bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Artificial Intelligence and Judging
Authors: Niblett Anthony
Published: May 2024

This chapter canvasses academic literature on artificial intelligence (AI) and judging. While the idea of ‘robot judges’ has been discussed with derision and fear, there is great promise for AI to improve the judiciary, both in terms of expediting process and in terms of the improving the substantive decisions of human judges. But the use of AI by judges is highly controversial. While much of the academic literature on AI and judging is relatively recent, it is already vast. The chapter is divided into four main topics. It begins by defining what is meant in this chapter by AI, a notoriously fuzzy concept. The field is broad, and the definition is constantly changing. The author primarily focuses on tools of prediction, such as supervised machine learning. Second, the chapter discusses how scholars of judicial behaviour have used machine learning tools to make predictions of how judges will behave. It then explores how courts around the world have already begun to use machine learning predictions in their decisions. Finally, literature outlining concerns and risks if AI tools were to be used more widely by judges is covered. Topics such as transparency, explanations, trust, bias, and error are explored.
Ordinances and Rituals
Authors: Jankiewicz Darius
Published: May 2024

Adventist practice Christian rituals such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, foot washing, ordination, child dedication, and anointing of the unwell. A distinction is made between the rituals of sacraments and ordinances. Following the Baptist tradition, Adventists choose to observe only the latter. For Adventists, this distinction is more than semantics, as it is based on their understanding of salvation. While traditionally the word “sacrament” is closely associated with dispensing human salvation, Adventists participate in ordinances not to receive salvation but because they have already received the gift of salvation through grace and faith alone (sola gratia et fides). The chapter begins with a New Testament overview of the Christian rituals and continues with a brief history of sacramental theology, both Catholic and Protestant. The roots of the Adventist understanding of the Christian rituals are closely tied with the sixteenth-century Reformation and particularly with its radical branch, the Anabaptists.
Theological Roots of Seventh-day Adventism
Authors: Miller Nicholas P.
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses four thematic, theological roots of Seventh-day Adventism, drawing from Methodist/Arminian, Reformed/Calvinist, and Baptist/Radical Reformation traditions and influences. Each of these pillars contributes an important element to Adventist identity, and each needs to be understood to grasp the larger system. The discussion proceeds as follows, moving from more general themes that Adventism shares with certain Protestant cousins and brothers, to themes and doctrines unique to Adventism: “(1) A God of Truths: The Words of God and Common-Sense Philosophy,” (2) “A God of Righteous Loves: The Atonement, the Sanctuary, and God’s Moral Government of Love” (3), “A God of Freedoms: Free Will and Religious Liberty,” (4) “A God of Creations: Sabbath, Human Wholism, and Stewardship.” Admittedly, this discussion of the theological roots of Adventism is incomplete. Given space constraints, it focuses on those that have either been overlooked, de-emphasized, or not made prominent elsewhere in this Handbook.
Adventists in Europe
Authors: Heinz Daniel
Published: May 2024

The chapter explores the beginnings and progress of the Seventh-day Adventists in Europe, the first continent where American Adventists began their worldwide missionary expansion. Only when Adventists developed a peculiarly missionary strategy that was adapted to European culture were they able to accomplish a missional breakthrough. Just prior to the outbreak of World War I, European Adventists had the largest growth rate in membership worldwide. Later, after the catastrophe of the two world wars and a complete transformation of society—materialism, secularism, and postmodernism—the European mission was faced once again with entirely new challenges. Due to the cultural diversity and sensitivity as well as the economic prosperity, European Adventists make a significant contribution to Adventist world mission until today.
Millerite Revivalism and Post-Millerite Adventist Churches
Authors: Campbell Michael W.
Published: May 2024

This chapter describes the apocalyptic background of Adventism through the antebellum Millerite revival and traces some of the post-Millerite descendants. It begins by providing background to the rise of premillennial apocalypticism, in global context, with a specific focus on American interest in the eschaton. This movement took on a tangible form in American religious history through the work of William Miller and Henry Jones, among others, who with entrepreneurial Joshua V. Himes helped a series of localized revivals grow into a movement on the heels of the Second Great Awakening. As the movement grew, increasing attention centered on the date “about the year 1843,” and as the time drew nearer, October 22, 1844, as the focal point of “Great Anticipation.” Despite some fluidity about the date, ultimately Christ did not return as expected, leading to a profound sense of disappointment. This chapter concludes by describing the various groups left in its wake.
Adventists and the Military
Authors: Burton Kevin M.
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its relationship with the state and its military around the globe. The first part analyzes the reinvention of Adventism in America by tracing its roots in radical dissenting politics in the abolition movement to its embrace of conscientious cooperation during the World War I era that culminated in the church-state alliance that produced Operation Whitecoat. The second part of this chapter explores the variety of challenges Adventists have faced around the globe in relation to the state and its military. Beyond the challenges of the draft and compulsory military service, attention is given to how denominational policy crafted in the American context has allowed Adventists to go to war with each other in international conflicts. Finally, this chapter documents the common narrative of state oppression that the global church has faced and the variety of Adventist responses to these challenges.
Ellen G. White’s Influence in the Development of Adventist Beliefs and Practices
Authors: Fortin Denis
Published: May 2024

Seventh-day Adventists believe that Ellen White received a special end-time prophetic ministry. However, her influence on the development of distinctive Seventh-day Adventist doctrines was minimal in the early years of the denomination, but more so now in the maintaining of these beliefs. Her influence was more prominent in the development of its church organization and institutions, in particular its publishing houses, hospitals, and schools. She also left an impression on the church’s evangelistic and mission work. She also was a primary voice in advocating an Adventist lifestyle of vegetarianism, the abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, and other harmful substances, and an overall conservative social Christian behavior.
How Do the Rishonim Read the Talmud and the Geonim?
Authors: Kanarfogel Ephraim
Published: May 2024

This chapter seeks to sketch and describe the relationship between the Talmud and its geonic and other medieval interpreters known as the Rishonim. It does so via a case study involving aspects of apostasy from Judaism and reversion. The Talmud itself contains relatively little explicit material on these issues. It was the task of the Geonim and Rishonim to locate and carefully interpret this material, and to further expand and shape it to derive well-based legal opinions which could be applied to post-Talmudic periods. Through this discussion, the relationship between the writings of the Geonim and the corpus of the Rishonim is also clarified.
The History of Buddhism in the United States
Authors: Calobrisi Thomas
Published: May 2024

The history of Buddhism in the United States is one whose brevity belies its complexity. This chapter provides a survey of that history, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and leading up to the contemporary moment. It focuses on how Buddhists and Buddhist sympathizers have adapted and revised teachings and practices to create new cultural forms that can meet their spiritual needs. This tendency to adapt, revise, and collage Buddhist ideas and practices into new forms, this chapter argues, is not limited to the late twentieth century but is present in even the earliest American engagements with Buddhism. While the history of Buddhism in the United States coincides neatly with the transnational development of “Buddhist modernism,” the chapter concludes with a short reflection on the prospects and limitations of the recent postmodern turn in American Buddhism.
Tibetan Buddhism in America
Authors: Gayley Holly , Brallier Joshua
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores Tibetan Buddhism in America as one vector in the global trajectory of Tibetan Buddhism, propelled by displacement and the conditions of exile. Eschewing the “western adaptation” model that collapses transformation into modernization and/or westernization, the authors center Tibetan agents, frameworks, and strategies for enacting the translation and transmission of Buddhist teachings and practices to new lands. Their case studies attend to the dynamic tension between continuity and adaptation as well as the transnational scope of Tibetan Buddhism and efforts to localize it geographically, institutionally, culturally, and linguistically in North America.
Buddhism and American Literature
Authors: Beek Kimberly
Published: May 2024

Buddhism has long been a source of inspiration for American writers, and its teachings and principles have played a meaningful role in shaping the landscape of American fiction and poetry. From the Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century to the Beat poets of the mid-twentieth century, from Asian American authors and poets to postmodernist writers of the twenty-first century, this chapter explores the intersection of Buddhism and American fiction and poetry. Offering a concise, chronological survey, the author highlights key examples of Buddhism in American literature that illustrate the trajectory of Buddhist narratives in fiction and poetry from transnational stories about Buddhism in Asia rendered for an American audience, through mid-century narratives that portray Buddhism as a lived religion and describe how to live as a Buddhist in a diversity of ways, to contemporary Buddhist American literature that has embedded Buddhism into the American social imaginary. In doing so, the author suggests that the umbrella category label “Buddhism and American literature” is more accurately expressed as “Buddhist American literature.”
American Buddhism and Technology
Authors: Grieve Gregory Price , Veidlinger Daniel
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines Buddhism and technology in America, from its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century, when boats utilizing the latest navigation technologies brought Buddhist texts from Asia to American shores, until the most recent developments, such as the explosion of Buddhist phone apps. It covers Buddhism and radio, movies, television, drugs, medicine, computers, and the internet, and seeks to highlight the ways that Buddhists have utilized these technologies to strengthen their practice and their communities, and examines how Buddhist ideas have in turn contributed to developments in these technologies. The chapter also explores some of the perceived pitfalls of technology enunciated by critics, who believe that Buddhism should entail a lifestyle that eschews the trappings of modern technology, and in fact could even be threatened by it. While they see digital Buddhism as inauthentic and faddish, other critics see Buddhism as a strategic way to counter the menace of technology.
Nichiren Buddhism in America
Authors: Craig Ralph H.
Published: May 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the history of Nichiren Buddhism in the United States. Following a brief discussion of the thirteenth-century reformer Nichiren (1222–1282) and his core teachings, the chapter introduces the four main Nichiren Buddhist sects that came to the United States in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Nichirenshū, Nipponzan Myōhōji, Nichiren Shōshū, and Sōka Gakkai/SGI-USA, paying particular attention to the latter group. Finally, the chapter suggests three areas of future research that consider questions of identity, adherence and affiliation, and the study of chanting-based Buddhist communities in the United States. These future research avenues call for detailed studies of race and gender in US Nichiren Buddhist lineages; investigations of how belonging is understood in these lineages; and study of US Nichiren Buddhist lineages as examples of Buddhist communities whose practice centers on ritual and chanting, rather than seated meditation.
Indigenous Approaches to Contemporary Climate Change
Authors: Nelson Peter , Newland Michael
Published: May 2024

Sea level rise, drought, mudslides, and other extreme conditions stemming from climate change are impacting and will increasingly impact ancestral places. Even though these impacts are increasing in severity at an alarming rate, the rush by agencies, archaeologists, and land managers to design and implement treatment plans to address this need should be done in collaboration with Indigenous communities. This chapter discusses examples from coastal California in the United States of America and the “caregiver” model as a framework for assessing the appropriateness of various technologies and strategies for stewarding ancestral places and cultural heritage. This model is rooted in community-engaged, Indigenous, and heart-centered research that aligns with the perspectives and desires of Indigenous communities within compliance and academic archaeologies. Essential to this model is the use of low-impact and noninvasive methods for stewarding Indigenous sites and ancestral places, including the use of technologies such as GPS/GIS, terrestrial LiDAR, and Ground Penetrating Radar.
Indigenous Hunting and Trapping Practice of Nagaland
Authors: Vasa Ditamulü , Changkiri Yabangri , Hodgins Elspbeth
Published: May 2024

The Naga Indigenous trapping and snaring method is part of the life and culture of the Ao Nagas in the Mokokchung district of Nagaland. They are one of the major Naga groups of Naga Hills. Apart from agriculturally related activities, the communities’ livelihood has primarily depended upon the hunting, fishing, and trapping of animals and birds. This chapter centers on Changki village within the Mokokchung district inhabited by the Ao Nagas tribe. Hunting poses a significant threat to Nagaland’s wildlife; however, conservation strategies must acknowledge the importance of traditional activities to Ao Naga’s livelihoods and cultural well-being. This chapter provides a succinct record of Ao Naga traditional hunting techniques. It describes various trapping and snaring techniques and discusses how these hunting practices and people–land relationships at Changki village have changed in the face of conservation and animal protection legislation. This chapter also highlights the importance of maintaining traditional hunting practices and recognizing Indigenous knowledge systems. within approaches to sustainable land management and the maintenance of Indigenous cultural heritage.
Realism and Novel Ethics
Authors: Weinberger Christopher S.
Published: May 2024

What good are novels? What responsibilities might they bear in representing others? Are readers ethically accountable for how they read fiction? Should one treat characters as if they were real people? During the rise of high literary theory in the twentieth century such questions were largely set aside as naive or ideologically complicit; they have once again risen to the fore of academic, creative, and popular literary concern after the “turn to ethics” in the early twenty-first century. This chapter traces some of the major developments in recent thinking about novel ethics. It begins by examining assumptions about realism underlying common claims about what makes a novel ethically good or bad. Once this groundwork has been laid, it focuses on what contemporary scholars have begun calling “the new ethics,” a shift in perspective on the value of the novel informed by late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century critical and creative practice.
Affect and the Global Politics of Emotion in German Realism
Authors: Malakaj Ervin
Published: May 2024

Drawing on recent work in formalist literary studies, which posits that the realist novel conceptualizes the building blocks of social relations and even imagines new ones, this chapter turns to the rhythms of social life as conceptualized in German realist fiction with the aim to inflect the analysis through a consideration of how form relates to affect. Its case study is the three-volume novel Hulda or The Deliverer (Die Erlöserin, 1873) by the German-Jewish writer Fanny Lewald (1811–1889). The novel’s investment in social patterns makes legible how regulated sociability burdens women’s lives in different contexts. Here, realist form (i.e., mimetic thick description) meets emplotment strategies by which the felt experience of oppression articulates sites of solidarity among different women. The chapter then argues that Hulda casts the recurrence of this variety of negative affect as a vital site for women’s emancipation, linking German struggles to international ones.
Singing for Singing’s Sake?
Authors: Balsnes Anne Haugland
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores singing in educational contexts in Norway from historical and contemporary perspectives. It is a metastudy that draws from several empirical sources, including historical and current curricula, a nationwide survey of singing in schools, case studies of selected schools, and a survey concerning the experiences of students of education and their attitudes toward singing. As a point of departure, the following question was developed: What role or position has singing had in the Norwegian school system throughout its history, from the earliest statutory education in the 18th century until today? The analysis focuses on how singing is used and legitimized both by means of curricula and the actions and views of educators. Theoretical perspectives from the field of music education illuminate the analysis. The aim of the study is to acquire knowledge about school singing, historically and today.
Singing into a Smartphone
Authors: McDaniel Byrd
Published: May 2024

In the years alongside the rise of Web 2.0, beginning in the early 2000s, apps have proliferated that enable people to make music via online platforms. These include Smule, AutoRap, Triller, Vocalo, Groovepad, Beat Roller, and TikTok, and they represent some of the most popular amateur music practices in the world. These apps invite various kinds of user input, from rhythmic finger tapping to visually stunning dance routines to expressive singing performances. This chapter explores music apps that revolve around singing, enabling users to participate in virtual communities with their smartphones. Employing a participant-observation methodology, the author considers two music apps: Smule and TikTok. Both apps encourage users to perform with pre-recorded media and circulate these performances in digital worlds. The chapter explores how these apps encourage collaboration—both with other people and with sound recordings. By using collaboration as a point of departure, the author demonstrates how these apps raise new and longstanding questions about participation in singing communities and models some of the ways media studies and ethnomusicology can offer complementary tools for examining digital cultures.
Singing, Suffering, and Liberation in the Concentration Camps of the South African War
Authors: Johnson-Williams Erin
Published: May 2024

This chapter considers the political implications of communal singing in the concentration camps of the South African War, 1899–1902. In these spaces, spontaneous, communal hymn singing emerged as a form of ethnic and religious expression. Eye-witness accounts (diaries, medical and newspaper reports) of prison life in Afrikaner concentration camps reveal that the singing of Dutch psalm tunes and hymns occurred spontaneously at moments of personal and communal grief, as well as more formally in concentration camp funerals and prayer meetings. The texts were Calvinist, often providing parallels between the plight of the Afrikaner people and that of the Israelites. This sacred repertoire was in aesthetic and theological tension with the evangelical, English-language hymns that British soldiers and missionaries disseminated among the prisoners. Drawing on the themes of “sounding biopolitics,” “audible incarceration,” and “de-incarceration and liberation,” the author proposes that the experience of communal singing in the context of imperial incarceration created cultures of separatism in which the act of collective singing shaped expressions of both oppression and resistance.
Selectively Staging the “Beloved Community”
Authors: Karlsberg Jesse P.
Published: May 2024

Folk festival organizers and Black and white Sacred Harp singers collaborated to present community singing from The Sacred Harp tunebook (1844) at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife in 1970 and 1976. As they planned and executed these events, singers and organizers worked at cross purposes in ways that revealed their competing priorities and divergent understandings of race, place, and politics. At these events, organizers characterized the presence of Black and white singers together as serving civil rights protest and later as evidence of the movement’s successes. Singers brought altogether different priorities to these encounters, hoping to find fame, proselytize, and attract new audiences to this historical form of community shape-note singing. Meanwhile, continued racial inequality affected singers’ participation and audience members’ reception of their performances. These encounters among singers, organizers, and audiences illustrate the conflicts and misunderstandings that undergirded the conscription of culture bearers and other participants to present the folk music movement as promoting the civil rights struggle.
Youth, Group Singing, and Peacebuilding in Urban Zimbabwe
Authors: Gukurume Simbarashe
Published: May 2024

To combat boredom, political violence, waithood, and the attendant frustrations, many young people in Zimbabwe turn to music. In an authoritarian state that has long closed off the public sphere and other political and discursive spaces to critical voices, young people have carved out alternative publics where they engage with the political and articulate their grievances and frustrations with the state and its excesses. This chapter examines the temporalities of youth group singing and how it is deployed as a peacebuilding tool in urban Zimbabwe. Drawing on ethnographic research with youth popular musicians (Zimdancehall and urban grooves), the author argues that these genres provide young people with a critical discursive space to creatively navigate violence and enact peace. Apart from being a space through which young people politically resist the gerontocratic, corrupt, and marginalizing power system, the author also frames Zimdancehall music as a discursive space where political differences are (re)negotiated through peaceful encounters. Through group singing, young people try to shape and reshape their futures and fill their days with purpose. In fact, to entertain themselves and improve their well-being, youth participate in group singing, and during weekends, community halls become spaces of collective discursive musical expressions. Through group singing, the author asserts, young people constitute themselves as socio-cultural agents, but most importantly also as political actors who creatively speak truth to power, while simultaneously bridging political polarization and enacting community cohesion.
From Art Music to Heart Music
Authors: Evison Fiona
Published: May 2024

This chapter explores the place of relational composition in community singing. During in-depth interviews aimed at revealing views and experiences, 33 composers and community music leaders offered insight into the valuable roles that composers can play in participatory music-making. Using grounded-theory methodology, the author theorizes that community composers write and facilitate music-making in ways that benefit both the community and themselves. Composers become a part of a community through a continuum of compositional activities reflecting various levels of creative input and control. This requires multi-skilled, relationship-based compositional practices, which are enhanced by non-traditional training. Community composers’ practices reflect a shift in thinking and values from those often associated with art music, resulting in relational purposes for composition that balance, or even prioritize, the well-being of people with the musical product. Relational composition is applied in the context of participatory singing, where it results in inclusive, creative music that emotionally impacts both the singers and composer.
New Music for Old Prayers
Authors: Shragg Lior
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the role music plays in communal performances of religious devotion and the construction of social identity within Black Lemba and Rusape Jewish communities in Zimbabwe. A study of the musical practices of Lemba Jews reveals how the combination of local music styles with Hebrew text creates a new genre of Jewish liturgical music. In contrast, composers in the Rusape Jewish community create new music for worship in the vernacular dialect, although they similarly incorporate local music practices. Drawing on transcription, analysis, and interviews, this chapter offers ethnographic reflections and data concerning the ongoing efforts of both Lemba and Rusape Jewish communities as they continue their efforts to develop new Jewish music. The purpose of this investigation is to offer insights into Black Zimbabwean Jewish identity as displayed through communal singing and religious devotion. My study reveals that Black Zimbabwean Jewish identity is a component of a complex constellation of characteristics that can be attributed to both Lemba and Rusape Jews. There is a sense of great pride and legacy among these communities and a desire to establish a connection to the outside Jewish world. I argue that music is an important vessel through which they choose to perform their identities as communities.
Vernacular Christmas Carol Singing in the Southern Pennines of England
Authors: Russell Ian
Published: May 2024

The performance of distinctive carols has been a feature of the season of Christmas in villages within a 25-mile range of Sheffield for well over 250 years. The region comprises some 50 or more settlements, many of which maintain a vernacular caroling tradition. In contrast to the monodic examples of solo performers recorded in England by folksong collectors in the early part of the 20th century, the carols and the manner of performance are wholly dependent on social interaction, characterized by part singing. This chapter will explore this tradition of community singing in terms of function, meaning, musicality, group structure, style, and repertoire. The dynamics that distinguish these groups are analyzed, including transmission, the roles of singers, and the performance milieux. These carols differ significantly from the standard repertoire broadcast on British television and radio during the holiday season, and promoted by churches and choral institutions. They are performed by ad hoc groups without formal musical direction, largely comprising singers who have not had formal training, but have learned the tradition by ear.
Land for Livelihoods
Authors: Jacobs Ricado
Published: May 2024

Rapid urbanization and ever-expanding surplus populations are rooted in the tendency of global capitalism to destroy established livelihoods faster than it creates new ones. This growing relative surplus population is differentiated along racial, gender, and citizenship lines. Drawing on illustrations of cities in the global South and the global North, this chapter argues that sections of the dispossessed rural classes are reproducing themselves in urban spaces and converging with different strata of wage laborers to eke out an agricultural livelihood. This places urban agriculture and food production as an important arena of land struggles and a livelihood option for sections of both the old and newly formed urban classes. It is also thus one of the key pillars of the urban land question and anticapitalist agrarian struggles in the twenty-first century. These land struggles are shaping in consequential ways the process of urbanization, transforming socioecological relations and landscapes in the city.
Enterprise Privatization and Ex Post Firm Performance in Post-Socialist Economies
Authors: Mizobata Satoshi , Iwasaki Ichiro
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the relationship between post-privatization ownership and firm performance in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU). Based on the literature of enterprise privatization, it predicts that CEE countries perform better than FSU countries in enterprise restructuring. It also assumes that (a) the voucher system is the worst privatization method; (b) direct sales are superior to management-employee buyouts (MEBOs); and (c) the speed of policy implementation is related to progress in firm restructuring. The chapter reports that a research synthesis of 2,894 estimates drawn from 121 previous studies support these hypotheses overall. The results also indicate that in CEE and the FSU countries, private entities were more desirable corporate owners compared to the state; therefore, privatization policy was an essential element for the restructuring of the former socialist companies in the transition economies. The chapter concludes that the lesson obtained from enterprise privatization in CEE and the FSU is that the policy design for enterprise privatization is crucial, but that whatever it is, the free transfer of state assets must be avoided at all costs.
J-Curved Growth Path
Authors: Iwasaki Ichiro , Kumo Kazuhiro
Published: May 2024

After the collapse of socialism, there was not a single country in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) that did not experience a serious economic crisis. Furthermore, the process of economic recovery from the crisis varied greatly among these countries. This economic phenomenon, known as the J-curve growth path, has caused a great deal of controversy among economists over its determinants. This chapter traces one of the most important debates in the transition economics, and elucidates the mechanism of the J-curve growth path through a meta-analysis of previous studies. The results of the meta-analysis, which employs 3,279 estimates drawn from 123 previous studies, reveal that while the growth-enhancing effects of structural change and transformation policy were small yet significant, inflation and regional conflict had a highly significant and strongly negative effect on output. In addition, the legacy of socialism might exacerbate the decline in production in the early stages of transition. Although these five factors have been repeatedly argued in the extant literature as main causes of the economic crisis and recovery in CEE and FSU countries, the meta-analysis is the first to compare their effect sizes, finally providing a complete picture of the mechanism of J-curve phenomenon.
From Cellhouses to the Parliament
Authors: Kurt Mashuq
Published: May 2024

This chapter investigates the ethnoreligious dimensions of the Kurdish question in Turkey. It focuses on a prominent Kurdish Islamist group, Hizbullah, and its transformation from an underground armed organization in the 1990s to a multiplicity of legal entities and a political party, the Free Cause Party (Hür Dava Partisi, Hüda-Par), under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002. After introducing a short historical account, it examines the conditions of Hizbullah’s emergence and its reconfiguration in the context of the Kurdish national struggle and the Islamist mobilization under the AKP’s governmentality in Turkey. It explores the power configurations and shifting alliances among the Islamist political fields following the failed peace negotiations between the Turkish state and the PKK in 2015 and the military coup attempt in 2016. It suggests that by thoroughly examining these shifting alliances and paying scholarly attention to the developments in the ethnoreligious political fields, we can understand the ways in which Kurdish Islamist groups navigate and adapt within the complex socio-political landscape of Turkey, shedding light on the intricate interplay between ethnicity, religion, and politics in the region.
Munging the Ghosts in the Machine
Authors: Yung Vincent , Colyvas Jeannette A.
Published: May 2024

Data wrangling is typically treated as an obligatory, codified, and ideally automated step in machine learning that transforms qualities into quantities and quantities into algorithmic inputs. In contrast, this chapter proposes a different perspective, suggesting that archival data wrangling is a theory-driven process best understood as a practical craft. The chapter draws on empirical examples from contemporary computational social science to identify nine core modes of data wrangling: noticing, accessing, filtering, assembling, weaving, casting, visualizing, retracing, and prospecting. These modes, while presented as sequential, are actually iterative and nonlinear in practice. Treating data wrangling as a craft allows researchers to practice reflexivity in a process that is inherently political. Archival evidence and analytical methods can propagate enduring institutional biases if left unchecked. To this end, the chapter also discusses how data wrangling can help address issues of coded bias in scholarly research and beyond. While contemporary machine learning focuses on architectural engineering, a thorough engagement with it requires a deep of understanding of data wrangling.
Machine Agencies
Authors: Yolgörmez Ceyda
Published: May 2024

This chapter builds on the phenomena of large language models (LLMs) to crystallize the outlines of a sociology of machines. LLMs pose many problems to our existing conceptions, especially the notion of agency in sociology, but at the same time present possibilities for developing a different kind of thinking. This chapter will problematize singular conceptions of agency that presuppose an individual actor, and develops an approach to understanding agency as a processual and collective achievement that includes human-machine socialities of different kinds. In discussing machine agencies, the chapter will first consider the figurations of human-machine relations that condition the possibility and stability of these models. Then, it will think through an event of machine authorship to both expose the limits of contemporary notions of agency and to propose a new way of looking at human-machine relations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the possibility of a sociology of machines founded on creative and playful methodologies and suggests this as a way to resist the dominant forms in which technology is commonly conceived.
Disseminating Buddhism in Transnational Organizations
Authors: Cheng Wei-yi
Published: May 2024

This chapter introduces contemporary transnational Buddhist organizations, investigating the diffusion of Buddhism across borders through transnational networks. It specifically focuses on Buddhist entities that have emerged from the latter part of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. These organizations may have their origins in one country, but they extend their influence and activities beyond national borders. The primary aim of this chapter is to introduce readers to Buddhist organizations that actively engage in transnational networking, a trend expected to further expand with technological advancements. The progress in transportation and communication technologies has made way for a novel era for Buddhists whose religious practices are being significantly shaped by this evolving phenomenon. The discussion is based on Peggy Levitt’s classification of transnational religious organizations into extended, negotiated, and recreated categories. This chapter expands the framework by introducing an “interactive” category, which takes into account the transnational religious influence of short-term mobile individuals.
Argentina
Authors: Chehtman Alejandro , Espósito Carlos
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines the integration of international law within the Argentine legal framework, highlighting its constitutional acceptance since the 19th century and the substantial deepening occurred with democratization after 1983 and the constitutional reform of 1994. Through both doctrinal and empirical analysis of treaty practices and judicial applications, it illustrates Argentina’s respect for and application of international norms, especially in international human rights law, countering traditional dualist and monist theories. The study contributes to understanding domestic implementation of international law and the dynamics of such law in Argentina’s legal system, signaling some features of a distinctive Argentine foreign relations law.
Assemblies and the Courts
Authors: Cammiss Steven , Doherty Brian , Hayes Graeme
Published: May 2024

To what extent is the protest trial a threat or an opportunity to protesters? This chapter argues that it is both. Trials potentially provide a site of resistance and the means for ongoing struggle and contestation, while simultaneously threatening to repress and restrict protesters’ voices. While protesters may wish to accept prosecution and conviction as the necessary consequence of direct action, their trial may nonetheless enable them to raise their political claims; foreground motives, ideals, and politics; speak truth to power; and address a wider audience beyond the courtroom. Recognizing that the court is a social space, not merely a site of adjudication, reveals the normative function of a trial as a social and communicative activity where the defendant is called to account. Yet there is significant variation in how trials serve this purpose and the degree to which they provide opportunities or constraints for activists. By contrasting two significant protest cases in the UK (the ‘Stansted 15’ and the ‘Colston 4’), the chapter not only reveals the extent to which some protest trials are more ‘political’ than others but suggests that one explanation lies in the availability and interpretation of legal defences which can serve to open up the courtroom as a political site. In this regard, the Stansted 15 were constrained by the process while the Colston 4 were effectively able to place Colston and Bristol City Council on trial.
History and Assembly in the Postcolony
Authors: Lockwood Sarah J.
Published: May 2024

The importance of history on protest has long been noted by scholars of social movements, but the literature still lacks a detailed understanding of the ways in which earlier assemblies influence assemblies in the modern day. This chapter provides an initial attempt to fill this lacuna by examining the ways in which historically important anti-colonial assemblies continue to influence protest in the postcolonial world today. Drawing on a rich set of examples, it argues that anti-colonial protests shape contemporary protests in ways far broader than the literature has traditionally assumed—affecting the issues protested, the types of protest we see, and the social and political arrangements that channel protest. Crucially, while some of these connections between past and present may be important globally, this chapter argues that there is something distinct about the way that anti-colonial movements influence contemporary protest in the postcolony. This is because the continued dominance of colonial arrangements and anti-colonial movements make it particularly difficult for activists today to break free from their influence. It is thus impossible to fully understand contemporary protest activity in the postcolony without studying and understanding these historical influences.
The Digitally Mediated Freedom of Assembly
Authors: McPherson Ella
Published: May 2024

We must reimagine the digitally mediated freedom of assembly—a misunderstood and misattended manifestation of this human right. Mediation, or the transmission of communication across time and space, is core to the practice of assembly, and so online assembly is a more mediated version of face-to-face assembly—rather than a lesser form. Even so, digitally mediated assembly is discredited as slacktivism—slacker activism, portmanteaued—in Western public spaces. This epithet springs from a tradition of subordinating the freedom of assembly to other communication rights, like the freedom of expression, because assembly is seen as a collective (vs individual), emotional (vs rational), and positive (vs negative) liberty. Slacktivism is also a visibility backlash: a reactionary, pervasive, distracting, media-fuelled phenomenon that preserves the status quo of public visibility. Discursively repositioning assembly online as the digitally mediated freedom of assembly extends the protection of this right to more people and more practices. It highlights the importance of incorporating assembly affordances into human rights-centred technology design, such as the affordances of pre-assembly, sight and sound, and gathering. Emergent social media platform trends—like depoliticization, the fragmentations of networks, and user alienation—only make attention to assembly affordances all the more urgent. Furthermore, promoting the idea of collective rights such as assembly helps us reimagine other communication rights currently understood as individual, such as the freedom of expression, raising the possibility of a détente in the current culture wars around this right.
Dramatic Criticism
Authors: Wu Duncan
Published: May 2024

An erroneous consensus has built up around Leigh Hunt—that he created the drama review as we know it, being responsible for increasing the amount of attention given theatre by daily newspapers and by making it normal for papers to devote lengthy notices to particular performances. In fact, as this chapter demonstrates, there is no evidence for these misconceptions. Instead, it would be more accurate to see Hunt as the inheritor of a thriving culture of journalistic reviewing which stems back to the mid-eighteenth century, and which was fostered by morning and evening papers, London, and provincial papers. The repeated claim that Hunt single-handedly brought the corrupt system of puffing to an end (i.e. favourable reviews paid for by free tickets and other blandishments) is also wildly inaccurate; the first steps to cease the practice were taken in 1798 and had nothing to do with Hunt. The careers of three theatre reviewers of the day are surveyed in order to show that Hunt was building on their work when he joined their ranks. Hunt’s theatre reviews are more often than not concocted essays that have little to do with specific performances. A better candidate for the role of innovator would be William Hazlitt, of whose theatrical reviews Hunt’s champions are usually surprisingly ignorant.
Essays
Authors: Morrison Robert
Published: May 2024

The Romantic essay took many different forms to strikingly different ends. Some versions of it appeared as book-length arguments that were designed to convince readers of a certain point of view, including Thomas Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population and Hannah More’s Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St Paul. But the vast majority of Romantic essays were shorter pieces first published in the periodicals, including the mordant reviews of Francis Jeffrey, the epistolary articles of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the raucous dialogues of John Wilson, and the dynamic sketches of Charles Dickens. Most notably, liberal-minded magazines like the London and the New Monthly fostered a new kind of personal essay that expanded and reworked eighteenth-century iterations of the form, and that reached its highest points in the writings of Thomas De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and William Hazlitt.
Europe
Authors: Saglia Diego
Published: May 2024

As ideas of cultural identity in Britain solidified between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Romantic-period narratives of the nation’s literary heritage confronted and accommodated a long history of contacts and exchanges with neighbouring traditions. This chapter addresses this process of cultural self-construction by exploring how Romantic nonfiction prose engaged with Europe as a literary–cultural continuum and assessed the place of England and Britain within it. Exploring selected literary works—including Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry (1774–1781), John Dunlop’s History of Fiction (1814), Walter Scott’s essays on chivalry, drama, and romance for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1818–1824), William Hazlitt’s lectures and critical essays (1817–1820), and Thomas De Quincey’s ‘Letters to a Young Man Whose Education Has Been Neglected’ (1823)—this chapter reappraises how nonfiction prose contributed to the emergence of a Romantic discourse on the nation’s literary–cultural history and identity, its current condition, and possible developments within the encompassing context of Europe.
Fashion
Authors: Campbell Timothy P.
Published: May 2024

This chapter outlines the pervasive entanglements of Romantic writing with the ‘language of fashion’ to examine fashion’s systemic importance for the prose of the age. During the Romantic period, written fashion served by turns as a model regime of close, material description; a structuring chronology of everyday social life; a template for serial genres and projects; and an intractable site of primary aesthetic qualities not easily bound to particular ideas, persons, times, and places. After beginning with William Hazlitt’s bird’s eye view of the promiscuous intersections between fashion and writing in the period, the chapter continues by outlining significant eighteenth-century developments in the material culture of clothing that supported fashion’s ascent in prose; sketching the Romantic state of ‘written fashion’ across a range of print genres (initially extraliterary but increasingly literary as well); and then concluding with an extended reading of James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner as a wryly magisterial commentary on the irresistible compulsions of fashion for prose, in the 1820s and ever since.
Antiquarian Publishing
Authors: Lynch Deidre
Published: May 2024

The peculiarities of antiquarians’ knowledge work had long made them the butt of jokes. That humour about antiquaries’ inability to systematize their learning, tendency to get waylaid by petty details, and attachment to mouldy old things continued in the Romantic period. Nonetheless, antiquarianism was in this period ever more public facing and reader friendly. It proved influential as an inspiration for such minor prose forms as the familiar essay and the anecdote. This chapter, which considers writing by William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Washington Irving, and Isaac D’Israeli, aims to do justice to the dynamism of antiquarian publishing. It traces how antiquaries’ curious and contrarian learning modelled a pluralistic understanding of the historical past and how it supplied Romantic authors with resources with which to express their own alienation from the present. The chapter also engages the concern with learning’s material platform that made Romantic antiquaries the forerunners of twenty-first century book historians.