bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Impact of (Mis)communication on International Commercial Arbitration
Authors: Arlota Carolina
Published: June 2020

International commercial arbitration is often considered the principal method for solving disputes between international business parties mainly because of its final and binding nature. International commercial arbitration is a valued alternative to litigation in foreign courts, while also avoiding simultaneous legal claims in different jurisdictions around the globe. In this context, effective communication among private parties, which is defined as steering clear of potential miscommunications among them in international business transactions, is essential for the negotiation of successful arbitration agreements and efficient international arbitral proceedings. Complexities concerning the communication among parties located in different countries—with different cultures and distinct legal traditions—abound. Such complexities are informative of the main stages of international commercial arbitration, namely, before reaching the negotiation table, during the writing of the arbitration agreement, and after a legal dispute arises. This topic has not been subject to comprehensive analysis, despite its significant impact on the parties’ business needs and related optimization of their interests. In addition, trending relevant issues in the field include the recently signed Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, the increasing judicialization of international arbitration proceedings, the increasing use of artificial intelligence and empirical studies in international commercial arbitration.
Synoptic to Intraseasonal Variability of African Rainfall
Authors: Schlueter Andreas
Published: June 2020

Rainfall over Africa varies across timescales of a few days to several weeks due to several tropical and extratropical modes of variability. Excessive rains or prolonged drought regularly result in natural disasters and have thus a severe impact on the local economy, agriculture, spread of diseases, and entire ecosystems. The dynamical nature of the atmosphere allows the existence of planetary balanced modes, which are called Rossby waves, and smaller-scale unbalanced inertio-gravity (IG) waves. The former, which are more rotational, arise from the horizontal pressure gradient force, while for the latter gravity acts as the restoring force, making their flow pattern more divergent. The main source of variability in the extratropics stems from Rossby waves. At the equator, further types of convectively coupled equatorial waves (CCEWs) exist, namely Kelvin and mixed Rossby-gravity (MRG) waves. As the slowest intraseasonal tropical mode, the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO), which is related to Kelvin and Rossby waves, acts on a timescale of 30 to 90 days. Although it is primarily a planetary mode, the MJO has a specific “flavor” over the African continent. On the short intraseasonal timescale of 10 to 25 days, equatorial Rossby (ER) waves and the internal modes of the West African monsoon, the quasi-biweekly zonal dipole (QBZD) and the Sahel mode, modulate rainfall. On the synoptic timescale of a few days to a week, African easterly waves (AEWs) are a dominant mode over West Africa, whereas Kelvin waves predominantly modulate rainfall over equatorial Africa. Extratropical influences on northern and southern Africa manifest themselves in Rossby wave trains, which modulate synoptic to intraseasonal rainfall through tropical rainfall plumes, cold air surges, and upper-tropospheric dry air intrusions. Furthermore, the Saharan heat low (SHL) acts as a link between the northern hemispheric extratropics and tropics. Finally, the Indian monsoon, the Atlantic, Indian, and the Pacific Oceans can remotely affect the intraseasonal variability of African rainfall. Forecasting synoptic to intraseasonal rainfall variability is an integral part of seamless prediction between the weather and climate regimes. In the early 21st century, numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems can forecast larger intraseasonal signals such as the MJO several weeks into the future, but they still struggle to forecast shorter scale features reliably. Besides NWP, statistical models can successfully forecast intraseasonal variability of rainfall. Due to the relevance of synoptic to intraseasonal rainfall variability for African societies, early warning systems (EWSs) have been developed to mitigate impacts.
Alpine Climate Change Derived From Instrumental Measurements
Authors: Brugnara Yuri
Published: June 2020

The European Alps have experienced remarkable climate changes since the beginning of the Industrial Age. In particular, mean air temperature in the region increased at a greater rate than global temperature, leading to the loss of nearly half of the glaciated area and to important changes in the ecosystems.

Spanning 1,200 km in length, with peaks reaching over 4,000 meters above sea level (m asl), the Alps have a critical influence over the weather in most of Europe and separate the colder oceanic/continental climate in the north from the milder Mediterranean climate in the south. The climatic differences between the main slopes are reflected into different climate changes—whereas the northern slope got wetter, the southern slope got drier.

The consequences of these climate changes are not confined to the Alpine region. Being located in the center of Europe, the Alps provide water and electricity for over 100 million people. Alpine run-off is a major contributor to the total discharge of several major European rivers such as the Rhine, the Rhône, the Po, and the Danube. Therefore, climate change in the Alps can have significant economic impacts on a continental scale.

Their convenient geographical position allowed scientists to study the Alpine climate since the very beginning of the instrumental era. The first instrumental meteorological observations in an Alpine valley were taken as early as the mid-17th century, soon followed by measurements at higher elevations. Continuous records are available since the late 18th century, providing invaluable information on climate variability to modern-day researchers.

Although there is overwhelming evidence of a dominant anthropogenic influence on the observed temperature increase, the causes of the changes that affected other variables have, in many cases, not been sufficiently investigated by the scientific community.
Historical Views of Homosexuality: Ancient Greece
Authors: Hubbard Thomas K.
Published: June 2020

Ancient Greece featured at least five different varieties of same-sex relations: (a) pederastic relations, typically between adolescent boys and adult men who were not yet married; (b) relations between male youths of approximately the same age; less frequently (c) homosexual relations between fully adult men; (d) age-differentiated relations between females; and (e) relations between adult females. The origins of pederasty appear to be related to the relatively late age of marriage for males, which evolved as a response to needs to limit population growth in the scarcity-driven economy of the 7th century bce. The contexts of pederastic socialization (athletics, military comradeship, hunting, cockfighting, and intellectual/musical performance at elite symposia) point toward masculinizing pedagogy and mentorship as key social functions.

However, social attitudes toward pederasty were not uniform throughout all Greek city-states in all periods. Evidence from several domains suggests that as Athens became more democratic and saw greater distribution of prosperity throughout all social classes, the age of male marriage declined; larger families became socially desirable, while non-procreative alternatives to marital sexuality became less fashionable and even morally dubious. What had always been characterized as an elite habitus during the archaic period and first half of the 5th century no longer seemed at home in a political system where appeal to the common man defined success and popularity. Some philosophical texts from the 4th century bce characterize physical sex between males as para physin (“beyond nature”), whereas others recognize the possibility that it is determined through natural processes grounded in anatomy or spiritual heredity.

Of most interest for modern politics is the question of what Greek historical evidence can tell us about the ability of adolescent boys to consent to intimate relations with adult men. Modern jurisprudence, especially in the United States, assumes a universal inability to provide informed consent until well after the onset of puberty, and even voluntary relations between adolescent boys and men are heavily sanctioned in the criminal justice system. Although classical Athens featured a robust tradition of criticizing pederasty for a number of reasons, the notion that pre-adult sex with an older partner was psychologically harmful to boys was not among them. The Greeks viewed adolescent (and even younger) boys as inherently sexual, and the widespread practice of nudity in athletic exercise and daily life conditioned Greek boys to a greater degree of frankness and physical disinhibition. Both iconographical and textual evidence show that Greek adolescents were quite capable of rejecting adult suitors or discontinuing relationships that no longer pleased them.
Courts in the United Kingdom
Authors: Hanretty Chris
Published: June 2020

Courts in the United Kingdom have evolved gradually over the past 700 years. The modern court system is sophisticated, displaying both specialization by area of law and regional differentiation. The English and Welsh court system, for example, is separated from the Scottish and Northern Irish court systems. Across all different jurisdictions within the UK, courts display moderate to high levels of de facto judicial independence without many guarantees of de jure judicial independence. Appointment to the courts system since the reforms of 2005 is strongly apolitical; this, coupled with a weak form of fundamental rights review, means that debates about judicial politics have been limited. Particularly sensitive issues arise in relation to courts’ handling of multilevel governance, and more particularly the relationship between the Westminster Parliament and the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, and between the Westminster Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Because of the gradual introduction of human rights guarantees in domestic law, and progressive devolution of power from center to periphery, UK courts offer lessons for those interested in the introduction of rights catalogs and in theories of constitutional review.
The European Commission
Authors: Kassim Hussein
Published: June 2020

Novel in both design and function, the European Commission occupies a central position in the political system of the European Union (EU). Compared to other international administrations in other international organizations, its responsibilities are extensive. The Commission is the principal source of EU legislative initiatives. It manages EU policy and processes, monitors the implementation of EU law, and negotiates trade agreements on the EU’s behalf. Though often decried as an “unelected bureaucracy,” the Commission is in fact a hybrid body. Whereas the services of the Commission form a permanent administration, the College, headed by the Commission president, is political. Members of the College, including the president, are appointed by the governments of the member states and elected by the European Parliament every five years, following popular elections to the latter body.

The internal functioning of the Commission has attracted considerable interest, particularly among scholars of public administration and comparative politics. With respect to the Commission’s functioning within the wider EU system, the main debates relate to the role of the institution in the EU’s development; the extent of its influence over policy; its executive responsibilities and interaction with agencies at EU and national levels; and, in the context of a wider discussion of the EU’s democratic credentials, the Commission’s accountability. Few dispute the Commission importance, but there is considerable disagreement on how the Commission’s role in integration should be theorized and how the Commission as a body should be conceptualized.
Political Neuroscience: Understanding How the Brain Makes Political Decisions
Authors: Haas Ingrid J. , Warren Clarisse , Lauf Samantha J.
Published: June 2020

Recent research in political psychology and biopolitics has begun to incorporate theory and methods from cognitive neuroscience. The emerging interdisciplinary field of political neuroscience (or neuropolitics) is focused on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying political information processing and decision making. Most of the existing work in this area has utilized structural magnetic resonance imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or electroencephalography, and focused on understanding areas of the brain commonly implicated in social and affective neuroscience more generally. This includes brain regions involved in affective and evaluative processing, such as the amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortex, as well as regions involved in social cognition (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex [PFC]), decision making (e.g., dorsolateral PFC), and reward processing (e.g., ventral striatum). Existing research in political neuroscience has largely focused on understanding candidate evaluation, political participation, and ideological differences. Early work in the field focused simply on examining neural responses to political stimuli, whereas more recent work has begun to examine more nuanced hypotheses about how the brain engages in political cognition and decision making. While the field is still relatively new, this work has begun to improve our understanding of how people engage in motivated reasoning about political candidates and elected officials and the extent to which these processes may be automatic versus relatively more controlled. Other work has focused on understanding how brain differences are related to differences in political opinion, showing both structural and functional variation between political liberals and political conservatives. Neuroscientific methods are best used as part of a larger, multimethod research program to help inform theoretical questions about mechanisms underlying political cognition. This work can then be triangulated with experimental laboratory studies, psychophysiology, and traditional survey approaches and help to constrain and ensure that theory in political psychology and political behavior is biologically plausible given what we know about underlying neural architecture. This field will continue to grow, as interest and expertise expand and new technologies become available.
Critical Criminologies
Authors: DeKeseredy Walter S.
Published: June 2020

There is no single critical criminology. Rather, there are critical criminologies with different histories, methods, theories, and political perspectives. However, critical criminology is often defined as a perspective that views the major sources of crime as the unequal class, race/ethnic, and gender relations that control our society. Critical criminologists oppose prisons and other draconian means of social control. Their main goal is major radical and cultural change, but they recognize that these transitions will not occur in the current neoliberal era. Hence, most critical criminologists propose short-term anticrime policies and practices and fundamental social, economic, and political transformations, such as a change from a capitalist economy to one based on more socialist principles.
Inclusive and Special Education in Australia
Authors: Arthur-Kelly Michael , Foreman Phil
Published: June 2020

Australian public education systems have developed policies since the 1980s and 1990s which have placed a major focus on inclusive educational practices. Despite this progress, Australia has witnessed the growth of parallel and sometimes competing systems of support for students with additional learning needs. It is helpful to view these approaches across one unified continuum of assistance for students. At one end of the continuum there are special schools which provide intensive and specialized learning support, coming within the traditional definition of “special education.” At the other end of the continuum is the full inclusion of students within regular classrooms, complemented by appropriate personalized learning supports. The inclusive approach is based on a philosophical platform that emphasizes the role of the local school in providing for the needs of all students in its community, regardless of diverse needs or disability. A unified view of educational provisions needs to consider the entire range of approaches from full inclusion through to specialized and alternative models of educational services and support, guided by one simple question: What is best for this learner? Principles such as universal design for learning (UDL) lead to an argument for a focus on individual needs and parental empowerment and choice, rather than an outdated dichotomous or settings-based model of educational support. By focusing attention on learning needs through the lens of curriculum, instruction, and contextual supports, the central goal of maximized outcomes for individual students can be realized.
Dynamics of Decision Making
Authors: Barbour JoAnn Danelo
Published: June 2020

The past and the future influence the present, for decision makers are persuaded by historical patterns and styles of decision making based on social, political, and economic context, with an eye to planning, predicting, forecasting, in a sense, “futuring.” From the middle to the late 20th century, four models (rational-bureaucratic, participatory, political, and organized anarchy) embody ways of decision making that provide an historical grounding for decision makers in the first quarter of the 21st century. From the late 20th through the first two decades of the 21st century, decision makers have focused on ethical decision making, social justice, and decision making within communities. After the first two decades of the 21st century, decision making and its associative research is about holding tensions, crossing boundaries, and intersections. Decision makers will continually hold the tension between intuition and evidence as drivers of decisions. Promising research possibilities may include understanding metacognition and its role in decision making, between individual approaches to decision making and the group dynamic, stakeholders’ engagement in communicating and executing decisions, and studying the control of who has what information or who should have it. Furthermore, decision making most likely will continue to evolve towards an adaptive approach with an abundance of tools and techniques to improve both the praxis and the practice of decision making dynamics. Accordingly, trends in future research in decision making will span disciplines and emphases, encompassing transdisciplinary approaches wherein investigators work collaboratively to understand and possibly create new conceptual, theoretical, and methodological models or ways of thinking about and making decisions.
Ethical Decision-Making in Schools
Authors: Önen Özgür , Tibet Burcu
Published: June 2020

How many times do people encounter an ethical dilemma within a day? Many of them, probably, say more than one. Frequently encountering ethically questionable situations which have heavy costs to both business and educational organizations is very common. It is crucial to understand how teachers, for example, make decisions when they are faced with ethically questionable situations, such as intimate relationship offers or dishonest grading desires. Indeed, every individual involved with schools—not only teachers, but principals, students, and even parents—are faced with ethically questionable situations, forcing them to choose between right and wrong, possibly benefiting themselves or the ones they are close to and/or harming innocent others. So, increasing knowledge on how individuals make judgments and act when they are confronted a dilemma is important. Which factors affects ethical decisions? Do people simply choose the options granting their positions or beneficial for them in some way? A review of theoretical models of ethical decision-making revealed that existing models need to be modified in order to cover some ignored aspects. Additionally, there seems to be a need to add new constructs to the moral intensity factor: ease of the act and magnitude of the gain are possible issue contingents to be considered. Furthermore, empirical findings, in general, present contradictory results on proposed factors affecting ethical decision-making. However, some factors, such as moral intensity and reward–sanction systems, were found to consistently affect decisions on ethically questionable issues. There are, nonetheless, many finer points to be understood regarding what exactly is happening when people face dilemmas. This suggests new studies need to be conducted.
The Knowledge Base in the Field of Educational Administration and New Field Members
Authors: Oplatka Izhar
Published: June 2020

The field of educational administration (EA) is characterized by loose scholarly boundaries that enable the permeation of new sorts of knowledge, resulting in some intellectual confusion. The purpose of this article is to probe into the kind of knowledge base in the field that every new scholar should know and read in order to become an expert in the EA field, one who contributes to its knowledge production and academic programs. What is the basic knowledge every emergent scholar in the EA field should be familiar with, regardless of his/her main discipline? In other words, I wonder what sort of knowledge a new field member whose education is in business administration, psychology of organizations, or sociology of education should acquire in order to be competent enough to teach in EA programs or supervise PhD students in this field. My rejoinder is built on the following steps.

Emergent EA scholars should realize that the connections between input-process and output are weak in the instructional aspects of the school organization. Emergent scholars trained in another discipline may continue teaching and analyzing educational administration from theoretical and conceptual perspectives that are alien to the basic characteristics of the school organization. Emergent scholars should not only know how to apply models such as transformational and participative leadership to educational institutions, but also comprehend the distinctive meanings of these models in schools. Emergent scholars should be familiar with models that seem to be particular to educational organization such as moral leadership, shared leadership, leadership for social justice, and distributed leadership.
Relational Approaches to Educational Administration Research
Authors: Eacott Scott
Published: June 2020

Well-rehearsed arguments have stressed that organizations and organizing are relational. With a transdisciplinary “relational turn” underway, particularly in closely related disciplines such as sociology, organizational studies, leadership, and management, it is not surprising to see an increasing number of educational administration and leadership literatures align with relations. However, this uncritical adoption of the importance of relations is problematic for research. Not all uses of the label “relational” are the same. For some, relational is applied as an adjective to advocate for a particular version of leadership or organizing. Others employ the term to describe an approach to understanding the co-determination of organizational activities and outcomes. Unlike the normative position underlying the adjectival use, the co-determinist is a variable-based approach with greater attention to measurement. Conflationism brings together two entities previous thought of as separate to offer an alternate version of relationalism. A fourth category offers a methodology and theoretical resources for understanding the social world.

Each of the four forms can claim to be relational. The distinctions among the forms have implications for what they offer educational administration and leadership research. The adjectival form is limited to advocating for a particular version of how to do things and is based on the common-sense argument that having positive relationships is a good thing. Co-determinism provides a framework for analyzing organizations and organizing and manipulating what are perceived as malleable pieces to maximize performance. Conflationism seeks to highlight the interwoven nature of what have traditionally been thought of as separate parts of a whole. The relational offers a way of thinking through relations with the social world and how these relations are both shaped by and shaping of organizing activity. Consistent with a focus on relations, the relevance and significance of relational research is not in having a single right version but in understanding knowledge claims in relation to alternatives and thinking through the implications for educational administration and leadership.
School Climate and Academic Performance
Authors: Ismail Siti Noor , Rahman Faizahani Abd. , Yaacob Aizan
Published: June 2020

Definitions of school climate have been interpreted in various ways by scholars since the 1960s. They have been closely associated with achievement, quality control, and school management, among many others that denote characteristics of highly effective organization. It has long been recognized and acknowledged by administrators of the organization, practitioners, psychologists, motivators, and educators that a healthy school climate promotes a positive attitude and openness that will thus create a learning environment that motivates and encourages effective teaching and learning activities; increases teachers’ job satisfaction; and, finally enhances students’ academic performance. The school climate model that determines the characteristics of an effective school climate encompasses four main factors: culture (assumptions, values, norms, beliefs), ecology (structure and facilities), humanity structure and system (instructions, administration, decision making, planning structure), and social system (structure element). Definitions derived from past literature and criticisms as well as arguments against what constitute healthy school climate are presented in this article. A clear set of goals and transparent definitions of the concept are recommended so as to ensure that both school and the other elements in the school body can work synchronously to achieve the same goal, which is providing a positive and healthy school climate.
Action Research
Authors: Johnson Eileen S.
Published: June 2020

Action research has become a common practice among educational administrators. The term “action research” was first coined by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s, although teachers and school administrators have long engaged in the process described by and formally named by Lewin. Alternatively known as practitioner research, self-study, action science, site-based inquiry, emancipatory praxis, etc., action research is essentially a collaborative, democratic, and participatory approach to systematic inquiry into a problem of practice within a local context. Action research has become prevalent in many fields and disciplines, including education, health sciences, nursing, social work, and anthropology. This prevalence can be understood in the way action research lends itself to action-based inquiry, participation, collaboration, and the development of solutions to problems of everyday practice in local contexts. In particular, action research has become commonplace in educational administration preparation programs due to its alignment and natural fit with the nature of education and the decision making and action planning necessary within local school contexts. Although there is not one prescribed way to engage in action research, and there are multiple approaches to action research, it generally follows a systematic and cyclical pattern of reflection, planning, action, observation, and data collection, evaluation that then repeats in an iterative and ongoing manner. The goal of action research is not to add to a general body of knowledge but, rather, to inform local practice, engage in professional learning, build a community practice, solve a problem or understand a process or phenomenon within a particular context, or empower participants to generate self-knowledge.
Race, Ethnicity, and Education in the Anglosphere
Authors: Ho Christina
Published: June 2020

Mass migration has transformed the education systems of many Western nations. Schools are more culturally diverse than ever before. The relationship between race, ethnicity, and education is being increasingly scrutinized. Some ethnic minority students face continued educational disadvantages as seen in their overrepresentation in disadvantaged schools and lower ability classes, below-average performances in standardized tests, and lower rates of high school completion and university admission. In contrast, other minority students, notably many children of Asian migrants, enjoy disproportionately high educational success and are viewed as a “model minority.” The education outcomes of ethnic minority students are therefore sharply polarized and largely reflect their levels of socioeconomic advantage. While high-achieving Asian students are often children of highly educated middle-class migrants, underperforming groups are typically from less-developed countries or disadvantaged social backgrounds.

While educational disadvantage among ethnic minorities has been well documented for many decades, the phenomenon of educational success among minority groups is comparatively less well researched. The debates and evidence relating to Asian migrant students’ educational success need to be examined to provide a more holistic understanding of the role of race, ethnicity, and social class in shaping outcomes. As the fastest growing minority group in many anglophone countries, Asian migrants are reshaping many education systems, offering a new educational “success story” that urgently needs to be more fully understood.

While some commentators attribute Asian success to cultural values, such as Confucianism, these kinds of cultural explanations are often simplistic and essentialist. The superior performance of many Asian migrant students reflects a complex array of both cultural and social factors. In particular, their parents, typically skilled migrants with strong educational capital, bring with them norms and practices honed during their own experiences with fiercely competitive education systems in Asia. This makes them well equipped to succeed in the increasingly competitive and hierarchical educational systems of the West. Their aspirations and anxieties reflect their migrant status in our unequal societies. Therefore, cultural values are often mediated by structural factors including national policies relating to immigration and education, students’ social class background and migrant status, and prevailing race relations and structures of opportunity in migrant-receiving societies in the West, all of which contribute to the polarized education outcomes of ethnic minority students.
The Kushan Empire
Authors: Liu Xinru
Published: June 2020

The Kushan Empire was a political power that started as a nomadic tribe from the Central Asian steppe and became established as sedentary state across South Asia and Central Asia. Migrating from the border of agricultural China in late 2nd century bce to north Afghanistan, by the 1st century ce, the Yuezhi nomads transformed themselves into a ruling elite in a large area from Afghanistan to the Indus Valley and North Indian Plain, embracing many linguistic and ethnic groups. Adapting the Persian satrapy administrative system into Indian kshatrapa administration, the Kushan regime gave much autonomy to local institutions such as castes, guilds, and Buddhist monasteries and meanwhile won support from those local communities. Legacies from Achaemenid Persia and Hellenistic cities, the cultures of various nomadic groups from Central Asia, and Buddhist and Brahmanical traditions merged to create a cosmopolitan Kushan material culture and art. Mahāyāna Buddhist theology and institutions matured in the Kushan economic and cultural environment and were propagated to Central Asia and China from there. Having under their control several important commodities, such as silk, lapis lazuli, and horses, demanded by elites from the Roman Empire, the Han Empire, and the Parthian Empire, the Kushan court sat on a key location of the Eurasian trade networks, or the Silk Road. The Kushan Empire benefited from the Silk Road trade economically and meanwhile received knowledge of faraway countries and facilitated transferring the information to the visions of the Romans, Parthians, and Chinese.
The Kalanga in Historical Perspective
Authors: Dube Thembani
Published: June 2020

The Kalanga are one of the ethnic groups found mostly in the Bulilima and Mangwe districts, in the southwestern parts of Zimbabwe. Although the origins of the Kalanga date back to a thousand years, it is important to note that Kalanga ethnic identity is a socially constructed phenomenon, which continues to be negotiated. Therefore, it is vital to note that dynamism, flexibility, and malleable are some of the attributes of this identity. As such, Kalanga history and identity, which has been a product of various processes, such as precolonial political and social organization, colonial rule and the postcolonial Zimbabwean state, will be sought after. Central to these processes are actors such as Kalanga chiefs, missionaries, colonial administrators, Kalanga elites, women, and the ordinary people, who played a significant role in shaping and articulating Kalanga identity at different historical epochs. Moreover, markers of Kalanga identity such as language, Ngwali/Mwali religion, chieftaincy, and histories of origin have been used to (re)construct Kalanga identity. Nonetheless, the heterogeneity of Kalanga people and the complexity involved in the intricate processes of identity formation will be acknowledged.

In postcolonial Zimbabwe there has been rising interest from Kalanga elites who have lobbied the government to recognize the Kalanga. This activism is inspired by perceived marginalization of the Kalanga and other minority groups, which has been enforced through monolithic linguistic policies, orchestrated through government favoritism toward the so-called majority languages, such as Shona and IsiNdebele. However, the interaction and cordial relations among the Kalanga and other ethnic groups found in Zimbabwe will also be acknowledged. Nonetheless, there is no exhaustive account of this group as scholars continue to engage with them, hence contributing to always expand the different interpretations on these people. It is therefore hoped that the history of this particular group will be chronicled and perhaps directions for future research on the Kalanga pointed out. In order to fully explore this historical account, various sources that have been used in the study of Kalanga history will be critically engaged.
Baartman, Sara
Authors: Crais Clifton , Scully Pamela
Published: June 2020

Sara Baartman (also known as Saartje, Saartjie, or Sarah), a South African woman, was widely known on stage in England and France in the early 19th century, and subsequently internationally since then, as the “Hottentot Venus,” the Western racist fiction of the primitive, sexualized, black woman. Until the 21st century, scholars paradoxically paid more attention to the fiction than the actual person. Further research showed that Baartman was born on the colonial frontier in the 1770s and lived in Cape Town in conditions similar to urban slavery from the 1790s through 1810, when she was taken to London. There and later in the English countryside and in Ireland, she was displayed on stage. In 1814, she was sold to an animal trainer in Paris who forced her to display herself to restaurant patrons and who possibly also forced her into prostitution. George Cuvier, the founder of Comparative Anatomy, interviewed her and, after her death in December 1815, performed an autopsy, not to discover the cause of death but to see if her body, literally, was the connection between humankind and animals. The Museum of Man in Paris displayed a nude plaster cast of Baartman’s body until the 1970s. Following the coming of democracy to South Africa, activists petitioned to bring Baartman’s remains home, and they were buried on South African National Women’s Day, August 1, 2002, as part of a nationally televised ceremony. Her burial site is in Hankey, Eastern Cape.
Women in Burundi
Authors: Saiget Marie
Published: June 2020

The history of women is characterized by nonlinear and gendered social, political and economic processes. In particular, the history of Burundian women’s collective actions has been embedded in the contested and violent trajectory of the Burundian state. Burundian women’s collective actions refer to a broad range of interactions: from protest, and social mobilizations to institutionalized actions. These interactions have been shaped by both global and local social structures, and by complex conflictive and cooperative relations between the Burundian state, political parties, women’s organizations and movements, and external actors (colonial powers, international organizations, non-governmental organizations).

Women’s experiences in Burundi’s pre-colonial patriarchal society are little known, with the exception of the glorified Queen-mothers. German and Belgian colonial policies (1886–1962) reinforced and rigidified pre-colonial social constructions of ethnic and gendered social identities and roles, assigning ordinary women to the domestic sphere and sanctioning their social inferior status along with ethnic lines (Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa). After Burundi’s independence, the one-party military regime organized and supervised the first forms of women’s political participation through the Union des femmes burundaises (1962–1980s). The democratic transition of the early 1990s led to the creation of autonomous women’s organizations and networks, which were extended during the civil war (1993–2005). Burundian women actively contributed to national and grassroots peace processes. In particular, a delegation of seven Burundian women participated in the negotiations held in Arusha (1998–2000), with observer status. Post-conflict struggles for women’s rights posed the central issue of women’s political representation, with the adoption of gender quotas from 2005, but left aside other issues after 2010, such as women’s right to inherit land. In Spring 2015, Burundian women were present in protests against the president’s third mandate; with the women’s march being the first to reach the city center in March 2015. Women’s organizations kept mobilizing towards women’s rights after the electoral crisis, in exile or within Burundi, though facing important financial constraints and political repression.
The Protection of Intellectual Property in the Global Economy
Authors: Saggi Kamal , Ivus Olena
Published: June 2020

Longstanding international frictions over uneven levels of protection granted to intellectual property rights (IPR) in different parts of the world culminated in 1995 in the form of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)—a multilateral trade agreement that all member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are obligated to follow. This landmark agreement was controversial from the start since it required countries with dramatically different economic and technological capabilities to abide by essentially the same rules and regulations with respect to IPRs, with some temporary leeway granted to developing and least developed countries. As one might expect, developing countries objected to the agreement on philosophical and practical grounds while developed countries, especially the United States, championed it strongly.

Over the years, a vast and rich economics literature has emerged that helps understand this international divide. More specifically, several fundamental issues related to the protection of IPRs in the global economy have been addressed: are IPRs trade-related? Do the incentives for patent protection of an open economy differ from those of a closed one and, if so, why? What is the rationale for international coordination over national patent policies? Why do developed and developing countries have such radically different views regarding the protection of IPRs? What is the level of empirical support underlying the major arguments for and against the TRIPS-mandated strengthening of IPRs in the world economy? Can the core obligations of the TRIPS Agreement as well as the flexibilities it contains be justified on the basis of economic logic? We discuss the key conclusions that can be drawn from decades of rigorous theoretical and empirical research and also offer some suggestions for future work.
China’s Economic Development
Authors: Lau Lawrence J.
Published: June 2020

Chinese real gross domestic product (GDP) grew from US$369 billion in 1978 to US$12.7 trillion in 2017 (in 2017 prices and exchange rate), at almost 10% per annum, making the country the second largest economy in the world, just behind the United States. During the same period, Chinese real GDP per capita grew from US$383 to US$9,137 (2017 prices), at 8.1% per annum.

Chinese economic reform, which began in 1978, consists of two elements—introduction of free markets for goods and services, coupled with conditional producer autonomy, and opening to international trade and direct investment with the rest of the world. In its transition from a centrally planned to a market economy, China employed a “dual-track” approach—with the pre-existing mandatory central plan continuing in force and the establishment of free markets in parallel. In its opening to the world, China set a competitive exchange rate for its currency, made it current account convertible in 1994, and acceded to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. In 2005, China became the second largest trading nation in the world, after the United States. Other Chinese policies complementary to its economic reform include the pre-existing low non-agricultural wage and the limit of one-child per couple, introduced in 1979 and phased out in 2016.

The high rate of growth of Chinese real output since 1978 can be largely explained by the high rates of growth of inputs, but there were also other factors at work. Chinese economic growth since 1978 may be attributed as follows: (a) the elimination of the initial economic inefficiency (12.7%), (b) the growth of tangible capital (55.7%) and labor (9.7%) inputs, (c) technical progress (or growth of total factor productivity (TFP)) (8%), and (d) economies of scale (14%).

The Chinese economy also shares many commonalities with other East Asian economies in terms of their development experiences: the lack of natural endowments, the initial conditions (the low real GDP per capita and the existence of surplus agricultural labor), the cultural characteristics (thrift, industry, and high value for education), the economic policies (competitive exchange rate, export promotion, investment in basic infrastructure, and maintenance of macroeconomic stability), and the consistency, predictability, and stability resulting from continuous one-party rule.
Guilds and the Economy
Authors: Ogilvie Sheilagh
Published: June 2020

Guilds ruled many European crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Each guild regulated entry to its occupation, requiring any practitioner to become a guild member and then limiting admission to the guild. Guilds intervened in the markets for their members’ products, striving to keep prices high, limit output, suppress competition, and block innovations that might disrupt the status quo. Guilds also acted in input markets, seeking to control access to raw materials, keep wages low, hinder employers from competing for workers, and prevent workers from agitating for better conditions. Guilds treated women particularly severely, usually excluding them from apprenticeship and forbidding any female other than a guild member’s widow from running a workshop. Guilds invested large sums in lobbying governments and political elites to grant, maintain, and extend these privileges.

Guilds had the potential to compensate for their cartelistic activities by creating countervailing benefits. Guild quality certification was one possible solution to information asymmetries between producers and consumers, which could have made markets work better. Guild apprenticeship had the potential to solve imperfections in markets for skilled training, and thus to encourage human capital investment. The cartel profits generated by guilds could in theory have encouraged technological innovation by enabling guild masters to appropriate more of the social benefits of their innovations, while guild journeymanship and spatial clustering could diffuse new technical knowledge. A rich scholarship on European guilds makes it possible to assess the degree to which guilds created such benefits, outweighing the harm they caused.

After about 1500, guild strength diverged across Europe, declining gradually in Flanders, the Netherlands, and England, surviving in France and Italy, and intensifying across large tracts of Iberia, Scandinavia, and the German-speaking lands. The activities of guilds contributed to variations across Europe in economic performance, urban growth, and inequality. Guilds interacted significantly with both markets and states, which helps explain why European economies diverged in the crucial centuries before industrialization.
Hominin Taxic Diversity
Authors: Wood Bernard , Doherty Dandy , Boyle Eve
Published: June 2020

The clade (a.k.a. twig of the Tree of Life) that includes modern humans includes all of the extinct species that are judged, on the basis of their morphology or their genotype, to be more closely related to modern humans than to chimpanzees and bonobos. Taxic diversity with respect to the hominin clade refers to evidence that it included more than one species at any one time period in its evolutionary history. The minimum requirement is that a single ancestor-descendant sequence connects modern humans with the hypothetical common ancestor they share with chimpanzees and bonobos. Does the hominin clade include just modern human ancestors or does it also include non-ancestral species that are closely related to modern humans? It has been suggested there is evidence of taxic diversity within the hominin clade back to 4.5 million years ago, but how sound is that evidence?

The main factor that would work to overestimate taxic diversity is the tendency for paleoanthropologists to recognize too many taxa among the site collections of hominin fossils. Factors that would work to systematically underestimate taxic diversity include the relative rarity of hominins within fossil faunas, the realities that many parts of the world where hominins could have been living are un- or under-sampled, and that during many periods of human evolutionary history, erosion rather than deposition predominated, thus reducing or eliminating the chance that animals alive during those times would be recorded in the fossil record. Finally, some of the most distinctive parts of an animal (e.g., pelage, vocal tract, scent glands) are not likely to be preserved in the hominin fossil record, which is dominated by fragments of teeth and jaws.