bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Global Aid Ecosystem
Authors: Brechenmacher Saskia , Mann Katherine
Published: March 2024

Chapter 2 outlines the global aid ecosystem focused on advancing women’s political empowerment. It examines how women’s rights activists mobilized throughout the twentieth century to establish an international norm for women’s political inclusion and traces the changes this norm triggered in foreign assistance over time. The second half of the chapter describes the contemporary aid landscape and maps out the global network of actors involved in funding, designing, and implementing women’s political empowerment interventions today. The chapter argues that women’s equal political participation and leadership is now firmly entrenched in international legal and policy frameworks and shows that funding in this area has steadily increased. However, behind this apparent global consensus lie questions and doubts about the depth of existing policy and aid commitments and the role of international assistance in furthering gender equality change in politics.
Confronting the Gatekeepers
Authors: Brechenmacher Saskia , Mann Katherine
Published: March 2024

Chapter 7 analyzes aid programs targeting gender inclusion in political parties. It draws on examples from Kenya, Morocco, Myanmar, and Nepal to illustrate the core hurdles women face within party organizations. It then examines the standard methods party assistance providers have used to advance women’s participation and influence. In recent years, several aid organizations have begun complementing their support for women party members and women’s wings with activities aimed at transforming exclusionary party structures and policies. In some contexts, these efforts have triggered incremental legislative and party-internal reforms. But progress has been uneven, and formal commitments and policy changes are not always implemented or sustained. Limited leadership commitment, low party institutionalization, and the pernicious role of money in politics all pose enduring challenges.
Toward a Different Assistance Model
Authors: Brechenmacher Saskia , Mann Katherine
Published: March 2024

Chapter 11 turns the lens back to the aid ecosystem and examines how current assistance practices need to change to meet both longstanding and emergent challenges facing the field. The chapter delves into three core critiques of international democracy aid: donors’ short time horizons, persistent programmatic and thematic silos, and the lack of flexible and core support for women’s rights actors. It then probes the possibilities and limitations of new efforts to address these shortcomings. Some donor governments have pioneered innovative funding mechanisms that shift more resources into the hands of women’s organizations. Others have adopted feminist foreign policies that center gender equality more explicitly in their external relations. These reforms respond to civil society calls for more equitable partnerships, diplomatic backing, and greater policy and aid coordination. Yet they also remain vulnerable to bureaucratic roadblocks and political pushback.
Epidemiologic Theory Counts
Authors: Krieger Nancy
Published: March 2024

Chapter 8 offers concrete examples explicating why epidemiologic theory counts when it comes to harm, knowledge, action, and the people’s health, using insights afforded by the ecosocial theory of disease distribution. New scholarship affirms and deepens the original examples pertaining to: menopausal hormone therapy and breast cancer; peptic ulcer, H. pylori, and stress; the fallacious “thrifty gene” hypothesis and diabetes among Indigenous populations; the selection of timeframes and metrics for monitoring and analyzing trends in health inequities; and racism and health. New examples concern cancer and climate change and current controversies over causal inference. Each case underscores the importance of choice of epidemiologic theory of disease distribution for getting the questions and answers right—or terribly wrong. Explicit use of—and debates over—epidemiologic theories of disease distribution will improve the odds of producing epidemiologic knowledge truly useful for preventing disease, improving the public’s health, and advancing health justice.
A Call for Feminist Insights in Cybersecurity
Authors: Whetstone Crystal , Luna K.C.
Published: March 2024

This chapter is a call for the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and the WPS agenda to be applied within cyberspace. Given the extent of cyberspace, the chapter argues that applying UNSCR 1325 to the virtual sphere will facilitate attention and resources to better address women’s security from a holistic perspective. The chapter focuses on both conflict-affected countries where gender-based violence increases in war environments and fragile states where cybercrime increases due to the vulnerabilities of the population. Following a critical rereading of UNSCR 1325, the chapter outlines a theoretical framework that builds on the work of previous feminist international relations (IR) scholars who have called for the expansion of UNSCR 1325 in innovative ways. The chapter highlights five areas where UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda can move forward in scholarship, advocacy, and policymaking to better secure women, girls, and other minorities in cyberspace.
The Application of IHL on Israeli’s Cyber Strategies Against the Palestinians
Authors: Mhajne Anwar
Published: March 2024

Cyberwarfare is becoming one of the critical issues on the agenda of policymakers and military leaders worldwide. Since civilians heavily populate cyberspace, it is essential to talk about international humanitarian law (IHL) as a framework for governing such operations. Some feminist legal scholars have critiqued IHL for being inherently discriminatory for prioritizing men—specifically male combatants–—and often either relegates women to the status of victims or accords them with legitimacy only in their role as mothers. This chapter argues that feminist scholars should extend their critique of the limitation of IHL to protecting data and guaranteeing civilians the right to data privacy in conflict settings. In examining the use of cyberspace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the chapter argues that there is a need to include data protection and safe civilian access to information technology under IHL protections.
Governing After War
Authors: Liu Shelley X.
Published: March 2024

The book explores how wartime processes affects post-war state-building efforts when rebels win a civil war and come into power. Post-war governance is a continuation of war: although violence has ceased, the victor must consolidate its control over the state through a process of internal conquest. This means carefully making choices about resource allocation toward development and security. Where does the victor choose to spend, and why? And what are the implications for ultimately consolidating power and preventing conflict recurrence? The book examines wartime rebel–civilian ties under rebel governance and explains how these ties—along with rebel governing institutions—shape the rebel victors' post-war various resource allocation strategies to establish control at the sub-national level. In turn, successfully balancing resources dedicated toward development and security helps the victor to consolidate power. The book relies on mixed-methods evidence from Zimbabwe and Liberia, combining interviews, focus groups, and archival data with fine-grained census, administrative, survey, and conflict datasets to provide an in-depth examination of sub-national variation in wartime rebel behavior and post-war governing strategies. A comparison of Zimbabwe and Liberia alongside four additional civil wars in Burundi, Rwanda, Côte d'Ivoire, and Angola further demonstrates the importance of wartime civilian tie-formation for post-war control. The argument's central insights point to war and peace as part of a long state-building process, and suggest that the international community should pay attention to sub-national political constraints that new governments face. Findings offer implications for recent rebel victories and, more broadly, for understanding the termination, trajectories, and political legacies of such conflicts around the world.
The Deadly Violence That Shook India
Authors: Marat Erica
Published: March 2024

The mobilization in support of the 23-year-old victim of gang rape in India was improbable, differing from responses to numerous other instances of fatal sexual attacks against women and girls. Until the attack in December 2012, rape was not a topic of wide public discussion. How did an anonymous woman become “legitimate” and “worthy” of public outcry? Why did mobilization spark around one specific event when violence is an everyday occurrence? This chapter emphasizes the unique coincidence of three processes before and after the attack on the student in New Delhi: preexisting feminist activism, vibrant political life on university campuses, and an attack on a young woman from a rising upwardly mobile middle-class background.
Subversion
Authors: Maschmeyer Lennart
Published: March 2024

In theory, subversion is the perfect weapon, yet in practice it often falters—and the same applies to cyber operations. This book explains why. Lennart Maschmeyer argues that subversion holds great promise as a cheap, easy, and yet effective alternative to war because of its distinct mechanism of action: secretly exploiting and manipulating adversary systems to undermine them and turn them against the adversary. In practice, however, subversion often falls short because this mechanism involves a set of underappreciated operational challenges that confront actors with a trilemma between speed, intensity, and control. Consequently, in most circumstances subversion is either too slow, too weak, or too volatile to produce strategic value. Subversion presents new and original evidence to support this theory from two detailed case studies that examine how the rise of information technology has changed this quality. The first case discusses the Soviet KGB’s use of illegal agents to crush the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The second case examines Russia’s use of traditional subversion and cyber operations against Ukraine since 2014, both in its “hybrid war” strategy short of war prior to the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and since the latter. Contrary to prevailing expectations of revolutionary change in conflict short of war, findings from these studies demonstrate that traditional subversion likely remains both more versatile and more effective than cyber operations.
The Breakdown and What It Means
Authors: Emerson Michael O. , Bracey Glenn E.
Published: March 2024

Chapter 6 examines the diversity among white practicing Christians. We find that two-thirds of white practicing Christians are followers of the ROW (i.e., ROWers). The ROW consists of two different but mutually supporting groups: White Veil and White Might. Three-quarters of ROWers belong to the White Veil group, and their mantra is “there is no whiteness, there is no white privilege, there are only people.” White Veil ROWers either say there is no racial inequality, or if there is, it is due to people of color’s shortcomings. The White Might group makes up one-quarter of ROWers. These are the foot soldiers of the ROW who spearhead efforts to defend the ROW against detractors. Finally, we identify Remnant Christians, the third of white practicing Christians who do not adhere to the ROW. Remnant Christians’ attitudes and orientation to the Bible are similar to those of Christians of color. After describing each group in detail, we draw on interviews with Remnant Christians to show how their attitudes differ from ROWers and the high prices they pay for not supporting the ROW.
Collisions
Authors: Kimmage Michael
Published: March 2024

On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a massive invasion of Ukraine, setting in motion changes that have been felt around the globe. Collisions is the story of this war’s origins. It begins in 2008, when Barack Obama came to power in the United States and Dmitry Medvedev came to power in Russia, a period of optimism and new beginnings. It then traces a steady parting of the ways between the United States and Russia, from the return of a newly aggressive Putin to the Kremlin in 2012 to the outbreak of a revolution in Ukraine—and the subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. Collisions captures the tumult of the Trump presidency, to which both Russia and Ukraine were crucial, and in detail it chronicles the suspenseful first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, as Russia amassed troops on the border of Ukraine and kept on upping the diplomatic ante. The book culminates in Putin’s 2022 attack on Ukraine, outlining the devastating effects of this war on Ukraine, Russia’s many military setbacks, and Volodymyr Zelensky’s successful defense of his country. Collisions explains the war in Ukraine as a historically inflected conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It also situates this conflict in its larger global context. The war has transformed Europe from a place of peace to a place of widening military tensions. It has foregrounded the role of the United States as a European power, and it has created new openings for China to expand its power. A history of a war, Collisions is no less a history of the global instability that has surged with this war.
Yes We Can
Authors: Kimmage Michael
Published: March 2024

Chapter 1 describes an international landscape (circa 2008) in which the eventual Russian war against Ukraine was not inevitable, a period of considerable optimism, even though it was shadowed by the financial crisis of 2008, an optimism that built upon the many achievements of the 1990s: an end to the Cold War, the expansion of NATO and the European Union, and a flourishing US-German relationship, which President Obama and Chancellor Merkel understood to be exemplary, a sign of where international order was tending—toward greater cooperation, greater integration, and greater respect for rules and for multi-lateral institutions.
Re-engendering Property
Authors: Alvarez José E. , Bauder Judith
Published: March 2024

The chapter draws five general lessons from CEDAW’s property jurisprudence viewed in light of the criticisms considered in chapter 3. Lesson One: CEDAW’s interpretation has evolved over time such that the regime does not rely on a male comparator, addresses substantive and not merely formal equality, punctures the public/private divide, embraces intersectional discrimination, and accords importance to all fundamental rights. Lesson Two: CEDAW’s property jurisprudence does not reify the institutional and regulatory program associated with “neo-liberalism.” Lesson Three: criticisms of the CEDAW regime that rely on universalizing and binary concepts need to be re-examined, along with the underlying theory of social change. Lesson Four: many other criticisms of the CEDAW regime require greater nuance. Lesson Five: the CEDAW Committee’s scrutiny over states’ actions and omissions remains necessary, no matter the kind of state regime in place.
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: March 2024

This essay is Thomas Nagel’s classic “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” which was influential in drawing attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. It also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of non-human creatures as an important subject of study. The essay argues that the essential subjectivity of conscious experience—what it is like for the creature undergoing it—means that reductionist theories of mind, which try to analyze it in physical terms, cannot succeed. It follows that the physical sciences cannot provide a complete description of reality, and that the physical conception of objective reality must be transcended if science is going to comprehend the mind.
(Trans)forming Expertise
Authors: Miles-Hercules Deandre
Published: March 2024

This chapter explores the state of linguistics’ engagement with (trans)gender inclusion. The author’s discussion is framed by a call to insist upon increased competence around issues of inequality as necessarily entailed by the notion of scholarly expertise. Setting the discipline’s consideration of trans and nonbinary scholars and issues within the context of regressive sociopolitical undercurrents in higher education, the author highlights instances of linguists’ interactions, or lack thereof, with the concerns of trans and nonbinary scholars in the field in terms of the methodological, structural, and interpersonal aspects of scholarly activity. These occurrences are drawn from both public discourse and personal experience, detailing circumstances that range in character from general disregard around gender inclusion to outright antagonism of trans and nonbinary linguists. The author offers concrete actions and strategies for combating cisnormativity and transphobia in linguistics, ultimately advocating for a sea change in linguists’ orientation to questions of equity and justice.
Disrupting English Class
Authors: Plackowski Amy L.
Published: March 2024

This chapter describes a high school linguistics course developed by the author in the 2020–2021 school year for the public school where she teaches English Language Arts. Unlike most high school linguistics courses, this course is not an elective, but can be taken for core English credit. The course is organized around thematic units rather than traditional linguistic subfields. These units use linguistics to provide students with a framework for investigating social issues, problems, and questions related to social justice and media literacy. The course is aimed at exposing all students to linguistics, including students who have not typically been offered opportunities to take linguistics (e.g., students on education plans, students designated English language learners, and non–college-bound students). This chapter discusses the necessity of including linguistics in social justice teaching, as well as challenges and limitations.
Increasing Inclusion Through Structured Active Learning
Authors: Schwarz Florian
Published: March 2024

One part of working toward more diversity in linguistics is to make introductory courses more welcoming and inclusive. The need for this is especially pressing in theoretical and formal linguistics, where the lack of diversity is particularly pronounced. Active learning pedagogy has been shown to be a useful tool toward this goal, especially when paired with focused efforts toward creating an inclusive classroom culture. The author reports on his conversion of Linguistics 106: Introduction to Formal Linguistics to an active learning class format, reporting both the details of implementation and data on class outcomes and evaluations. Overall, the outcomes suggest that the new format enhances student performance and provides a more inclusive class experience. While no formal data on the impact on specific racial backgrounds is available, there is hope that these changes especially benefit students from diverse backgrounds and contribute toward making introductory linguistics teaching more welcoming and inclusive.
Introduction
Authors: Naseemullah Adnan A. , Chhibber Pradeep K.
Published: March 2024

The introductory chapter lays out the empirical and theoretical puzzles associated with South Asia and elsewhere: When and how do populist politics induce such significant political change, and how do they threaten the norms of democracy? It then defines populism as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that established elite groups disregard their concerns.” It situates populist politics in the context of crises of representation. It then introduces the concept of the moral contract: that in democracies, states are obligated to redress structures of inequity; populists evoke the breaking of the moral contract and promise restoration. The chapter then describes three different types of populist politics, depending on how widely these claims resonate and the consequences of these types for democratic backsliding.
Studying Populism in India and Pakistan
Authors: Naseemullah Adnan A. , Chhibber Pradeep K.
Published: March 2024

This chapter introduces the theoretical and empirical approach of the book to cases in South Asia. It begins with introducing the puzzle of the prevalence of populism in South Asia, despite multiple factors that should make this difficult, including long-standing, “primordial” social divisions. It then surveys the literature on national and subnational populisms in the region in relation to the book’s typology of populism. The chapter previews the historical narrative of cycles of national populist politics, beginning with crises of representation and being resolved by first reordering populisms of the left and then additive populisms of the right. It discusses how populism explains party system convergence in South Asia when most theory predicts political system fragmentation.
Additive Populists of the Right
Authors: Naseemullah Adnan A. , Chhibber Pradeep K.
Published: March 2024

This chapter explores the causes, nature, and consequences of additive populist mobilizations of the right in the 2010s: those of Narendra Modi and Imran Khan. Though a committed Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi’s victory in the 2014 elections resulted from a mobilization that energized the upper-caste Hindu vote-base but also reached beyond it by highlighting the moral failings of the UPA regime and promising restoration through good governance and development. In power, Modi has consolidated power as a constitutional strongman and, in the 2019 election, ran an ethnic majoritarian campaign that was not populist in character. Imran Khan in Pakistan ran successfully in 2018 on themes of anticorruption and good governance and against the moral failings of the PML-N government that attracted voters from all provinces. His chaotic period as premier ended with a parliamentary no-confidence vote supported by the judiciary and the military.
Populism in the United States
Authors: Naseemullah Adnan A. , Chhibber Pradeep K.
Published: March 2024

This chapter of Righteous Demagogues explores the populist tradition, its history, and its impact on party politics in the United States. It describes the crises of representation that have plagued the country as the distance between democratic ideals and the degraded reality of partisanship. It argues that the American Dream of progress through hard work and rule-following represents a moral contract, the abrogation of which allows for populism to emerge. It then surveys the preponderance of additive populisms, with the People’s Party in the late nineteenth century mobilizing in the gaps in representation between Democratic and Republican Parties, the ways that the New Deal made appeals to moral restoration that expanded the Democratic Party beyond its core base, transforming the state, and how Donald Trump used claims of brokenness and restoration of the American Dream to reach beyond the Republican base. The chapter also surveys quotidian populisms within the Democratic and Republican Parties and reordering populism in Huey Long’s Louisiana.
Introduction
Authors: Anderson Terry H.
Published: March 2024

The Introduction, New World Order: Last Superpower Standing and Desert Storm, examines two significant events in 1990–1991. The demise and collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the Red Army withdrawing from Eastern Europe and the subsequent “velvet revolutions” in those nations, which brought about independent nations. The reasons for that collapse are multifaceted, including the behavior of Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and US president George H. W. Bush. The collapse resulted in fifteen new nations, previously states of the USSR, and their subsequent struggles to bring about a semblance of capitalism and more democratic governments. The second main event in this chapter happened simultaneously, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting American-led coalition to liberate that nation, Desert Storm. That shifted US focus in foreign affairs away from the Soviet Union and toward Iraq.
Bush, Clinton, Perot, and the Crumbling Center
Authors: Anderson Terry H.
Published: March 2024

Chapter One, Bush, Clinton, Perot, and the Crumbling Center, first examines the reasons why President Bush with a 90 percent approval rating in spring 1991 could not win reelection—the recession of 1991–92, higher taxes, and the Rodney King beating and subsequently the South Central Riot. Bush did sign some significant legislation—the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Golden Visa, Clery Act, Clean Air Act—and he began negotiations for NAFTA. The 1992 campaign had three candidates: Republican Bush, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, and independent H. Ross Perot. The election placed Clinton in the White House, where he signed important bills—NAFTA, Family and Medical Leave act (FMLA), budget act, and Assault Weapons ban. His policy for gays in the military, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, satisfied no one. He reacted to the first domestic terrorism, the World Trade Center bombing, and to issues in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Meanwhile, a new term, politically correct, was emerging, as was diversity.
Angry White Men
Authors: Anderson Terry H.
Published: March 2024

Chapter Two focuses on an emerging and significant group in American society, angry white men. It investigates origins, development, and key actors, including David Duke, and violent ones Randy Weaver and Timothy McVeigh. The chapter examines the role of the federal government, especially the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ (ATF) behavior at Ruby Ridge and at the Branch Davidian compound Mount Carmel, led by David Koresh, and the subsequent Waco siege. Politically, angry white men voted en masse in 1994, and the result was the Republicans captured Congress, Newt Gingrich, who proposed his Contract with America, became Speaker of the House, and Bob Dole became Senate Majority Leader. On radio angry white men appeared as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and eventually Alex Jones, and on television at Fox News after Rupert Murdoch hired Roger Ailes.
Epilogue
Authors: Anderson Terry H.
Published: March 2024

The Epilogue concerns the event that ends the nineties era—the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. During the first seven months of the new Bush administration, Terror Czar Richard Clarke, CIA Director George Tenet, and others warned the administration about a possible attack from Osama bin Laden and his group, al Qaeda. The administration showed little concern until after nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. The attack cost about 2,800 American lives, the most deadly single assault on the United States. September 11, 2001, also changed the course of America—and the world.
Black, White, Human
Authors: Shonekan Stephanie , Seagrave Adam
Published: March 2024

This chapter contains each of the authors’ reflections on the process of becoming aware of racial identity in the United States. The authors trace this process beginning with their respective childhood experiences in very different environments. Shonekan grew up in a postcolonial Nigeria influenced by European culture and its widespread assumptions of white supremacy. It was not until adulthood, and through her experience of Blackness in the United States that she came to a full appreciation of her own identity. Seagrave grew up in Napa, entirely unaware of Black/white racial dynamics and histories. It was not until adulthood that he, too, realized the significance of his identity and the American history that had shaped it. The authors’ collaboration has led to a fuller understanding both of each other’s racialized identities as well as the humanity that they share.
Freedom and Hope, Liberation and Love
Authors: Shonekan Stephanie , Seagrave Adam
Published: March 2024

This chapter connects alternative versions of American historiography with Black music. It argues that the concept of freedom is central to both, receiving different and complementary expressions in each. Three versions of American historical narratives are presented: the Mount Rushmore narrative, the Untold Story narrative, and the Human Freedom narrative. The Human Freedom narrative is connected through the thought of W. E. B. Du Bois to the music of the African diaspora, and particularly that of Camilla Williams, William Grant Still, and Max Roach. The Harlem Renaissance is discussed as a catalyst for this connection. The authors conclude with a reflection, inspired by Du Bois, on the prospects for hope that American history will approach the ideal of freedom expressed in Black music.
Introduction
Authors: Massot Pascale
Published: March 2024

This chapter presents the three puzzles driving this book: Why, despite China’s rising salience, are Chinese stakeholders often not able to shape markets in their preferred direction? What explains the variation in China’s impact on global commodity markets? And how can we explain the uneven liberalization dynamics across markets? Indeed, not only do dominant Chinese stakeholders not always get what they want, but their behavior can also lead to unexpected global outcomes that include liberalization trends, a counterintuitive outcome. The chapter introduces the argument of the book, which is that the balance of market power between Chinese domestic and international market stakeholders and the way it evolves over time explain the behavior of market stakeholders as well as the likelihood of institutional change in global markets. Finally, the chapter introduces the qualitative methodological and case selection strategies for the cases of iron ore, potash, uranium, and copper.
Global and Chinese Commodity Markets
Authors: Massot Pascale
Published: March 2024

This chapter discusses and characterizes the variation in global and Chinese commodity markets across different types of commodities. It introduces an institutional conceptualization of global markets, based on four premises: markets as created, embedded, contested, and plural. This conceptualization allows us to think about global market change in a thicker, more fullsome way, by looking at how these markets are shaped, their concentration levels, the power relations between stakeholders, their price determination mechanisms, governance mechanisms and regulatory specificities, their history, or the embedded assumptions shared by stakeholders. The chapter then introduces the dependent variable, global commodity market pricing regimes, and its operationalization alongside a liberalization de-liberalization continuum. The importance of providing an explanation for liberalization or de-liberalization trends observed in global commodity markets is laid out: such trends are at times unintended by powerful stakeholders, unequal across markets, always political, and don’t map neatly against Chinese domestic political economy dynamics.
Explaining Change in Global Market Institutions
Authors: Massot Pascale
Published: March 2024

This chapter presents the book’s argument, which is that the balance of market power between Chinese domestic and international market stakeholders and the way it evolves over time explains the behavior of market stakeholders as well as the likelihood of change in global market institutions. The impacts of three aspects of relative market power are discussed: the relative position of market power between producers and consumers (determining who wields more influence), the change in relative market power between dominant producers and consumers (as a catalyst for change in global market institutions), and the relative position of market power vis-à-vis their own peers (a determinant in the development of preferences for global pricing regimes). The explanatory variables are then discussed in more detail, operationalized as the differential capacity to coordinate market behavior. Finally, the chapter discusses the ways in which the book contributes to broader literatures, including on global China.
Derek Walcott's Encounter with Homer
Authors: Friedman Rachel D.
Published: March 2024

This book puts Derek Walcott’s Omeros in conversation with Homer, especially the Odyssey, to understand how reading the poems against each other changes our understanding of both. By locating the poems in a zone of vibrant and unexpected encounter, it reveals how they are mutually informing texts, each made richer in the presence of the other. The book follows two interwoven thematic threads. The first focuses on the poems’ landscapes and seascapes, the characters who populate them and the ways in which Omeros reworks the Odyssey’s affective geography. Walcott reverses the Odyssey’s Ithacan trajectory from sea to land and finds a viable homecoming only at sea. In contrast to the Odyssey’s representation of the sea as lethal and its valorization of life on land, Omeros, which bears witness to the painful histories carried in the St. Lucian terrain, relocates the site of homecoming to the Caribbean Sea, a space which accommodates diasporic histories and the imagining of fluid forms of emplacement. The book’s second interpretive thread focuses on the “Poet,” Walcott’s authorial persona, as it follows his journey in and out of the poem and his positioning of himself as a “tribal poet” like Homer. The Poet’s ability to serve as the vessel of his people’s histories and give voice to their landscapes rests on his transformation into—and self-perception as—Homer’s contemporary and equal. Central to the project of Omeros is thus an account of the Poet’s shift from a diachronic to a synchronic relationship with Homer: over the course of the poem the Poet and Homer come to occupy the same temporality and creative space.
Introduction
Authors: Friedman Rachel D.
Published: March 2024

This chapter provides a theoretical framework for reading Walcott and Homer together; it offers several intersecting models for thinking about Walcott’s belief in the simultaneity of great art, and it explores the practical ramifications of this belief for a reading of Omeros. It first articulates Walcott’s forceful rejection of any hermeneutic dependent on a linear conception of time in the context of his positioning of his poetry within the fluid continuum of orally composed song. It then considers the ways that this resulting freedom from linear time offers new possibilities for imagining transpatial and transtemporal relationships between authors. Édouard Glissant’s notion of creolization provides one model for envisioning the encounters that ensue: the two authors being put in conversation with one another “intervalorize themselves” so that each is enriched by its contact with the other. The Odyssey and Omeros emerge as mutually informing texts interacting through networks of complex and shifting temporal routes. The links between the texts are not straightforward or predictable but surprising, unexpected, and often mappable only on winding and indirect pathways. The final part of the theoretical introduction considers recent models of classical reception studies which eschew straightforward avenues of reception in order to encourage readings that embrace looser and less hierarchical temporal arrangements.
An Odyssean Poem
Authors: Friedman Rachel D.
Published: March 2024

This chapter situates Omeros against the Odyssey by considering its formal aspects, particularly the interrelated questions of its structure and the narrative presence of the Poet. It focuses on the Odyssey’s portrayal of Odysseus as a wanderer-poet in relation to its depiction of the figure of the aoidos, the ancient bard who was one of a group of itinerant professionals. Discussion of Odysseus as an aoidos, focusing on the role that he plays as the teller of his own story in Odyssey’s books 9–12, provides entry to the structure of Omeros and the difficult question of the role of its books 4 and 5, where the poem departs St. Lucia and shifts to the Poet’s first-person account of his life in the US and his wanderings there and in Europe. In both the Odyssey and Omeros, the disjuncture between the middle books and the rest of the poem reflects the challenge posed by the protagonist’s homecoming. In this way Odysseus’s movement through the Odyssey—from being hidden on Calypso’s island, to telling his story among the Phaeacians, to returning home to Ithaca—provides a model for thinking about the Poet’s movement through Omeros. His telling this American narrative in books 4 and 5 facilitates his return to the island and reintegration with the St. Lucian community in books 6 and 7 so that his plot line and those of his characters can come together.
Overview
Authors: Heck Richard Kimberly
Published: March 2024

Frege’s Puzzle has been much discussed, but there is less agreement than one might have expected about what the puzzle is. In fact, there are three puzzles that go by this name. This chapter distinguishes the three puzzles and begins to explore the connections between them. It contains discussion of representational mental states and their explanatory role; of linguistic attributions of such states and what data a semantics for such attributions must explain; and of the bearing these questions have on communication involving proper names, with special attention to what is nowadays known as ‘interpersonal coordination’.
Do Demonstratives Have Senses?
Authors: Heck Richard Kimberly
Published: March 2024

Frege held that referring expressions in general, and demonstratives and indexicals in particular, contribute more than just their reference to what is expressed by utterances of sentences containing them. This chapter first attempts to get clear about what the Fregean view is, arguing that it rests upon a certain conception of linguistic communication, the ‘Naïve Conception’, that is natural but ultimately indefensible. On the other hand, however, understanding a demonstrative (or indexical) utterance does require one to think of the object denoted in an appropriate way. This fact makes it difficult to reconcile the view that referring expressions are ‘directly referential’ with any view that seeks to ground meaning in facts about communication.
Retreat
Authors: Gomes Anil
Published: March 2024

What connection, if any, is there between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world? This chapter examines two broad approaches to answering this question in twentieth-century philosophy. The first argues that it is a condition on being self-conscious that we think of the world as objective; the other argues that it is a condition on being self-conscious that we experience the world as objective. Each constitutes a retreat from the ambitions of the Cartesian and Kantian projects in that they aim to show only that self-consciousness requires our being intentionally directed towards an objective world. These arguments are clarified and discussed, and lessons from their failure are presented.
Definiteness in Balkan Romance
Authors: Isac Daniela
Published: March 2024

This book is a study of micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family (Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian): in some instances, the definite article is spelled out only once, in other situations it is spelled out multiple times, and in still other cases it can be phonologically null. The book proposes a uniform account of these options based on a post-syntactic rule that specifies the conditions under which the definite article can be pronounced on various heads within the nominal constituent. This rule is the same as the rule that affects the pronunciation of movement chains, i.e. the copy that is pronounced is the highest copy, unless realizing the highest copy violates some lexical property of the items involved. I propose that in languages where definiteness is expressed as a suffix, spelling out the highest copy of a definiteness Agree chain does violate a lexical property of D (its affixal nature), and therefore what gets pronounced is a lower copy. In addition, I argue that the option of pronouncing the lower copy of an Agree chain is further limited by two factors: (i) accessibility/locality restrictions and (ii) possible interference with other Agree chains that D might be part of, i.e. Agree chains based on a different feature than [def]. The various patterns of definiteness displayed by specific languages in this family are accounted for by positing that lexical and functional items may bear different features in different languages (which result in different Merge positions and different dislocation options).
Conclusions
Authors: Isac Daniela
Published: March 2024

Chapter 5 sums up the challenges presented by the data collected for each Balkan Romance language and correlates each challenge with the solution that was offered in previous chapters. The chapter also presents the factors that were identified as playing a role in the observed variation in definiteness patterns across Balkan Romance languages and points out that all of these factors are legitimate factors of variation within the theoretical framework adopted in this book. The chapter also offers a summary of the morpho-syntactic features of all relevant heads that play a role in the derivation of definite DPs (Num, Dem, A, Q, Card, Poss, N) and points out which of these features are shared by the respective heads across all Balkan Romance languages, and which are specific to individual languages.
Appendix
Authors: Isac Daniela
Published: March 2024

Chapter 6 offers a summary of the analysis presented in earlier chapters as applied to each individual Balkan Romance language. The first part of the chapter contains a list of template structures for each type of DP (simple DPs, DPs with post-nominal and pre-nominal adjectives, with quantifiers and cardinals, DPs with complements, and Dps with possessives) The second part of Chapter 6 contains a brief description of the relevant lexicon for the derivation of definite DPs, with the specific features that define their lexical items, as well as their merge position. The third part includes a list of patterns that can be found in each of the Balkan Romance languages, with a pointer towards the type of lexical items that are needed in the Numeration for the derivation of the respective pattern.
Selfish Genes to Social Beings
Authors: Silvertown Jonathan
Published: March 2024

For all the selfishness of genes, they team up to survive. The history of life is in fact a story of cooperation. Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it’s hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, this cooperative history digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, and to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, there would be no life.
Big steak or big mistake?
Authors: Silvertown Jonathan
Published: March 2024

Humans do favour their kin, but self-sacrifice as shown by Mexican Topos is but an extreme example of normal human behaviour towards non-relatives. In the jargon, we are ‘prosocial’. Kin selection cannot explain why we are prosocial since kinship is not required. What other explanations can there be? The simplest hypothesis is that it is all a big mistake. This proposes that humans evolved in small family bands where kin selection favoured helping everyone around you. As the size of human groups grew to include non-kin, we still treated everyone as kin because this was baked into the human psyche. Could prosociality be a non-adaptive, evolutionary hangover? An alternative hypothesis is that we are all dependent on each other for our individual success. It really does take a village to raise a child. Hunting large animals also requires the cooperation of many and it is ancient, dating back at least 1.8 million years to Homo erectus, who were skilled elephant hunters. The abundance of food produced by cooperative hunting is an example of what economists call a ‘public good’. Public goods are resources produced by the collective efforts of individuals in the community and from which all may benefit, regardless of personal effort. But what stops free riders taking advantage of everyone else’s hard work when a public good is available to all? One answer is that cooperators gather and work together, shunning and punishing non-cooperators. Successful systems of cooperation require the fair sharing of benefits and sanctions against cheats.
Odd couples
Authors: Silvertown Jonathan
Published: March 2024

A major transition in evolution (MTE) is complete when both partners become so dependent on each other that they reproduce as a unit. Typically, the smaller partner becomes a passenger transmitted from one generation of its host to the next along with the genes of the host, as happens in mitochondria and chloroplasts. What happens in lichens is complicated. At least 27 modes of reproduction are known, of which 13 involve a dispersal unit that contains the cells of an alga encased in fungus. In the remaining 14, the unit is a lone fungus that must find free-living algal cells to make a new lichen. As far as major transitions go, the 27 modes of lichen reproduction can be divided into just two kinds, depending on whether the alga is transmitted vertically (by inheritance) or horizontally (acquired from the environment). Only the lichens with vertical transmission have completed the transformation to a new individual. MTEs have occurred in many other symbioses, such as in insects that carry nutrient-supplying bacteria in a specialized organ called the bacteriome. There is a continuum of benefit in symbiosis, from cooperation (mutualism) at one end to theft (parasitism) at the other. It’s hard to tell where the bacteriome of insects sits on this continuum because the bacteria are so completely controlled by the insect host. But experiments suggest that, if allowed to, bacteria would multiply much faster than they can in the bacteriome and that therefore they are the prisoners not mutualists of insects.
Phytosympathies
Authors: Silvertown Jonathan
Published: March 2024

The first land plants brought symbiotic fungi with them from the sea. Over 70 per cent of land plants today still have these arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. AM fungi supply their hosts with nutrients gathered from the soil, particularly phosphorus, and in exchange receive carbohydrates from the plant. As much as 20 per cent of a plant’s production can go towards feeding its AM fungus, but it can receive back up to 80 per cent of the nitrogen and all the phosphorus it needs. Although plant and fungus are nutritionally dependent on each other, they do not reproduce as a unit. AM fungi are confined to roots and do not find their way into seeds, so the formation of the AM symbiosis was not a major transition in evolution. The orchids and the heathers have swapped the original AM for their own particular brand of mycorrhizal system. Orchids parasitize their fungus in their early years and some continue as parasites when fully grown, suggesting that plants are in control. A set of turnkey genes is used by plants to selectively admit fungal hyphae into root cells. The same genes admit symbiotic bacteria called rhizobia that feed plants in the pea family with nitrogen. Many different bacteria all have the same set of genes required for nitrogen fixation, which move as a unit between rhizobia species. The take-home message from root symbioses is that cooperation can be many layered, dependent, and complicated. All the symbionts have a choice of partners, which sustains cooperation without them becoming permanently bound together.