bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Postracial Stardom
Authors: Wilks Jennifer M.
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines how the movie musicals Carmen Jones (dir. Otto Preminger, 1954) and Carmen: A Hip Hopera (dir. Robert Townsend, 2001) functioned as pivotal moments in the careers of Dorothy Dandridge and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. Their respective star turns positioned the two actors to transition from intraracial fame to mainstream, or postracial, stardom, but only Beyoncé ultimately achieved that goal. Although Dandridge came close, appearing on the cover of Life magazine and becoming the first African American woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, she found herself constrained by persistent racism within 1950s Hollywood and a lack of control in guiding her career. Carmen Jones was the role that both catapulted Dandridge to stardom and confined her to portrayals of the stereotypically alluring, exotic woman of color. In the more progressive context of the early 2000s, in contrast, Beyoncé pivoted from both her depiction of Carmen and beginnings in an R&B girl group to become a consummate entertainer who transcends artistic genres and racial categories. Whereas the “hip hopera” draws primarily from Preminger’s film as its model, it is Mérimée’s literary Carmen—a shrewd polyglot who embraces her Romani identity and serves as de facto leader of her associates—who seems a more fitting point of comparison for Beyoncé’s thriving, carefully crafted post-MTV career.
Research Materials of Special Value to the Psychobiographer
Authors: Anderson James William
Published: October 2024

While the usual sources, such as letters and diaries, are useful for a psychobiographer, certain materials provide a portal into the subject’s inner life: slips of the tongue and related phenomena, humor, body language, fictional writing, art, dreams and fantasies, and delusions and other psychiatric phenomena. Examples in this chapter include slips of the tongue that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung made while writing to each other; humor from Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Stalin; dreams from William James, Edith Wharton, and Lyndon Johnson; Isaac Newton’s word play; drawings from William James; and the text of letters Henry James wrote late in life while under the delusion that he was Napoleon.
Introduction
Authors: Morales Daniel
Published: October 2024

Although cyclical migration patterns and Mexican villages’ dependency on remittances in the late twentieth century have been examined, this model was established decades earlier. This book revisits the era of the first mass migration, between 1910 and 1940—that is, from the Mexican Revolution to World War II. It reconsiders Mexican American community formation within the broader context of ongoing circular migration, both between the United States and Mexico and within the United States. The latter dynamic has been least recognized or understood. Permanently settled migrants were in the minority; most were constantly on the move. They trekked around the country following work in agriculture, mining, and industry. They voted with their feet to resist local vagrancy laws and labor agents who tried to control them. They organized mutual aid organizations and unions. And they sought to return to their hometowns in Mexico. Circular migration and settlement were not successive phases, but always concurrent and dynamically related. This can be best seen by going full circle, starting and ending with communities in Mexico.
Introduction
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Since the late 1990s, an “accidental alliance” of scholars, policymakers, digital intermediaries, and other business interests have advocated successfully to curtail U.S. copyright and patent protections in content and technology markets. Through legislative, judicial, and regulatory actions, the “information wants to be free” coalition has produced an intellectual property rights environment that advantages vertically and systems-integrated firms at the expense of “stand-alone” innovation specialists that play a critical function in a knowledge-based economy. Contrary to standard intuitions, weakening intellectual property rights can therefore raise entry barriers and shield incumbents against the competitive threat posed by disruptive innovators.
Making and Unmaking Intellectual Property Rights
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Any body of law can be understood as the product of lobbying, advocacy, and other “influence investments” made by interested constituencies. In content and technology markets, an alliance has formed between scholars, advocates, and business sectors that share ideologically, intellectually, or economically motivated interests in relaxing (or, in some cases, abolishing) intellectual property protections. In content markets, this alliance has overcome the interests of media and other creative industries in maintaining robust copyright protections against mass infringement in digital environments. In technology markets, this alliance has countered the interests of certain technology sectors (including biopharmaceuticals and certain segments of the semiconductor and hardware industries) that rely on robust patent protection to secure returns on investments in research and development.
The Accidental Alliance
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

The weakening of intellectual property rights in content and technology markets since approximately the mid-2000s by courts, legislators, and antitrust regulators reflects the influence of two key constituencies with overlapping interests in that same policy outcome: platform-based technology firms and substantial portions of the scholarly community. As illustrated by a case study of the Linux operating system project, this alliance relies on an “accidental” convergence of interests among thought leaders and advocates with ideological or intellectual commitments to weak intellectual property rights and platform-based firms with business interests in reducing the costs of acquiring and using content and technology assets. The activities of various members of this coalition are reflected by evidence on lobbying in the U.S. Congress and advocacy at the U.S. Supreme Court.
How Courts Rewrote the DMCA
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Enacted in 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was designed to balance the interests of the content industry in preserving meaningful copyright protections in digital environments and the interests of the tech industry in minimizing infringement litigation that may stifle the growth of digital markets. Courts have interpreted the DMCA in a one-sided manner that almost entirely shields platforms from infringement liability while largely precluding any meaningful enforcement of copyright to deter mass infringement by individual users. The result is a skewed property rights environment that advantages intermediaries that aggregate content over individuals and entities that produce it.
Free Stuff Gets Dangerous
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Skepticism toward intellectual property rights among the scholarly and advocacy communities often relies principally on theoretical assertions that relaxing or even abolishing intellectual property rights protections would have no adverse (or even a positive) impact on innovation. In the pharmaceutical industry, there is no persuasive evidence to support this assertion. Remarkably, policymakers have recently taken or proposed actions to relax significantly patent protections in this industry, which would almost certainly have adverse impacts on pharmaceutical innovation and consequently human health. This imprudent integration of reflexive IP-skepticism into policymaking in the biopharmaceutical sector is illustrated by the “IP waiver” concerning COVID-19 vaccines and recent efforts to curtail significantly the scope of the Bayh-Dole Act, which is the legal foundation for the academic technology transfer industry.
Free Stuff and the Decline of the Free Press
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Consistent with views widely expressed among the scholarly and policymaking communities, the news industry responded to the digital transition by widely adopting open-access, ad-supported business models. This has mostly been an economic failure, exacerbated by the difficulties in enforcing copyright protections against the use of news content by platforms and other digital aggregators. In response, the news industry has widely reverted to closed-access subscription models and has sought various forms of patronage through philanthropic or corporate sponsors. The erosion of copyright protections in digital content markets has challenged its economic viability and may have significant non-economic implications for the health of a liberal democracy.
Reinvigorating IP Rights and the Innovation Ecosystem
Authors: Barnett Jonathan M.
Published: October 2024

Various steps can be taken to alleviate the erosion of intellectual property rights protections in content and technology markets. In copyright law, the current scope of the fair use doctrine should be narrowed so that it no longer threatens the integrity of the copyright protections that support investment in content production and the associated ecosystem of content licensing and distribution entities. Courts should apply the DMCA’s safe harbors from indirect infringement liability so that a meaningful portion of the enforcement burden shifts to digital platforms that are best positioned to deter mass infringement. In patent law, Congress should restore the historical presumption that a patent owner is entitled to injunctive relief against adjudicated infringers. Concerns over opportunistic patent litigation can be addressed through various tools that do not endanger the property-rights foundation behind well-functioning technology markets.
Demagoguery, Populism, and Political Culture in Cooper’s The American Democrat
Authors: Kapust Daniel
Published: October 2024

The chapter explores the theme of demagoguery by engaging with the work of one of America’s first great novelists, James Fenimore Cooper. While demagoguery has been relatively neglected in recent political theory, it was a central concern in early American political thought. For Cooper, demagoguery was one of the chief problems of American political life. His The American Democrat, which analyzes the figure of a flattering demagogue, can be placed in a long tradition of anti-demagogic texts, ultimately traceable to Plutarch. Beyond the conventional Plutarchan moralistic and pejorative account of demagoguery, prevalent in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century America, Cooper develops also a discourse-centered account of it that avoids the structural limitations common to moralistic approaches. This account suggests ways in which demagogic appeals could find less purchase in political discourse, through a process of cultural transformation and the elite practice of rhetoric.
Rhetorical Resonance
Authors: Lambek Simon
Published: October 2024

When political theorists consider rhetoric, they are often concerned with exceptional, rather than everyday speech—affectively charged speech that is strategically manipulative or, conversely, speech that triggers judgment and imaginative thinking. What is missing is a framework that captures the political effects of far more mundane and commonplace forms of rhetoric: speech acts that do not stand out as exceptional, but which nonetheless have significant consequences. This chapter proposes the concept of “rhetorical resonance” and makes a case for attending to the iterative, constitutive effects of everyday rhetorical encounters. Building from the hermeneutic theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the chapter argues that rhetoric that “resonates” with discursive horizons can nevertheless transform those horizons, ushering in new conditions of political possibility. To illustrate the power of resonant rhetoric, the chapter considers the lead-up to the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol and the effects of repeated claims of election fraud and mismanagement.
The Business of Bobbysoxers
Authors: Beisel Hollenbach Katie
Published: October 2024

Using World War II Frank Sinatra fan communities in the United States as its primary case study, The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom considers celebrity following, popular music culture, and fan productivity as windows on the lives of wartime female youth. Popular memory conjures up an image of typical American teen girls from the 1940s as “bobbysoxers”: largely white, hysterical devotees of Frank Sinatra, clad in bobby socks and saddle shoes, who—by pursuing a celebrity obsession in the midst of international crisis—drew scrutiny from much of American society. Examination of the previously unexplored practices of war-era popular music fan clubs and other teen social communities, however, reveals a different story. Fan clubs and organizations like Teen Canteens were used as spaces where American teenage girls could use their enjoyment of popular music and other media to cultivate relationships with each other, popular icons, and the entertainment industry. Operating on the periphery of the critical public eye, these communities offered girls a place to safely explore and discuss issues including civil rights, politics, the war, patriotism, internationalism, and professional development, providing flexibility to participate at various levels of anonymity. Additionally, in a time when female sexuality was met with censorship and contradictory public expectations, fan communities also provided teenage girls with peer groups in which they could creatively express their personal desires and consider their futures as American women together.
Teenage Girls in Wartime American Culture
Authors: Beisel Hollenbach Katie
Published: October 2024

Chapter 1 sets the scene of cultural forces that shaped American girl culture during the 1940s. Both women and girls were pressured to maintain particular beauty and hygiene standards, which were set by an ever-growing cosmetics industry. At the same time, the government and other areas of society complicated these expectations by distributing contradictory messages regarding female roles and sexuality. Women were encouraged to take on war work, but the expectation that they would return to domestic lives once the war ended ran alongside these recruitment efforts. Teens and young women were expected to maintain conventional beauty standards even as they took on roles as industrial workers and military personnel. Sexual promiscuity, however, was discouraged. The contradictions go on, and it is not difficult to see why younger teenage girls might have grappled with uncertainty about their roles and futures as American women within this climate.
Life beneath Our Feet
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2024

The soil contains many organisms and important processes, but they are out of sight. Although some living organisms have been found at great depths (>1.5 km underground), most are found in a relatively shallow layer. They form an amazing array of organisms. Our lives would not be the same or even possible without the processes that take place in the living world that lies right beneath our feet. Nitrogen is critical to life, but the nitrogen in the air we breathe is not available to us. Soil-dwelling bacteria and other organisms fix nitrogen in compounds that other organisms can use. Seeds germinate underground to provide food for animals and humans. Decomposition of dead organic matter is critical to provide nutrients for plants.
Frogs and Fingers
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2024

Amazingly, the genomes of all cells studied so far include genetic death programs that, when triggered, cause the cells to commit suicide. These programs underlie diverse processes in plants and animals. Importantly, in humans, programmed cell death is used to cull antibody-producing cells that react with our own tissues and allow our fingers to develop. Leaves and ripe fruit fall because a layer of cells dies at the right time to release them. Even bacteria commit suicide when the colony has outstripped its resources in a process called quorum sensing. Programmed cell death allows living organisms to leverage death to ensure survival.
Laughing and Crying
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2024

Crying at birth is a human’s first communication with the world, but physical, verbal, and chemical communications encompass much more than that. Communications is a complex topic. It occurs in cells, tissues, and organisms in humans and other species. Animals also have pheromones. The question of when vocalizations become a true language is still debated. Humans also have neurotransmitters, hormones, cytokines and chemokines, and other factors. For example, the senses involve the communication of information across a membrane, and secondary messengers within the cell and nucleus that turn genes on and off. During development, tissues communicate to ensure that organs take on their correct size and shape.
Introduction
Authors: Sweet James H.
Published: October 2024

In early 1768, sailors discovered a mysterious British shipwreck on the reefs of Hispaniola, reporting the findings to their superiors in Jamaica. News eventually reached the ship’s owners, Bristol merchants John Fowler and James Laroche. The ship’s intended destinations were Old Calabar and Antigua, but the crew mutinied before reaching Africa, killing their officers and sailing for Brazil. For the next eight years, the ship’s owners partnered with the British Crown to bring the mutineers to justice. This privatization of state power generated fabulous wealth for a select few slave traders, some of whom passed along their economic and political power to generations of their heirs.
The Black Prince
Authors: Sweet James H.
Published: October 2024

The slave ship Black Prince launched from Bristol in December 1768. Several weeks into the voyage, the crew mutinied, elected new officers, changed the ship’s name to Liberty, and voted to sail for Brazil. After three tense weeks in the Atlantic crossing, the Liberty washed ashore on the northeast coast of Brazil. The Brazilians attempted to interrogate crew members, but communication was difficult. The only crew member who spoke Portuguese was an African named Phillip Thompson. Thompson negotiated for provisions. The next day, Native American laborers began loading water and firewood on the ship. Meanwhile, the crew disintegrated into a fractious mob. One group commandeered the ship, fired cannon shot on the city and fled into the Caribbean, leaving nine sailors behind in Brazil. For merchants and pirates alike, political freedom was easily reduced to individual ambition and greed. However, merchants controlled the mechanisms of the state.
Epilogue
Authors: Sweet James H.
Published: October 2024

In June 2020, Bristol protestors toppled the statue of philanthropist and slaver Edward Colston and dumped it in the River Avon. A symbol of the convergence of Britain’s economic and political dependence on slave trading, Colston is a convenient scapegoat. However, slaving permeated eighteenth-century Bristol society. Merchants, ship captains, and Bristol’s Caribbean slaveholders had direct ties to slavery. Traders in iron, gunpowder, and textiles also earned profits derived from the African trade. So too did Bristol bankers and insurers whose capital investments underwrote the trade, as did the accountants and lawyers who represented slaving interests. This is to say nothing of the thousands of sailors who earned their paltry livelihoods working onboard slave ships. Thanks to slavery’s ubiquity, men like Fowler built their fortunes so silently we hardly know their names. Their legacies of financial exploitation and state capture persist in today’s liberal democracies.
Adversarial and Non-kinetic Uses: The Case of Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Deterrence
Authors: Taddeo Mariarosaria
Published: October 2024

This chapter focuses on deterrence theory and its shortcomings when applied to cyberwarfare. It shows that deterrence theory faces significant limitations in cyberspace, stemming from fundamental mismatches between the theory and the characteristics of cyberwarfare and cyberspace. Using these limitations as lessons learned, it outlines a novel deterrence theory tailored to the nature of cyberspace and which bases deterrence strategy on the idea of prevailing rather than preventing cyber-attacks. It introduces a framework centred on AI capabilities and offers recommendations for regulating state conduct in this domain.
The Neuroscience behind Cognitive Aging
Authors: Black Ryan C. , Owens Ryan J. , Wohlfarth Patrick C.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 2 provides an accessible yet rigorous introduction to relevant neuroscience research on cognitive aging. Decades of research persuasively demonstrates that the brain’s physical structures and efficiencies change over time, leading to marked and measurable cognitive declines. These declines emerge as early as one’s mid-20s and tend to progress in a steady manner throughout the aging process. The chapter discusses several different cognitive domains (e.g., memory, processing speed, and executive function), examines various parts of the brain (e.g., the frontal lobe), and summarizes how the brain changes with age. In particular, the chapter emphasizes how processing speed and executive functioning decline significantly as humans age.
Opinion Crafting and Cognitive Aging
Authors: Black Ryan C. , Owens Ryan J. , Wohlfarth Patrick C.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 4 analyzes the opinion-writing process and the content of judicial opinions. It examines how cognitive aging influences the bargaining and accommodation that take place privately as judges write their opinions and form coalitions. Using archival data collected from the private papers of Judge J. Skelly Wright on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the empirical results show that as they age, judges require substantially more time to circulate opinion drafts. The results also show that older judges are more likely to rely on decision-making heuristics, such as their ideological preferences, when bargaining over the content of opinions.
Opinion Style
Authors: Black Ryan C. , Owens Ryan J. , Wohlfarth Patrick C. , Tahk Alexander M.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 5 examines judges’ writing style variation over time. It focuses on the cognitive complexity, linguistic tone, and length of judges’ opinions. The chapter’s empirical analysis leverages the text of approximately 429,000 opinions written by courts of appeals judges from 1924 to 2019. The empirical results show that, as judges age, their opinions change in several ways. Declining abilities to reason result in opinions that are less cognitively complex and shorter in length. The readability of aged opinions is also reduced, as manifested in longer sentences. Consistent with theoretical expectations, older judges’ opinions are less emotional overall. Last, the results suggest older judges write opinions that are more inconsistent in their cognitive complexity than opinions authored by younger judges.
Cognitive Aging and Following Supreme Court Precedent
Authors: Black Ryan C. , Owens Ryan J. , Wohlfarth Patrick C.
Published: October 2024

Chapter 8 considers whether, as they age, judges rely more on ideological heuristics to apply U.S. Supreme Court precedent. This topic is important given the hierarchical nature of the federal judiciary, where a key expectation of circuit court judges is the faithful application of High Court precedent. Using data on how circuit judges treated a random sample of U.S. Supreme Court precedents from 1953 to 2000, the empirical results show that aging judges become significantly more likely to consider the ideological implications of Supreme Court precedent when they apply those precedents. Younger judges appear to apply High Court precedent more faithfully than older judges.
Desire
Authors: Murshid Nadine Shaanta
Published: October 2024

Chapter 3, “Desire,” discusses how women’s sexual desire is used against them, particularly when they go against social norms that make premarital sex haram, forbidden, and shameful. As women navigate respectability politics of a particular kind, policed and enforced by social norms that are in turn policed and enforced by aunties, what becomes clear is the (un)natural connection between desire and beauty standards, commitment, marriage, and violence.
Coda
Authors: Murshid Nadine Shaanta
Published: October 2024

The Coda highlights the some of the interlinked feminist issues that emerged in the book and that are important for policy, practice, and research: the fraught location of middle-class; the thinning of women’s humanity through violence and gossip; the governance and regulation of women’s bodies through the aunty figure that represent society writ large; respectability politics; resilience; the challenges of forging new intimate relationships with trauma history as “the elephant in the room”; the complexities of love, sex, desire, sexual violence, and rape amid neoliberal isolation; capitalist-patriarchal social norms that are produced and reproduced in new ways; and the need for transforming the idea of justice to center affective not just legal redress.
Entering the Field of Music and Martial Arts
Authors: McGuire Colin P.
Published: October 2024

The first chapter introduces the inspiration for the book, namely to conduct ethnography on the intersection of music and martial arts, and it introduces the theories and methods used in the research. The members of the Hong Luck Kung Fu Club were amenable to a researcher studying their percussion music, but they imposed two caveats. The first was that learning would be in the traditional manner, in a curriculum that proceeded through martial arts and lion dance before getting to percussion. The second was that they did not consider their beats to be music at all, which led to the development of the martial sound concept.
Experiencing Martial Sound in Performance
Authors: McGuire Colin P.
Published: October 2024

The tightest focus comes in the sixth chapter, which provides first-person ethnographies of performance, using a phenomenological lens to interpret the experiences. Martial sound is useful here to differentiate between disciplined synchronization in lion dance with percussion accompaniment versus the purposefully asynchronous relationships of fighting movements against musical rhythms during kung fu demonstrations. The former evokes the choreomusical strictness of military drill and troops moving on the battlefield, while the latter is a reflection of organized chaos in the rhythm of combat. Extended ethnographic vignettes provide thick descriptions of peak moments and allow deeper interpretations to remain grounded in the horizons of experience.
Bringing the Past into the Future
Authors: McGuire Colin P.
Published: October 2024

The final chapter is a conclusion and summary of the findings, as well as a consideration of the Hong Luck Kung Fu Club’s legacy. Fieldwork occurred during a liminal moment when the founding masters passed away and members of the club had extended discussion about the future. Hong Luck’s ethos is traditional and conservative, so consciously maintaining a continuity of change will be important; no one wants to lose the valuable treasures of embodied knowledge left behind by the master. This chapter also emphasizes the many ways that kung fu as a blurred genre empowers practitioners and audiences. More specifically, it discusses the potency for meaning creation when sound and movement intersect. Lastly, it discuss how the concept of martial could be applied more broadly.
A New Approach to Social Closure
Authors: Mackert Jürgen
Published: October 2024

This chapter briefly outlines the tasks involved in each of the steps of conceptualization, typology, and explanation that a new approach to social closure requires. It frames social closure as an aspect of permanently ongoing struggles in the social world and outlines the critical aspects of the new and methodologically relational approach. The chapter argues that, from this perspective, closure results from the social relations between powerful groups pursuing strategies of social closure and those groups who are confronted with these strategies and eventually react to them. It also introduces a framework that differentiates forms of closure—exclusion, exploitation, and elimination—and their corresponding strategies—marginalization, extraction, and annihilation. Further, drawing on Heinrich Popitz’s concept of power, it distinguishes three contexts of closure. This framework provides a basis for further conceptualizing social closure.
A New Concept of Life Chances / Chances of Survival in the Opportunity Structure
Authors: Mackert Jürgen
Published: October 2024

This chapter presents a new concept of life chances / chances of survival for social closure. While sociology has conceived life chances mainly as access to rights and resources, to understand how and why closure strategies of powerful social actors are directed against the life chances of less-powerful social actors the chapter elaborates on the concept by adding networks/institutions and communities as critical elements to it. In a relational perspective, this concept allows us to understand that in closure struggles powerful social actors by pursuing strategies of social closure aim to realize their own chances at the cost of less-powerful social actors.
Extravagance and Misery
Authors: Thomas Alan , Archer Alfred , Engelen Bart
Published: October 2024

This book investigates the extensive and growing economic inequalities that characterize the affluent market societies in which we currently live. It diagnoses the damaging impact that existing inequalities have on well-being and explores more just alternatives. It draws on philosophical, psychological, social scientific, and other insights to diagnose what has gone wrong in our highly unequal and frequently unhappy societies. Combining both the approaches of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, John Rawls, and Philip Pettit and analyses from political economists, it uncovers the economic, social, and political mechanisms that create and perpetuate income and wealth inequality. The key claim is that wealthy elites engage in rent seeking and opportunity hoarding and shape our social, economic, and political structures in ways that benefit them and harm the rest. It develops important insights from the new science of happiness to assess the impact of inequality on the well-being of the poor, the middle class, and the rich. It specifically examines the role of key emotions, such as shame (amongst the poor), envy, and admiration (towards and for the rich). It discusses which emotional narratives serve to justify and entrench excessive inequalities in income and wealth. The result is an explanation of the emotional regime that characterizes our capitalist societies and that perpetuates the unfair gap between the extravagance of the rich and the misery of the poor. It concludes with policies and proposals to reshape this emotional regime in the interests of justice and solidarity.
The Emotional Regimes of Roman Republicanism and Political Liberalism
Authors: Thomas Alan , Archer Alfred , Engelen Bart
Published: October 2024

This chapter distinguishes Philip Pettit’s republicanism from John Rawls’s liberalism and discusses what both have to say about justice and potentially destabilizing social and psychological attitudes, such as the desire to dominate. It discusses the political psychology needed to stabilize a conception of justice and discusses the central role that self-respect plays in this. It stresses the difference between Pettit’s and Rawls’s normative commitments, both at the individual level (Pettit’s ideal of a free person versus Rawls’s focus on mutual investments) and at the societal level (Pettit’s weak egalitarianism versus Rawls’s strong egalitarianism).
The False Promise of Meritocracy and Its Emotional Regime
Authors: Thomas Alan , Archer Alfred , Engelen Bart
Published: October 2024

This chapter contributes to the growing literature on meritocracy: the idea and narrative that economic inequalities are just because they reflect individual differences in desert. It discusses objections against meritocracy from the Right (Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek) and the Left (Amartya Sen, Iris Marion Young). It discusses whether markets can be said to reward merit (they typically do not) and whether it is merit or luck that primarily determines economic success (it is typically luck). It explains the emotional corollary of meritocracy and how both winners and losers in a meritocracy are told to feel about their supposedly merited places on the socio-economic ladder. It argues that these emotional responses constitute a form of affective injustice. In addition, it provides an explanation why the “myth of meritocracy” is so stubborn and why it is endorsed by both its self-certified winners and its losers.
Democratic Rationality Is Social
Authors: Fuerstein Michael
Published: October 2024

This chapter argues that, under democratic conditions, experiments in living are morally rational processes. In that respect, they are a reliable pathway to progress and not merely arbitrary swings of power or mob psychology. The key point is to see moral rationality in social rather than individual terms. From a social standpoint, the reliability of moral inquiry depends on aggregate group tendencies distributed over an extended time frame. And—consistent with voter data—that is compatible with relatively low levels of average individual rationality. Democracy supports social rationality through its distinctive egalitarian norms. These maximize opportunities for contestation across diverse groups, empower those with the deepest knowledge of injustice to initiate change, and support robust norms of deliberation that reduce the effect of social hierarchies.
Introduction
Authors: Hijzen Constant Willem
Published: October 2024

On 22 March 1979, at 09:00, the British ambassador to the Netherlands Sir Richard Sykes and his butler Karel Straub were killed in front of the ambassador’s residence, the Spaansche Hof (Spanish Court). The Dutch security agency Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD)’s ensuing investigation encompassed forms of intelligence collection (through bilateral and multilateral intelligence liaison, agent operations, and simple requests for information as in the case of the newspaper) and revealed how close the worlds of diplomacy and intelligence were intertwined. What is conspicuous by its absence, however, is the “paradigm of prevention.” None of the BVD’s activities in the aftermath seems to indicate that intelligence contributed to finding and stopping future terrorists before they detonate their bombs or fire their weapons. This Introduction argues why this is interesting and how the book will address this issue.
A Tale of Four Regions
Authors: Forrat Natalia
Published: October 2024

The second chapter connects the theory of unity- and division-based authoritarianism to a concrete empirical puzzle. The puzzle is related to the 2012 presidential election in Russia, which Vladimir Putin won with sixty-four percent of the vote despite a historically low approval rating. The chapter uses a nested analysis research design combining quantitative analysis of electoral statistics with regional case studies. It presents the results of the quantitative analysis and the profiles of the regions that will supply empirical material for the rest of the book—the Kemerovo region, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Rostov region, and the Republic of Altai.
Not Your Parents' Politics
Authors: Kligler-Vilenchik Neta , Literat Ioana
Published: October 2024

Whether we like it or not, social media platforms have become a key space for youth political expression. Yet young people’s engagement with politics on social media looks and feels different from adult conceptions of political expression: it is creative, making inventive use of platform affordances; it is personal, shaped by young people’s experiences and identities; and it is meaningful to young people, as a space to exert their political voice. This book thus argues for the need to consider the potential value of social media, both as a space for young people to experiment with their political voice and as a window into the political and social concerns on their minds. Grounded in empirical research on three case studies of youth political expression (the US 2016 election, Black Lives Matter, and climate change) on musical.ly, Instagram, and YouTube, the book offers insights into the varied ways young people engage with political issues on the social media platforms most popular with youth audiences. On a theoretical level, the book offers a conceptual framework for analyzing how different platforms shape political expression through the interaction between their affordances, norms, and contents. This empirical and theoretically based investigation sets the stage for a normative discussion, asking how the forms of expressive citizenship identified throughout the book might bolster—or hinder—democratic engagement. Ultimately, the book considers what it means to take youth political expression on social media seriously, and what the stakes are for political socialization and democratic participation.
Expressive Citizenship
Authors: Kligler-Vilenchik Neta , Literat Ioana
Published: October 2024

This chapter sums up the book’s descriptive, theoretical, and normative takeaways and returns to the key aim of reframing the conversation around youth, social media, and politics in a way that recognizes the potential value of social media for youth political expression. Then, building on the empirical research throughout the book, this chapter takes on the normative aim of evaluating what “good” political expression on social media looks like. It introduces the concept of expressive citizenship, which posits that publicly expressing views around current events is a form of political participation in and of itself—one that, particularly at times of turmoil, may be normatively expected of “good citizens.” The chapter then considers the strengths and challenges of expressive citizenship for democracy. While the book is a call to take political expression on social media seriously, the concluding chapter grapples with what that looks like, and what stakes are at play.
Light Microscope Optics
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses elementary optics and the properties of light as they pertain to microscopy. Concepts covered are refractive index, or the velocity of light as it passes through transparent media, as well as refraction, or the change in the path of light as light passes through te interface between two transparent media. The chapter describes the Snell-Descartes law and how it can be used to calculate the angle of refraction of light. A knowledge of this relationship is instrumental in understanding the action of optical lenses, and the formation of magnified images by lenses. Finally, there is a short description of five properties of light: reflection, refraction, diffraction, dispersion, and polarization. The bulk of this text describes in detail how these fundamental properties are exploited to create microscopes and microscope techniques to visualize samples.
Lens Aberrations
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter covers the common aberrations of lenses and optics, most notably spherical and chromatic aberration. Monochromatic aberrations, or Seidel aberrations, are the result of mis-refraction of light due to the geometric properties of a lens. The most common of these is spherical aberration where light rays impinging on the outer radii of a lens refract to a point in image space that is different from rays impinging on the inner radii. Chromatic aberration (CA) is the result of the phenomenon of dispersion, or the dependency of refractive index to wavelength. The result if which focuses violet and red light to different points in image space when imaged through a single converging lens. If the originating light is on-axis the result is called longitudinal CA. If the originating light if off-axis then the result is called lateral CA or chromatic difference in magnification. Both of these aberrations have been overcome through the use of lens doublets of different transparent media. The most famous of which is the achromatic doublet of Chester Moore Hall (c. 1733).
Phase Contrast Microscopy
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses Zernike phase contrast microscopy and how transparent objects can be visualized using sample optical path length (OPL) relative to that of the non-sample background. This phenomenon is translated by optics into a microscope interferometer, which manifests OPL differences into contrast differences that we can see. The optical basis of this is the insertion into the microscope of two unique devices: the phase annulus in the condenser and the phase plate in the back focal plane of the objective. There is a detailed description of the construction and utilization of the phase plate as first described by Frits Zernike in 1933, and how it is implemented in modern phase contrast microscopes.
Selective/Single Plane Illumination Microscopy
Authors: Ruzin Steven E.
Published: October 2024

In the early nineteenth century, Zsigmondy and Siedentopf used a thin “sheet” of light transmitted at a right angle to the optical axis of the microscope to image colloidal fluids. In this chapter I describe how this old idea has been adapted to fluorescence microscopy to perform imaging that is now called selective plane imaging, or lightsheet fluorescence imaging. The chapter describes the placement and orientation of the major optical components including the illuminating and imaging objectives, and how a circular laser beam is transformed into a thin sheet of excitation light. The useful extent, or confocal length, of this light sheet is explained in the context of sample size. Since lightsheet imaging requires transparent samples, three common methods of sample clearing are also defined. Finally, the several variations and extensions of selective plane imaging are described including diSPIM, oSPIM, and lattice lightsheet SPIM.
Competition and Custom in Economic Contracts
Authors: Young H. Peyton , Burke Mary A.
Published: October 2024

Survey data suggest that cropsharing contracts exhibit a much higher degree of uniformity than is warranted by economic fundamentals. We propose a dynamic model of contract choice to explain this phenomenon. Landowners and tenants recontract periodically, taking into account expected returns as well as conformity with local practice. The resulting stochastic dynamical system is studied using techniques from statistical mechanics. The most likely states consist of patches where contractual terms are nearly uniform, separated by boundaries where the terms shift abruptly. These and other predictions of the model are borne out by survey data on agricultural contracts in Illinois.
Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations
Authors: Young H. Peyton
Published: October 2024

New ideas, products, and practices take time to diffuse, a fact that is often attributed to some form of heterogeneity among potential adopters. This chapter examines three broad classes of diffusion models—contagion, social influence, and social learning—and shows how to incorporate heterogeneity into each at a high level of generality without losing analytical tractability. Each type of model leaves a characteristic “footprint” on the shape of the adoption curve which provides a basis for discriminating empirically between them. The approach is illustrated using the classic study of Ryan and Gross on the diffusion of hybrid corn.
Introduction
Authors: Grene Nicholas
Published: October 2024

The author’s experience as a judge for the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards in three different periods, 2006, 2016, 2020–2, provides the material for the three sections of the book entitled ‘State of Play’ (‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’). Selected from the notes of his immediate impressions, these give overviews of Irish theatre in those specific times. The other chapters in the book analyse some of the key features of the new millennium, following on from his 1999 book The Politics of Irish Drama: new developments in dramatic language; experimental theatre companies that rejected traditional text-based plays; the re-imagination of past and present in history plays, the legacies of the Troubles, and adaptations of classic drama; the politics of gender in the #WakingTheFeminists movement, in plays representing toxic masculinity and female-authored representation of women’s experience. While necessarily selective, and to some extent subjective, the book offers a searching view of Irish theatre in the twenty-first century.
Selves
Authors: Meer Marcus
Published: October 2024

Just like the nobility, medieval townspeople linked their heraldry to their sense of identity. They saw arms as ‘tokens of noblesse’, that is, as expressions of their bearers’ distinguishing qualities (rather than their legal status). The texts of grants of arms, family books, and chivalric literature and their illuminations presented heraldic signs as visual expressions of key aspects of medieval identity, particularly a sense of honour derived from claims to a long lineage, virtuous and pious conduct, exclusive social networks, and even martial prowess. Precisely because the link between honour and arms was so strong in urban society, heraldry was deemed capable of not only reflecting but also increasing the bearers’ honour. For this reason, attempts to improve heraldic signs were an established part of the communicative strategies with which burgesses competed for social and political status in late medieval England and Germany.
Conclusion
Authors: Meer Marcus
Published: October 2024

The conclusion summarizes the book’s examination of the medieval city through the lens of its heraldry. It recapitulates the various users of heraldry, the multiplicity of media involved, the coexisting and at times competing perceptions of heraldry, and its diverse range of functions in urban society. Perspectives are then offered on the comparative history of England and Germany, where, despite some variation, heraldic practices emerge as strikingly similar overall. Finally, the conclusion suggests potential avenues for future research, and points to continuities of heraldic perceptions and practices in modern visual culture.
Introduction
Authors: Evans Lucy
Published: October 2024

The introduction outlines the book’s main aims and arguments as well as its methodology, scope, and interventions. It positions the book’s analysis of crime narratives in relation to interdisciplinary research on crime in the Caribbean. It highlights the need for research on crime in this context to incorporate approaches and perspectives from the arts and humanities. The introduction then situates the book’s literary analysis in the context of recent paradigm shifts in the study of crime fiction, showing how these inform the book’s methods while also drawing attention to the limitations of extant world literary approaches to the crime genre. Next, the introduction addresses ethical concerns associated with literary representations of crime in the Caribbean, indicating how these are confronted and navigated in the novels analysed in this book. Finally, it connects the book’s methodology to research in literary criminology, indicating how the book contributes to this field.