bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Principles of Good Governance
Authors: Addink Henk
Published: May 2019

The theoretical foundation of the principles of good governance has been created by developing a strong relationship with the discussion between Dworkin and Hart about the position of the notion of principles in the concept of law. Another relationship has been worked out between law and values and the link between justice and morality, especially in the context of public law. In the context of good governance, the discussion is focused on whether good governance is a norm for the administration (or the government from a broader perspective) or a citizen’s right. A difference between Dworkin’s and Alexy’s approach to rules and principles has been recognized and finally we bridge the gap between principles and values.
The Principle of Transparency
Authors: Addink Henk
Published: May 2019

The most fundamental reason to have a principle of transparency is the need for legitimacy of the government. But transparency also assists internal accountability and enhances the opportunity for outside comment. Several developments have caused the increasing need for transparency. First, rules have become more technical and the bureaucracy has expanded. Thus, the idea that transparency and accountability flourish when the administration is more rule-bound is not necessarily true. As rules have become more intricate, the public at large finds itself often defeated by this technical language. The enlarged bureaucracy created an enormous number of rules, which is out of the scope of the Parliament. Further, more and more experts are hired. But experts cannot be relied upon to know what is good for us. Here, protection by means of the principle of transparency is needed. Second, national law in general and administrative law are increasingly influenced by international and regional legal institutions. Transparency has declined because of the opacity of international law-making and policymaking processes. Apart from this kind of internationalization, states increasingly cooperate by means of ad hoc agreements as to certain activities. The legitimacy question then requires further-reaching transparency. Third, competences are more frequently transferred to regulatory agencies that hold a considerable degree of discretion. These institutions should inform the public about their regulations and policies under the principle of transparency. Finally, the increasing number of private finance initiatives and public-private partnerships make it necessary to think about the actual transparency of these activities.
The Principle of Accountability
Authors: Addink Henk
Published: May 2019

This chapter explains the principle of accountability as part of the principles of good governance. The principle of accountability is already far beyond financial accounting, and it comes closer to the accountability of the minister in their relationship with the parliament and with the civil and criminal responsibility of persons and institutions in general.
Implementation of Good Governance Principles on the European Level
Authors: Addink Henk
Published: May 2019

In this chapter the focus is on the implementation of the principles of good governance by the European Union administrative institutions and the controlling institutions like the European Court of Justice and the European Ombudsman. The Treaty of Lisbon contains rules and obligations in respect of the implementation of these principles. The principle of transparency has found its expression in article 1 paragraph 2 TFEU. The principles of political participation are embodied in article 11 TEU. The right of access to documents of the Union’s institutions is a fundamental rule in article 15 TFEU. Furthermore, according to article 16 paragraph 8 TEU, the European Council of ministers must meet in public when acting as a legislator. These Treaty principles are complemented by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union which has entered into force with the final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and its chapter on citizen’s rights like the right to good administration in article 41. In search for a better quality of administrative proceedings, a code on good administrative practise, a soft law instrument based on the logic of best practise has ultimately been adopted.
Introduction
Authors: Shieh Sanford
Published: May 2019

This chapter presents the principal philosophical issue of the book: is the nature of logic specified by the concepts of necessity and possibility? According to Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, the answer is no, because these concepts of modality are empty: there are no genuine distinctions among the necessary, the possible and the actual. The upshot for Frege and Russell is that logic is fundamental, and modality is to be reconstructed from logical notions. This chapter continues with a brief outline of Volume II of this work: how C. I. Lewis and Ludwig Wittgenstein argued against the anti-modal stance of Frege and Russell. I conclude with a note on the significance of this aspect of early analytic philosophy for contemporary philosophy of logic and modality.
The Nature of Logic
Authors: Shieh Sanford
Published: May 2019

How does Frege conceive of logic, if not in modal terms? For Frege, logic is a system of truths that divides into primitive truths, which are axioms or basic laws, and logical truths justified by primitive logical truths. Frege appears to hold that what makes a thought a primitive logical truth is that it provides its own justification. However, Frege appears also to give arguments for the basic laws of Frege’s systems of logic. I argue that these arguments cannot be understood as non-question-begging demonstrations that the basic laws are self-justifying. Knowledge of self-justification results from the exercise of a perception-like capacity, and Frege’s “arguments” are intended to provide his readers with the occasion to exercise this capacity with respect to the thoughts expressed by his basic logical laws.
Completing the Rejection of Idealism
Authors: Shieh Sanford
Published: May 2019

This chapter shows how Russell’s rejection of modality rounds out his criticism of Bradleyan idealism. Russell’s argument against internal relations by itself is not a fully satisfying criticism of Bradley’s idealism, because it doesn’t show what exactly is wrong with Bradley’s arguments against the reality of relations. I show that several of Bradley’s arguments, including not only his famous regress argument against the reality of relations, but also his rejection of psychological atomism and his account of the philosophical method that leads to idealism, rest on a tacit modal principle of sufficient reason. In 1905-7, Russell became aware of this unacknowledged ground of Bradley’s arguments. Bradley’s tacit principle of sufficient reason presupposes the coherence of a distinction between the actual and the merely possible, and collapses in face of Russell’s amodalism.
Logic and Implication
Authors: Shieh Sanford
Published: May 2019

This chapter presents three main aspects of Russell’s non-modal conception of logic. First, Russell characterizes the axioms of logic as rules of inference that incorporate the relation of implication. Second, Russell takes logic to be maximally general, in the sense that logic governs all valid deductive reasoning, no matter what about. Third, Russell ascribes to implication certain notoriously counter-intuitive features, nowadays often dubbed “the paradoxes of material implication.” This view rests on an argument that implication is not analyzable in other terms. Ultimately, we can only “perceive” what propositions imply what others, by reflecting on what forms of inference are indispensable in deductive reasoning. For the purpose of obtaining a simpler formulation of logic in Principia, Russell replaces implication with a defined ersatz that has these indispensable features.
Computational Science and Its Effects
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: May 2019

A new kind of scientific revolution is described, one called an emplacement revolution. Emplacement revolutions are contrasted with Kuhnian revolutions and Hacking revolutions. The concept of the anthropocentric predicament is introduced and the associated concept of the interface problem. Each provides a challenge in understanding the world from the perspective of computational science. The central concept of epistemic opacity is described and connected to the interface problem. Some reasons why computational science is new are given, arguments are provided for why philosophy of science should not restrict itself to in principle results, and the fact that contemporary science is inextricably entwined with technological advances is explored.
The Philosophical Novelty of Computer Simulation Methods
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: May 2019

Reasons are given to justify the claim that computer simulations and computational science constitute a distinctively new set of scientific methods as compared to traditional analytic methods and that these computational methods introduce new issues in the philosophy of science. These issues are both epistemological and methodological in kind. Definitions of epistemic opacity and essential epistemic opacity are given, the syntactic and semantic accounts of theories are shown to address different problems than those addressed by computational science, the important role of concrete dynamics in simulations is stressed, and differences between in principle approaches and in practice approaches to philosophy of science are explored.
How Properties Emerge
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: May 2019

A framework for representing a specific kind of emergent property instance is given in terms of the fusion of property instances. A solution to a generalized version of the exclusion argument is then provided to show that this is not restricted to physical and mental events, and it is shown that upward and downward causation is unproblematical for that kind of emergence. One real example of this kind of emergence is briefly described and the suggestion made that emergence may be more common than current opinions allow. Throughout, reasons to be skeptical of an ontology containing sharply divided levels are given.
Why Propensities Cannot Be Probabilities
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: May 2019

Propensities are often taken to provide an interpretation for probability theory that is congenial to single-case probabilities. An argument is provided to show that propensities cannot be correctly represented by conditional probabilities because they do not in general satisfy Bayes’ theorem or the multiplication principle. The first section of the chapter provides an informal version of the argument, indicating how the causal nature of propensities cannot be adequately represented by standard probability theory. In the second section, a full version of the argument is given so that the assumptions underlying the informal account can be precisely identified. The third section examines those assumptions and deals with objections that could be raised against the argument and its conclusion. The fourth and final section draws out some rather more general consequences of accepting the main argument.
Probability Theory and Its Models
Authors: Humphreys Paul
Published: May 2019

This paper argues for the status of formal probability theory as a mathematical, rather than a scientific, theory. Some remarks are made about the historical transition from Hilbert’s view of probability as a scientific theory to Kolmogorov’s view of probability as a mathematical theory. A process is provided that bridges abstract probability theory with concrete systems via mathematical models. This demonstrates that empirical content is injected into formal models via the mapping from those formal models on to elements of the concrete systems. David Freedman and Philip Stark’s concept of model-based probabilities is examined and is used as a bridge between the formal theory and applications.
Wartime Identification
Authors: Sriraman Tarangini
Published: May 2019

This preliminary chapter presents a picture of the various wartime initiatives to identify, enumerate, and classify subjects in what constituted a historic and unprecedented moment of colonial documentation. During the period of the Second World War, the ration card emerged as an indispensable administrative marker of a verifiable address and a ‘proper’ family as well as a critical model of identification in fraught discussions around fraud and corruption. While the colonial regime of rationing documents opened the floodgates to a deluge of genres which varied on the basis of province, state, and region, this chapter demonstrates that in Delhi they were the outcome of cultural mobilizations by groups such as textile workers’ unions, railway unions, washermen’s groups, and religious communities.
Emotions in the Time of ‘Licence Raj’
Authors: Sriraman Tarangini
Published: May 2019

What happens when low-ranking officials encounter (identification) documents in a society saturated by emotion-laden practices of kinship and ritual? Documents of rationing summoned deep interpretive traditions of governance and enabled the fluid negotiation of administrative boundaries of rules. In addition, they unlocked emotions of food officials that were ‘culturally motivated’ and ‘socially articulated’ (Lutz and White 1986: 409) and conjured dynamic constructions of the bureaucratic Indian self. This chapter argues that it is by paying attention to the tangibility, materiality, and at other times, the magical power of rationing documents to circulate in various spaces that ‘street-level bureaucrats’—to deploy Michael Lipsky’s phrase (Lipsky 2010: xi)—were able to flesh out cultural norms that were dear to them during the period designated the License Raj in India.
Making Proof in a Slum
Authors: Sriraman Tarangini
Published: May 2019

In the popular memory of slum residents and the urban history of Delhi, a survey exercise and a drive to issue a bundle of IDs stand out for their remarkable move to erase the mandate of producing proof of identity. This enumeration and identification initiative carried out under the vigilant leadership of the then-prime minister V.P. Singh was unprecedented in that it demolished historically sacrosanct criteria of submitting evidence of ‘occupation’. Such an intervention, however, forced the enumerating food official to respect the administrative ‘factum of residence’ by relying on extra-documentary aesthetic-material and affective practices of counting and verifying families and their slum residences. This chapter argues that the initiative and its aftermath enabled both a precarious and kind regime of urban legalism where residents were able to set up a diverse range of material, emotional, and familial claims on housing benefits through popular practices such as counterfeiting, securing FIRs for lost cards, and filing Right to Information (RTI) petitions against counterfeiters.
Indian Information Technology, the New Caste Frontier
Authors: Fernandez Marilyn
Published: May 2019

After reviewing the evidence for caste diffusion and reproduction in Indian IT, a case was made for deconstructing the caste-tinged merit construction project. If IT is to live up to its mantel of India’s saviour from historic caste inequalities, soft and hard strategies for transforming the IT work habitus into a Dalit caste diverse and inclusive space are outlined. While there will be intense resistance, a call is made to IT’s cutting-edge R&D divisions. Caste inclusive strategies will have to be self-arbitrated (like with an internal ombudsmen) and accompanied by reasonable and enforceable limits on caste based litigation. Evaluative evidence on the progress of caste diversity initiatives can be used by companies to verify, with hard evidence, official claims of companies as equal employment opportunity employers.
Renegotiating Delhi
Authors: Guerrieri Pilar Maria
Published: May 2019

This chapter focuses in particular on Delhi’s architecture and urban developments from 1912, when the British Town Planning Committee for New Delhi was formed, to 1962, when the first Master Plan was implemented. The chapter gives an overview on the analyses of Delhi’s elements of architecture and planning that develop in detail in the following chapters, briefing on the exchanges processes that occurred. This chapter poses a fundamental question: How active was the role of the evolving urban capital city in the cultural exchange process? It attempts to view influences not only as flowing from West to East, but as a much richer, intricate, and more complicated process, giving insights on how much Delhi has developed its own tradition and its own identity through a unique negotiating and renegotiating of numerous influences from within the country and from abroad.
Political Offences and Speech Crimes
Authors: Singh Anushka
Published: May 2019

The first chapter is a comparative chapter on four legal regimes namely England, USA, Australia, and India dealing with political offences and speech crimes. The chapter analyses two particular paradigms to study the existence of sedition as an offence: first, the conventional paradigm of ‘violence as a physical act of force’ and second, the non-conventional paradigm of ‘violence through words’. Within the first paradigm, sedition is compared with the allied political offences of (a) treason, (b) incitement to disaffection/violence/overthrow, and (c) political conspiracies. Within the second paradigm, sedition is compared with four speech crimes, (a) personal libel, (b) hate speech, (c) blasphemy, and (d) pornography. Both levels of comparison offer deductions about specificity of sedition as a political speech act creating a discord within the value framework of liberal democracies.
Caste, Class, Community, and the Everyday Tales of Law
Authors: Singh Anushka
Published: May 2019

This chapter juxtaposes the understanding of sedition emerging from the higher judiciary with the practice of the law on the ground. The chapter is primarily field based which looks at sedition in its everydayness intertwined with the social order based on caste, class, and community in India. It proceeds through a study undertaken of three specific regions of Haryana, Maharashtra, and Punjab. The regions, are not chosen as field sites; in fact, they emerged as field areas following the case law method in which the intertwined dynamics of sedition with sociopolitical variables, lend it a different character. This included personal visits, face to face interviews, and the attempts to partially experience the lived realities of the actors involved both at the level of state institutions and otherwise.
Line on Fire
Authors: Jacob Happymon
Published: May 2019

The India–Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has witnessed repeated ceasefire violations (CFVs) over the past decade. Indeed, with relations between India and Pakistan degrading, CFVs have gone up exponentially. These CFVs have the potential to not only begin a crisis but also escalate an ongoing one. To make things worse, in the event of major violations, political leadership on either side often engage in high-pitched rhetoric some of which even have nuclear undertones. Using fresh empirical data and oral history evidence, this book explains the causes of CFVs on the J&K border and establishes a relationship between CFVs and crisis escalation between India and Pakistan. In doing so, the book further nuances the existing arguments about the escalatory dynamics between the two South Asian nuclear rivals. Furthermore, the book explains ceasefire violations using the concept of ‘autonomous military factors’.
Military Gamesmanship and Moral Ascendency
Authors: Jacob Happymon
Published: May 2019

This chapter discusses the causes of ceasefire violations (CFVs) using a template of five types of causes which are, operational reasons, politico-strategic reasons, retributive reasons, cultural factors, and inadvertent firing. The order in which these causes have been mentioned is based on their ability to cause CFVs. This chapter also explains CFVs using the concept of ‘autonomous military factors’ (AMFs). A large chunk of the causes of CFVs identified earlier fall under the category of AMFs. The chapter uses interviews with over 80 officials and a survey of primary and secondary sources to examine the causes of CFVs.
Ceasefire Violations and Crisis Escalation
Authors: Jacob Happymon
Published: May 2019

This chapter argues that there is an empirically evident linkage between ceasefire violations (CFVs) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and India–Pakistan escalation dynamics. It examines this relationship using empirical evidence since the academic literature on South Asian escalation dynamics seems to, by and large, ignore the crucial links between CFVs and crisis escalation. The chapter also shows that CFVs have a cumulative snowballing effect; once they begin, several things could happen including political rhetoric, military posturing and diplomatic standoff which can lead to more CFVs and even more escalation. This chapter discusses eight cases to show how CFVs by themselves can lead to crisis escalation between India and Pakistan. In doing so, it juxtaposes quantitative data on CFVs and escalation during specific periods to highlight how escalation has resulted from CFVs and how the two have fed off of each other.
Implications for Theory and Practice
Authors: Jacob Happymon
Published: May 2019

This chapter highlights some of the conceptual and theoretical implications of the arguments that have been made in this book. This chapter argues that the traditional theorization of escalation dynamics in South Asia does not expect the possibility of: i) autonomous military factors triggering severe ceasefire violations (CFVs); ii) CFVs triggering escalation, and; iii) accidental/inadvertent escalation to some extent. The absence of such expectations further cements the strongly held belief that escalation is controllable especially due to the existence of a general context of nuclear deterrence-induced stability. The chapter, besides highlighting the theoretical finding of the book, also discusses various measures that can be taken to control CFVs and India–Pakistan crisis escalation.
Introduction
Authors: Mathur Kuldeep
Published: May 2019

This chapter briefly introduces the broad theme of the book. Very early, with adoption of the democracy and development as key foundational goals, it was understood that the inherited colonial administration with its strong civil service system was not appropriate for the new dispensation. Committees and commissions were appointed and international experts invited to suggest ways of reform. Little substantive impact was made till neoliberal economic policies were adopted in 1991. This period transformed that focus and support of the private sector was sought in implementing state policies. The chapters that follow discuss many issues emerging from this broad theme.
Struggle for Political Control
Authors: Mathur Kuldeep
Published: May 2019

The political leadership used the civil service’s predominant role in administration as an instrument to further its own goals. This chapter provides an account of how while Indira Gandhi initiated a debate on its neutrality and commitment, the political leadership struggled to establish the subservience of the civil service. No formal change took place but informally loyalty and reliability became attributes to place bureaucrats to positions that were considered critical, giving rise to a legitimately approved transfer system. This has helped the prime ministers to take a stance critical of the civil service while freely relying on it to implement their policies.
Public–Private Partnership (PPP)
Authors: Mathur Kuldeep
Published: May 2019

Among the more prominent initiative taken in governance reforms is that of forging public-private partnership both at policy as well as at administrative level. This chapter critically examines its rationale for delivering public goods and services. While accepting its promotion in physical infrastructure sector, where high levels of capital and technology are demanded, the author questions its relevance in the social sector, where distributive policies are an important part of implementation agenda. However, these partnerships are a continuation of the perspective of de-politicization, technical proficiency for increasing performance efficiency.
Social Mobilization for Public Accountability
Authors: Mathur Kuldeep
Published: May 2019

This chapter examines administrative accountability through the democratic pillar of public transparency. One of the pillars of democratic accountability is the availability of adequate information in the public domain about the functioning government. It has taken a social movement for transparency in government to establish people’s right to information through the passage of the Right to Information Act in 2005. However, traditional administration has not reconciled to its demands and PPPs are kept out of its purview on the plea that they are not public authorities. The Lok Pal (ombudsman) Bill has been passed in response to another struggle of civil society.
Reform or Silent Revolution
Authors: Mathur Kuldeep
Published: May 2019

The concluding chapter summarizes the analysis and argues that a silent revolution is taking place transforming the whole idea of public administration focusing on public interest in providing public goods and services. The reform movement during the Plan period aimed towards strengthening this perspective. The neoliberal era is dominated by concerns of efficiency and technical competence in delivering services. The vocabulary features privatization, public–private partnerships, semi-autonomous institutions, and so on. New institutions in this framework are being established while traditional ones continue to exist. To oversee that these institutions work in public interest, multiple regulatory agencies are being instituted. A complex system of administrative system is emerging where boundaries of public and private are getting blurred and accountability being eroded.
Introduction
Authors: Alpers Edward A. , Goswami Chhaya
Published: May 2019

‘Like beads in a string—be it Kachchh, Saurashtra, Gujarat, or Hindustan—for a thousand years the Darialal [sea] has played a fundamental role in the history of Gujarat; and therefore the sea is indeed worthy of study and thought’. Thus writes Gunvantrai Acharya in his thrilling novel ...
Forty Years On
Authors: Alpers Edward A.
Published: May 2019

Almost forty years ago, the author published an article on Gujarat and East Africa from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Although several other scholars had written serious historical works either about or including Indian traders in eastern Africa in the modern period, at the time it was a pioneering piece for historians of East Africa. While the author has written and continues to write about the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean world and, more recently, the islands of this vast oceanic space now referred to as Indian Ocean Africa, he has not again written anything specifically about Gujarat and the Indian Ocean, nor about Gujarati traders in East Africa. This chapter attempts to review the last forty years of scholarship written in English on Gujarat and the Indian Ocean with a focus on transregional trade and traders. What is hoped from this overview is a sense of how current debates have developed over these decades and where further research is called for.
Reaching Across Land and Sea
Authors: Sheikh Samira
Published: May 2019

Although the last nawab of Bharuch was ousted by the East India Company’s forces in 1772, his trusted minister Lallubhai flourished under Company rule. Lallubhai’s influence and income derived from his deep understanding and control of late-Mughal revenue systems and their role in the flourishing cotton supply chain of south Gujarat. As Mughal control waned in Gujarat, revenue entrepreneurs such as Lallubhai virtually ran the military–fiscal apparatus of successor states and then the Company. Equally, and unlike most commodity traders and bankers, Lallubhai and his kind were deeply involved in politics. This chapter locates Lallubhai’s career within overlapping circles of influence—some deeply local, others radiating out into the trade networks of the Arabian Sea—and argues that Gujarat’s celebrated transregional trade cannot be understood without its agrarian backdrop. Lallubhai, like Gujarat itself, faced both land and sea.
Surat
Authors: Chaiklin Martha
Published: May 2019

In the eighteenth century, Surat was perhaps the single most important port city of the Moghul empire, if not the world. Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese ships were called from Africa and Brazil to obtain Gujarati textiles, side by side with dhows from the throughout the Indian Ocean. This textile trade was underpinned by ivory, large amounts of which poured in the city both by caravan and by sea. Even though Surat, or even Gujarat, was not elephant habitat in the early modern period, Surat became a significant port for the import of ivory into India. The need for tusks of an appropriate size for bangles created symbiosis of trade between Gujarati textiles and ivory that directly affected the prosperity of Surat. The chapter thus links Surat to the Indian Ocean World through ivory and demonstrate the interconnected nature of ivory and textiles in the Gujarat region.
Coffee Mocha
Authors: Goswami Chhaya
Published: May 2019

The second half of the eighteenth century, witnessed a boom in the trade in coffee in Mocha and Muscat. The Kachchhis traders of Mandvi and Surat based traders were central to this trade. The shifts and circumstances of the eighteenth century disturbed the control and Surat was forced to lose the premier position in coffee supply. The considerable coffee trade was diverted to Muscat in the eighteenth century. Concurrently, the Sultans were running into political expansion and risked considerable resources. Kachchhi merchants in Muscat were stressed to contribute. This necessitated the fortune making enterprise through the lucrative commodity trading. The opportunity to import Mocha coffee and re-export them to destinations in the neighbourhood of Oman was, thus, the outcome. This chapter takes us to the understanding that how the circulation of a single commodity empowered the transregional trade routes not only with the significant volume of trade but also facilitated the flow of specie and profit through various channels.
Ratansi Purshottam, the Gujaratis of Muscat, and the Global Connectivity of Indian Ocean Transregional Markets
Authors: Allen Calvin H.
Published: May 2019

This chapter provides a case study of the career of Seth Ratansi Purshotam to demonstrate the role of Gujarati Banyans of Muscat, Oman in linking that port’s transregional commercial network of India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa to the global market. Ratansi, a native of Mandvi, Kachhch, began his career as a clerk in his uncle’s shop in 1857, opened his own shop in 1867, and by the 1880s until his death in 1904 was one of the leading importers/exporters and money lenders of Muscat and a principal financier of the government of Oman as the customs farmer. During that period Ratansi joined with other Banyan, Khoja, and Arab merchants to expand and strengthen direct contacts with European and American commercial outlets for the export of Omani products, especially dates, and the import of Western manufactured consumer goods, most notably arms and ammunition.
The Deepest Blue Sea
Authors: Machado Pedro
Published: May 2019

A misperception has persisted in Indian Ocean scholarship that Indian—particularly Gujarati shipping—had declined precipitously by the middle of the eighteenth century for reasons related to the decline in the great Islamic empires. This chapter argues that this view has exaggerated the diminution of Gujarati shipping in the ocean by largely overlooking the continued and indeed expanded presence of medium-sized ocean-going ships in the western Indian Ocean well into the nineteenth century, as Gujarati networks reoriented their focus from the Red Sea and other longstanding markets to those in Africa. In focusing on Gujarati Vāniyā shipping from Diu and Daman to the southwestern Indian Ocean between the 1750s and 1840s, this chapter shows that this represented an especially vibrant segment of this shipping; and was of great importance in sustaining the involvement of Gujarati capital in the waters of the ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Migration and Creation of New Societies
Authors: Sheriff Abdul
Published: May 2019

The general outline of Indian migration to East Africa is broadly understood, and there have been a number of detailed family histories of prominent people of Indian origin, which sometimes tend to freeze the image of Indians as a homogeneous and separate entity. The author decided to compile a history of his family which had lived in Zanzibar for five generations. He wanted to understand, within the context of much wider migrations and settlements across the Indian Ocean by all sorts of peoples, why and how they migrated, how they became not a ‘diaspora’ but an indigenized and part of a constantly evolving multicultural society, a perspective that is often lacking in the existing literature on the Indians overseas.
Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age
Authors: Russell Norman
Published: May 2019

‘Palamism’ is not a neutral term. It was devised in the early twentieth century by a Roman Catholic scholar, Martin Jugie, to indicate a system of thought developed in the fourteenth century by Gregory Palamas and validated by several Orthodox Church councils that Jugie considered erroneous and therefore indicative of the fallibility of Orthodox teaching. In opposition to Jugie, Orthodox scholars, principally John Meyendorff, proposed a different interpretation of Palamism that in many ways was just as ideologically motivated. The first part of this book examines the debates generated by Meyendorff’s classic Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas and the new directions that have been taken since then by both Western and Orthodox scholars. The second part, in response to a call by Robert Sinkewicz to raise ‘the larger questions’, explores the issues raised by the controversy initiated by Barlaam of Calabria in 1340 with his denunciation of Palamas as a ‘Messalian’ heretic. These issues concern the nature of doctrinal development, the sense in which a human being can participate in God, the meaning of grace, the character of symbols, and the context of divine–human communion. Palamas developed his distinction between the divine essence and the energies precisely in order to defend the reality of such communion as deification. It is argued that he did not reify the distinction but at the same time held that it was more than merely notional. Finally, it is suggested that Palamas has a valuable contribution to make to current debates on the relationship between divine transcendence and divine immanence.
John Meyendorff’s response to Jugie
Authors: Russell Norman
Published: May 2019

Meyendorff was the first to attempt an account of Palamas and Palamite theology based on a thorough investigation of the sources, both edited and unedited. On its publication in 1959, his Introduction was widely acclaimed. Two Western scholars who welcomed it warmly were Eric Mascall and Louis Bouyer, but a reaction set in the 1970s. This chapter follows the debate initiated by the Dominican journal Istina and continued in the pages of St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly and the Eastern Churches Review, and shows how behind it lay the Roman Catholic struggle between conservatives and progressives after the Second Vatican Council. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how Meyendorff abandoned the much-criticized dichotomies of his Introduction but did not alter his fundamental perspective.
Introduction: a sign of contradiction
Authors: Russell Norman
Published: May 2019

Palamas is still regarded in the West with suspicion, partly because of Jugie’s persuasive construction of Palamism as a ‘near-heresy’, and partly because of the role of Palamas in Orthodox identity politics. The history of the reception of Palamas in the Orthodox world is traced in outline up to the imiaslavie controversy just before the First World War. The response to Jugie came from members of the Russian emigration, especially Meyendorff, who wished not only to defend Palamas but also to delineate an Orthodox identity in its new Western environment. The reception of Meyendorff’s work is discussed together with the new areas of research that he opened up. In a recent article on Palamas, Robert Sinkewicz declared that it was now time to raise the larger questions. These questions, concerning the coherence and significance of Palamas’ work on the philosophical and theological levels, are addressed in Part II of the book.
A Dilemma for Internalism
Authors: Weatherson Brian
Published: May 2019

The previous chapter argued that symmetry between factual and moral ignorance is not ultimately intuitive. This chapter argues that even if it is intuitive, it must be rejected. Or, at least, symmetry between all types of ignorance must be rejected, and without that universal symmetry, symmetry between factual and moral ignorance is not motivated. Universal symmetry must fail because without it we have to say positive things about people who are violating both the correct principles and their own principles, but who think their actions comply with the principles they think they have. After surveying some options, it is argued that there is no plausible positive thing to say about these folks, so symmetry fails.
Akrasia
Authors: Weatherson Brian
Published: May 2019

This chapter argues that epistemic akrasia is rationally permissible. The first task is to describe just what akrasia comes to. Loosely speaking, it is having a belief and thinking one should not have this belief, but there are three importantly different ways to make this precise. Unlike in the previous chapter, there is a systematic reason why none of these will pose a problem to normative externalism. There is no kind of akrasia that is licensed by normative externalism that is not made independently plausible by the failure of evidence to be, in Timothy Williamson’s sense, luminous. All of the arguments against akrasia work equally well, or perhaps we should say equally poorly, as arguments against the luminosity of evidence. The chapter ends with a discussion of the desire as belief arguments, and in particular with an argument that luminosity failures threaten the idea that expected values can be in any way guiding.
Evil in the Hebrew Bible
Authors: Newsom Carol A.
Published: May 2019

In ancient Israelite literature sustained intellectual reflection on evil occurs mainly in the wisdom literature, focused on the respective fates of the righteous and the wicked. These reflections can helpfully be brought into conversation with modern philosophy through the work of Susan Neiman, who frames the problem of evil in relation to the question of the intelligibility of the world. The Israelite wisdom literature takes a variety of positions on the issue, ranging from a relative confidence in the intelligibility of the world (Proverbs) to a tragic perception of moral rationality as central to human existence but not necessarily to God’s creation (Job) to an ironic despair that since the rationality that governs the cosmos cannot be grasped by humans, even the fundamental relationship between acts and their consequences is rendered unreliable, so that there is finally no clear difference in the fates of the righteous and the wicked (Ecclesiastes).
The Early History of Satan
Authors: Hamori Esther J.
Published: May 2019

ha-satan (the adversary) is an ambiguous figure in the earliest Hebrew texts. Far from being the malevolent, majestic embodiment of pure evil imagined by Milton, the figure we confront in the Hebrew Bible can sometimes be a source of assistance around the heavenly court. Conversely, and even more surprisingly, Yahweh is depicted in some of these texts as having a moral character that is not wholly good. This Reflection assesses the way the depiction of ha-satan evolves across various parts of the Hebrew Bible, and relates it to the way the character of the devil is depicted in Christianity.
Explaining Evil in Late Antiquity
Authors: O’Meara Dominic J.
Published: May 2019

The problem of evil was often debated in the Greco-Roman world of late antiquity. Two very influential contributors to this debate were the Christian theologian Augustine and the pagan Platonist Proclus, whose theory of evil reached the Middle Ages through a paraphrase in the Pseudo-Dionysius. Augustine and Proclus were both influenced by, and distanced themselves from, the original theory of evil developed by the pagan Platonist philosopher Plotinus in the third century ad. Plotinus identified the indeterminate background (“matter”) against which the physical world appears as the reason for the existence of physical and moral evil. Here a summary of Plotinus’s theory of evil is given, together with a discussion of the various difficulties and objections that arise, in particular in Proclus’s criticism of it.
but draw not nigh this tree
Authors: Germann Nadja
Published: May 2019

The notion of evil in Islamic thought is as heterogeneous as Islam itself. Consequently, this chapter focuses on the major conceptual shifts this notion underwent during the formative period of Islamic culture, i.e. the time between the Qurʾānic revelation and the first consolidation of what might be called the orthodox Sunnite position in the eleventh/twelfth century. The study is focused on two crucial stages. The first section, dedicated to Islam’s core reference point and founding document (the Qurʾān) seeks to investigate ideas of evil in Islam’s holy book and, thus, explore the framework within which discussions about evil developed among Muslim scholars. The second section examines a passage by al-Ghazālī, an Ashʿarite thinker who played a pivotal role in the formation of orthodoxy. There, al-Ghazālī engages in a debate with his opponents, the Muʿtazilites, on the subject of evil—this offers unique insight into key conceptual controversies in early Islam.
Evil After the Holocaust
Authors: Motzkin Gabriel
Published: May 2019

After the Holocaust, we have a new appreciation of the concept of radical evil. Radical evil is evil that is not defined in comparison to the good; it is evil even when there is no good. Crimes against humanity, or crimes that challenge the concept of humanity, are challenges to the whole code, not infractions of some rule. Because radical evil transcends the law, the commission of radical evil is inexpiable. Since such a crime has a conceptual basis, instigators are as guilty if not guiltier than perpetrators. The Holocaust, by linking radical evil to mass extermination, marks a new phase in our historical experience. The contrast between good and evil is replaced by the contrast between good and neutral. Since radical evil reconfigures the good as the neutral, and then also reconfigures the evil as neutral, neutrality in the face of radical evil is no longer an option.
On Google and Not Being Evil
Authors: Chan Wesley
Published: May 2019

In this Reflection, an early product manager at Google discusses his view of the way the famous motto in the company Code of Conduct—“Don’t be Evil”—functioned to prevent certain kinds of ruthlessness, but also to improve the relationship with the customer and the corporate bottom line. The author argues that, contrary to popular opinion, Google in fact tried to avoid exploiting the user data that they collected, as well as data from Google Analytics, and that the “Don’t be Evil” motto was important in helping employees make good decisions. The Reflection is thus a kind of apologia on behalf of Google (at least in its early days) against now-familiar charges that it is part of the company’s essential strategy to engage in various nefarious activities.
A Simulation-Based Evaluation of Tip-Dating Under the Fossilized Birth–Death Process
Authors: Luo Arong , Duchêne David A , Zhang Chi , Zhu Chao-Dong , Ho Simon Y W
Published: May 2019

Bayesian molecular dating is widely used to study evolutionary timescales. This procedure usually involves phylogenetic analysis of nucleotide sequence data, with fossil-based calibrations applied as age constraints on internal nodes of the tree. An alternative approach is tip-dating, which explicitly includes fossil data in the analysis. This can be done, for example, through the joint analysis of molecular data from present-day taxa and morphological data from both extant and fossil taxa. In the context of tip-dating, an important development has been the fossilized birth–death process, which allows non-contemporaneous tips and sampled ancestors while providing a model of lineage diversification for the prior on the tree topology and internal node times. However, tip-dating with fossils faces a number of considerable challenges, especially, those associated with fossil sampling and evolutionary models for morphological characters. We conducted a simulation study to evaluate the performance of tip-dating using the fossilized birth–death model. We simulated fossil occurrences and the evolution of nucleotide sequences and morphological characters under a wide range of conditions. Our analyses of these data show that the number and the maximum age of fossil occurrences have a greater influence than the degree of among-lineage rate variation or the number of morphological characters on estimates of node times and the tree topology. Tip-dating with the fossilized birth–death model generally performs well in recovering the relationships among extant taxa but has difficulties in correctly placing fossil taxa in the tree and identifying the number of sampled ancestors. The method yields accurate estimates of the ages of the root and crown group, although the precision of these estimates varies with the probability of fossil occurrence. The exclusion of morphological characters results in a slight overestimation of node times, whereas the exclusion of nucleotide sequences has a negative impact on inference of the tree topology. Our results provide an overview of the performance of tip-dating using the fossilized birth–death model, which will inform further development of the method and its application to key questions in evolutionary biology.