bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The European Societies and Jihadism
Authors: Khosrokhavar Farhad
Published: June 2021

The introductory chapter gives insight into the major topics of the book. It stresses the fact that the major actors of jihadism were of Muslim immigration origin but also include a minority of middle-class converts from secular Europe. The notion of “total social fact,” coined by Marcel Mauss, a major French anthropologist, is used to give a comprehensive picture of jihadism as a social phenomenon involving urban sociology (many came from the so-called poor districts, but also some came from some middle-class districts), ethnic relations (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Moroccan, Algerian), national political culture (in France Laïcité, in Great Britain multiculturalism), family (the crisis in family among many jihadis), gender (a significant minority), and generation. From my viewpoint, all these aspects are to be taken into account in order to make sense of jihadism in Europe.
The Birth of the Islamic State and its Impact on European Youth
Authors: Khosrokhavar Farhad
Published: June 2021

Since 2013, a major event occurred in the Middle East. A jihadi group founded a new state in June 2014 with a territory that was, at its heights, as vast as the United Kingdom under the name of the Islamic State in Syria and Sham (ISIS), and later on, simply the Islamic State (IS). Chapter 1 reveals how this event was a sea change in jihadism, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and, more generally, worldwide. IS brought about a great transformation in the minds of European jihadis. European societies had not undergone major ruptures between the years 2000 and 2014, but the number of young people who became jihadi warriors, either internally (the so-called homegrown terrorists) or externally (the so-called Foreign Fighters) grew disproportionately between 2013 and 2016 in comparison to the pre-IS period. A key element was holding a territory as a state. It fundamentally changed the capacity of this jihadi organization. One essential characteristic of IS was its apocalyptic nature. The creation of the new caliphate in 2014 after a ninety-year interruption aroused new hopes in many parts of the Sunni world, traumatized by the failure of nationalism and pan-Arabism and eager to rekindle its lost glory. The attraction of radical Islamic utopias promising revenge against inhospitable European societies pushed a tiny minority of them toward violent action in the name of Allah, in particular after the creation of IS that galvanized them in that sense.
From Rabbi Meir to Beruria
Authors: Roth Daniel
Published: June 2021

Aaron is not the only example of a third-party peacemaker in classical rabbinic literature. In this chapter, eight additional legends found in classic rabbinic literature of third-party peacemakers are presented. The chapter begins with the case perhaps most similar to Aaron, that of Rabbi Meir, and ends with the case most different from Aaron, that of simple jesters. It also discusses two cases of women serving as third parties, which differ from all other examples of third-party peacemakers presented in this book. Many of these legends, like those of Aaron, have served as important sources of inspiration for subsequent generations to engage in peacemaking.
Sindh Before Partition
Authors: Faiz Asma
Published: June 2021

This chapter examines the origins of Sindhi nationalism during the colonial period. To understand the construction of modern Sindhi identity, the author focuses on landmark developments of this period, such as the introduction of Sindhi as the language of administration, which precipitated the growth of print capitalism—a crucial factor in the emergence of nationalist consciousness in the province. The chapter also analyzes key British policies such as canal colonization and the settlement of Punjabis in Sindh, which provoked negative sentiments against the outsiders. It discusses the first political movement of Sindh, i.e., the demand for a separate Sindh province, which was realized in 1936, as well as the impact of pirs in the province’s politics and the shifting Hindu-Muslim relations. The chapter concludes by examining party politics inside and outside the electoral arena in the decade prior to partition in Sindh.
Doubt
Authors: Wright Samuel
Published: June 2021

Chapter 1 draws a connection between critical inquiry and the feeling of trust among scholars. It argues that a new relationship between doubting and reasoning can be found in the early modern period of Sanskrit logic that allowed for new forms of critical inquiry to be employed by scholars. Specifically, the chapter recovers a new conception of doubt called “doubt from speech” (śābda-saṃśaya) in contrast to an older conception called “doubt in the mind” (mānasa-saṃśaya). Yet, when scholars accepted the arguments for this new conception of doubt, they displayed themselves to be not only intellectually competent but also emotionally competent with respect to “the new,” enabling a feeling of trust to emerge between scholars who accepted the new view on doubt and its role in critical inquiry.
Introduction
Authors: van Onselen Charles
Published: June 2021

The introduction explains that the Eastern Main Line between Mozambique and South Africa was never designed to carry passengers but to serve an agricultural economy and, later, to transport coal and mining machinery. Yet, its primary function became the round-trip transportation, under the cover of darkness, secrecy and white guilt, of the thousands of black miners who helped construct the twentieth-century South African economy.
The Eastern Main Line
Authors: van Onselen Charles
Published: June 2021

The psychological and social hardship experienced by African migrant miners on trains in southern Africa left a deep cultural imprint. This chapter explains how classic African musical renditions—now largely shorn of their historical context—in songs such as Shosholoza and Hugh Masekela’s Stimela, present poignant reminders of the systemic exploitation of black labour in the South African mining industry.
WNLA Train Disasters
Authors: van Onselen Charles
Published: June 2021

In colonial dispensations, the transport of passengers separated by colour and class reflected the racist hierarchy within the larger society. Moreover, drivers designated to operate various types of trains were allocated duties in ways that reflected their experience and skills. White passenger trains got priority over those carrying black migrant workers. Under such circumstances, rail ‘accidents’—disasters—cannot be fully separated from the way that racism informed the operation of the system. The chapter examines two disasters, one in 1918 and the other in 1949, which show how the analysis of ‘accidents’ cannot be divorced from the underlying racist structures that shaped the transport system in the colonial society.
Contracts Created through Delivery (“Real Contracts”)
Authors: Frier Bruce W.
Published: June 2021

The Romans recognized four types of contracts that were formed through agreement together with the delivery of property: loan for consumption; deposit; loan for use; and pledge for debt. Each contract type has its own rules concerning the rights and duties of the two parties. This chapter sets out these rules and their general legal character. Among the topics of particular interest are the principles the jurists use to assign liability between the parties, the ability of the parties to transform one type of contract into another, and the efforts of the jurists to make these contracts more commercially useful.
Filling in the Gaps
Authors: Frier Bruce W.
Published: June 2021

The Roman system of contracts left out of account many agreements that deserved enforcement, especially in a developed economy. The jurists clearly recognized the limits of their system, in particular the sometimes obscure boundaries of recognized contracts and the difficulty in recognizing new ones. For agreements that could not be accommodated, they eventually developed a rather awkward mechanism whereby, in principle, a contractual promise only became enforceable after one party performed its side, after which it could demand that the other party either carry out its promise or provide restitution of unjustified enrichment. This mechanism provides relief, but is obviously imperfect. Still, the jurists were at least willing to carry over from the recognized contracts some implied rights and duties.
Of Power and Peril
Authors: Radnitz Scott
Published: June 2021

This chapter provides an explanatory framework for why regimes promote conspiracy claims, based on the insight that because conspiracy theories are theories about power, it makes sense to foreground politics—the opportunities and constraints facing politicians as they consider what stories to tell about the world. It conceptualizes conspiracy theories as a form of propaganda and summarizes theories about conspiracism in politics. The author argues that claiming conspiracy can signal knowledge and prescience, and details three factors associated with the production and circulation of conspiracy claims: destabilizing events, political competition, and cross-border connections and alignments. Regimes may use conspiracy claims intermittently or may construct broad conspiracy narratives and strategically disseminate them over time, but there are potential hazards for regimes that rely excessively on conspiracism. Finally, the chapter outlines the features of three conspiratorial modes: sporadic official conspiracism, competitive conspiracism, and sustained official conspiracism.
Connecting the Dots
Authors: Radnitz Scott
Published: June 2021

This chapter analyzes the database of conspiracy claims to understand the purposes conspiracy theories serve for the people who promote them. First, it examines the data as a whole to check whether the frequency of conspiracy claims rose over two decades, and if so, what events were most responsible for the rise. Second, it asks how critical events affect the manifestation and timing of conspiracy claims. Third, it looks at the influence of geopolitical alignments and rivalries. Fourth, it explores the domestic realm and shows how regime type affects conspiracy claims. Finally, it examines how heads of state and other authority figures contribute to the overall patterns of conspiracism in the region. In summary, the chapter demonstrates how conspiracism can be an outgrowth of palpable threats, political competition, and developments abroad.
The Consequences of Conspiracism
Authors: Radnitz Scott
Published: June 2021

This chapter analyzes the results of a survey of 1,000 respondents in each Georgia and Kazakhstan, assessing attitudes toward generic and specific conspiracy theories and responses to two experimental vignettes. The analysis shows that most people are willing to give conspiracy theories the benefit of the doubt, with Georgians being more conspiratorial overall. Yet politicians who promote conspiracy theories are not automatically believed or rewarded politically. In an ironic twist, the success of conspiracy mongers in winning popular support is limited by the very cynicism that conspiracy theories produce in the first place. Finally, conspiracy believers are different from the general population, being more alienated from politics but more socially engaged.
“Rip off the band-aid”
Authors: Messner Michael A.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 3 begins with an electric moment of group debate and conflict about gender, race and coalition politics at the 2019 Veterans For Peace (VFP) convention. This moment is a point of departure to analyze the often-painful clash between the older generation’s efforts to build organizational “diversity” with the younger veterans’ more expansive intersectionality. Here, the chapter zeroes in on the organizational processes in VFP and About Face that serve to limit or marginalize younger members, especially queer and women of color veterans: race and gender tokenism; assumptions—often imported from the routine masculinist values in the military—about what a proper “leader” should look like; routine microaggressions and gaslighting; and race/gender double-standards concerning expressions of emotions in social movement contexts. The chapter closes with a discussion of how tokenism, leadership assumptions, microaggressions, gaslighting, and emotional double-standards are problems being addressed across the field of social movement activism.
Performativity and Political Ecology, Matter’s Politics
Authors: Parker Emily Anne
Published: June 2021

This chapter considers the work of Karen Barad, placing her account of the need for a concept of agential realism beside the performative account of racial difference in the work of Saidiya Hartman. Chapter 2 shows that there are not one but two concerns with performativity: (1) a political ecology concern about the lack of attention to “nonhuman” agency in the sense of technology, in the work of Barad, and (2) a performativity concern about whether performativity can contain the intensity of the bodily conscription that whiteness requires, in the work of Hartman.
The Political Economy of the Emergency Looking for Ideology
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe , Anil Pratinav
Published: June 2021

The chapter presents a balance sheet of the political economy during the Emergency. It focuses on the divergence between the socialist rhetoric of Mrs Gandhi’s Twenty-Point Programme and her dirigiste corporatism in practice. It also denotes the complementarity of authoritarianism and populism, as populism has no ideology either. This depoliticization, which is described as a major characteristic of authoritarian regimes by Linz, helped to bridge the class divide in order to maintain the status quo. This was followed by policies to allow some redistribution, such as land reforms and by keeping essential commodities affordable to prevent mass protests. However, the chapter concludes that the little progress that was made due to redistribution policies was offset by the class war, with the elites eventually maintaining the status quo.
Conclusion
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe , Anil Pratinav
Published: June 2021

This chapter pursues the following questions: (1), was the Emergency a parenthesis, a turning point or was the difference between it and the periods that bookended it more a matter of degree? And (2), how exceptional was this episode for the average Indian? It compares the Emergency to the post-independence period of democracy that preceded it, as well as to the decades following it. The chapter places India’s first experiment with authoritarianism and the regime itself in a broader historical perspective. In sum, the conclusion interprets the Emergency and positions it in India’s postcolonial history.
Power, Privilege, and Entitlement
Authors: Anderson Kristin J.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 1, Power, Privilege, and Entitlement, situates entitlement among related terms that help explain inequality, such as power and privilege. This chapter defines entitlement and details the way entitlement is measured. Experiments that assess entitlement find reliable differences in women’s and men’s sense of entitlement. Men tend to have an inflated sense of entitlement relative to women. White individuals tend to have a higher sense of entitlement compared to people of color. In addition to entitlement to pay, research on academic entitlement is examined as well. Academically entitled students hold attitudes toward learning and teachers that they should receive more from their academic experience than they put in; that professors should bend rules for them; that they should not have to work as hard as others. Academic entitlement is correlated with academic disengagement, cheating, and classroom incivility.
Entitlement’s Enablers: Peers and Popular Culture
Authors: Anderson Kristin J.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 4 further explores the development of entitlement. This chapter is divided into two parts as it considers two areas of developmental influence: the peer group and mass media. The chapter begins with a look at the impact of social dominance goals (e.g., establishing power) of the peer group and the degree to which these goals affect peer interaction and disruptive classroom behavior. Homophobic bullying and gender policing are also addressed in this chapter. The price for entitlement is the all-out avoidance of femininity and all-in conformity to male norms. Boys and men may come to see conforming to rigid gender rules as a relatively small price to pay for privilege and entitlement. Sexualized violence is then considered through the lens of entitlement. In some male peer groups, the mistreatment of girls and women is not condemned, but rather it actually helps men gain status within that group. Chapter 4 next considers the influence of media and popular culture on the valuing of dominant groups over subordinated groups. The different representations of gender, race, and sexuality in mass media facilitate entitlement in dominant groups. Finally, the impact of media is considered with a review of experimental and correlational research on how media messages affect viewers.
Entitlement Makes People Ignorant, Egocentric, and Mean
Authors: Anderson Kristin J.
Published: June 2021

This chapter explores the ways in which entitlement facilitates ignorance, egocentrism, and inconsiderateness. People with power tend to engage in shoddy information processing. Compared to those who are marginalized, dominant group members think in shortcuts. Power emboldens people to be careless about repercussions, at least compared to those without power. Power holders do not feel compelled to view things from another person’s perspective and they do not feel obliged to know much about people with less power. For marginalized people, their very lives depend on understanding the idiosyncrasies of power holders and they understand these dynamics much better than powerful people. Power entitles people to conveniently and self-servingly assume they know more than they actually do when it comes to telling women and people of color how to think about sexism and racism (e.g., mansplaining and whitesplaining). At the same time, power entitles people to claim they know less than they actually do when they are called to account for sexual violence.
Conclusion
Authors: Anderson Kristin J.
Published: June 2021

The conclusion presents the consequences of entitlement for individuals, the planet, and democracy. Entitlement makes people cognitively inflexible but also behaviorally, professionally, and politically unable to adapt to change. Dominant group members do not believe they should have to change and adapt, and they react emotionally when they are asked to do so. Economically struggling White people support policies that are self-destructive to themselves and their communities. Many White people vote according to their racial status against their economic needs. They support politicians who offer policies that objectively advantage the wealthy and harm working-class and poor White people. Entitlement can help us understand climate change denial if we consider it in the context of anti-intellectualism, individualism, and fragile masculinity—topics covered in previous chapters. Finally, entitlement could end democracy. The grievance politics of the entitled has knocked down some crucial pillars that historically have upheld democracy in the United States. In order to stay in power, Republican politicians must cheat because their initiatives are so unpopular, they would not win elections if everyone voted. Therefore, they gerrymander districts to absurdity, they remove voters of color from voter lists, they close voting locations in ethnic minority communities, and they limit early voting, weekend voting, and even voting by mail during a global pandemic.
Introduction
Authors: Drobak John N.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 1 explains that this book examines two economic “principles,” or beliefs, that have shaped the perception of the economic system in the United States today: (1) the belief that the U.S. economy is competitive, making government market regulation unnecessary, and (2) the belief that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders, but not for other stakeholders. Contrary to what many economists and policymakers believe, the chapter shows that numerous markets in the United States are not competitive and that the belief in shareholder primacy is not an economic principle but a normative notion. In addition, the belief in the existence of competitive markets is used to argue that market regulation is unnecessary because competition provides all the needed constraints. If there are no constraints from competition and no regulation, serious harm can result, as shown by the Great Recession of 2008. The chapter also points out that there never was a purely laissez-faire market economy. The real question is how much market regulation is desirable. It is often difficult to debate this issue because many people label any expansion of government regulation as socialism. In addition, some people just do not like being told what to do by the government. That was a principle reason for the objection to the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The chapter then introduces the relationship between the two economic narratives and the millions of job losses this century, using lessons from the new institutional economics to analyze the issues.
The Effects of Mega-Mergers
Authors: Drobak John N.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 4 shows that a good part of the decrease in competition has resulted from the recent wave of large mergers. Merger regulation, which is based solely on economic considerations, is limited to assessing the potential anticompetitive effects among the competing firms, without any consideration of the size alone of the combined firm or the effects on noncompeting firms. In addition, many mergers are justified by a claim of increased efficiencies in the new firm, which is often the result of layoffs and plant closures. Not only does this cause significant job losses, it also hurts families and communities. Even though economic theory does not take these kinds of externalities into account, they are nonetheless harmful consequences of mergers. Numerous studies have shown that many mergers do not result in lower prices, while some mergers have even led to price increases. In these mergers, workers suffered not for the sake of consumers but for the financial benefits reaped by the shareholders and managers of the merging firms and by the professionals who put the deals together. It also appears that investment advisors encourage mergers just so that they can profit from the transactions, regardless of the degree of benefit provided to consumers (or even shareholders). With little or no benefit to consumers from some mergers and significant harm to labor, the chapter argues that we need to reassess how the government should review mergers.
Recommendations
Authors: Drobak John N.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 9 lays out proposals for change. They range from simple and uncontroversial ones, like requiring the government to collect reliable statistics about the number of jobs lost through mergers and outsourcing, to controversial proposals, like adding labor representation to the corporate boards of directors. Although some antitrust scholars have recently proposed changing merger review to include consideration of the effects on labor, the chapter argues that changing the current process is not feasible. Instead, the chapter proposes the creation of a new government panel to review proposed mergers and outsourcing. The board would assess the expected displacement of labor in comparison with a realistic appraisal of the expected gains to consumers. The chapter argues that the proposed reforms cannot be achieved until the influence of business on Congress is limited. The chapter also deals with political effects, by pointing out that the harm to workers has aggregated over the years, culminating in popular support for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election. There is a dark side to this growing populist movement, however, because disgruntled labor has played a role in nationalistic and fascistic movements during the twentieth century.
Exchanges
Authors: Lally Jagjeet
Published: June 2021

By tracing the flow of goods from sites of production to sites of consumption, this chapter shows that long-distance trade was made up of numerous exchanges. Closely examining these exchanges, it demonstrates how caravan trade integrated the lives of even relatively remote peasants and pastoralists—not to mention bureaucrats, bankers and craftsmen—into larger economic and political structures. In the eighteenth century, the hub of caravan trade in north India shifted to Multan in western Punjab, its environs the site of trade-related production and home to the kinsmen of the pastoralists who plied the caravan routes, and its cities containing the workshops of artisans and the business houses of north-Indian magnates heavily involved in long-distance exchange. By comparing similar but very separate phenomena in Punjab and Bengal, this chapter reveals that globalisation was not a single process but a multiplicity, and one that could create disconnection just as much as greater connectivity.
Traders
Authors: Lally Jagjeet
Published: June 2021

The eighteenth-century expansion of the Durrani, Qing and Romanov empires deeper into Eurasia brought liquid wealth from the increasingly globalised economy into this space, stimulating commercial opportunities and the closer integration of the continental interior. This chapter uncovers one of the outcomes of this process as the empowerment of new commercial groups. Afghans, Pashtuns and Muslims from the Indo-Afghan frontier—generally seen by scholars only as pastoralists and peddlers—were the entrepreneurial lynchpins of the developments examined in this chapter. As former peddlers harnessed market opportunities and channelled the benefits accrued from political patronage into new business ventures, they accumulated capital and widened the geographic scope of their operations. In so doing, they posed serious competition to established north-Indian magnate groups, while also changing the character of commerce itself.
Colonial Conquest
Authors: Lally Jagjeet
Published: June 2021

The final three chapters scrutinise the impact on Indo-central Asian trade on the conquest and incorporation of the Eurasian interior into the British and Russian empires, typical of the penetration of European political or commercial regimes into the continental interiors of Afro-Eurasia and America during the era of the New Imperialism. The advent of new railway and shipping routes, as well as the development of new and existing roads, was integral to this process. The result was the revitalisation of a range of routes criss-crossing and connecting the inner continental spaces and their greater integration into the larger world economy. This chapter surveys these developments, focusing on maritime and overland routes from India across the Arabian Sea, over the Karakoram, and those along the Grand Trunk Road through Afghanistan to central Asia.
Conclusion
Authors: Lally Jagjeet
Published: June 2021

The endurance of terrestrial forms of connectivity over the Eurasian continental interior lies at the heart of this book. By reviewing the life of such connections in the twentieth century, this chapter draws out this book’s four major interventions. The first concerns the value of examining long-term patterns of change and the virtue of thinking across such divides as Mughal and British, pre-colonial and colonial. The second relates to the way this book thinks about empires in novel ways, whether by taking a trans-imperial framework or by focussing on the ways non-political entities—such as merchant networks—persisted through periods of imperial flux and the rise and fall of empires. The third is the focus on space, particularly interior or inner-continental space, and its place within global history. The final contribution is to provide an impetus to scholars to think of the synchronicity of multiple forms of globalisation and their interrelation.
Introduction
Authors: de Búrca Gráinne
Published: June 2021

This chapter describes the current climate in which human rights law and institutions are under threat from the rise of political illiberalism, and are also being sharply critiqued by sceptical scholars who predict the decline and demise of the human rights movement. These developments are juxtaposed with the simultaneous rise of social movements and protests around the world, many of which invoke and claim human rights as part of their campaigns for social, political, environmental, racial, economic and other forms of justice. While some commentators have argued that human rights are ‘not enough’ in the pursuit of justice, this book takes the view that politics without human rights—i.e. without the kind of moral and institutional underpinning provided by the human rights framework with its explicit set of commitments to human dignity, freedom, and welfare—are not enough. It challenges the view of human rights as an ineffective, marginal or apolitical movement, and argues that human rights are the product of ongoing contestation and engagement between a multiplicity of actors, institutions and norms at different levels, including grassroots activists and advocates as well as international bodies and domestic institutional actors.
Standard Contracts for Cloud Services
Authors: Michels Johan David , Millard Christopher , Turton Felicity
Published: June 2021

This chapter reviews the main issues that cloud contracts typically cover and what their terms provide. It examines whether approaches vary significantly between providers, and assesses how terms have changed over the past ten years. The approach is largely empirical. The chapter presents the results of a survey of the standard Terms of Service (ToS) under which providers offered cloud computing services in 2019. It looks at general terms relating to the contract, such as duration, termination, and variation clauses. The chapter then considers terms relating to the allocation of responsibility, liability, and intellectual property (IP) between customer and provider. It analyses these terms from the perspective of English law, and where relevant, European law.
International Tax Implications of Cloud Computing
Authors: Koukoulioti Vasiliki , Reed Chris
Published: June 2021

This chapter explores the international tax implications of cloud computing. Current tax laws are based heavily on concepts of physical geography, such as controlling premises and physical equipment or employing staff in the jurisdiction. The geographical concepts do not accommodate the cloud business model in any sensible way. As a consequence, the taxation of cloud providers is particularly complex and uncertain. The chapter then explains the basic rules for direct taxation of cross-border profits, which apply no matter what technology (or lack of technology) is involved. It then discusses the complex exceptions to those rules which have been developed in respect of intangible products and services, in particular relating to intellectual property, and to cross-border income from the use of computing equipment, and it examines how they might impact cloud providers. The chapter also considers the current rules which determine taxation nexus, as well as indirect taxation, particularly Value Added Tax (VAT). Finally, it looks at how the OECD and the UN are attempting to deal with the major problems with the current system.
Power, government, and political life
Authors: Watts John
Published: June 2021

The chapter offers a survey of the central features of later medieval political life. It was often bloody, but the resort to bloodshed was politically purposeful, and the focus on individuals reflected the parts they played in larger frameworks of power. Those frameworks were both ‘private’ and ‘public’—they were followings of men and women, linked together in relationships of marriage, service, or friendship for mutual advantage; but they also involved the performance of official roles, the negotiation of public business, the management of institutions. The frameworks of power were national, international, and ‘transnational’. Europe was divided into self-conscious political spaces, each with a measure of sovereignty and identity, but these spaces also overlapped and, within virtually any political setting, authority was contestable: it involved a complicated mixture of relationships among elites and much wider movements, voiced and promoted by representative assemblies and popular revolts.
The church and religious life
Authors: Swanson Robert
Published: June 2021

Late medieval Europe identified itself as explicitly Christian and specifically catholic. Christianity provided moral and ethical guidelines for organizing and structuring human society; it also presented moral and ethical challenges to contemporary social structures and practices. It accordingly provoked constant debate on issues like the violence of warfare, the validity of lending money at interest, social differentiation, and relations with other religious traditions. These were also traumatic years in the western church’s institutional history, especially for the papacy. Preceding evolutions continued and were consolidated, but there was also reaction as obscured tensions and ambiguities became more apparent, revealing fissures and forces which threatened the church’s status and its claims to catholicity within Europe. The chapter deals with a broad range of issues: the papacy; ideas about the church, the pope, and conciliarism; the evolution of national and local churches, the lower clergy, and the religious orders; and, of course, spirituality, heresy, dissent.
Culture and the arts
Authors: Lee Alexander
Published: June 2021

The later Middle Ages as a cultural period has been shaped by the Burckhardtian tradition: Burckhardt drew a sharp distinction between the ‘medieval’ outlook he believed had prevailed north of the Alps and the ‘rebirth’ of classical antiquity he saw taking place in the Italian peninsula. Over the past 60 years, however, the validity of such a contrast has been called into question. As a consequence, it is now generally accepted that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were characterized more by diversity than by division. This chapter examines how, in every field of cultural endeavour, from painting and sculpture to poetry and music, there emerged a series of quite different, often heterogeneous trends. Originating in different parts of Europe, these were transmitted across the continent, where they interacted with parallel developments elsewhere. The effect was less that of a concerto than of a rich and discordant symphony of competing voices.
Society, family, and gender
Authors: Kovesi Catherine
Published: June 2021

A shared understanding of Christianity as the foundation of society in this life and in the next; a predominant acceptance of classical Greek texts for understandings of the human body and of sexual differences between men and women; an overwhelming dependence on patriarchal structures with implications for constructions and experiences of masculinity and femininity; and an ideal of family and of community relationships (whether secular or religious) from which no individual could readily claim isolation were touchstones throughout late medieval Europe against which normative values were constructed. Marginalized and often persecuted groups, such as Jews, sodomites, or heretics, were understood and defined against this normative backdrop. That said, by the end of the period increasing political and legal consolidation of societal structures led to their interrogation by those whom these same structures excluded or constrained. The result is an image of surprising fluidity and change in society, family, and gender.
Does Socrates Claim to Know that He Knows Nothing?
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: June 2021

Socrates is often thought to have said that he knows that he knows nothing. The main source of evidence for this view is Plato’s Apology. Chapter 2 argues that Socrates does not say, or imply, that he knows that he knows nothing in a way that involves self-contradiction. Rather, he is saying either that he knows that he is not wise (where knowing something falls short of being wise with respect to it); or else that he is aware that he is not wise (where being aware of something falls short of knowing it). Neither claim involves or implies a contradiction. The chapter also explores the epistemology of the Apology more generally.
Subjectivity, Ancient and Modern: The Cyrenaics, Sextus, and Descartes
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: June 2021

It’s sometimes argued that the ancients lack the concept of subjectivity and that Descartes is the first to have had such a concept. The question of whether any of the ancients has the concept of subjectivity or takes anything to be subjective depends, in part, on what one takes subjectivity to be. And just as there is controversy about how to characterize knowledge and belief, so there is controversy about how to characterize subjectivity. Chapter 12 argues that Pyrrhonian skeptics and the Cyrenaics have a recognizable conception of subjectivity, and take various things to be subjective, and that Descartes does not articulate the stronger conception of subjectivity that is sometimes ascribed to him.
Divine Action in History
Authors: Abraham William J.
Published: June 2021

This chapter probes the relationship of divine action to historical processes by looking at the creation of the modern state of Israel and its relationship to the Jewish people. The establishment of Israel has been described by many writers as a miracle of God. It argues particularistic claims like these should be taken seriously. It also suggests that these kinds of public claims about divine action are not going away, and we ought to reckon with them; if we do not, it is to our detriment for public understanding. It suggests the crucial link between history and theology is the nature of causation—it draws on Ernst Troeltsch’s work to bring out this point.
Divine Action and the Demonic
Authors: Abraham William J.
Published: June 2021

This chapter identifies the realm of the demonic as one area of theological inquiry in the wider topic of divine agency and divine action. It sketches the kinds of actions demons do and the kinds of agents they are. The chapter then looks at the nature of evil as it manifests in persons, and suggests we do not need church doctrine to know about the existence of evil beings. We all intuitively know that evil exists and in some cases this belief is verified by experience. The chapter suggests that demons are complex spiritual agents who oppose all things divine. It responds to four objections to this view and concludes.
Introduction
Authors: Parrington John
Published: June 2021

This introductory chapter begins by providing an overview of the power of the human brain, which is displayed in the wonders of modern civilization. Despite the human brain’s capacity for such intellectual and technological feats, we still know astonishingly little about how it achieves them. This deficit in understanding is a problem not only because it means we lack basic knowledge of the biological factors that underlie our human uniqueness, but also because, for all its amazing capabilities, the human mind seems particularly prone to dysfunction. Still, some would argue there is good reason to be optimistic about the prospect of developing new and better treatments for mental disorders in the not-so-distant future. Such optimism is based on the increasing potential to study how the brain works in various important new ways thanks to recent technological innovations. The chapter then considers two overly polarised views of the human mind. Ultimately, this book argues that society radically restructures the human brain within an individual person’s lifetime, and that it has also played a central role in the past history of our species, by shaping brain evolution.
Individual and Society
Authors: Parrington John
Published: June 2021

This chapter investigates the relationship between the individual and society, which has been hotly disputed among philosophers and politicians through the ages. Recent studies have questioned the idea that human beings are naturally solitary individuals. Instead, they suggest that socialising with others is so central to our species that rejection is registered in the same brain regions that respond to physical pain. Other studies have undermined the idea that human beings are inherently selfish, indicating instead that altruistic acts trigger activity in the ‘reward’ region of the brain that is stimulated when a person experiences pleasure. Studies like these raise the question of how the human brain became so attuned to social cues in this way. Here there are two issues to consider. One is evidence that primates in general have evolved to be highly sensitive to social interactions with other members of their species, and this has been accompanied by enhanced brain growth in order to handle these more sophisticated interactions. Yet while social interaction may be hardwired into our brains because of evolutionary changes in our primate ancestors, some features of our strong tendency towards social interaction may be specifically human. The chapter then looks at Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s novel ideas about human consciousness.
Sanity and Madness
Authors: Parrington John
Published: June 2021

This chapter explains that the central difficulty in diagnosing and treating mental disorders is reaching a level of agreement about their underlying basis. In this respect, proponents of the view that mental disorders are primarily biological in origin were particularly excited by the Human Genome Project, as they believed this would make it possible to truly get a grip on the nature of such conditions. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have now been used to study a range of mental disorders. However, GWAS findings have been contradictory and confusing and this chapter looks at the reasons why, and at a number of possible biological causes of schizophrenia. The chapter then considers a very different way of explaining schizophrenia, one based on the idea that it is not genetics but the social environment that determines whether an individual succumbs to this disorder. A version of this hypothesis sees schizophrenia as primarily the result of defective family relations, and the disorder as a consequence of those distorted relations, but also as a response to wider pressures in society. One psychotherapy approach claimed to have a very good level of success in the treatment of schizophrenia is called 'Open Dialogue.
Science and Technology
Authors: Parrington John
Published: June 2021

This chapter challenges the common perception of scientists as a group that think and behave in very different ways from the rest of humanity. While scientists may occupy a very specific niche in society in their role in the construction of new knowledge, they are prone to the same strengths and weaknesses in terms of their individual minds, and are affected by the same social prejudices, as the rest of humanity. Moreover, far from being an alien activity, the pursuit of scientific knowledge is something that is a key resource for humanity as a whole. Everyone with an interest in the origins and fundamental nature of human conscious awareness should have a strong interest in knowing more about the process of scientific discovery, and an input into debates about both the direction and application of scientific research. To understand why, it is worth looking at how science first developed, which this chapter does. The chapter then goes on to look at some of the key ways in which scientists develop new scientific concepts about the world, building on Lev Vygotsky’s ideas about this process and extending them to a discussion of some of the main areas of science today. It also links this process back to the specific theme of the book about human consciousness.
A Metaphysics of Love
Authors: Pattison George
Published: June 2021

The book is the third and final part of a philosophy of Christian life. The first part applied a phenomenological approach to the literature of the devout life tradition, focussing on the feeling of being drawn to devotion to God; the second part examined what happens when this feeling is interpreted as a call or vocation. At its heart, this is the call to love that is made explicit in the Christian love-commandment but is shown to be implied every time human beings address each other in speech. A metaphysics of love explores the conditions for the possibility of such a call to love. Taking into account contemporary critiques of metaphysics, Dante’s vision of ‘the love that moves the sun and other stars’ challenges us to account for the mutual entwining of human and cosmic love and of being/God and beings/creatures in love. Conditions for the possibility of love are shown to include language, time, and social forms that mediate between immediate individual existence and society as a whole. Faced with the history of human malevolence, love also supposes the possibility of a new beginning, which Christianity sees in the Incarnation, manifest as forgiveness. Where existential phenomenology sees death as definitive of human existence, Christianity finds life’s true measure in love. Thus understood, love reveals the truth of being.
The Logic of Inter-Party Competition and Cooperation
Authors: Casal Bértoa Fernando , Enyedi Zsolt
Published: June 2021

The first chapter lays the foundation for a cooperation-focused way of thinking about party politics. It provides reasons why its analysts should go beyond individual parties and consider blocs of parties. It introduces the concept of poles, as distinct from blocs, and builds a party system typology around them. The second part of the chapter elaborates the concept of party system closure, relating it to the wider notion of party system institutionalization, and identifies its three components: alternation, innovation, and access. The chapter ends by considering the most likely causes and most important political consequences of closure.
A New European Dataset and the Measurement of Party System Closure
Authors: Casal Bértoa Fernando , Enyedi Zsolt
Published: June 2021

The second chapter introduces the dataset of the book, defines its units of measurement, and operationalizes its key concepts. We discuss the method of creating our principal tool of analysis, the composite closure index. We reflect in detail on the question of how experiences accumulated through time can be taken into account when measuring stability. Finally, in a validation exercise, we also investigate whether our closure index could have been used to predict which democracies collapsed around the world between the two World Wars. With this exercise we also show that closure is a better proxy for party system institutionalization than the more traditionally used indicator, the electoral volatility index.
The Explanatory Model of Closure
Authors: Casal Bértoa Fernando , Enyedi Zsolt
Published: June 2021

This chapter provides a comprehensive explanatory model of party system closure. The model includes the variables analysed in the previous chapters (i.e. age and birth period of democracy, party institutionalization, parliamentary fragmentation, and polarization), with the addition of the degree of economic development, the type of electoral system (i.e. majoritarian or proportional), and the nature of the constitutional regime (i.e. presidential, semi-presidential or parliamentary). Then we ask the question: what would be the explanatory model of party system institutionalization had we operationalized it in terms of volatility rather than closure? We show that the determinants of closure are not identical with those of volatility. The latter is more a function of the behaviour of the citizens, the former is more a product of elite decisions. At the end of the chapter we place the factors responsible for closure into a causal chain.