal majority in favor of context-specific rules advances the state’s liberty-respecting ends and better aligns the legal and sociocultural constructions of adulthood. The developmental and behavioral sciences can and ought to supplement more traditional policymaking considerations.
Transitioning to Adulthood in the Legal System
Authors: Gillespie Marie L. , Riano Nicholas S. , Cauffman Elizabeth
Published: December 2023

Transition-age youth, or those between the ages of 18 and 25, represent a unique population that warrants differential treatment in the legal system due to rapid psychosocial changes. This chapter addresses the developmental science that underlies distinctions inherent to this age group and explains the current representation of young adults in the legal system. The chapter provides an overview of diversion programs designed to incorporate developmental research, which are being increasingly implemented in the United States. It highlights a case study of a novel young adult court in Southern California, which aims to reduce the collateral consequences of felony convictions. The chapter concludes with policy implications and future directions in both research and practice to improve the lives of young adults in the legal system.
Prisoner Reentry and the Life Course
Authors: LeBel Thomas P. , Richie Matt
Published: December 2023

This chapter addresses prisoner reentry and the life course. It focuses on three distinct phases or timeframes: what happened in the life course for many individuals before arriving at the prison gate, events that take place while incarcerated, and what transpires after release from prison. Although recidivism (rearrest, conviction, return to prison) is discussed, the chapter also examines other important life course events or outcomes such as employment, housing, family relationships/marriage, and health. Other factors that make achieving a successful life (maximizing one’s potential) difficult for formerly incarcerated persons are described such as the stigma of incarceration and the collateral (legal) consequences of a felony conviction. The chapter concludes by discussing directions for future research.
Ethical Considerations and Ramifications of Advance Care Planning and End-of-Life Decision Making for Older Adults
Authors: Teaster Pamela B. , Shealy E. Carlisle
Published: December 2023

In the 1970s, the advance care planning movement gained momentum, reacting to improvements in medical technology allowing patients in life-limiting situations to survive longer than ever before. Ethical questions arose about end-of-life care and laws to address them. The United States continues to wrestle with treatment for dying patients related to treatment and quality of life. Against this landscape, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss how features of old age influence end-of-life and advance care planning. The chapter begins by characterizing old age and end of life, discussing ethical principles and the evolution of end-of-life decision making. Following, it considers mechanisms for end-of-life planning, including surrogate decision-making laws and guardianship for emergent health care situations. The chapter reviews ten years of research on advance care planning and introduces the diffusion of telemedicine. It concludes with questions yet to be resolved and how research, practice, and policy can help answer them.
Older Adults as Victims and Witnesses
Authors: Brank Eve
Published: December 2023

The older adult population is one of the fastest growing in the United States due to advances in medicine and aging baby boomers. Developmentally, bodies and minds go through changes as they age that contribute to victimization risk and eyewitness accuracy. Although official crime statistics suggest that older adults are infrequently crime victims, they may fear being victimized at a greater rate than other age groups and they are at increased risk of being victimized by family members who are entrusted to care for them. Older adults who are victimized or who witness another crime can be called upon to serve as an eyewitness. Eyewitness research that has focused on older adults as eyewitnesses has found that they generally do not perform as well as younger adults due to both developmental and generational differences. Using older adults in research requires creativity and extra efforts, but it is a worthwhile pursuit, given their potential for victimization and other involvement in the legal system.
Defoe and the Book Trade
Authors: Rogers Pat
Published: December 2023

First, this chapter lists some external factors that affected the book trade in Daniel Defoe’s era, specifically the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, the Copyright Act of 1710, the Stamp Act of 1712, the threat of prosecution for seditious libel, and the extreme partiality of public discourse. It then considers Defoe’s confrontations with the law, detailing a series of works that resulted in prosecution and punishment, as well as cases where his writings were pirated. Next, some particular issues relating to publication by subscription are assessed. At the heart of the chapter is an examination of a large number of booksellers, printers, and editors with whom Defoe had dealings in London and Edinburgh, as they stood within the print business. A brief conclusion raises the question of how far Defoe’s interactions with such groups were representative for authorship in general.
Daniel Defoe and the Social Structure of Pre-Industrial England
Authors: Downie J. A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter uses Defoe’s classification of English society into seven social strata to understand the gradations of rank in England prior to the Industrial Revolution. In the Review, Defoe wrote that English men and women fell into the following social levels: ‘the Great, who live profusely’; ‘the Rich, who live very plentifully’; ‘the middle Sort, who live well’; ‘the working Trades, who labour hard, but feel no Want’; ‘the Country People, Farmers, &c. who fare indifferently’; ‘the Poor, that fare hard’; and ‘the Miserable, that really pinch and suffer Want’. The chapter challenges simplified understandings of Defoe which see him announcing and embracing the rise of the middle class, promoting ‘middle-class gentility’, or embodying liberal and democratic ideals. It addresses Defoe’s social conservatism, the centrality of the possession of landed property to his understanding of the political nation, and the compatibility with this outlook of his consistent championing of trade.
Defoe, Science, and Technology
Authors: Loar Christopher F.
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses Daniel Defoe’s practical and pragmatic approach to scientific and technological knowledge. It first examines Defoe’s understandings of non-human nature and his ideas about how apprehensions of the natural world generated through empirical observation and experimentation intersect with faith. From early writings that engage with the Royal Society through to late writings on supernatural topics, Defoe was a promoter of new kinds of scientific knowledge, but he consistently left space for religion. Second, the chapter turns to the application of science through technology, especially in industry, travel, and commerce. It finds that Defoe adheres to the view that human action improves the world, in harmony with Divine Providence, and that human innovation is a form of imitation of the natural creation.
Defoe and War
Authors: Alker Sharon , Nelson Holly Faith
Published: December 2023

Daniel Defoe lived through a period when Britain was often at war. This chapter assesses Defoe’s writings on warfare, appraising his methods of reporting remotely on wars, his fascination for war as a complex system, and his interest in the emotional effects of soldiery. The chapter examines Defoe’s topical commentaries on international relations and military conflicts, particularly the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), in panegyric poetry, pamphlets, and his periodicals, the Review (1704–13) and The Master Mercury (1704). And it evaluates Defoe’s interest in the history of military technology, ranging from An Essay upon Projects (1697) to A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6). Finally, it analyses the depiction of soldiers’ experiences in Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) and Colonel Jack (1722), novels that bring war up close, exploiting eyewitness testimony to explore the psychic effects of battles and sieges.
Crime and the Law in Defoe’s Works
Authors: Loveman Kate
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines Daniel Defoe’s representations of the law and its agents in Moll Flanders (1722), Colonel Jack (1722), and his early satires. It begins by outlining how criminals were apprehended and prosecuted in the early eighteenth century, explaining the ways these legal processes were manipulated by the various parties involved. In pamphlets such as The True-Born Englishman (1700/1), Defoe attacked the injustice of the legal system and the corruption of certain London magistrates. Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack similarly assume that their readers will be knowledgeable about the operation of the law in London—assumptions which include crafty appeals to readers’ knowledge of local history and legal personalities. In carefully plotted moments, perceptions of right and wrong, duty and mercy are tested. Defoe’s works urge readers to recognize and scrutinize the forces affecting the administration of justice; forces which, he insists, include readers themselves.
Defoe and Britain
Authors: Sills Adam
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines Daniel Defoe’s progressive view of Great Britain as a social, political, cultural, and commercial entity. Against the grain of more nostalgic, backwards-looking idealizations of Britain in antiquarian and historical writing, Defoe anticipated a more glorious and prosperous future. His optimism was based on a view of the British nation as mixed, which inclined him to promote (Protestant) immigration and toleration, and to celebrate linguistic plurality across the kingdom. In his writings in support of the foreign King William III, especially The True-Born Englishman (1700/1), his promotion of the Anglo-Scottish Union (1707), and his descriptions of inland and international trade in A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), Defoe imaginatively constructed a Britain made more cohesive by its internal diversity as well as its rising global power.
Defoe and the Pacific
Authors: Markley Robert
Published: December 2023

Daniel Defoe was fascinated by the Pacific Ocean. From his early journalistic works to his last novel, he projected onto the region a vision of the endless profits to be made by exploiting opportunities for trade, piracy, and colonization. In Defoe’s era, the Pacific was perceived as a mosaic of distinct regions and spheres of influence: the trade-rich coastal waters of China; the unapproachable empire of Japan; the South Seas along the coasts of Chile and Peru, patrolled by Spanish war ships and raided by the British and French; the Spanish colony in the Philippines; the Dutch commercial empire in the East Indies; the known and hypothesized islands dotting the vast ocean. No one attitude or consistent view of the vast Pacific existed; instead, the open ocean and its bordering lands served as ideological screens for the dreams and fantasies, the values and assumptions, that animated an ideology of ‘infinite Advantage’.
Africa and the Levant in Defoe’s Writings
Authors: Mitsein Rebekah , Powell Manushag N.
Published: December 2023

Daniel Defoe viewed Africa and the Middle East with a mixture of fear and uncertainty: fear of the threat posed to European Christianity by Islam in northern Africa and the Levant, and uncertainty about the unchartered regions of sub-Saharan Africa. But Defoe also wrote about these parts of the world with a sense of opportunity, anticipating prospects of British trade and colonialism. This chapter analyses Defoe’s call for commercial and intellectual investment in Africa, including his demonizations of Ottomans as a justification for military conquest to dispossess Muslims of the coastal regions of North Africa. It then examines Defoe’s writings in support of the commercial monopoly of the Royal African Company amidst debates about how best to conduct the transatlantic slave trade. Finally, it explores Defoe’s representations of the African interior and its peoples in Captain Singleton (1720), showing how Defoe’s polemical arguments on international trade inform his fiction.
Attribution and the Defoe Canon
Authors: Pauley Benjamin F.
Published: December 2023

The question of what Daniel Defoe wrote was vexed in his own day and has continued so ever since. While it seems clear that Defoe wrote more than the approximately sixty works whose authorship he affirmed, it seems equally clear that he did not write all of the hundreds of works that have been attributed to him over the years. This chapter surveys the debates surrounding the attribution of works to Defoe (with particular attention to the critique of the Defoe canon by Furbank and Owens and subsequent responses to their work), and it weighs the equivocal promise of computer-assisted stylometric analysis for author attribution. Many of the uncertainties surrounding the Defoe canon simply reflect the circumstances of printed publication in Defoe’s day. Thinking about the Defoe canon demands, to an unusual degree, engagement with the broader universe of early eighteenth-century print, in which certainty about authorship is necessarily elusive.
Habits of Gender and Genre in Three Female Robinsonades, 1767–1985
Authors: Swenson Rivka
Published: December 2023

Almost from the moment it was published, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) has provoked fictional responses and appropriations, and the microgenre that depicts a castaway battling for survival is known as the Robinsonade. This chapter addresses the female Robinsonade, dealing in particular with three novels that respond to Robinson Crusoe by reframing the masculine castaway story with a woman protagonist. The chapter analyses The Female American (1967), published under the pseudonym Unca Eliza Winkfield; Muriel Spark’s Robinson (1958); and Jane Gardam’s Crusoe’s Daughter (1985). It argues that these novels, in distinctive ways, push against the sartorial and architectural authority of the original novel, challenging gendered structures of power. In this respect they are self-consciously metafictional and metageneric contributions to the well-established genre of novels that rework Crusoe.
Defoe, Prose Fiction, and the Novel
Authors: Sill Geoffrey
Published: December 2023

Defoe has long been regarded as the father of the realistic English novel, but that label obscures the variety of prose fictional genres in which he worked. Recent scholarship sees his fictions as hybrids of genres such as biography (both historical and imaginative), history (both private or ‘secret’ as well as public), and moral or propagandistic tracts (advancing political, religious, or social purposes). The three volumes that comprise the life, adventures, and reflections of Robinson Crusoe exemplify this hybridity, each drawing on multiple genres to reveal different aspects of Crusoe’s personality. Memoirs of a Cavalier, Journal of the Plague Year, and New Voyage Round the World use imaginary narratives of public events to examine historical and political subjects. Defoe’s most ‘novelistic’ works, Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack, commence as works of entertainment but explore topics including piracy, crime, and slavery. Finally, The Fortunate Mistress flouts the conventions of ‘the novel’ and creates something entirely new.
Dialogue and Didacticism
Authors: Pritchard Penny
Published: December 2023

This chapter analyses Daniel Defoe’s extensive corpus of didactic writings, particularly The Family Instructor (1715) and Religious Courtship (1722), which make extensive use of fictional dialogue. The first section surveys Defoe’s conduct books directed at various groups in society, which provided advice on topics as diverse as sexual morality, commercial integrity, and domestic worship. The second section establishes the didactic models with which Defoe worked, particularly those that used invented dialogues, and the religious and social contexts that Defoe’s advice literature addressed. The final section examines Defoe’s dialogic didacticism, showing how he educates and entertains readers through realistic and lively illustrations of moral quandaries that allow him to capture the point of view of disputants as well as to provide authoritative commentary to inculcate moral wisdom. Defoe emerges from the analysis as an artful didactic writer.
The Great Polemicist
Authors: Hopes Jeffrey
Published: December 2023

This chapter analyses Daniel Defoe’s pamphlets and tracts. It explores his contributions to intersecting political and religious debate during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, showing that he made his name as a radical Whig and Dissenter in the wake of the 1688 Revolution, though he was also an analyst of the emergent party system and displayed ambivalence towards his co-religionists, as in his contributions to debates over occasional conformity. It then turns to trade and finance, showing Defoe’s support for strong British trade and his critical treatment of high finance, especially in the wake of the South Sea Bubble (1720). Defoe’s occasional writings extend to foreign affairs, where his writings on European diplomacy and warfare were motivated by his patriotic promotion of British strength. Defoe also produced tracts on a succession of moral and social themes, which like all of his pamphlets demonstrate his verve and versatility.
Defoe and the Idea of Travel
Authors: Baines Paul
Published: December 2023

Daniel Defoe died in hiding and was often imprisoned, but his imagination roamed the world. He had a powerful vision of networked trade, fluidly operating along frictionless routes, with merchant princes as supreme travellers along the magical map of international exchange (whether or not they left the counting-house). But he was also fascinated by blocked, spasmodic, and unpredictable motion, represented mystically by the Great Storm, with its irrational, chaotic, kinetic force. The Great Plague too moved without logic, obstructing trade, imprisoning sufferers, generating mad parodies of travel. Defoe’s protagonists from Crusoe to Roxana are hyperkinetic, deracinated, migrant, and restless, ‘rambling’ against stasis, criss-crossing the Atlantic, Africa, or Europe, yet often driven from the mapped world, blocked by random pirate encounters, diverted by shipwreck, or possessed by an inner pathology of pointless motion. This chapter surveys the tensions between economically plotted movement and psychological misdirection through a range of Defoe’s writing.
Archival Education and Professionalism
Authors: Sexton Anna
Published: December 2023

Using the Masters in Archives and Records Management at University College London as a case in point, this chapter seeks to problematize the origin stories that are told within professional recordkeeping education in the United Kingdom. By tracing how the concept of impartiality is explored within the UCL MA programme, this chapter problematizes the White Eurocentric lens through which key conceptual and theoretical underpinnings are introduced, while seeking to highlight the affective impact this can have on the student’s lived experience of the curriculum. Through this exploration, the author argues for a re-envisioning of how the anchor points of archival theory are taught and introduced within archive education in the UK, with a more thorough de-centring of concepts such as impartiality and the development of a curriculum that pays respect and gives space to long-standing archival traditions, concepts, and practices that currently remain sidelined and unseen in the traditional professional canon.
Networks
Authors: Ahnert Ruth , Ahnert Sebastian E.
Published: December 2023

The application of methods from network science to the arts and humanities has gained traction in recent years. This chapter discusses how network analysis provides a way of connecting entities both within and across archives. Using examples from our work on epistolary data we show how network metrics provide a way of describing the contours of the archive in question, drawing attention to how the distribution of entities are shaped by collection biases, loss, and other organizational factors. The network framework also provides solutions for linking across archives, through the construction of a ‘meta-archive’: an online hub where the metadata from multiple digital projects can be stored and cross-linked. The power of network analysis scales with the size and complexity of the data, allowing us to navigate the data deluge and make new connections that could have not been found on the scale of a single collection.
Authenticating and Evaluating Evidence
Authors: Moss Michael , Thomas David
Published: December 2023

Archivists and historians have made elaborate truth claims for archives. We critically assess these claims both in the analogue world and in the digital, and show that they are problematic. We contend that archives operate in two truth spaces: the mundane and the imaginal. Archives can fulfil their mundane administrative functions and meet all possible tests of authenticity but remain full of half-truths and distortions. The only way to determine whether a document is authentic is to apply the scholarly tests developed by classicists and biblical scholars since the sixteenth century and which are as relevant in the digital era as they were when applied to the second century Epistles of Phalaris. Our arguments echo the views of Lord Acton, the founder of ‘scientific’ history in Britain, who saw history as a process of criticism and evaluation which requires everything, including the authenticity of documents, to be continually evaluated.
Doors into the Archives
Authors: Richardson Catherine
Published: December 2023

This chapter explores the sometimes uncomfortable and anomalous place that material objects occupy within contemporary archives. It investigates how they enter the archive in the first place, their relationship with other parts of the collections, and the challenges and opportunities which they present for a deeper engagement with those collections. The focus is upon two case-study groups of objects and associated texts which have stayed together—cabinets of curiosities and sets of cupboard doors—used to think through the relationship between things and the documents kept within and written about them and their owners and compilers. In order to explore the way documents can become implicated and entangled in the spaces that produce and house them, reference will also be made to artists’ studios and writers’ huts—creative spaces which can be shut off from surrounding environments—exploring the access things give to working practices.
Response to ‘Materialities’
Authors: Mandell Laura
Published: December 2023

This response to the chapters in the section on 'Materialities' places the discussion of archival materiality in the wider context of media archaeology, the sociology of texts and network theory. It emphasizes the tensions between the materiality of the archive and the frequent assumption that digital data is immaterial, and argues for the importance of digital materiality.
Archival Impulses and the Gunpowder Plot
Authors: Strohm Paul
Published: December 2023

This chapter considers the mixture of choice and accident involved in the creation of an archive, and the senses in which a collection’s origins continue to influence the terms of its own study. It considers the assembly of what are known as the Gunpowder papers: the documents associated with the attempt to bomb parliament in London in 1605. Their origins are traced from an initial gathering in a ‘great buckrom bagg of the Powder Treason’ belonging to the Attorney-General Edward Coke, to a ‘Paper Office’ in Whitehall, then to safer lodgings on Chancery Lane and The National Archives at Kew. However, in selecting the Gunpowder papers, many other letters relating to the plot were left in the broader run of State Papers, and perhaps these secondary materials tell us more about the Catholic predicament in Jacobean England.
Irreconcilable Archives
Authors: Kahn Rebecca
Published: December 2023

This chapter compares two archival collections which provide different perspectives on a notorious South African story—the 1989 kidnapping and murder trial of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The case was a political sensation, and its homophobic undertones polarized members of the anti-apartheid movement, many of whom were also part of the burgeoning gay rights movement. The responses to the trial are viewed through the holdings of two very different collections—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission archives, and those of Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) a small activist archive in Johannesburg. This comparison asks whether reconciliation between archives is possible or desirable. It explores the significance of archives and archivists in facilitating complex enquiries into complicated histories and their capacity to contribute to the development of functioning democracies.
Destruction and Displacement
Authors: Whiting Rebecca Abby
Published: December 2023

When the 2003 invasion of Iraq toppled the Baʿth regime, various actors sought to gain control of the records and archives that had been under its control. The seizure of records was indicative of a new order of power that defined what was considered to be of value, who could access it, and how it could be deployed. As archives of immense historic significance were left to the mercy of the war’s destruction, the invading forces captured documents created by the former regime and subsequently displaced them. In addition to documents seized due to their presumed military value, two large collections were displaced through interventions that were justified in terms of efforts to preserve the Iraqi historical record. This chapter considers the impacts of conflict on records and archives and investigates the networks of power that led to the deterritorialization of Iraqi documentary heritage.
Response to ‘Erasures and Exclusion’
Authors: Weld Kirsten
Published: December 2023

This short response to the chapters in the preceding section on 'Erasures and Exclusions' emphasizes how the 'archival turn' has made us more aware of the silences and lacunae in archives and the way this reflects power relations. The response reviews how the chapters in 'Erasures and Exclusions' add to our understanding of absences in the archive and urges further probing of these silences as part of a mission to democratize and pluralize archives.
Plato
Authors: Lamm Julia A.
Published: December 2023

Schleiermacher changed the course of modern Plato studies and thus changed how we understood Plato. His monumental Platons Werke (Plato’s Works), 1804–1828, which included translation of almost the entire Platonic corpus as well as Introductions to the dialogues, influenced Plato scholars throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What is less known is the degree to which Plato’s philosophy influenced Schleiermacher’s own thought. The influence on his hermeneutics and his theory of translation is perhaps clearest. Yet, once we understand how Schleiermacher interpreted Plato—that is, once we understand Schleiermacher’s Plato—we will recognize just how profoundly Platonic Schleiermacher’s early ethics, his Christmas Dialogue, Dialectic, and his On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despiser truly are.
Sin and Redemption
Authors: Vander Schel Kevin M.
Published: December 2023

Though Schleiermacher’s treatment of redemption often attracts less attention than other aspects of his theology, the opposition of sin and grace and the manner of their expression in history lies at the center of his mature theological vision. This chapter examines Schleiermacher’s distinctive understanding of redemption in his Christian Faith by considering his interconnected analyses of the doctrines of sin and grace. It argues both that sin and grace are inseparably linked in Schleiermacher’s theology, and that his treatment of each is notably distinguished by an emphasis on historical and social mediation. This approach leads to a substantially revised conception of the traditional relationship between sin and evil and to pioneering treatments of social sin and the communication of grace.
Kant
Authors: Grove Peter
Published: December 2023

This chapter claims that Kant’s philosophy is one of the most important presuppositions of Schleiermacher’s thought and that his work would have been unthinkable without Kant’s. Firstly, it shows how Schleiermacher’s first formative period 1789–1797—here represented in particular by his 1789 treatise On the Highest Good—displays a critical but constructive reception of Kant, one that is influenced by early Kantians like August Wilhelm Rehberg and Karl Leonhard Reinhold. This reception finds expression in Schleiermacher’s critical-philosophical view of autonomy, cognition, metaphysics, and religion. Secondly, the article argues that Schleiermacher’s much sharper criticism of Kant around 1800 does not make his reception of Kant unimportant for his later work. On the contrary, with modifications, his early Kantianism remains fundamental—for example, for his mature theory of the idea of God.
Trinitarian Thought
Authors: Poe Shelli M.
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses Friedrich Schleiermacher’s treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Conclusion of his Christian Faith (1830/1831) and his 1822 essay on Sabellianism. The chapter demonstrates that current scholars are no longer satisfied with the claim that Schleiermacher relegates the doctrine of the Trinity to the status of an appendix. While consensus has been reached on the notion that Schleiermacher rejects the doctrine of the immanent Trinity, interpreters are developing various strains of argument regarding the content and value of his trinitarian thought. I offer my own constructive reading of Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith as implicitly containing a “doctrine of the essential Trinity,” which could expand the contemporary discussion both in terms of an evaluation of Schleiermacher’s theology as well as the diversity of thought possible within Christian doctrine. The chapter concludes with directions for further research, including a development of the third article of the Nicene Creed in consultation with Schleiermacher’s theology, and the relation of the doctrine of the Trinity to gender and sexuality.
The Life of Jesus
Authors: Danz Christian
Published: December 2023

Between 1819 and 1832, Friedrich Schleiermacher gave five courses of lectures on the life of Jesus at University of Berlin. His lectures presuppose the Enlightenment as well as the historical criticism of the biblical scriptures and the epistemological critique of Immanuel Kant. Against this background, he sketched a picture of the historical Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion. The basis of his biographical interpretation of Jesus of Nazareth is his concept of religion. Starting from his concept of religion, Schleiermacher interpreted Jesus’ work as an expression of his inner consciousness of God and in this way connected history and faith in the work of the Nazarene. But Schleiermacher’s lectures on the life of Jesus are less about a historical foundation of the Christology of his dogmatics, as research has always assumed, than they are about a religious picture of the man from Nazareth. Schleiermacher presented Jesus as the founder of a community of equals, which presentation was supposed to function as an ideal model for his own time as well as for the debates about the national unity of Germany after the Napoleonic Wars.
Early Writings on Ethics
Authors: Brino Omar
Published: December 2023

The short Monologen (1800) and the broad Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803) argue for an ethical perspective based on mutually “formative” (bildende) interactions between individuals and communities as well as between peculiarity and universality. Whereas in the Monologen this perspective is presented in an “effusive” and “evocative” style, the Grundlinien develop it at a theoretically deeper level, detailing an impressive systematic confrontation with ancient, modern, and contemporaneous philosophers. The Vertraute Briefe über die Lucinde von Schlegel (1800) also consider conjugal love and the relationship of sexes from a “formative” ethical perspective. There are some differences between these early works and the later writings, both in an attenuation of the more “ideal” and “prophetic” aspects and in an accentuation of the “institutional” and “pragmatic” ones; however, the republications of the Monologen until 1829 and the systematic relationships between the Grundlinien and the late academic papers demonstrate a specific continuity on important basic principles of Schleiermacher’s “formative” ethical thought.
Sermons
Authors: Kelsey Catherine L.
Published: December 2023

With its completion in 2018, KGA 3 tripled the number of sermon texts available for study and opened new research paths. This chapter shows how that fresh resource offers insight into the ways Schleiermacher sought to evoke Christ’s God-consciousness in the context of a faith community. It explores the kinds of sermons and sources for sermons now available in German and in English translation, discussing their typical form and use of Scripture. Reception of the sermons by worshippers, readers, and scholars writing in English is also discussed. The chapter argues that the sermons add significantly to the interpretation of Schleiermacher’s dogmatic and ethical writing.