bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
School Safety and Climate in Evolving Contexts
Authors: Benbenishty Rami , Astor Ron Avi
Published: March 2024

This chapter presents the conceptual model of school violence, bullying, and climate in evolving contexts, a socioecological model that puts the school, rather than the individual student, in the center. The chapter outlines the importance of understanding and, where possible, changing the multiple contexts in which the school is embedded. It emphasizes that although these external contexts have major influences, they do not predetermine the school’s processes and outcomes. School climate is the internal context that can buffer, moderate, or exacerbate these external influences. The chapter identifies three interrelated components of school climate: social-relational, academic, and organizational. School practitioners can help improve these dimensions of climate and help the school community, students, teachers, and parents achieve better outcomes. Practitioners can employ a range of interventions and practices—some of them formal and structured evidence-based programs and others that are locally developed grassroots interventions—adapted to the school’s needs. Practitioners should monitor and assess the implementation and effectiveness of the range of interventions and practices employed in the school. This should be a continuous process, responding to changes that may require modifications of the methods used and additional data collection opportunities. Most importantly, monitoring needs to be perceived as an opportunity to listen to the voices of the school community, students, staff, and parents; include them in the process of making sense of the information gathered; and empower them to take part in school improvement efforts designed to prevent violence, increase safety, and improve the well-being of all school constituents.
School Disciplinary Practices and Staff–Student Relationships
Authors: Dupper David R.
Published: March 2024

This chapter first discusses not only the racialized ramifications of exclusionary discipline practices in public education but also factors that contribute to the issue. For example, the chapter discusses issues such as suspension, expulsion, and contact with the juvenile justice system and explores a theoretical explanation for said contributions. Further, critical race theory is discussed as a possible explanation. Next, the chapter exposes the reader to the number of approaches and programs that have shown to be effective in preventing or reducing behavior problems in school settings before these behaviors result in harsh disciplinary measures. These include schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports.
School Threat Assessment
Authors: Cornell Dewey G. , Warren Emily
Published: March 2024

This chapter describes the benefits to students and schools when primary and secondary schools adopt the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines. This model uses a five-step decision tree to determine the seriousness of a student threat and formulate appropriate actions intended to help the student and reduce the risk of violence. The chapter discusses benefits of using threat assessment as an alternative to zero tolerance policies. The chapter provides some case examples to illustrate its graduated approach.
Best Practice Grief Work With Students in the Schools
Authors: Goldman Linda
Published: March 2024

This chapter presents a synthesis of best practice grief work that educators can offer to facilitate a student’s grief journey. The foundation of best practice griefwork is to provide a safe haven for expression of feelings, a respect for the grief process, and an acknowledgment that a child is a recognized mourner. One must understand the nature of grief at each developmental stage and utilize techniques, practices, and age-appropriate language that can enhance creative outlets for grief as well as promote dialogue. Student exposure by the media to vicarious grief events daily becomes an overlay for children’s pre-existing grief experiences.
Groups With Adolescents
Authors: Gross Ondine
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines school practitioners meeting the emotional needs and concerns of student in a positive, supportive environment. Due to the adolescent developmental stage that brings about major physical, cognitive, and social-emotional change in individuals, the author argues the imperative need of school practitioners to construct mental health approaches that will help these students within said stage. The author argues that in order to enable students to grow toward a healthy sense of identity, which results in school success and connectedness, school practitioners must address mental health issues. The chapter specifically lays out best practices for delivering mental health group services.
Groups With Children
Authors: LeCroy Craig Winston
Published: March 2024

The chapter presents the importance of a strong relationship among the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children. To promote the healthy psychosocial development of children, this chapter discusses helping children learn social competence skills and how they can be a protective factor that helps them respond to difficult situations and build coping skills to promote mental health. Thus, the process of teaching social competence is detailed. Next, the chapter presents the use and ease of utilizing groups to administer skills to promote social competence among children and presents a framework to promote effective group treatment.
Social Skills Groups
Authors: Landguth Joan D. , Harris Mary Beth
Published: March 2024

Social interaction skills and issues, including communication and functional language issues, are fundamental in forming and maintaining relationships. Schools use a social-emotional learning (SEL) framework with social skills groups as an integral part. Presented here is an applied psychoeducational social skills group intervention with a curriculum to allow the practice of specific social skills. The curriculum is based on concepts from M. A. K. Halliday’s model of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Halliday’s functional concepts have been redefined as a social conceptual model using the terms “sensory/experiential skills,” “regulatory skills,” “narrative skills,” “interrogative skills,” “analytic skills,” “synthesizing skills,” and “expository skills.” Definitions of these terms and a curriculum for a psychoeducational group exercise are presented.
Strategies to Promote and Support Parent and Guardian Involvement in Schools
Authors: Joyce Hilary D. , Lasseigne Amber , Ward Hilary , Sterling Karen , Anderson-Butcher Dawn
Published: March 2024

This chapter explores best practices for working with different types of families and provides guidance for removing barriers that may prevent or discourage parents from engaging in school. Strategies discussed in this chapter are deemed critical to the recruitment of parents. These strategies include (a) assessing parent and family needs, (b) addressing needs through services and supports, (c) building relationships, (d) viewing parents as experts, (e) having parents as leaders, (f) creating spaces for parents, (g) creating meaningful activities, and (h) culturally competent practices. The strategies are discussed and detailed with examples. A case example demonstrates how one school made parent/guardian engagement a reality as the school implemented these strategies.
Defying the Legacy of Racialized Oppression in K–12 Education in the 21st Century
Authors: Fitzgerald Terence D.
Published: March 2024

Broadly, this chapter gives context to understand the current racialized and oppressive terrain within U.S. public schools. A discussion involving the oppressive rationalization created by U.S. founding elite White males is presented. The 21st-century ramification of said rationale is explained in relation to children of color in public education. The chapter presents a historical and contemporary analysis involving the motivation for systemic racism in the institution of U.S. public education. Finally, the chapter presents a proposition and consequential strategies involving cultural competence and cultural humility. Both are potential tools for school service professionals to exploit as a means to combat systemic oppression in their school setting.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

In this query, Thomas Jefferson posits Africans and African-descended persons are inherently deficient cultural producers, social peers, and political actors. He argues free black people are unassimilable into a democratic polity such as Virginia. His evidence for these claims is a pseudoscientific analysis of black bodies, including a bewildering reading of black female sexuality, and a dismissive view of black rhetoric and literary culture, including the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley.
The Black Woman of the South
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

In this speech, leading African American intellectual Alexander Crummell explores the condition of rural black women in the post-Reconstruction South. He argues that the effects of chattel slavery were worse for black women than black men. He calls for teams of women to be dispatched across the South to train rural black women in the domestic arts and industrial sciences. Crummell also makes a distinction between educated and better-off “colored people” and the masses of the uneducated and indigent “negro population.”
Anna Julia Cooper, “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race”
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

In this essay, Cooper explores the interplay of race and gender in America. Of particular interest is how these dynamics play out among black men and women themselves. “Womanhood” theorizes how African Americans should organize their political communities internally and in relation to the broader American polity. Cooper also takes aim at Alexander Crummell’s theory about different types of black people. His limited understanding of the lives of black women hampers his analysis, she argues.
Selections from Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Open Letter to Frederick Douglass
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

Mary Ann Shadd Cary was the first African American woman to edit a newspaper in North America. She was also a leading emigrationist who believed free blacks in the United States were better off moving to Canada, as she did. In these selections she lays out several reasons why black people cannot thrive in America, discusses the limitations of black women’s citizenship, and calls for the creations of jobs for young black men.
Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

“Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality” quickly established Stewart as a major voice in abolitionist circles and in black Boston. It was her first published essay, and she wrote it in the aftermath of the recent deaths of her husband, James W. Stewart, and mentor, David Walker. The essay calls on African Americans to adopt Christian-based ethics and refuse to mimic the immoral behaviors of broader American society. Stewart also explains what compelled her public social criticism: it was a call from God.
Meditation VI and Meditation XII
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

These short Christian devotions were first published in 1832. These short Christian devotions were first published in 1832. These short Christian devotions were first published in 1832. These short Christian devotions were first published in 1832.
Sufferings During the War
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

This short autobiographical sketch covers Stewart’s later years from her time in Baltimore, where she moved in the 1850s, to Washington, D.C., where she moved during the Civil War and lived the rest of her life. Stewart describes how she made ends meet and built thriving relationships in her new city. She wrote this sketch to be part of a reissue of her earlier writings.
A Socratic Device
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

Multidisciplinary scholarship and philosophical argument drive Part I’s pivotal theme: Western commitments to exploiting non-European peoples and resources principally explain race intrigue, not the other way around. The idea of continental races licensed pseudo-rationalizations for slavery, colonialism, and subsequent social inequality. Part I shows how race ideology is a grave distraction from gross injustice. A demystifying alternative is proposed for interpreting Western practices of attaching importance to visible continental ancestry—the concept of geoancestry, for Africa-identified, Europe-identified, or Asia-identified groupings of people. This anti-metaphysical deflation of race inquiry, combined with unmasking White America’s colored law, lends deep support to a shadow tradition of viewing race as a caste hierarchy. American color caste, Part I shows, is rooted not in weird beliefs or feelings about some contested “race” thing but in inherited slavery and enforced segregation of Black Americans as descendants of American slavery.
Some “Race” Things
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

Despite persistent efforts to arrive at a best account of major races, there remains no consensus about the conceptual basis. This section emphasizes that various meanings for “race” may fit some things that are biologically or socially real about continental groupings of people. The argument recommends deflationary “race” pluralism: races might intelligibly be said to exist, or not, depending on what different speakers believe the “race” thing is. More important, for example, Black Americans are an Africa-identified national people (generally of “mixed” Afro-Anglo heritage) as descendants of American slavery—a fact of social lineage distinguishing them from Africa-identified persons (“blacks”) of immigrant background. “Racial” beliefs, the section contends, have been a distraction from circumstances of gross injustice.
(Sub)continent-Wide Human Types?
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

French physician François Bernier in 1684 introduced classification of people by continental ancestry and appearance—calling these groupings “races,” which he saw as slightly more than skin deep. German philosopher Immanuel Kant later began the tradition of using continental race classification to biologize anti-black/African stereotypes. Africa-identified skin color became racial color and (alleged) evidence of lesser mentality that meant lesser humanity. This section argues that such conjecture about racial mind/brain is what drove scientific racialism. From Kant and Hume to Jefferson and the US Supreme Court, race was dishonestly claimed to be relevant to the merits of slavery, colonialism, and segregation. The section contends that this normalized color-conscious oppression that Westerners have culturally bracketed as perhaps not obviously wrong. Familiar apologetics for Western supremacy icons would otherwise sound absurd.
Racism versus Racialism
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

A philosophical-historical survey of the modern idea of race illustrates why notions of racial nature arouse interest. This section argues that for hundreds of years, the main business of the race concept has been to sponsor Western ideological-rhetorical pretexts for subjugation, exploitation, and nonrepair of other-raced peoples. It emphasizes that the content of race ideology-rhetoric is far less consequential than this overarching function it serves; an elusive racial factor can cast indefeasible doubt on a people’s worthiness for social equality. The section interprets racism as racialism’s unruly, activist twin. For as long as the theme that “blacks” might be mentally inferior to “whites” has work to do—in America, normalizing White power and perpetual Black social disadvantage—fervent interest in racial mentality will endure.
From Racial Theology to “Race” Optimism
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

Segments of American Christianity (e.g., Southern Baptist, Catholic, Mormon) stayed with the tradition of applying race myth to divine agency. Yet contemporary Christian leadership, like current race science, seeks to distance itself from explicit anti-black ideology. This section shows the following about the continuity of religious and scientistic racial thinking: slavery was the prime source of American antiblackness, which precedes the modern idea of race as continental groups; race intrigue has not been sustained by serious empirical inquiry; and racialism lives on among scientists and other educated people. The race concept carries old (super)naturalist suspicions that whatever race is, it naturally goes beyond shallow or incidental differences. Popular and specialist notions of race are steeped in a hodgepodge of beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes about nature.
Renewed Race Science
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

Any biology of familiar racial groupings will proceed from some preconceived racial geography, searching for genetic traits that individuals within a race’s boundaries have in common. This section argues that this may call for (re)adjusting the boundaries or the race concept itself to get the desired fits. The notion of race populations presupposes that descendants of out-of-Africa migrants evolved into distinct subspecies/races, each on its own (sub)continent. Physical features would have been the only evidence that non-Negroid populations had come into being, yet qualities unrelated to physical features might be truer to racial boundaries. The section explains that renewed race science tries to redeem the race concept by first implying that there are innate differences of narrow consequence. Old-school and new-school race categories would coincide, supported by a mysterious race calculus.
Racial Metaphysics of Distraction
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

This section shows that metaphysical race inquiry is marginal to understanding Western practices of attaching importance to visible continental ancestry. Theorizing the existence of races inevitably projects Western “racial” impressions onto the world, flat blackness especially, despite the non-Western world’s own varying responses to continental (skin) color. Ascribed membership in “the black race,” for example, covers up the specificity of Black American social lineage—as Du Bois’s (super)naturalist early use of the race concept illustrates. The section argues that the core function of race ideology is to exert social influence beyond reason in service of distraction from subjugation, exploitation, and nonrepair. Inherited slavery, not any “race” thing, was White America’s basis for constructing an Africa-identified slave caste. There is little to gain by philosophizing over the metaphysics and semantics of what “race” refers to.
Enter “Geoancestry”
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The widespread (mis)impression that racial thinking is central to social meanings of skin color comes from forgetting that continental color consciousness is rooted in continental ancestry, not in the race concept. To bypass obscure and irresolvable debate about “race,” this section recommends the concept of geoancestry to track Europe-, Asia-, and Africa-identified peoples. There can be no illusion, for example, that continental ancestry alone determines geoancestral identity for persons of substantial mixed continental descent such as Black Americans (an Afro-Anglo national people). The US government was never trying to track some “race” thing: race ideology mystified a fixed boundary between an Africa-identified “Slaves” caste and a Europe-identified “Free White” caste. In the early twentieth century, the US Census began normalizing distraction from caste slavery and segregation by turning continental “color” labels into “color or race” designation.
Negro Blood
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

Being counted in America as “Slaves,” “black,” or “Negro” was never about race essences or natural categories. This section contends that equating monoracial blackness with non-northern African ancestry was a practical measure to ensure unambiguous whiteness during and after American slavery. White America’s law established guidelines for denying white caste status to persons known to have African ancestry: homegrown “blacks” were to comprise a group forever marked by the ascribed dishonor of slavery and subordinate personhood. Those guidelines in turn socially reinforced American color caste and racial thinking. Of special note was the state of Virginia’s “Racial Integrity Act” of 1924, which imposed the “one-drop rule” to assign everyone at birth to either a “white” or “colored” category.
Caste Impurity
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The purity doctrine of whiteness, as this section describes it, equates truly being white with having no traceable non-European ancestors. In America, persons of mixed continental descent who had African ancestry that was known were thereby “black.” Race law was never about who persons truly are by natural race, biological family, or personal identity. Virginia in 1662 legally established inherited slavery via the enslaved (Africa-identified) “condition of the mother.” Having mixed continental ancestry was always known to be compatible with black/Negro identity; “Negro blood” was merely a proxy for social lineage in the “Slaves” caste. The section argues that the purpose of America’s color caste hierarchy was to conserve unambiguous Anglo/European hegemony and an Africa-identified bottom caste marked by slavery. Yet, the section shows, living as white or “passing” has not required legal membership in the white caste or escape from legal blackness.
A Colored Breed Apart
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The wholeness claim emphasizes that for some persons of mixed continental descent, social affirmation of their mixed-raceness would remove a psychological obstacle to a complete racial self. This seems to imply a tight natural relation between alleged racial being and the facts of continental descent. Monoracial guidelines such as the one-drop rule tell a different story: the components of any person’s mixed continental ancestry are only a necessary and not also a sufficient condition for racial identification. This section argues that an ethical defense of multiracialism would refuse special pleading for persons whose visible African ancestry might be light enough for them to gain white affirmation as nonblack. Advocates often mention the darker, “more African” physical features of other people who have mixed continental ancestry—which in effect sets up a lighter-skinned contrast class against which to explicate multiracial identity.
Mixed Family Reunion
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

This section explains that family as a social unit is not always and importantly defined by biological relations. American multiracialism presupposes the importance of a person’s raced genealogy to raced self-conception, then uses this in defense of an overarching claim that “mixed race” persons have a need to be recognized for what they racially are. But the facts of one’s continental ancestry ultimately bear the load of that circular reasoning: the genealogical facts are raced according to one’s continental origins. Without presupposing the importance of brute “biological family relations,” there would not be the appearance of a mystery about how one could endorse a racial identity that fails to allude to the purported race of some traceable lineal ancestors. Acknowledging raced forebears from different continents is not naturally connected with endorsing a racial identity that incorporates theirs.
Social-Political Lineage Matters
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

In the spirit of Douglass, Harlan, Du Bois, and Morrison, Part III shows how the core of Black American social identity has been political, not racial. The argument is that foundational American caste, with its “colored” descendants of American slavery, will end only when a solid minority of White Americans make Black social equality a moral priority. Concrete policy will have to reckon with circumstances of Black American national specificity—not universalist antiracism, Africa-themed identity politics, or diversity “of color.” Part III outlines a non-racial, non-exclusionary, post-nationalist account of Black (American) political solidarity that welcomes all who oppose American color caste and support reparative justice. The epilogue, “Forgiveness on Layaway,” morally compares post–Jim Crow America and post-apartheid South Africa: Sincere “white” hopes for forgiveness cannot be squared with nonrepair of historical injustice that maintains vast “black” social inequality.
Plessy on Being Colored
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

White America’s “racial” logic led the US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to reserve the term “colored” for persons who had any visible or reputational fraction of African ancestry. The contemporary liberal variant “people of color” (for certain non-Anglo groups) ignores the foundational caste division—“Free White” versus “Slaves”—constructed through more than two hundred years of enslaving Africa-identified persons in America. This section argues that replacing “colored” with the variant “of color” falsely implies roughly comparable American caste status and lived experience across nonwhite national peoples—which obscures the distinctive history and circumstances of Black Americans. The section also argues that the “racial” justice claims of Africa-identified descendants of American slavery have a moral urgency and priority in the United States.
Black Specificity in America
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

This section argues that under American caste, “one drop” of “colored blood” was figurative for visible African ancestry as a telltale sign of homegrown slave lineage. The normalization of black “racial” identity in America is a prevalent effect, not a principal cause, of the bottom caste status of descendants of American slavery. After early preoccupation with trying to metaphysically specify racial blackness, Du Bois was satisfied loosely referring to Africa-identified Americans as “we who are dark”—from a Western perspective, by virtue of known African ancestry in domestic context of the former “Slaves” caste. The section explains why Black American identity is not merely a function of living in America, having African ancestry, looking black, and therefore being susceptible to experiencing some similar kinds of color-conscious maltreatment. Capital “B”-Black Americans are Africa-identified descendants of American slavery.
Anti-Caste Black Solidarity for All
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The exclusionary “racial” feature of black nationalist thought has been a hurdle for nonblack persons interested in supporting the Black American justice cause. Some now believe that the exclusionary feature is mistaken. This revisionist conclusion comes from a place of close sympathy with an account of “pragmatic black nationalism” as political, not racial or “ethnocultural,” solidarity. For the revisionist, being in Black political solidarity does not require being an Africa-identified person. Yet the animating vision of Black social equality remains the same. This view can be described as Black post-nationalist: Black political solidarity should welcome support from everyone moved, regardless of their social identity, by the moral urgency and priority of corrective justice for descendants of American slavery, which would finally dismantle color caste in the United States.
Introduction
Authors: Englert Gianna
Published: March 2024

This chapter begins with a contemporary dilemma: the dissolution of liberal democracies and the threat posed by illiberal and authoritarian forms of governance. But it also argues that the earliest liberals in nineteenth-century France confronted a similar dilemma for themselves. Accordingly, it draws readers’ attention to that period and its political thought. It homes in on liberals’ two responses to the rise of mass democracy: their concept of “political capacity” and their efforts to sever democracy from its ancient and political roots. This Introduction outlines the structure of the book, offers a brief note on its methodology, and introduces its leading cast of characters, from the canonical writers Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville to the statesman François Guizot and the forgotten figures of the French Second Empire. It argues that we cannot appreciate the depth of liberals’ vaunted commitments to individual liberty without understanding their initial objections to political democracy.
“The Regular Representation of Opinion”
Authors: Englert Gianna
Published: March 2024

If Chapters 1 through 4 featured specific moments and even incendiary arguments in the contested politics of the suffrage, Chapter 5 zeroes in on one proposed institutional solution to preserving liberalism and democracy together: the modern party system. It does so by illuminating the political thought advanced by Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, a neglected voice in the liberal tradition. Like Tocqueville and Laboulaye, Duvergier de Hauranne looked to the American example to instruct an inexperienced French democracy, though his work was also indebted to Victorian British debates over the franchise. From his studies of America and Britain, Duvergier de Hauranne pressed his French contemporaries to overcome their existing hostility toward pluralism and the modern party. Parties provided the answer that liberals had been searching for; they would retain political capacity within a political democracy, thereby guaranteeing that liberal principles and universal suffrage could be mutually enhancing.
Introduction
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

Since the late eighteenth century in Europe it has become impossible to discuss religion and the history of religion other than in connection with the normative demands and history of political freedom. In that sense the dialogue on faith has, explicitly or implicitly, come under the “spell of freedom.” This chapter first demonstrates that, surprisingly, religion is a blind spot in much contemporary Hegelianism. It then develops the argument that our contemporary understanding has to move beyond Hegel with regard to his (intellectualist) understanding of faith, his teleological philosophy of history, his understanding of political freedom, and his Eurocentrism. These four aspects are crucial for the structure of the whole book.
The Independence of Religion: Ernst Troeltsch
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

Ernst Troeltsch, the Protestant theologian and pioneer of a historical sociology of Christianity, is a crucial figure in the rise of a post-Hegelian and non-Nietzschean theory of religion. This chapter restricts itself to an interpretation of one of his early pieces originally published in 1895–1896. His thesis of the “independence” of religion is a means of resisting both every reductionism and every essentialism in the study of religion. The chapter demonstrates how Troeltsch turned this doubly negative attitude into a methodological program. Special emphasis is given to Troeltsch’s attempts to defend a study of religion that is free of tacit presuppositions of both an apologetic and secularist character; it must neither presuppose the truth claim of a particular religion nor declare every truth claim of every religion to be illusory. This means that the specific character of religious truth claims has to be clarified.
Self-Evidence or Sense of Self-Evidence?: Max Scheler
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

While the other major contributions to the modern discourse on religion in the early twentieth century either had a Protestant or a secular Jewish background, Max Scheler not only was a Catholic but saw his own phenomenology-based understanding of religion as a fundamental renewal of the message of faith in a time of tremendous historical upheaval. This chapter asks whether Scheler, in his philosophy of religion, managed to go beyond the descriptive ascertainment of the fact that religious faith is based on feelings of self-evidence and succeeded in demonstrating the self-evidence of certain religious beliefs of a particular faith. This question is explored in both the philosophical and sociological fields and by contrasting Scheler’s ideas with pragmatist philosophy and theory of religion.
The Sacralization of Democracy: John Dewey
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

In the work of John Dewey, as in no other philosopher’s work before him, democracy stood at the center as a political ideal and a moral guideline. While his original view of history was optimistic-progressive, later he increasingly probed what binding forces democracy itself might develop without recourse to the traditions of Christianity. This chapter focuses on Dewey’s 1934 book A Common Faith and discusses the plausibility of Dewey’s view that secularization entails liberation from dogmatism and elimination of artificial barriers within a polity. This question is also discussed against the background of Dewey’s own theory of religion.
Post-totalitarian Christianity
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

This chapter deals with religion in the work of one of the greatest German novelists of the twentieth century, Alfred Döblin, and specifically with his two religious dialogues of 1942–1943 and 1950–1952. In the literary form of a dialogue between a believing older man and an unbelieving younger one, Döblin articulates in argumentative form his own journey from the secular Judaism of his early years to the Catholic Christianity of his later life. For him this was a path leading not to the restoration of Christianity as it had been, but to a “post-totalitarian” Christianity, that is, to a Christianity shaped by the experiences of totalitarianism and the twentieth-century history of violence.
The Secular Option, Its Rise and Consequences: Charles Taylor
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor is perhaps the most important and influential present-day thinker when it comes to the relationship between secularization and the modern history of freedom. This chapter focuses on his monumental study A Secular Age (2007), with a particular interest in the connection between Taylor’s original Hegelianism and his theory of secularization. This theory is also criticized in several historical respects (understanding of medieval Europe, claim of a “vector” of reform) and contrasted with an alternative conception, based on a political understanding of the history of religion and a different view of transcendence and sacredness in our time.
Introductory Remarks
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

The search for a “different kind” of freedom does not refer to the Hegelian critique of a purely negative conception of freedom as emphasized in present-day Hegelianism, but aims at an understanding of the “indebtedness” of human freedom. This idea was already inherent in the work of Troeltsch, but was elaborated more systematically by Paul Tillich in his reflections on “theonomy.” It was then taken up in the important writings of the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. In a different way, the ideas about “communicative freedom” in the writings of the German Protestant theologian Wolfgang Huber also point in a similar direction.
Introductory Remarks
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

Almost a century after Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, which amalgamated contemporary knowledge on the history of religion and political freedom, the great studies in the sociology of religion emerged in Germany and France (Weber, Troeltsch, Durkheim, Mauss). For all of them, the assumption shared by Hegel and his adversary Schleiermacher that Christianity is undoubtedly the highest form of religion was no longer tenable. The introductory remarks to Part IV of the book have two aims. The first is to characterize the most important ways in which the project of a historical sociology continued over the course of the twentieth century, namely in the work of those authors to whom the following five chapters are dedicated and a few others (Will Herberg, Shmuel Eisenstadt). The second is to delineate the attempts to overcome Eurocentrism and Christianocentrism in the course of these developments.
Christianity and the Dangers of Self-Sacralization: Werner Stark
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

This chapter deals with the ambitious work of the Catholic sociologist Werner Stark, one of the sharpest critiques of a Protestant bias in Max Weber’s sociology, particularly his five-volume Sociology of Religion. The chapter first discusses the validity of his criticism and then turns to the alternatives Stark proposes, especially his ideas on the potential institutionalization of charisma in the church and the focus he advocates on the role of monasticism and religious orders in the history of Christianity. Finally, his emphasis on the “universality” of the church (as distinct from its national organization) and his plea for an unabridged Christian universalism are discussed.
More Weberian Than Weber?: David Martin
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

This chapter offers a portrait of the lifework of the British sociologist of religion David Martin. Its starting point is the possible discrepancy between Weber’s de facto research in historical sociology and his famous notion of a world-historical process of rationalization and disenchantment. Martin has been called “more Weberian than Weber” because he adhered to Weber’s research methods but was skeptical of his grand statements about historical tendencies. His approach is characterized as a “political sociology of religion” and a crucial challenge to the secularization thesis. Martin’s controversial contributions to the study of global Christianity, particularly Pentecostalism in Latin America, are also discussed.
Religious Evolution and Symbolic Realism: Robert Bellah
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

The greatest scholar in the field of the historical sociology of religion after the classical figures was Robert Bellah. This chapter delineates his intellectual development from the 1950s onward and then focuses on his synthesis of Parsons’ sociological theory and the theology of Paul Tillich. The existing volume of the universal history of religion he aimed to write (Religion in Human Evolution) is presented here as an epoch-making achievement, particularly because of its inclusion of Chinese and Indian history. I argue that nobody has moved so decisively beyond both Hegel’s philosophy of history and Max Weber’s historical sociology as Robert Bellah.
Development, Trajectories, and Catch-Up
Authors: Bravo-Ortega Claudio , Eterovic Nicolas
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines the long-term development experiences of Latin American and Scandinavia, with particular reference to the case of Chile. The Scandinavian comparator is of interest from a Latin American perspective since both regions have strong established comparative advantages in the natural-resource-intensive sectors. It is found that superior growth performance was generally achieved in Scandinavia as result of greater openness to world trade and greater proximity to key markets. Despite the fact that Scandinavia (like Latin America) was heavily reliant on natural-resource-intensive exports, its higher levels of human capital formation enabled it to sidestep into related sectors, creating the basis for superior growth. The chapter ends with a detailed review of the Chilean experience. It finds that Chile’s recent embrace of openness, combined with capabilities inherited from a more interventionist era, have allowed it to close the income gap with Scandinavia.
The Extractive Sector and Development in Latin America
Authors: Villar Paul Fenton , Papyrakis Elissaios , Pellegrini Lorenzo
Published: March 2024

The ‘resource curse’ literature suggests that resource abundance, far from propelling development forward, might instead undermine it. Still, it is increasingly argued that with appropriately implemented governance frameworks, resource-rich countries might mitigate some of the negative externalities associated with natural-resource extraction. Focusing on Latin America, this chapter analyses the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and its potential role in improving development outcomes arising from the operation of the extractive sector. The chapter shows that EITI membership in the region is growing, but it still remains limited and that progress among those countries that have joined has been slow. However, there are some unfolding contributions concerning the EITI’s practical development of transparency standards in Latin America, especially in Peru and Colombia. The chapter suggests that more progress of this nature will need to be made if the region is to realize fully the development potential of the natural resources sector.
Digitalization in Latin America
Authors: Carlos Ferraz João , Torracca Julia , Arona Gabriela , Peres Wilson
Published: March 2024

This chapter assesses the extent to which the diffusion of digital-related technologies may contribute to development catching-up processes of nations, with particular reference to Latin America. The chapter finds that developing nations, including Latin America, were able to significantly evolve and to extend the most basic form of digitalization (internet access) to an important proportion of their population, while still lagging in costs, skills, and infrastructure relative to higher-income countries. The chapter also finds that the productivity gap of the informal sector, in comparison to its formal counterpart, has increased during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, despite substantial progress in the expansion of digital access in all selected countries of the region. The infrastructure, skills, and cost issues that hold Latin America back in realizing its digital potential are not insuperable. However, tackling then will required well-considered policies that are cognizant of the structural realities of the region’s diverse economies.
Brazil
Authors: Amann Edmund
Published: March 2024

Despite significant economic reform over the past four decades, Brazil has yet to find an effective formula enabling it to build on its strengths and move forward on a path of accelerated, inclusive, and sustainable growth. With the inauguration of a new administration at the start of 2023, an opportunity has opened up for a constructive discussion around the elements needed to generate such a formula. The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on this issue, focusing on the structural constraints that have been holding Brazil back and the potential means for overcoming them. Effective ways forward are unlikely to centre on forced attempts to reverse the so-called re-primarization of the Brazilian economy. Instead, opportunities exist to build on existing strengths in the natural-resource-intensive sectors. At the same time, economy-wide growth and productivity challenges need to be addressed.
Colombia’s Growth since the 1990s
Authors: Luzardo-Luna Ivan
Published: March 2024

In the early twenty-first century, Colombia saw substantial economic growth and development. This allowed the country to reduce its income gap with advanced economies, even outperforming most of the large economies in Latin America since 2014. The reasons behind this regional outperformance are most likely related to the persistence of structural reforms implemented in the early 1990s, reinforced by a second generation of reforms. However, Colombia’s economic convergence with the global economic leader, the United States, stalled in the mid-2010s. This raises concerns that the country may have fallen into the so-called middle-income trap. Colombia’s persistent institutional problems, particularly its high level of violence and weak rule of law, remain the main constraints for more dynamic economic growth. Colombia’s pathway to overcome the middle-income trap will likely lie in improving its institutions and reducing violence, as well as building on the economic framework established in the early 1990s.
Uruguay
Authors: Bianchi Carlos , Isabella Fernando
Published: March 2024

Uguay is usually seen as a success within the Latin American context. An early modernization process, marked by welfare policies oriented to the urban population, and a long democratic tradition have built a relatively egalitarian society that has recently (2004–2019) experienced one of its longest and strongest periods of economic growth. During this period, public policies were extended, in both the industrial and technological areas (as well as the social sphere), aiming to promote investment and a socially inclusive growth process. However, inclusive economic growth was accompanied by little structural change, which limits the possibilities of following a sustained development path. In this context, Uruguay seems not to have escaped from the so-called middle-income trap. The analysis shows that part of the problem here is that policies have been oriented to boost competitiveness and build capabilities in a horizontal manner, rather than changing the underlying economic structure.
Costa Rica
Authors: Orozco Jeffrey , Ruiz Keynor
Published: March 2024

This chapter analyses the evolution of the Costa Rican economy, considering the challenges it faces in closing the development gap with its rich-country counterparts. Starting in the mid-1980s, Costa Rica adopted a new economic model which saw it open up considerably to trade and investment. The new policy framework met with some success, in particular in terms of export diversification. A new range of manufactures, services, and natural-resource-intensive products was launched on the global marketplace. Though export activity has proved very dynamic, it has not been able to consolidate itself as the engine of the economy. This is mainly due to its weak productive and technological integration with the national economy. It will not be possible to develop the necessary new sources of growth without a holistic strategy to strengthen the system of innovation and improve linkages between dynamic export sectors and the rest of the economy.
From Roman to Pagan
Authors: Rives J. B.
Published: March 2024

This chapter surveys imperial policy on animal sacrifice in the fourth century CE. Constantine’s redirection of economic resources away from temples and municipalities to the imperial state and the church exacerbated problems of funding public animal sacrifice, while his aggrandizement of these centralized institutions over local municipalities undercut its sociopolitical significance. His disapproval of the practice accelerated its transformation from a marker of identification with Rome to a marker of a specific religious affiliation, labeled “pagan.” Constantine’s nephew Julian furthered that trend by promoting animal sacrifice as a marker of adherence to Hellenism. After his death, the laissez-faire policy of his successors left the legal status of animal sacrifice uncertain until Theodosius I prohibited it in the early 390s. Although discourses about sacrifice played an important part in these developments, the crucial factors were social and political: whereas in the early empire animal sacrifice had played a valuable role in articulating empire-wide sociopolitical structures and enabling local elites to negotiate a place for themselves within those structures, in the new empire of the fourth century, the centralized institutions of church and state played a dominant role, leaving animal sacrifice with much less to contribute.