bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Learning Agility, Resilience, and Successful Derailment
Authors: Yost Paul R. , DeHaas CodieAnn , Allison Mackenzie
Published: August 2021

“Learning Agility, Resilience, and Successful Derailment” discusses the practices that individuals and organizations can adopt to increase their short-term resilience in crisis, their long-term resilience capacity, and their ability to successfully navigate derailment. Short-term resilience practices include problem framing and identification, building a fence to focus energy, managing emotions, drawing on social networks, and promoting healthy practices. Long-term resilience strategies include envisioning possible futures, practicing bricolage, cue and reinforcer management, deepening social support, and reflection. Last, strategies to successfully navigate derailment are reviewed, including the key practices and lessons that allow a leader to grow from the experience. Throughout, the relationships between learning agility, resilience, and derailment are examined, including promising directions for future research.
The DNA of VUCA
Authors: Peterson David B.
Published: August 2021

“The DNA of VUCA: A Framework for Building Learning Agility in an Accelerating World” presents a practical guide to building learning agility and resilience for leaders to thrive in the face of crisis, disruption, complexity, and exponential change. It decomposes the term VUCA into two elements—volatility and complexity (which are best understood and addressed rationally) and uncertainty and ambiguity (which typically generate strong emotional reactions such as fear, stress, and anxiety and are best addressed by communication, emotional support, and human connection). Preparing leaders to thrive in VUCA times requires that they increase their exposure to diverse, novel, and adverse experiences (DNA) so they build capabilities and comfort in making decisions and taking decisive action under conditions of uncertainty and risk and projecting confidence and clarity in leading people through times of doubt and distress. In addition, leaders need to build their capacity to reflect on their experiences to see meaningful patterns and make informed choices about the best course of action going forward.
Sense-Making in a VUCA World
Authors: Heaton Laura
Published: August 2021

“Sense-Making in a VUCA World: Applying Vertical Development to Enhance Learning Agility” highlights lessons learned in applying vertical development to improve learning agility with leaders in the context of rapid growth and an increasingly complex marketplace. A case is presented for demonstrating the concept of vertical and horizontal development. The concept and theories of vertical development are reviewed and considered against current contextual challenges and the needs for increased learning agility. A general framework for building increased sense-making fitness is reviewed as guidance for a system of leadership development. Key practices for facilitating vertical development in leaders are introduced, and implications for practitioners are offered.
Learning Agility in Action
Authors: Schmidt Veronica
Published: August 2021

“Learning Agility in Action” presents a series of 10 real-world case studies examining how organizations have applied learning agility in their talent management and leadership practices. The cases are from a variety of organizations, ranging from school systems to healthcare organizations to Fortune 500 companies such as Procter & Gamble, IBM, and Johnson & Johnson. Organizations are based in the United States as well as in China and Australia. All of the case studies were written by practitioners. They identify how the concept of learning agility was introduced into their organizations, difficulties and pleasant surprises they experienced, and successes and drawbacks they have observed. It is hoped those lessons will provide a road map of best practices for readers in their journeys to implement learning agility in their talent management practices and organizational cultures.
Adaptations, Refractions, and Obstructions
Authors: Corrigan Timothy
Published: August 2021

This chapter looks at a particular shape of adaptation today in what may be called a “refractive environment,” a look that may seem slightly less peculiar if we keep in mind that the chapter poaches its fundamental terms and ideas and what they suggest from essays by André Bazin. Alongside abiding respect for traditional pathways into adaptation studies, the direction here has little to do with cinematic adaptation in most of the usual senses. Instead it wants to follow Bazin’s terms as dynamic metaphors for some ways of thinking about adaptation studies today and, as a somewhat more provocative move, of raising some questions about the advancement of adaptation studies into today’s environment as an evolutionary shift that might be best served by looking backward. Here is where the chapter locates the intersection of adaptation and metacinema.
Méliès, Astruc, and Scorsese
Authors: Palis Eleni
Published: August 2021

This chapter analyzes how Hugo (2011, dir. Martin Scorsese) metacinematically approximates what French film theorist Alexandre Astruc called the caméra-stylo, or camera pen, through which cinema communicates as written language. In “writing” a film history around and through Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902), Hugo’s metacinematic caméra-stylo strictly adheres to classical auteur theory ideas about personal, authorial enunciation. However, Scorsese writes a metacinematic film history that periodically disavows personal enunciation to claim film-historical truth, fact, and canon—a white, male, paternalistic canon that teaches Hugo’s young audience a warped film history. Hugo’s metacinematic, historiographic writing invokes contemporary debates about videographic criticism, the essayistic mode, and film historiography conveyed on film.
Clouds of Sils Maria
Authors: Di Summa Laura T.
Published: August 2021

In a way that is reminiscent of Luigi Pirandello’s take on character impersonation, Clouds of Sils Maria (2014, dir. Olivier Assayas) plays with the history of film, with the layering of performances, crossing theater and film, actors and characters. This chapter focuses on how the duo Binoche / Maria Enders encourages a reflection on metacinema by questioning what it means to be a character, to create one for ourselves, and to assess the very viability of such a creation. More narrowly, the chapter argues that Clouds of Sils Maria is capable of adding a significant contribution to the debate, within analytic aesthetics, on the advantages and the dangers of seeing our lives as narratives. For while watching the feature may prompt an agreement with Peter Lamarque’s criticism of the “narrative view,” which highlighted how a “story-like” narration of our lives might transform nonfictional, factual events into fictional ones, we are also reminded of how such a crafted and constructed rendition of facts may ultimately be inevitable.
Waltz with Bashir’s Animated Traces
Authors: Shibolet Yotam
Published: August 2021

Contemporary documentary practices are strongly challenged by growing suspicions of the cinematic claim to truth by indexical capture—the notion that footage objectively captures traces of the past is becoming increasingly less convincing. Under this light, the chapter re-examines Waltz with Bashir (2008, dir. Ari Folman), a groundbreaking animated documentary, and its unique slew of strategies for making powerful non-indexical truth claims about the reality of war experiences and the creative, post-traumatic ways in which they are remembered. Waltz with Bashir’s final sequence, which cuts from animation to archival footage, grounds the story’s moment of catharsis in solid historical proof and appears to retreat from the film’s creative strategies. The chapter explores the stitches hiding behind this unusual cut and suggests an alternative, subversive reading of the final sequence. It then concludes that the film’s meaningfulness and documentary value are sustained despite skepticism about the objective truth of its cathartic ending.
Toward an Ontology of the Moving Image
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

This chapter proposes a series of necessary conditions for membership in the category of the moving image, a group that includes not only film, but broadcast television, video, various kinds of computer-generated imagery, and technologies yet to be invented. The chapter argues that “the moving image” is the category that media studies – including the philosophy of media – needs in order to organize and carry out the kinds of research it is pursuing.
Movies, Narrative, and Emotion
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

This chapter discusses the way in which the criterial prefocusing of audience emotions and erotetic narration are typically coordinated in movies.
Subjectivity, the Emotions, and the Movies
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

This chapter contrasts the cognitive approach to the way movies engage audiences psychologically with the dominant approaches in cinema studies especially in terms of cognitivism’s account of the emotions in general and the moral emotions in particular.
Amy Schumer or the Incongruities
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

The chapter examines the comedy of Amy Schumer on video and film from the perspectives of Freudian psychoanalysis and the incongruity theory of comic amusement and concludes that one feature of the latter theory that is superior to the former theory is that it accommodates what is feminist in Schumer’s oeuvre to a greater extent than does psychoanalysis.
The Dogma Dance Film
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

This chapter reviews he problem of and one possible solution for creating a post modern, dogma dance film.
Béla Balázs
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: August 2021

This chapter examines wo of Balász’s early film theory books and situates him in the context of classical film theory, while arguing that he is committed to a version of the expression theory of art.
Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behavior
Authors: Olkin Rhoda
Published: August 2021

This chapter is a review of the relevant literature on effecting changes in attitudes and behaviors toward people with disabilities. It begins with a discussion of the goals of the book and the activities in the book. There is discussion of the relationship between attitudes and behaviors, and whether a change in one is followed by a change in the other. The core research about the bases of attitudes toward disability and attitude change is reviewed. The move in the past few decades from attention to implicit bias to focus on explicit bias is highlighted. The rationale for not using simulation exercises is provided, as well as the social underpinnings of the activities.
Everyday Issues
Authors: Olkin Rhoda
Published: August 2021

The three activities in this chapter focus on the everyday experiences of people with disabilities. The first activity highlights the ways that disabled people have to expend energy for disability-related needs, specifically the financial and time costs. The second activity explores pain experiences in an experiential activity; students are asked to endure minor discomfort for 30 minutes and pay attention to their perceptions. They will note how they might describe pain to another, and what coping mechanisms they used. The third activity focuses on media messages about disability for one week, in as many media sites as possible (e.g., television, magazines, billboards, advertisements, movies, traffic reports, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). They then consider the potential impacts of those messages on disabled clients.
Assessing Outcomes
Authors: Olkin Rhoda
Published: August 2021

This chapter explores the possible outcomes of completing the activities in this book and revisits some of the questions raised in Chapter 2 about how to change attitudes and behaviors toward people with disabilities. Despite a desired goal of affecting implicit bias, that outcome is not guaranteed. Ultimately, the goal is to increase cultural responsivity and skill levels for therapists working with their clients with disabilities. Various measures of attitudes toward disability are reviewed (and references provided) and a link to the Harvard measure of implicit bias is included. Six ways of assessing the outcomes of doing the activities are included: the Bogardus Social Distance Scale, able-bodied privilege, and four created by the author.
Playing with Fire
Authors: Bock Mary Angela
Published: August 2021

This chapter outlines the theoretical foundation for the book, first by describing the persuasive power of images, how they are made meaningful, and why they are especially useful in the construction of ideological messages. The concept of embodied gatekeeping, key to understanding the way news images are constructed, is explicated in this chapter, along with the book’s overall argument: social actors struggle over the construction of visual messages in embodied and discursive ways, and digitization has vastly expanded the encoding capabilities of everyday citizens, allowing them to add visibility to their expression of democratic voice even as the ethical rules for visual expression are inchoate. The chapter offers a mass-media model for the way images are created and then recontextualized, and an updated model for the way the recontextualization process is uncontrollably accelerated in the digital age.
Spectacular Trials
Authors: Bock Mary Angela
Published: August 2021

This chapter expands on the concept of embodied gatekeeping as it studies the way visual journalists negotiate access to the most newsworthy trials. In the United States, rules for camera access to trials vary state to state. Some states, such as Florida, have opened courtrooms to visual media, while others, such as Pennsylvania, forbid camera-in-the-court coverage. At either end of the spectrum, visual journalists face a maze of rules designed by court officials to protect the dignity of the process. Based on interviews and observational research, this chapter details the way visual journalists have negotiated these rules as they covered several spectacular trials, including Jerry Sandusky’s child sexual assault trial in 2012, George Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2013, and Bill Cosby’s sexual assault case in 2017. Each case drew national attention, and each presented journalists with different sets of grounded challenges for visual coverage.
What Picture Would They Use?
Authors: Bock Mary Angela
Published: August 2021

This chapter studies the impact of digital culture on a long-standing crime news staple, the mug shot. First, it historicizes the way mug shots have traditionally served the interests of news organizations and the criminal justice system. Then, based on two highly publicized cases, the chapter situates mug shots in a model of decontextualization and recontextualization that accounts for traditional and social media. Former Texas governor Rick Perry’s mug shot was recontextualized by traditional journalists and social media users, and grounded research suggests that he was able to exert embodied gatekeeping to control the narrative about his case. Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was subjected to the anger of many Twitter users, who used his digital mug shot to create counternarratives to criminalize him visually. The two cases illustrate the affordance of images to narrative, the role of power in message construction, and the impact of digitization on a model for recontextualization.
What’s So Special about Video?
Authors: Bock Mary Angela
Published: August 2021

This chapter examines video’s epistemological trio of moving images, audio, and a timeline and their evidentiary affordances. Based on a single court case that blended video clips from a variety of perspectives, the project explores the evidentiary value of video and the way it’s used in testimonial narrative. Fisher’s narrative paradigm serves as the foundation for this chapter, which theorizes video as both an affordance and as a text with its own embedded narrative. In US courts, video cannot stand for itself but must accompany other testimony, and as testimonial affordance, video can explain or illustrate the order of action. Video is especially useful for refuting testimony that does not match what the video depicts. While its timeline affords a natural plot, the narrative that matters most is the discursive one crafted in court, offering what Fisher labeled coherence and fidelity—the moral or legal “point” of the story.
Filming Police
Authors: Bock Mary Angela
Published: August 2021

This chapter historicizes and theorizes the work of self-described “cop-watchers,” or police accountability activists based on interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis. This chapter describes the way police accountability organizations are proliferating, thanks to smartphone penetration and the ease of video sharing on social networks. The chapter describes the origins of such counternarrative “sousveillance” in the United States. Two women who founded the longest-running cop-watching group in the United States, Berkeley Copwatch, are among the subjects of the research, which spans multiple cities, organizations, and perspectives. The chapter explores the difference between sustained and organized cop-watching and the incidental or spontaneous filming of police, and argues that the true power of cop-watching lies not in its videos but its commitment to community surveillance and witnessing, and that participation in the visual public sphere can be theorized as an essential, democratic, human capability.
What Is the Problem and Why Does It Matter?
Authors: Sinatra Gale M. , Hofer Barbara K.
Published: August 2021

Science denial, doubt, and resistance are not new. Galileo challenged the prevailing geocentric view of our solar system and was dismissed as a heretic. What is the history of science denial, what’s different now, and why does it seem worse? In this opening chapter, “What Is the Problem and Why Does It Matter?,” the authors chart the development of this problem, examine how doubt has also been manufactured, and explain how media attempts at “balance” can become a form of bias. While acknowledging the limits and fallibility of science, they argue that if the United States is to be a leader in sustainable economic and social progress, a greater percentage of Americans need to value, understand, and accept scientific methods and findings. When so many US citizens deny science, the health and well-being of Americans and the hope for a sustainable future are in peril.
How Do We Make Sense of Science Claims Online?
Authors: Sinatra Gale M. , Hofer Barbara K.
Published: August 2021

Science doubt, resistance, and denial have been amplified in the digital society. There is a previously unimaginable range of information available, and most people can no longer imagine life otherwise. When one is curious about something, one turns to the internet. But how does one know what to believe and what is truthful? In Chapter 2, “How Do We Make Sense of Science Claims Online?,” the authors argue that most people are ill-equipped to engage in the critical reflection that would help them evaluate conflicting claims and biased information or to recognize agendas that may lead to distorted or one-sided presentations. The echo chamber of the internet raises additional concerns. As individuals seek out information, they often turn to familiar sources and the opinions of like-minded individuals. In an age of social media, they see Facebook postings and tweets of friends who share a worldview—and often drop the feeds of those who do not. The authors draw on their own research and that of others to describe these growing concerns and offer suggestions to inividuals, educators, communicators, and policy makers for improving critical evaluation of scientific information found online.
How Do Emotions and Attitudes Influence Science Understanding?
Authors: Sinatra Gale M. , Hofer Barbara K.
Published: August 2021

Science is often portrayed as a cold, dispassionate enterprise. The notion that science is an emotionless pursuit is mistaken. In Chapter 7, “How Do Emotions and Attitudes Influence Science Understanding?,” the authors explain how conducting and learning about science involve the full range of human emotions, including joy, amazement, surprise, and confusion as well as anxiety, anger, fear, and hopelessness. These emotions are present in the lab, in the science classroom, and in individuals reading about topics like genetically modified organisms and climate change. Research clearly shows that emotions and attitudes are deeply intertwined in thinking and reasoning about science, as they are with all human experiences. If one is in favor of innovative treatments for disease, one is likely to experience curiosity and hope when reading about a new therapy. If one is skeptical about vaccines, one may experience anxiety and fear when reading about fast tracking the development of vaccinations. The authors provide suggestions for individuals, educators, and communicators for heightening appreciation for the role of emotions and attitudes in science understanding and in science doubt, resistance, and denial.
Justifying Contract in Europe
Authors: Hesselink Martijn W.
Published: August 2021

This book explores the normative foundations of European contract law. It addresses fundamental political questions on contract law in Europe from the perspective of leading contemporary political theories. Does the law of contract need a democratic basis? To what extent should it be Europeanized? What justifies the binding force of contract and the main remedies for breach? When should weaker parties be protected? Should market transactions be held legally void when they are immoral? Which rules of contract law should the parties be free to opt out of? Adopting a critical lens, the book interrogates utilitarian, liberal-egalitarian, libertarian, communitarian, civic republican, and discourse-theoretical political philosophies and analyses the answers they provide to these questions. It also situates these theoretical debates within the context of the political landscape of European contract law and the divergent views expressed by law makers, legal academics, and other stakeholders. The book moves beyond the acquis positivism, market reductionism, and private law essentialism that tend to dominate these conversations, and foregrounds normative complexity. It explores the principles and values behind various arguments used in the debates on European contract law and its future to highlight the normative stakes involved in the practical question of what we, as a society, should do about contract law in Europe. In so doing, it opens up democratic space for the consideration of alternative futures for contract law in the European Union, and for better justifications for those parts of the EU contract law acquis we wish to retain.
Concluding Remarks
Authors: Hesselink Martijn W.
Published: August 2021

Chapter 9 presents the main conclusions from this inquiry and also offers a few wider concluding observations on justification, private law essentialism, normative pluralism, democratic compromise, and the limits of legal theory.
Bonaventure, Aristotle, and the Being of Universal Forms
Authors: van Buren Franziska
Published: August 2021

The question of whether Bonaventure’s metaphysical thought is “Aristotelian” has long been answered with a plain “no.” Indeed, many scholars have interpreted Bonaventure as parting ways with Aristotle on a number of foundational metaphysical positions: Bonaventure adopts Augustinian seminal reasons, instead of the accounts of generation and causation found in Aristotle, and Bonaventure’s universal forms have ‘being’ independent of and prior to sensibles. While the characterization of Bonaventure as largely opposed to Aristotelianism has become standard in contemporary scholarship, this paper demonstrates quite the opposite: Bonaventure, in developing his notion of form, relies almost exclusively on his—indeed idiosyncratic—interpretation of Aristotle. Accordingly, the author argues that Aristotle’s philosophy is at the foundation of Bonaventure’s two seemingly Augustinian positions concerning seminal reasons and the ontological status of forms—as well as his distinction between the universal form and the seminal reason, which is neither a real nor a conceptual distinction.
The Right and the Wren
Authors: Peterson Christa , Samuel Jack
Published: August 2021

Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This chapter argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism.
Praise as Moral Address
Authors: Telech Daniel
Published: August 2021

While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our ‘reactive attitudes’—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this chapter advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps renders intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships.
There’s Something Wrong
Authors: Beaumont David
Published: August 2021

The role of the occupational physician, and relationships with employers and insurers. New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Commission and its role as a state insurer. The need for system change in order not only to prevent health and disability but to improve people’s health. Case example showing the role of the health and safety manager and the effect of the sick note on return to work. The views of the chair of Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) on the relationship between GP and patient. The conflict of interest between GPs and occupational physicians. Author’s research to elucidate the problem, working with the Trades Union Congress and the Department for Work and Pensions, resulting in a consensus statement and editorial in The BMJ. Author’s work on the Policy and Advocacy Committee of the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Launch of position statement, ‘Realising the Health Benefits of Work’, in 2010. Work with Helen Kelly, President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, and the concept of ‘good work’. Dame Carol Black and the Black Review, Working for a Healthier Tomorrow. The constraint of short appointment times for GPs in the UK: RCGP’s aim to increase appointment times from the current 10 minutes to 15 minutes by 2030.
Introduction
Authors: Pereboom Derk
Published: August 2021

Anger with wrongdoers is often accompanied by the supposition that its target deserves to be the recipient of an expression of this emotion, one that intentionally causes pain or harm, which classify it as a retributive emotion. Chapter 1 introduces the claim that we do not need retribution, whether it be in justifying our responses to wrongdoing, or in the emotions employed in those responses. We have alternatives to retributive anger, and to anger more generally, that are practically and theoretically preferable. One way to motivate this stance is by skepticism about the control in action—the free will—required for retribution to be justified. This chapter summarizes the author’s argument for free will skepticism, which addresses the compatibilist and libertarian alternatives. Also proposed is that there are ethical considerations independent of the concern about control in action that serve to justify the antiretributivist stance.
Forgiveness as Renunciation of Moral Protest
Authors: Pereboom Derk
Published: August 2021

Chapter 5 sets out an account of forgiveness consistent with the rejection of the retributive emotions. On the standard view, forgiveness is the renunciation and overcoming of resentment, which is at least typically a retributive emotion. Thus on the standard view forgiveness involves the renunciation of an attitude that for the skeptic about retribution was inappropriate in the first place. If forgiveness is instead understood as renunciation of the stance of moral protest, then for the skeptic forgiveness is in the clear, since that stance need not presuppose desert. Renunciation of moral protest potentially qualifies as a general feature of forgiveness, by contrast with renunciation of resentment. In a range of cases of wrongdoing resentment is initially unfitting for reasons independent of concerns about retribution.
Abusive Judicial Review
Authors: Dixon Rosalind , Landau David
Published: August 2021

This chapter explains the concept of abusive judicial review: the use of courts by regimes to achieve anti-democratic constitutional change. Abusive judicial review involves abusive constitutional borrowing in two distinct senses: first, regimes lean on captured or cowed courts as a strategy to legitimate or advance authoritarian goals, and second, those courts often draw upon liberal democratic doctrines in abusive ways. It develops a typology of two different forms of the phenomenon—a weak form where courts uphold authoritarian moves by political actors, and a strong form where they act more directly to remove obstacles to authoritarian programs. Finally, it draws out two main examples: the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s repression of the opposition-held legislature using a doctrine of ‘legislative omission’ and other tools, and the wielding of militant democracy doctrines by the Cambodian and Thai apex courts to ban parties for authoritarian ends.
Legal Syncretism as a Theoretical Framework for African Constitutionalism
Authors: Gebeye Berihun Adugna
Published: August 2021

This chapter presents legal syncretism as a new theoretical framework for African constitutionalism. After providing reasons for needing a new theoretical framework the chapter proceeds to explore the existing theoretical frameworks of law in general—legal centralism and legal pluralism—and examines their relevance to African constitutionalism. After demonstrating both the potential and limits of these frameworks, the chapter then proposes legal syncretism as a new and better theoretical framework with which to capture and explain the transformation of African constitutionalism from precolonial times to the present, as well as all the attendant constitutional designs and practices.
The Executive
Authors: Gebeye Berihun Adugna
Published: August 2021

This chapter focuses on the executive branch in order to explain how legal syncretism influences African constitutional design and practice, using Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa as comparative case studies. The chapter first develops a conceptual framework for the design of the executive and the practice of executive power drawing from liberal constitutional theory. The chapter then explores and examines the design of the executive and the practice of executive power in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The aim is to demonstrate how legal syncretism shapes the executive branches in these countries and how different configurations of legal syncretism have produced imperial executives in Nigeria and Ethiopia, but not in South Africa. By disentangling the discursive practices that bring about and sustain the imperial executives, and by showing the pathologies of constitutional design and practice related to the executive, the chapter defends the idea of a limited executive if constitutionalism is to prosper in Africa.
Articulation in Ruins
Authors: Morrison Benedict
Published: August 2021

This chapter challenges the critical tradition that has interpreted the formal disjunctures of Roberto Rossellini’s Germania anno zero (1948) as representative of its young protagonist Edmund. The film’s complicated formal experiments—including in cinematography, editing, and sound design—have been read as expressions of the child’s distress as he struggles to survive in post-war Berlin. This criticism, however, cannot account fully for the film’s disjunctive transitions between documentary realism and expressionism. This chapter argues that year zero is a space in which all stabilizing definitions are thrown into disorientating contingency, and the clash between styles marks this unsettledness. In such a historical moment, Edmund is unable to articulate himself, and the film’s formal ruptures do not speak clearly for him. The form cannot be explained through reference to a character who is outside explanation. The film records an eccentric moment in Germany’s history, in which meaning is out of reach.
The Ever Conscious View and the Contingency of Moral Status
Authors: Harman Elizabeth
Published: August 2021

It is common to think that if something has moral status, then, necessarily, it has moral status. This chapter argues for a view of moral status, the Ever Conscious View, which holds that a living being has moral status throughout its life just in case it is ever conscious, at any point in its life. Moral status is contingent: some beings that have moral status might have lacked moral status, and some beings that lack moral status might have had moral status. The author explains and addresses the Objection to Contingency; it can be answered by recognition of the Good Method of finding our harm-based and benefit-based moral reasons. We should embrace the Good Method for reasons wholly independent of the Ever Conscious View; so, a defense of the Ever Conscious View using the Good Method is a principled defense. She also defends the Good Method in the face of an objection from “The Asymmetry,” according to which we have reasons not to create miserable people, but we have no reasons to create happy people; she responds that we do have reasons to create happy people, but there is nothing at all wrong with failing to do so.
Moral Status and Moral Significance
Authors: Persson Ingmar
Published: August 2021

This chapter discusses the relations between moral status (or standing) and what the author calls moral significance. Something has moral significance just in case it morally counts for its own sake, or is something that must be taken into consideration in itself when moral judgments about what ought or ought not to be done are made. The chapter argues that the moral status of something is dependent on what is morally significant about it. Nothing can have moral status if there is not anything morally significant about it. On the other hand, something can be morally significant, even though it does not have moral status. The notion of moral significance is then the more fundamental notion and the notion of moral status could be dispensed with. In fact, it would simplify and clarify matters if it were dispensed with.
Revisiting Inexorable Moral Confusion About the Moral Status of Human–Nonhuman Chimeras
Authors: Robert Jason Scott , Baylis Françoise
Published: August 2021

In “Crossing Species Boundaries” (Robert and Baylis 2003), the authors explored the history, ethics, and prospective future of stem cell research involving chimeras made in part from human cells. They dismissed the various then-extant ethical objections to the creation of such chimeras, finding them all inadequate. In their stead, they sketched (but did not elaborate or defend) an alternative response—namely, that their creation would create a kind of inexorable moral confusion. Since then, a variety of alternative objections to—as well as justifications for—this research have emerged, alongside advances in the technologies for introducing genetic and cellular material across putative species boundaries. In this chapter, the authors revisit the notion of inexorable moral confusion, further specifying and elaborating the original concept in light of recent scientific and technical developments and ethical insights.
Sharing the World with Digital Minds
Authors: Shulman Carl , Bostrom Nick
Published: August 2021

The minds of biological creatures occupy a small corner of a much larger space of possible minds that could be created once we master the technology of artificial intelligence. Yet many of our moral intuitions and practices are based on assumptions about human nature that need not hold for digital minds. This points to the need for moral reflection as we approach the era of advanced machine intelligence. This chapter focuses on one set of issues, which arise from the prospect of digital minds with superhumanly strong claims to resources and influence. These could arise from the vast collective benefits that mass-produced digital minds could derive from relatively small amounts of resources. Alternatively, they could arise from individual digital minds with superhuman moral status or ability to benefit from resources. Such beings could contribute immense value to the world, and failing to respect their interests could produce a moral catastrophe, while a naive way of respecting them could be disastrous for humanity. A sensible approach requires reforms of our moral norms and institutions along with advance planning regarding what kinds of digital minds we bring into existence.
Introduction
Authors: Crès Hervé , Tvede Mich
Published: August 2021

The central puzzle of the book is introduced: Why is there so much consensus among shareholders of large firms? Although trading on the market forges agreement between shareholders about the firms’ objectives, residual yet substantial disagreement should persist because of market failures. To resolve the puzzle, a vision of the political economy of the (publicly traded) firm is outlined, showing 1) how the upstream operation of a decentralized market mechanism makes collective decision-making in the firm easier and more stable; and 2) why the democratic (majority) principle is likely to promote economic efficiency as a politically stable choice. Yet more is needed: a vision of the social economics of shareholders showing how collective decision-making shapes individual preferences in a way that promotes the alignment of shareholders. These two visions are laid out in the two parts of the book.
Disagreements on the Market
Authors: Crès Hervé , Tvede Mich
Published: August 2021

A general equilibrium model of publicly traded firms is provided in the case of a perfect market; it shows how, at the market equilibrium, shareholders agree that profits should be maximized, and about how to compute profits. Hence, they all agree on the objectives of the firms. Next three different contexts of market failure are introduced: incomplete financial markets, production externalities, and monopolistic competition. By use of a common tool (value vectors), it is shown how the market mechanism fails to generate full alignment between shareholders: when facing production externalities or monopolistic competition, shareholders do not necessarily agree that profit should be maximized; when facing incomplete financial markets, shareholders disagree on how to compute profits. In a nutshell: trading on the market generates agreement, but if trading is incomplete or imperfectly competitive then agreement is only partial, and the residual disagreements give rise to problems for collective decision-making.
Why So Much Consensus?
Authors: Crès Hervé , Tvede Mich
Published: August 2021

An even more holistic approach to the problem is adopted by looking at how collective decision-making impacts the choices and characteristics of individual agents, e.g. their shareholdings, their beliefs about economic prospects, or even their preferences. The thesis is that individual characteristics shape collective choices and are at the same time shaped by them, forming a duality between persons and groups. The analysis is deployed on the network of affiliation of investors to firms. Indeed, suppose the Pareto principle holds at both the collective and individual levels, then a full agreement between all agents occurs within a cluster of investors and firms, despite potentially severe market failures—the ‘single thought’ theorem. Efficiency results from the endogeneity of individual characteristics, yet the theorem is strikingly strong and clear-cut. An analysis of what it takes for the Pareto principle to hold is proposed in each of the three contexts of market failure.
Introduction
Authors: MacArthur-Seal Daniel-Joseph
Published: August 2021

The chapter introduces readers to the geographic and chronological extent of British military expansion in the eastern Mediterranean that is assessed in the book. It further explores changing definitions of the Levant and Levantine and explains why they are an appropriate appellation for this imperial project. It critiques predominant explanations of British military expansion and contraction in the region and sets forth an alternative model for how the geographical imagination of soldiers and statesmen informed policy making. It then outlines the sources that research for the book is centred on—namely the letters, diaries, and memoirs of British servicemen, alongside official state documents—and explores how these been read and utilized in literature on the First World War. Finally, it provides an overview of the structure of the book.
Port to Port Sea Voyaging and the Logistics of Empire
Authors: MacArthur-Seal Daniel-Joseph
Published: August 2021

The chapter shows how the onset of the First World war rerouted the material and human circuits that traversed the eastern Mediterranean. The outcome of this process, though not without its challenges, was the establishment of a British maritime logistical network that linked Alexandria and Salonica, numerous islands between them, and, briefly, the Gallipoli peninsula. The chapter documents the extent of the movements of soldiers, labourers, and refugees set in course by the war and its aftermath and the interactions between them. In addition, it shows how these sea voyages contributed to the establishment of the geographic imaginary of the Levant and how the disciplinary regimes governing the transport ship provided a point of contrast to the city that would be encountered on arrival.
City and Camp Reordering the Levantine City
Authors: MacArthur-Seal Daniel-Joseph
Published: August 2021

The chapter investigates how the incorporation of Alexandria, Thessaloniki, and Istanbul into the Allies’ military logistical network posed a set of challenges whose answer seemed to be the militarization of urban space. It explores how soldiers contrasted the rapid development of the military camps to which they were dispatch on arrival with the supposed stagnation of the cities they orbited. Military authorities responded to this dichotomy by attempting to both segregate the camp, through restricting the interaction of soldiers and local civilians, and to harmonize the city with military standards, introducing new rules and regulations managing urban space and circulation. The chapter concludes by examining the military antecedents to the town plans created for Alexandria and Thessaloniki that followed wartime occupation.
1916–1918
Authors: MacArthur-Seal Daniel-Joseph
Published: August 2021

The sub-chapter outlines the development of the First World War in the eastern Mediterranean from the evacuation of the Gallipoli peninsula to the signing of the Armistice of Moudros that took the Ottoman Empire out of the war. It examines how the growing Allied presence at Salonica instigated an uprising in the city that later took power at the Greek capital with British and French support. It assesses the impact of the Russian revolution on the Caucasus front, which led the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and local groups into a scramble for control of key towns and infrastructure. It then summarises how progress on the Palestine front, in conjunction with support for an uprising in the Hejaz, and a breakthrough in Macedonia forced the Ottoman Empire to sue for peace.
1920–1922
Authors: MacArthur-Seal Daniel-Joseph
Published: August 2021

The sub-chapter summarises military and political developments in the eastern Mediterranean in 1920–1922, beginning with the decision to formally occupy Istanbul, which expanded Allied responsibilities while leading to the emergence of a rival Turkish national assembly in Ankara. It assesses Greece’s successive offensives into Anatolia, which ended in defeat and the loss of Izmir to Turkish national forces in September 1922. It further examines the impact of the Bolshevik victory in the Russian civil war on Britain’s position in the Caucasus and Istanbul, and the changing relationship between the Allies and Greece following the Royalist victory there. The chapter shows how Britain took unilateral action to redefine its position in Egypt after failed negotiations with nationalist representatives. Finally, it shows how confrontation with Greece and nationalist Turkey in the vicinity of Istanbul forced the British government to accept a revision of the peace treaty they had forced on the region.
A Worldview Evolution in West European Politics
Authors: Tillman Erik R.
Published: August 2021

This chapter develops the worldview evolution argument that is tested in this book. West European societies have experienced major economic and socio-cultural changes in the past several decades, with the rise of the post-industrial economy, deepening and widening of European integration, and growing multiculturalism and values liberalism. As a result, older political divisions centred on class and religion have given way to new conflicts over national community and identity. Authoritarianism is the key to understanding this evolution of voting behaviour. The changes of the past several decades have generated perceptions of threat to social cohesion among high authoritarians, who have responded by moving towards populist radical right (PRR) parties that promise to fight those threats. Low authoritarians welcome these changes because they perceive them as enhancing individual autonomy and diversity, so they move towards parties that support them. The result is an emerging political conflict organized around rival worldviews: high authoritarians support parties committed to preserving social cohesion and national community, while low authoritarians support parties committed to enhancing individual autonomy and diversity. Because established parties had organized around earlier class and religious divisions, they struggle to maintain voter support in this new era as newer left-liberal and radical right parties gain at their expense. The chapter concludes by describing hypotheses about the evolving relationship between authoritarianism and public support for the EU and voting behaviour, respectively.