bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Metaphor, Riddles, and the Origin of Language
Authors: Danesi Marcel
Published: July 2024

Scientific evidence for the origin of speech is abundant, but evidence for the origin of language as separate from speech as a naming system remains speculative. What evidence can be utilized that will furnish relevant insights on the origin or language? This book attempts to provide an answer by suggesting that the first riddles of humanity, along with the first myths, reveal that language may have emerged as a mode of reflection via metaphor—a mode that involves blending speech forms together to produce complex, abstract cognition.
Kyoto School Philosophy in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Stevens Bernard
Published: July 2024

Kyoto School Philosophy in Comparative Perspective: Ideology, Ontology, Modernity presents the thought of the Kyoto School, the most famous Japanese philosophical movement of the twentieth century, by comparing the philosophy of its most representative members—Nishida and Nishitani—with some better known thinkers in the West: Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricœur, and Michel Henry. Bernard Stevens highlights the proximity of this movement of thought to the European phenomenological current that influenced it. However, the book also addresses an eminently problematic reality: the affiliation of some of its members with the militarism of the 1930s and 1940s. The political philosophers Arendt and Maruyama provide useful guidance here, in clarifying one of the central issues of this episode: the ideology of "overcoming modernity", supported by some of the younger disciples of Nishida. This book proposes intellectual conditions for both critical and appreciative receptions of one of the most fascinating philosophical adventures of the twentieth century.
Everyday Life Ecologies
Authors: Gobbo Alice  Dal
Published: July 2024

Everyday Life Ecologies: Sustainability, Crisis, Resistance is about those complex, sticky, but also open arrangements of bodies, objects, and plants that make up daily existence. The multiple and interlocking lines of a long capitalist crisis disrupt their normal flow: sometimes, they open opportunities for transformation, sometimes else, they foreclose horizons of change. In contrast with approaches that respond to environmental crisis by advocating “sustainable lifestyles” and “responsible behaviors,” Alice Dal Gobbo suggests that it is necessary to address the complex socio-material relationalities that constitute everyday ecologies. Beyond that, the book argues for their politicization, illuminating daily existence as embedded in capitalist relations of re/production. Combining political ecology and new materialist sensitivities, this book investigates the ways in which ecologically damaging logics are inscribed in everyday assemblages through their habitual rehearsal and libidinal hold. But it also points to how apparently banal acts of resistance embody and promote different logics, such as a logic of care and an ecological “aesth-ethics” of desire. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Northeast of Italy, this journey through the concrete matters and beings of daily life in crisis talks beyond this emplaced reality and dialogues with emerging forms of contestation and prefiguration that put socio-ecological reproduction at their center.
The Protestant Settlers of Israel
Authors: Yudin Joseph B.
Published: July 2024

When conjuring an image of “settlers” in the Holy Land, one hardly envisions vast numbers of European and North American Evangelical Protestants. Yet this is precisely the picture set forth in this book. The region has witnessed settlement, conquest, destruction, and resettlement from time immemorial. But the story of Protestants settling in the Land and staking their own claim, while missionizing among the population, has yet to be told in its fullness. The Protestant Settlers of Israel tells that tale, including a discussion of the present-day whereabouts of some 100,000 Protestant individuals living in the State of Israel, with a steady rate of expansion and growth in some circles.
Celebrities in American Elections
Authors: Longoria Richard T.
Published: July 2024

Using a case study approach, Celebrities in American Elections contends that celebrities have the talent, fame, and resources to succeed in electoral politics. These factors account for the electoral victories of Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Fred Grandy, Sonny Bono, Jesse Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Franken, and Donald Trump. However, the author argues that these items are insufficient without a favorable political environment; as many celebrities have lost elections as have won them. They lose because their persona does not match the politics of their time, or they represent the minority party in a one party dominated district or state, or they advocate for unpopular policies. Among those that won, nearly half were elected by a plurality – not a majority – of voters. This does not suggest overwhelming public support for celebrity candidates despite their many advantages. With a few exceptions, celebrities that won tended to also win the fundraising battle, while celebrities that lost tended to raise less than their opponent – the normal laws of politics still apply. The celebrity factor, while helpful, does not fully explain why celebrities win or lose elections.
Community Networks and Cultural Practices in Twentieth-Century Romania
Authors: Szikszai Mária
Published: July 2024

Community Networks and Cultural Practices in Twentieth-Century Romania: Paper-Based Cultures in the Writings of a Catholic Priest presents an anthropological interpretation of 2,400 documents left behind by a Hungarianized Swabian Catholic priest living in Romania during one of the Eastern European dictatorships of the twentieth century. This book addresses what the pre-digital paper-based culture was like in Eastern Europe from the point of view of the protagonist, a Catholic priest, who lived in a predominantly Orthodox country. The author calls the twentieth century the era of the typewriter. Mária Szikszai’s questions refer to both the epoch and the micro-universe of these people. What was the world like in which the protagonist and the other people he was in contact with lived? How did they live their daily lives? How did they make important decisions? What pains, hopes, and joys did they have? What did they have to say and what were they silent about? This volume presents an anthropological incursion into the life of an Eastern European man who lived almost throughout the twentieth century, during which time he tried to document the era he was living in.
Spectator in the Cartesian Theater
Authors: Slezak Peter
Published: July 2024

The “Cartesian Theater” is Dennett’s famous metaphor for the idea that a homunculus or “little man” watches the screen on which our thoughts appear. However, contrary to much academic teaching and scholarship, Spectator in the Cartesian Theater: Where Theories of Mind Went Wrong since Descartes shows that Descartes was not guilty of this fallacy for which he has been blamed. In his physiological writings neglected by philosophers, Descartes explained that the pseudo-explanation arises not from what is included in our theory of consciousness, but rather from what is missing. We fail to notice that the theory is incomplete because we are intuitively doing part of the explanatory work. That is, we are the spectators in the Cartesian Theater.

With detailed critiques, Peter Slezak shows that Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, Kripke’s theory of proper names, Davidson’s semantics of natural language and Kosslyn’s theory of visual imagery rely on what is intuitively meaningful to us rather than what follows from the theory. Slezak offers a novel solution to the elusive logic of the Cogito argument, showing it to be akin to the Liar Paradox. Since Descartes’ perplexity is our own, this shows how the subjective certainty of consciousness and the mind-body problem can arise for a physical system. An intelligent computer would think that it isn’t one.
Sophos Ontology
Authors: Irwin Lee
Published: July 2024

Sophos Ontology: On Post-Traditional Spirituality discusses religious plurality and post-traditional perspectives on emergent forms of sacred sensibility, particularly for those identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” This book is divided into three parts. The first part is a retrospective account of multiple religious traditions, with emphasis on esoteric thought as influenced by mystical writings, covering western, eastern, and Native American traditions. The second part discusses the need for a new conceptualization of the “sacred” as expressed through multiple spiritual perspectives relevant to a pansentient, post-traditional process ontology. Other topics in this section include the importance of an ethically shaped spirituality, collective influences, dreams, imagination, and the role of pluralism in shaping beliefs. Part three explores the role of faith, redefined as spiritual commitment, mysticism as direct experiential knowledge, and transpersonal theory influenced by comparative studies in altered states of consciousness, paranormal research, and the metaphysics of discovery — all contributing to the development of present and future spirituality.
Reproducing Refugees
Authors: Carastathis Anna , Tsilimpounidi Myrto
Published: July 2024

Since 2015, the ‘refugee crisis’ is possibly the most photographed humanitarian crises in history. Photographs taken, for instance, in Lesvos, Greece, and Bodrum, Turkey, were instrumental in generating waves of public support for, and populist opposition to “welcoming refugees” in Europe. But photographs do not circulate in a vacuum; this book explores the visual economy of the ‘refugee crisis,’ showing how the reproduction of images is structured by, and secures hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and ‘race,’ essential to the functioning of bordered nation-states. Taking photography not only as the object of research, but innovating the method of photographìa— the material trace of writing/grafì with light/phos— this book urges us to view images and their reproduction critically. Part theoretical text, part visual essay, Reproducing Refugees vividly shows how institutional violence underpins both the spectacularity and the banality of ‘crisis.’

This book goes about synthesising visual studies with queer, feminist, postcolonial, post-structuralist, and post-Marxist theories. Carastathis and Tsilimpounidi offer theoretical frameworks and methodological tools to critically analyse representations, both those circulated through hegemonic institutions, and those generated from ‘below’.

They carve a space between logos and praxis, ways of knowing and ways of doing, by offering a new visual language that problematises reified categories such as that of the ‘refugee’ and makes possible disruptive, alternative, resistant perceptions. The book contributes to the fields of migration and border studies, critically engaging visual narratives drawn from migration movements to question dominant categories and frameworks, from a decolonial, no-borders, queer feminist perspective.
Targets of Terror
Authors: Bell Laura N.
Published: July 2024

Targets of Terror addresses the repercussions of assassination as a tactic of terrorism and delineates post-assassination political outcomes across target types. Assassination of heads of state, such as John F. Kennedy and Yitzhak Rabin, are rare events, but the political murders of police personnel, local government officials, politicians, and journalists occur frequently. These “softer” targets are often pursued during broader campaigns of terrorist violence, and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) records a significant number of these assassination events—16,246 to be exact—between 1977 and 2017.

Utilizing survival analysis and the Polity IV Index to examine the span of time from a terrorist assassination to potential shifts in state political institutions, Laura N. Bell compares changes in authoritarian, mixed, and tumultuous regimes with democratic governments. She argues that these cases illuminate the extent to which the type of assassination target may or may not be linked to significant institutional change. By establishing differences in post-assassination political outcomes across regimes and targets, Bell provides a baseline study upon which to build future examinations of the types and severity of risks to governmental institutions during terror campaigns.
Imagining LatinX Intimacies
Authors: Chamberlain Edward A.
Published: July 2024

Imagining Latinx Intimacies addresses the ways that artists and writers resist the social forces of colonialism, displacement, and oppression through crafting incisive and inspiring responses to the problems that queer Latinx peoples encounter in both daily lives and representation such as art, film, poetry, popular culture, and stories. Instead of keeping quiet, queer Latinx artists and writers have spoken up as a way of challenging stereotypes, prejudice, and violence occurring in communities ranging from Puerto Rico to sites within the mainland United States as well as transnational flows of migration. Such migrations are explored in several ways including the movement of queer people from Chile to the United States. To address these matters, artistic thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, and Rane Arroyo have challenged such socio-political problems by imagining intimate social and intellectual spaces that resist the status quo like homophobic norms, laws, and policies that hurt families and communities. Building on the intellectual thought of researchers such as Jorge Duany, Adriana de Souza e Silva, and José Esteban Muñoz, this book explains how the imagined spaces of Latinx LGBTQ peoples are blueprints for addressing our tumultuous present and creating a better future.
Cut-and-Paste Genetics
Authors: Sarkar Sahotra
Published: July 2024

The emergence of CRISPR/Cas9 technology has revolutionized gene editing. The Nobel prize for chemistry was awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, the scientists responsible for its discovery, in 2020 and it is considered the frontier of sophisticated medical science. This technology contains the promise that both gene therapy and eugenic control of human evolution is possible, even plausible, in our near future.

This book looks at these developements in the context of the history of previous social and scientific attempts at genetic editing, and explores the policy and ethical challenges they raise. It presents the case for altering the human germ-line (which contains and controls hereditary genetic information) to eliminate a large number of genetic diseases controlled by a single or few genes, while pointing out that gene therapy is likely to be ineffective for diseases with more complex causes. In parallel it explores the possibility of genetic enhancement in a set of case studies. But it also argues that, in general, genetic enhancement is ethically problematic and should be approached with caution.

Given the success of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, and the explosion of related techniques, in practice it would be virtually impossible to ban germ-line editing in our future. A more useful goal is to put regulation in place, with oversight that represents the interests of society. That, in turn, requires an informed public discussion of these issues, which is the intention of this book.
United States Foreign Policy 1945-1968
Authors: Santos Michael Wayne
Published: July 2024

Between 1945 and 1968, the possibility of Mutual Assured Destruction led to a host of odd realities, including the creation of an affable cartoon turtle named Bert who taught millions of school children that nuclear war was survivable if they simply learned how to “duck and cover.” Meanwhile, fear of Communism played out against the backdrop of potential Armageddon to provide justification for a variety of covert operations involving regime change, political assassination, and sometimes bizarre plot twists. United States Foreign Policy 1945-1968: The Bomb, Spies, Stories, and Lies takes a fresh look at this complex, often confusing, and frequently farcical period in American and world history.
Education and Language in the Philippines
Authors: Symaco Lorraine Pe , Dumanig Francisco P.
Published: July 2024

Education and Language in the Philippines provides a comprehensive overview of the critical role of education and language development in the Philippines. Lorraine Pe Symaco and Francisco P. Dumanig highlight the economic, social, and political factors that led to the complexity of the country’s education system and language policies. In addition, they provide a nuanced discussion of the pressing issues regarding the contextual realities of Philippine education language policies and reforms, the role of multilingual education in learners’ identity formation, and the impact of multi-ethnic teaching approaches. The book emphasizes that in a plurilingual country, social actors contribute in many ways to the changes of language education policy. It explores and discusses how such policies are implemented and results in the development of multilingual education. This book is the first to comprehensively examine the interconnected roles of education and language in the Philippines.
The Representational Theory of Capital
Authors: Zelmanovitz Leonidas
Published: July 2024

This book proposes a “representational” theory of capital according to which there is a relation between capital goods in the real side of the economy and instruments representative of property claims on those goods in the abstract side. Financial instruments are treated herein as a particularly liquid form of property claim. The relation proposed between these two things is a loose rather than a direct one, and the causes for (and consequences of) the looseness are explored in the book. This book aims not merely to simplify our understanding of the relationship between “things” and “claims to things,” but to make explicit and precise what many current researchers assume implicitly and, consequently, imprecisely. This book will be a tool that researchers can apply to their own research, in the form of a standard by which inconsistencies in the literature on Capital Theory can be identified. Understanding what capital is requires delving into its nature on both the real and the abstract sides. In regard to capital goods, what they actually are is made clearer by the thesis that they exist on a spectrum with respect to consumer goods. In going back to the philosophical and economic basics, no claim is made of being comprehensive. The argument is that a crucial idea for our understanding of what capital is that actual capital goods (and processes, and knowledge) are represented in financial instruments and other property claims. A formal treatment that lays out the philosophical and economic basics is necessary to put this idea across, and the model proposed in the book is a first step in that direction. Further, by laying out the philosophical and economic basics of the theory, the book offers the reader the reasons why having a clearer concept of capital is an important tool for wealth creation, and why wealth creation is, more than never, necessary for our individual wellbeing and the flourishing of our civilization.
Dance Music Spaces
Authors: Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette
Published: July 2024

Dance Music Spaces examines the production of physical and digital spaces in dance music, and how the players—clubs, clubbers, and DJs—use authenticity, branding, and commercialism to navigate them. An in-depth study into three women DJs—The Blessed Madonna, Honey Dijon, and Peggy Gou—reveals a new concept, “authenticity maneuvering.” In it Danielle Hidalgo exposes how the strategic use of a rave ethos both bolsters acceptance in dance music spaces and hides often problematic commercial practices. This timely, thoughtful, and deeply personal book presents a compelling analysis of the complicated interplay between dancing bodies, digital practices, and spatial offerings in contemporary dance music.
Japanese Idols Go to China
Authors: Tu Xiaofei , Xie Wendy
Published: July 2024

This book situates the Chinese acceptance of Japanese popular culture, specifically the intriguing and sometimes awkward relationship between the “idol” groups AKB48 and SNH48, within the broad context of nationalist ideology and international relations in East Asia. It aims to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the reader about contemporary East Asian cultural exchanges and nationalist expressions in concrete forms. Additionally, this book attempts to discover heretofore overlooked aspects of nationalism’s metamorphosis in both China and Japan and challenge the existing scholarly and popular understandings of nationalism. By interrogating the nationalism factor in popular culture in Chinese and Japanese contexts, this books concludes that popular culture fandom can both be a culprit in promoting hegemonic political ideologies and serve as a potential antidote.
The Nexus of Teaching and Demographics
Authors: Bradbury Boyd L.
Published: July 2024

The Nexus of Teaching and Demographics: Context and Connections from Colonial Times to Today provides an overview of the evolution of education in the United States within the context of teacher preparation and demographics. Boyd Bradbury argues that the key to equitable education for all, including marginalized and underserved populations, is the nexus of teaching and demographics. Bradbury examines the history of education in the U.S., the relationship between minorities and education, the current state of teacher preparation, supply, and demand, and the potential impact of pedagogical dissonance, resilience, and best practices can have on creating diverse educational settings.
Votes At 16
Authors: Michelsen Niall Guy
Published: July 2024

At a time when American political institutions are under intense criticism and facing internal and external pressures, Americans must identify opportunities for changing the status quo. Rather than reject the system as fatally flawed, Niall Guy Michelsen argues that lowering the voting age to 16 will decrease the voting gap between the college and non-college citizens. Increasing voter turnout will make the American electorate more representative of the country and add needed voices to political debates. Dr. Michelsen analyzes the nature of voting habits and concludes that too many citizens start their adult lives as non-voters and become habitual non-voters as a result. Using voter turnout data and demographics, Dr. Michelsen shows that lowering the voting age to 16 would help both college-attending and non-college-attending young adults develop voting habits and raise voter turnout.
The Politics of Human Trafficking
Authors: Sarkar Siddhartha
Published: July 2024

Human trafficking is a phenomenon that encompasses more than a perceived threat to the sovereignty and security of states and their citizens. It is the ultimate manifestation of the current social, economic, cultural, and political landscape being so entrenched in discrimination, inequality, exclusion, and exploitation across the globe. Based on theoretical and empirical evidence from a cross-country study, this book unfolds the basic structure of these criminal organizations, the sophisticated methods and technology used, and the interactions and roles played by state and non-state actors. Through a more holistic lens, Siddhartha Sarkar examines the complex network of human trafficking governance—transnational cooperation, legislation, and enforcement—required to tackle this global problem.
Black Women's Rights
Authors: Boyce Davies Carole
Published: July 2024

Black Women's Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power presents Black women as alternative and transformative leaders in the highest political positions and at grassroots community levels. Beginning with a critique of the assumption of an equivalence between masculinity and political leadership, Carole Boyce Davies moves through the various conceptual definitions, intents, and meanings of leadership and the differences in the presentation of practices of leadership by women and feminist scholars. She studies the actualizing of political leadership in the Presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the historical role of Shirley Chisholm as the first woman to run for presidency of the United States on a leading party ticket, the promise of the Black left feminist leadership of Brazilian Marielle Franco, and the current model of Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados in advancing new leadership models from the Caribbean. This book proclaims the 21st century as the century for Black women's leadership.
Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry
Authors: Komura Toshiaki
Published: July 2024

Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry: Tracing Inaccessible Grief from Stevens to Post-9/11 examines contemporary literary expressions of losses that are “lost” on us, inquiring what it means to “lose” loss and what happens when dispossessory experiences go unacknowledged or become inaccessible. Toshiaki Komura analyzes a range of elegiac poetry that does not neatly align with conventional assumptions about the genre, including Wallace Stevens’s “The Owl in the Sarcophagus,” Sylvia Plath’s last poems, Elizabeth Bishop’s Geography III, Sharon Olds’s The Dead and the Living, Louise Glück’s Averno, and poems written after 9/11. What these poems reveal at the intersection of personal and communal mourning are the mechanism of cognitive myth-making involved in denied grief and its social and ethical implications. Engaging with an assortment of philosophical, psychoanalytic, and psychological theories, Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry elucidates how poetry gives shape to the vague despondency of unrecognized loss and what kind of phantomic effects these equivocal grieving experiences may create.
The History of the Tajik Civil War, 1992-1997
Authors: Mullojonov Parviz
Published: July 2024

The History of the Tajik Civil War, 1992–1997 presents a historical and analytical survey of the Tajik civil war—one of the bloodiest and most violent conflicts that took place in the post-Soviet space after the collapse of the USSR. The conflict continued for five years as a political and military confrontation between pro-government, pro-Communist forces, and United Tajik Opposition (an alliance between Tajik democrats and Islamists). This book is an analytical reconstruction of the course of political, economic, and military events covering the entire period of the civil war starting from Perestroika to the beginning of 2000s. It explores a set of conceptual aspects such as conflict generating factors, causes, conflict dynamics, peacebuilding, and conflict transformation.
Japan's Engineering Ethics and Western Culture
Authors: Kenichi Natsume
Published: July 2024

Given that engineering significantly affects modern society, ensuring its reliability is essential. How then should society implement engineering ethics to ensure its reliability? Can we expect engineering ethics to be nurtured naturally in the practice of engineering communities? If not, should the subject be compulsory in educational programs? Japan is among the most advanced countries with respect to engineering; however, it was not until the end of the 1990s that current engineering ethics education was introduced into Japanese engineering education programs. While economic globalization played a significant role in promoting this introduction, expectations of Western individualistic ethics and a hesitancy toward a foreign culture laid the foundation. Japan’s Engineering Ethics and Western Culture: Social Status, Democracy, and Economic Globalization examines the broad historical process of developing engineering ethics from the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century. Even though the process was rooted in Japan’s original culture and influenced by the ideologies of respective periods, such as nationalism and democracy, it consistently acknowledged trends from the United States and other Western countries. Natsume Kenichi discusses this history from a comprehensive perspective, including not only engineering education but also science, technology, industry, and higher education policies as well as various issues in science, technology, and society (STS) studies.
An Object of Seduction
Authors: Duan Xiaolin
Published: July 2024

The first book-length English-language study focusing on the early modern export of Chinese silk to New Spain from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, An Object of Seduction compares and contrasts the two regions from perspectives of the sericulture development, the widespread circulation of silk fashion, and the government attempts at regulating the use of silk. Xiaolin Duan argues that the increasing demand for silk on the worldwide market on the one hand contributed to the parallel development of silk fashion and sericulture in China and New Spain, and on the other hand created conflicts on imperial regulations about foreign trade and hierarchical systems. Incorporating evidence from local gazetteers, correspondence, manual books, illustrated treatises, and miscellanies, this book explores how the growing desire for and production of raw silk and silk textiles empowered individuals and societies to claim and redefine their positions in changing time and space, thus breaking away from the traditional state control.
Japan As an Immigration Nation
Authors: Sakanaka Hidenori
Published: July 2024

This book proposes a solution to three interrelated problems facing Japan: the rapidly declining population, a decrease in working age adults, and a lack of social and economic vitality. Hidenori Sakanaka, the former director of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, proposes that Japan accept ten million immigrants, including refugees, over the next fifty years, and articulates the benefits of this measure for Japan and its future. The author has spent close to fifty years working in the field of immigration and was one of the first to identify the pending population crisis as early as the mid-1970s. This is the first time his thoughts appear in book-length form in English.
Long-Distance Nationalism in the Global City
Authors: Cross Bennett Eason
Published: July 2024

Focusing on migration within the global south, Bennett Eason Cross uses the example of the Malian trade diaspora in Lagos to argue that aspects of the original model of the transmigrant were based on labor migrations from global south to global north that are not representative of their south-to-south counterparts. In Long-Distance Nationalism in the Global City: A Cultural History of the Malian Diaspora in Lagos, Nigeria, Cross notes that the cultural and racial differences between migrant communities and their host societies in Europe and the U.S. are often narrower, or even nonexistent, in south-to-south migrations, which shapes different outcomes. As this multi-site case study reveals, however, these differences in outcome can seem counterintuitive, as immigrants in the north typically develop loyalties to both origin and host nations, whereas, among the Malians in Lagos, affinity for the host nation was virtually nonexistent, despite a common regional culture. He complicates the

standard bilateral struggle for belonging between host and origin societies by examining the role of Islam, both as a parallel transnational movement and as a competing localized form. This book analyzes the deep historical structure of each society to explain the Malians' failure to develop the multiple national identities observed in other diasporas.
Transnational Yoga at Work
Authors: Klepinger Laurah E.
Published: July 2024

Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots is an ethnography about local wageworkers in the Indian branches of a transnational yoga institution and about yoga practitioners and spiritual tourists who visualize peace through yoga. Practitioners’ aspirations for peace situate them at the heart of an international movement that has captured the imagination of cosmopolitans the world over, with its purported benefits to mind, body, and spirit. Yoga is thought to offer health, vitality, and relief from depression through control of body and breath. Yet, the vision of peace in this institution is a partial vision that obscures the important but seemingly peripheral others of its self-conception. Through in-depth ethnographic analysis, this book explores the processes through which global spiritual movements can have peace front and center in their vision and yet condone and perpetuate cycles of injustice and social inequality that form the critical and problematic foundations of our global economy. The book privileges the experiences and hardships faced by Indian wageworkers—most of them women —but it also offers a sympathetic portrayal of international yoga practitioners and of the complex patterns of work and worship central to a global mission.

For more information, check out A conversation with Laura E. Klepinger, author of Transnational Yoga at Work: Spiritual Tourism and Its Blind Spots
Menkiti's Moral Man
Authors: Oyowe Oritsegbubemi Anthony
Published: July 2024

In Menkiti’s Moral Man, Oritsegbubemi Anthony Oyowe offers an original interpretation of Ifeanyi Menkiti’s conception of person, one that has significant implications for his metaphysics and moral philosophy. Menkiti holds that one is not born a person but becomes a person in a linguistic and cultural community, denies that the mere possession of intrinsic properties makes one a person, and maintains that personhood is defined by the community. This last process consists in the community socially recognizing as person one who has been incorporated into society and has successfully carried out a range of obligations linked to social roles and positions. On the one hand, Oyowe clarifies the role of intrinsic properties in Menkiti's account by arguing that for Menkiti, moral agency and personhood do not coincide. One is a moral agent but not a person in virtue of being rational, free, and endowed with a moral personality. On the other hand, he clarifies the sense in which the community makes one a person by drawing on principles of social ontology to explain how by adopting certain attitudes and practices a community constitutes its members as persons.This interpretation has the potential to illuminate a range of problems raised in response to Menkiti’s conception of person.
The Blackness of Black
Authors: Hart William David
Published: July 2024

This book explores the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people within the discourse of the blackness of black. This critical discourse developed during the last two decades as scholars explored what Saidiya Hartman describes as the afterlife of slavery. Hartman’s concept, which argues for a troubling continuity between the status of enslaved and emancipated Black people, is the pivot between discursive tributaries and trajectories. Tributaries of the discourse of the blackness of black comprise five foundational concepts: Frantz Fanon’s “phobogenic blackness,” Orlando Patterson’s “social death,” Cedric Robinson’s “racial capitalism and the black radical tradition,” and Hortense Spillers’ “flesh.” The book traces three trajectories within the afterlife of slavery: Frank Wilderson’s “ Afropessimism,” Fred Moten’s “generative blackness,” and Calvin Warren’s “black nihilism.” This ensemble of concepts enable us to understand what is at state in how we understand the relations among blackness, antiblackness, and Black people.
Vietnam's Prodigal Heroes
Authors: Glatz Paul Benedikt
Published: July 2024

Vietnam’s Prodigal Heroes examines the critical role of desertion in the international Vietnam War debate. Paul Benedikt Glatz traces American deserters’ odyssey of exile and activism in Europe, Japan, and North America to demonstrate how their speaking out and unprecedented levels of desertion in the US military changed the traditional image of the deserter.
The Russian Orthodox Community in Hong Kong
Authors: Kim Loretta E. , Zhou Chengyi
Published: July 2024

Hong Kong has been a unique society from its establishment as a political region separate from mainland China in the nineteenth century under British colonial rule until the present day as a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. A hub of interregional and international migration, it has been the temporary and long-term home of people belonging to many racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. This book examines the evolution of the community established by clergy and congregants of the Russian Orthodox Church. This community was first developed in the 1930s and then revived after a hiatus of over two decades from the 1970s to the 1990s with the founding of the Orthodox Parish of Apostles Saints Peter and Paul (OPASPP) at the turn of the twenty-first century. This study demonstrates how the OPASPP has become a vital provider of knowledge about Russian language and culture as well as a religious institution serving both heritage and convert believers. The community formed by and around the OPASPP is important to foster Sino-Russian relations based on individual-to-individual contact and mutual exposure to Chinese and Russian cultures in a region of China which allows spiritual and social diversity with minimal political constraints.
The Ontology of Perceptual Experience
Authors: Sanhueza Rodríguez Sebastián
Published: July 2024

Contemporary philosophy of perception typically focuses on discussions concerning the content and the phenomenology of perceptual experience. In a significant departure from this tradition, The Ontology of Perceptual Experience explores the very conscious phenomena to which intentional or phenomenal features are thus ascribed. Drawing on a new wave of research— including the work of maverick philosophers like Helen Steward, Brian O’Shaughnessy, and Matthew Soteriou—this book examines two ways of categorizing perceptual experiences in accordance to their dynamic structure: on the one hand, Experiential Heracliteanism, an approach striving to describe perceptual experiences in terms of irreducibly dynamic components; and, on the other, Experiential Non-Heracliteanism, which conceives perceptual experiences as dynamic phenomena that may nevertheless be described in terms of non-dynamic elements. Sebastián Sanhueza Rodríguez describes both proposals and makes a modest case on behalf of the Non-Heraclitean approach against its increasingly popular Heraclitean counterpart. This case crucially turns on the fact that the Heracliteanist engages in a controversial and perhaps unnecessary commitment to irreducibly dynamic processes. The ontological framework this book unpacks offers a platform from which traditional issues in the philosophies of mind and perception may be revisited in refreshing and potentially fruitful ways.
The Role of miR-155 and miR-122 in Valproic Acid-Induced Liver Injury
Authors: Pashmforoosh Narges , Rashno Mohammad , Baradaran Masoumeh
Published: July 2024

: Valproic acid (VPA) is a commonly used drug for treating epilepsy and other neurological and psychiatric disorders. Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) caused by VPA has been reported in several studies. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are recognized as potent regulators involved in many biological processes and are currently considered promising biomarkers for detecting DILI. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression levels of two hepato-specific microRNAs, miR-122 and miR-155, in hepatocytes exposed to VPA. This study was conducted using HepG2 cell lines treated with different concentrations of VPA for 24, 48, 72, 96, and 120 hours. The results showed that exposure to VPA significantly elevated the transcription levels of both tested miRNAs in HepG2 cell lines after 24 hours. However, prolonged exposure down-regulated the expression levels of these miRNAs, possibly due to VPA-induced cell death. We suggest that the significant decrease in miRNA expression in treated cells is correlated with VPA-induced apoptosis, followed by enhanced cell death after 120 hours of VPA exposure. Our findings imply that miR-122 and miR-155 play an important role in valproic acid detoxification and have prognostic or therapeutic implications.
О проблеме определения подлежащего компенсации размера морального вреда
Authors: Kopsergenova R.L.
Published: July 2024

the author of this article aims to analyze the proportionality of compensation for moral damage resulting from crimes against the fundamental rights of citizens, as evidenced by judicial practice in the Russian Federation. This analysis will involve comparing decisions from higher and lower courts within Russia, as well as contrasting these with rulings from U.S. courts. This study seeks to examine the rulings of the lower and Supreme Courts in case No. 33-23013/2023 to assess the significance of the compensation for moral damage and to identify factors influencing this determination. By comparing the calculation of compensation in Russia with the principles applied in the United States, the aim is to incorporate international best practices into the formula for calculating compensation in the Russian Federation. Ultimately, the primary goal of this study is to analyze judicial practices in order to develop recommendations for determining an appropriate amount of compensation for moral damage. The findings of this study have practical implications within the field of jurisprudence, with the potential to enhance the process of determining compensation for moral damage resulting from crimes against fundamental rights. Furthermore, these results can be utilized to formulate recommendations and guidelines for judges, lawyers, and other legal professionals, as well as to enrich the education of law students.

автор настоящей статьи ставит перед собой задачу проанализировать соразмерность возмещения морального вреда, причиненного преступлениями против основных прав граждан, как показывает судебная практика в Российской Федерации. Этот анализ будет включать сравнение решений судов высшей и низшей инстанций в России, а также их сопоставление с решениями судов США. Целью данного исследования является изучение постановлений нижестоящего и Верховного судов по делу №33-23013/2023 для оценки значимости компенсации морального вреда и выявления факторов, влияющих на это решение. Сравнивая расчет компенсации в России с принципами, применяемыми в США, цель состоит в том, чтобы включить в формулу расчета компенсации в Российской Федерации передовой международный опыт. В конечном итоге основной целью данного исследования является анализ судебной практики с целью разработки рекомендаций по определению надлежащего размера компенсации морального вреда. Результаты данного исследования имеют практическое значение в области юриспруденции и могут улучшить процесс определения компенсации морального вреда, причиненного преступлениями против основных прав. Кроме того, эти результаты могут быть использованы для формулирования рекомендаций и руководств для судей, адвокатов и других юристов, а также для улучшения образования студентов-юристов.
On the issue of the civil law regime of cryptocurrencies
Authors: Гришаев И.А.
Published: July 2024

работа посвящена анализу правового режима (правовой природы) криптовалюты, в том числе поиску ответа на общий вопрос о наличии либо отсутствии у криптовалюты признаков объекта гражданского права (объектоспособности). Автор анализирует основные взгляды на феномен криптовалюты с точки зрения права, в том числе приводит критический анализ позиции законодателя. По результатам работы автор, анализируя такие признаки криптовалюты, как выполнение ею функции денежного суррогата, отсутствие в отношении криптовалюты обязанного лица, а также существование криптовалюты в форме информации, приходит к выводу о том, что крипиптовалюта не является объектом гражданского права. В то же время автор не исключает целесообразность применения к отношениям, связанным с использованием криптовалюты, норм о неосновательном обогащении.

the paper is devoted to the analysis of the legal regime (legal nature) of the cryptocurrency, including the search for an answer to the general question about the presence or absence of signs of the object of civil law (objectability) in the cryptocurrency. The author analyzes the main views on the cryptocurrency phenomenon from the point of view of law, including a critical analysis of the position of the legislator. According to the results of the work, the author, analyzing such signs of cryptocurrency as its fulfillment of the function of a monetary surrogate, the absence of an obligated person in relation to crypto currency, as well as the existence of cryptocurrency in the form of information, comes to the conclusion that crypto currency is not an object of civil law. At the same time, the author does not exclude the expediency of applying rules on non-innovative enrichment to relations related to the use of cryptocurrencies.
Corporate agreement of the participants of business companies: in search of a causa
Authors: Алешкин И.А.
Published: July 2024

работа посвящена анализу существа корпоративного договора в качестве договорного типа. Автор, анализируя законодательное регулирование корпоративного договора, литературные источники, а также реальную практику конструирования условий корпоративного договора, приходит к выводу о том, что корпоративный договор не может быть признан самостоятельным договорным типом, поскольку он не обладает единой каузой договора. В работе также аргументирована необоснованность подхода, приравнивающего каузу корпоративного договора к каузе договора простого товарищества. В заключение делается вывод о мультикаузальности корпоративного договора.

the article is devoted to the analysis of the essence of a corporate agreement as a contractual type. The author, analyzing the legislative regulation of corporate contract, literary sources, as well as the actual practice of constructing the terms of a corporate contract, comes to the conclusion that a corporate contract cannot be recognized as an independent contractual type, since it does not have a single contract clause. The paper also argues for the unreasonableness of the approach equating the causation of a corporate agreement with the causation of a simple partnership. In conclusion, the conclusion is made about the multicausality of the corporate agreement.
OIL AND GAS PROSPECTS OF THE AGBURN-DENIZ STRUCTURE RELATED TO THE PETROPHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ROCKS
Authors: Zeynalova Sevil , Sharifov Jafar
Published: July 2024

Abstract. The article discusses the relationship between the oil and gas prospects of the Agburn- Deniz uplift zone with rich oil and gas condensate fields and its geological and tectonic development features. The main object of study in the Agburn-Deniz is the Productive serie and sediments below it. Relevant studies have been conducted in several structures to investigate whether there is a regularity in the change of collector properties of rocks on a regional scale and individual structures. The oil and gas prospects of the Northern Absheron archipelagoare mainly due to traps due to lithological cracking in the Post kırmalı suite and Kala Suite sand horizons of the PS and their fault zones, and tectonic shielding in the parts complicated by fractures and partly to carbonate-fractured sediments of the Upper Cretaceous. Keywords: oil, gas, sedimentation, archipelago, facies, carbonate, psammite