bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Non-quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic groups via Stallings-like techniques
Authors: Dani Pallavi , Levcovitz Ivan
Published: September 2022

We provide a new method of constructing non-quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic groups by utilizing techniques inspired by Stallings’ foldings. The hyperbolic groups constructed are in the natural class of right-angled Coxeter groups (RACGs for short) and can be chosen to be

2
2

-dimensional. More specifically, given a non-quasiconvex subgroup of a (possibly non-hyperbolic) RACG, our construction gives a corresponding non-quasiconvex subgroup of a hyperbolic RACG. We use this to construct explicit examples of non-quasiconvex subgroups of hyperbolic RACGs including subgroups whose generators are as short as possible (length two words), finitely generated free subgroups, non-finitely presentable subgroups, and subgroups of fundamental groups of square complexes of nonpositive sectional curvature.
Gendered Organization Theory
Authors: Rodriguez Jenny K. , Guenther Elisabeth Anna
Published: September 2022

Gendered organization theory refers to an understanding of organizations as sites that (re)produce gender dynamics and the gender order. Bringing the gender lens to discussions about organization theory is useful to capture the filter through which relational dynamics operate in organizations and the way these (re)construct the psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that shape the organization as a dynamic, relational, and interdependent structure. Key ideas associated with gendered organization theory center on gender as a social category that continues to be the basis for inequality in working life. Gendered organization theory pays particular attention to how gender interacts with different dimensions of social, political, economic, and technological life and how this is mobilized in organizations as well as how organizations foster and tackle new and reformulated gender(ed) inequalities. However, gender is not the only social category of difference that shapes inequality in organizations and would benefit from more explicit insight from feminist theories to unpack the complex dynamics in organizations and the impact they have on individuals. Focusing on intersectionality, decolonial feminism, ecofeminism, queering, and theorizing beyond the human provides a more integrated framework to understand the complex and fluid impact of gender in organizations.
Arts-Based Queer Communication Studies
Authors: Faulkner Sandra L. , Pollino Madison A.
Published: September 2022

The blending of queer communication studies and arts-based research (ABR) offers a unique way to engage in this exploration and critique dominant structures and institutions that influence social lives. ABR offers scholars a means to understand in more imaginative ways by allowing for personal, emotional, experiential, and embodied expressions of knowledge that value alternative, participatory, and indigenous ways of knowing. ABR approaches to queer communication studies allow individuals to combine queer concepts, content, and methodologies with subjective lived and embodied experiences. ABR offers several avenues to disrupt and transform the taken-for-granted heteronormative foundations of research. ABR alongside queer communication studies encourages individuals to challenge their perceptions of gender and sexuality as well as the conventions that shape these perceptions. ABR, unlike other research methodologies, creates a space where individuals can explore and confront difficult topics in a more digestible and nontraditional manner. Through creative practices such as autoethnography, poetic inquiry, performance, and film, individuals can resist and critique the status quo while simultaneously providing an alternative perspective that recognizes the highly personal and fluid nature of one’s identities and relationships.
Queer Temporalities
Authors: Goltz Dustin
Published: September 2022

The political and ideological workings of temporality—how our engagement and understanding of time is culturally constructed and assigned meaning—has garnered much attention by queer theorists inside and beyond the field of communication. Specifically, queer temporality, as an interventionist project, interrogates the assumed naturalness of straight temporality, its governing logics, and its foreclosures. Stemming from the work of queer theorists such as Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, Jose Esteban Muñoz, and Elizabeth Freeman, queer temporality calls for reconsideration of how marriage, children, generativity, and inheritance define and confine cultural expectations of maturation, responsibility, happiness, and future. Additionally, queer temporality seeks to question how time is approached and performed, examining the political elements of these understandings. In short, queer temporality pushes against heteronormativity’s framing and disciplining of time, charting more queer ways to think about history, pace, relationships, notions of success, and the linear segmentation of past/present/future.
Queer Safe Spaces and Communication
Authors: Pascar Lital , David Yossi , Hartal Gilly , Epstein Brandon William
Published: September 2022

Historically, organizations and individuals have (un)consciously produced safe spaces out of various backgrounds and in myriad ways. Specifically, queer safe spaces represent a significant construct within queer discourses and practices that articulate the need for physical, psychological, rhetoric, virtual, and imagined safety. In this context, safety means being protected from heteronormative and patriarchal violence that shapes the everyday lives and subjectivities of queer and LGBT+ individuals in public and private spaces. Whether these are offline, online, physical, or educational settings, queer safe spaces are defined as relational and deliberative spaces in which unsafety cannot be completely undone. Queer safe spaces then provide refuge for activism, social and personal transformation, facilitation thereof for productive spaces of dialogue, and identity construction. Even though the term “queer safe space” is commonly used, it remains undertheorized and no comprehensive understanding of queer safe spaces, their social role, or the practices involved in producing them exists. This article therefore defines queer safe spaces by encompassing the use of a critical perspective to foreground their qualities and fallacies as well as their inherent dilemmas and contradictions.
Ethnic Media: A Reflection and Outlook on Ethnic Media Research
Authors: Yu Sherry S.
Published: September 2022

Ethnic media have been studied consistently across various regions since the early 1900s. This chapter reflects on ethnic media research in the digital age, specifically focusing on research published in the past two decades. The purpose is to understand how ethnic media have been conceptualized and researched, and to suggest future research directions. This reflection identifies the persistent conceptualization of ethnic media as “media for the Other,” with increasing attention to the broader role of ethnic media as “media beyond the Other.” This reflection also identifies three approaches to ethnic media research: assimilationist/pluralist, journalistic/media-centric, and interdisciplinary approaches. Among these approaches, the journalistic/media-centric and interdisciplinary approaches were notable. As attempts to move beyond the assimilationist/pluralist binary, the journalistic/media-centric approach tends to explore the production, consumption, and content of ethnic media within or in relation to the broader societal context of social, economic, political, policy/regulatory, and technological factors, while the interdisciplinary approach tends to emphasize hybrid diasporic identities of migrants and their sense of belonging and media practices in a transnational context. Future research requires more attention to ethnic media in the Global South, the diasporic nature of ethnic media, and the intercultural role of ethnic media.
Education and Ethnicity in Contemporary Russia
Authors: Trofimova Irina N. , Morgan W. John
Published: September 2022

Ethnicity and education form an interdisciplinary and multilevel research field. The issues are equity, whether education promotes unity or ethnic diversity, and whether such objectives are contradictory. Interethnic relations in education are shaped by state policy as well as social, economic, and demographic processes, culture, and traditions. The relations between federal government and regions, which have different ethnic demographics, create an ideology of interethnic relations in formal education and the media. Such relations develop from the everyday communication experiences of ethnic groups in multinational communities. These are at the macro-, meso-, and microlevels providing a framework for description and theoretical analysis.

The historical context is followed by the political, demographic, and ethnic structure of the Russian Federation. Ethnicity and national minorities in formal education, including migrants and their children, is considered. This is followed by ethnicity in higher education, professional education, and vocational training. The contribution of informal popular education and lifelong learning to self-esteem, and civic self-confidence is also considered. Interethnic relations are influenced by the relationship between the titular nations and the Russians. The experience of coexistence in a multinational environment is a key factor in interethnic communication in contemporary Russia. The problem of ethnicity in education is changing, with the spatial segregation of ethnic groups becoming more common as well as the growing role of the media. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is noted. The impact on interethnic relations of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, is assessed briefly.
Ethnicity, Migration, and Digital Labor: Mobile Phone Technology Use Among Uzbek Migrants
Authors: Urinboyev Rustamjon
Published: September 2022

Smartphones and social media have become inextricable parts of our daily lives. The everyday lives and communication practices of migrant workers are particularly affected by these global technological developments. Such global developmental trends are especially visible within the growing body of scholarly literature on migrant transnationalism and technology, where mobile phones are examined as central drivers of migrant transnationalism. However, the bulk of the existing literature on “migration and mobile phone technology” focuses on the case studies of immigrant communities living in Western democracies (e.g., the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia). Given the sociopolitical and cultural differences between Western and post-Soviet contexts, we cannot assume that theoretical insights and tools developed in Western contexts are fully applicable in the Russian context.

The Russian context provides intriguing insights to “migration and mobile phone technology” debates given its undemocratic regime, xenophobic environment, corrupt legal system, and draconian immigration laws and policies that leave little room for migrant transnational activism and collective mobilization. Notwithstanding these structural barriers, migrants in Russia are resilient actors and have developed alternative coping strategies by producing smartphone-mediated transnational communities and identities, usually centered around migrants who hail from the same village and community. Accordingly, within the Russian context, smartphones and social media serve not merely to maintain daily transnational communication (i.e., being “here” and “there”), but, more importantly, represent tools for building a tight-knit community and are crucial to migrants’ daily survival and livelihoods in a repressive and xenophobic environment. These processes not only encompass coping strategies and communicative practices that take place within the migrant labor market (“outside world”) but also touch upon the lives of migrants serving prison sentences in Russia’s penal institutions (“inside world”). In this sense, smartphones provide a virtual platform for various risk-stretching activities and establishing social safety nets otherwise unavailable from the migrants’ home and host countries.
The Body in Social Interaction
Authors: Keevallik Leelo
Published: September 2022

Communicative action can be carried out by not only verbal but also embodied means. People regularly use multimodal resources to make sense for each other. Consider a mundane activity, such as a greeting. In addition to the choice of lexical items to fit the relationship, such as “hi,” “yo,” or “good morning, Mister Smith,” extreme prosody featuring high pitch, increased loudness, and extensive lengthening on a “hi” may be necessary for your friend to feel recognized and truly appreciated. In some contexts and relationships, a handshake, a bow, or a hug may be mandatory, while the appropriate duration of those behaviors, the adequate spatial distance, and the exact positions of touch are culturally significant. Across activity settings, bodily behavior is regularly treated as meaningful by coparticipants, as it plays a role in action formation alongside the use of lexicon and grammar. Qualitatively different semiotic resources are juxtaposed so that they mutually elaborate each other and constitute actions within the locally emerging interactional sequences, as understood by the current participants. Aspects such as gaze, gesture, posture, objects, and movement are all potentially recruited to achieve social action, depending on the praxeological context. It is, for example, crucial to pay attention to a specific area in the surrounding space when someone does a pointing gesture or to adjust one’s pace when interacting on the go. We are held socially accountable for our embodied behavior, be it designed for others or not, and the body is constantly interpreted in regard to its action import. Social actions can furthermore be exclusively carried out by the bodies within their spatial, material, and praxeological settings.
Persuasive Communication: Source, Message, Audience
Authors: Rosenberg Benjamin D. , Marshburn Alexander , Siegel Jason T.
Published: September 2022

Persuasive communication, defined as any message designed to influence people’s attitudes or behaviors, is a core concept in social psychology. It is possible that persuasive communication scholarship would not exist if not for Carl I. Hovland, Irving L. Janis, and Harold H. Kelley’s seminal text Communication and Persuasion, and its theoretical propositions are still being examined today. The approach outlined in that text, which has since informed multiple theories and research programs, suggests a tripartite model, where source, message, and audience features dictate persuasive impact.
Ethical Leadership
Authors: van Gils Suzanne , van Quaquebeke Niels
Published: September 2022

Business scandals in the early 2000s gave renewed rise to the question of how companies can be led ethically. Correspondingly, research on ethical leadership focuses on leaders as moral persons—but even more so as moral managers. This focus came with a more general shift within many Western societies toward issues of sustainability, social justice, and well-being, and it has simultaneously given rise to the development of related constructs such as servant, respectful, and authentic leadership. In general, ethical leadership research has contributed to a necessary debate about leaders’ roles and responsibilities. Nonetheless, recent meta-analyses and critical reviews have criticized the minimal to nonexistent incremental value of the current operationalization of ethical leadership beyond other leadership concepts, underscored the philosophically all too simplistic notion of ethics underlying the concept, and highlighted its construct redundancy with the domain of follower-focused leadership. As such, there appear to be fruitful avenues for further honing the construct and its operationalization so that research can meaningfully inform leadership practice.
Cross-Cultural Issues in Industrial, Work, and Organizational Psychology
Authors: Glazer Sharon , Kwantes Catherine
Published: September 2022

For the first half century of industrial, work, and organizational psychology’s (IWOP’s) existence, the role of culture has been ambiguous at best. Attention to culture in IWOP started to take form in the 1970s, and in the last 20 years culture has begun to be integrated into IWOP research more generally. This integration has led to explorations of culture in the workplace far beyond the initial focus on organizational management theories and practices to looking at cultures’ relationships with all aspects of organizational and employee experiences.

Most cross-cultural studies in IWOP research clearly show the importance of understanding societal culture’s impact on organizations, institutions, work, and workers. Merely transferring existing theories and practices of IWOP to new contexts without a clear understanding of whether those theories and practices make sense across cultures is unlikely to be successful. Through globalization and the multiculturalization of workforces, employees are increasingly interacting with people of varying cultural backgrounds on a far more regular basis than in the past. This change has spurred attention to how culture has impacted theories, research, and practices in some key IWOP theoretical domains, including leadership; occupational safety, stress, and health; precarious and decent work; trust and trustworthiness; and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the multinational organization.
Corporate Fraud, Corruption, and Financial Malfeasance
Authors: Prechel Harland
Published: September 2022

Corporate failures and financial crisis in the early 21st century generated an increased awareness of the pervasiveness of corporate corruption, fraud, and financial malfeasance. In addition to the tremendous financial costs to society and the loss of public confidence in corporations and social institutions, corporate wrongdoing adversely effects corporations by undermining profits, morale, and trust.

Understanding contemporary corporate corruption, fraud, and financial malfeasance requires an examination of the extent to which historical variation in organizational, political-legal, and ideology arrangements affect opportunities for managers to engage in these behaviors. These components of the social structure are not mutually exclusive but are part of a dynamic system that consists of many interconnected component parts. As a whole, the literature examined here suggests that the components of the formal and informal structure create incentives, motivations, and opportunities to engage in corruption, fraud, and malfeasance.

The emphasis on social structure is critical to advance our understanding of how corporate political embeddedness, the social organization of markets, and corporate characteristics all affect wrongdoing. The main findings include the following.

1.Contemporary research confirms and extends Sutherland’s initial insight that differential social structure creates variation in opportunities to engage in corporate crime. Corporate characteristics, including structure, size, vertical integration, prestige, cognitive assumptions, corporate norms, dependence on institutional investors, bounded rationality, opportunities, and political embeddedness, are associated with corporate corruption, fraud, and financial malfeasance.

2.Corporations in the United States engaged in political behavior to re-regulate multiple spheres of corporations’ political embeddedness that permitted management to enter existing markets, create new markets, and engage in high-risk behaviors in them.

3.Corporate culture and ethics interact with markets and other dimensions of the social structure to create normative conditions conducive to corporate corruption and fraud.

4.Individual characteristics, including chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) age and the networks among top management and corporate boards, affect corporate corruption, fraud, and malfeasance.

5.Given that few policy changes were implement in the 2008 post-crisis era, the political embeddedness and characteristics of corporations continue to provide opportunities for corporations and their agents to engage in corruption, fraud, and malfeasance.
Crime Mapping and Policing
Authors: Tompson Lisa
Published: September 2022

The empirical truism that crime clusters geographically has increasingly informed police practice in the first two decades of the 21st century. This has been greatly aided by crime mapping, which can be thought of as a summary term for the geographic analysis of data related to crime and disorder. Crime analysts use a range of mapping techniques to describe and explain patterns in data, being mindful of the unique qualities of geographically referenced data. These include point pattern maps, thematic maps, kernel density estimation, and GI* statistic maps. Rate maps are also used when the aim is to understand the risk of victimization. Crime maps can be used to identify hot spots for targeted action, identify recently committed crimes that might form part of a linked series, monitor the impact of police initiatives, and aid understanding of crime problems. Environmental criminology theory is often used for the latter of these purposes, as this can explain spatiotemporal patterns revealed through crime mapping and assists in understanding the mechanisms driving the patterns. The logic for organizing police efforts around geographical crime concentration is instinctive: by focusing on a small number of locations with high crime volumes, police can be more focused and hence effective. Thus, “hot spots policing” has become business as usual in many jurisdictions, focusing attention at small units of geography. Hot spot policing has, in many countries in the early 21st century, evolved into “predictive policing,” which is a data-driven crime forecasting approach. However, this approach has attracted strong criticism for further entrenching bias in the criminal justice system. Critics argue that the data sets on which the predictive policing algorithms are founded are racially biased and perpetuate police attention on communities of color. This serves to highlight the systematic biases that can be present in crime-related data, and professional crime analysts use a range of approaches to mitigate such biases, such as triangulating data sources.
Homeschooling in the United States: Growth With Diversity and More Empirical Evidence
Authors: Ray Brian D.
Published: September 2022

Homeschooling (home education) is parent-directed, family-based education, and is typically not tax-funded, with parents choosing assistance from other individuals or organizations. Home-based education was nearly extinct in the United States by the 1970s but grew rapidly during the 1990s to about 2.6 million K–12 homeschool students in March of 2020 to then about 5 million in March of 2021. The demographic variety among homeschooling families rapidly increased during the 2000s to the point that in 2016, 41% of homeschool students were of ethnic minority background, with about 79% of those living in nonpoor households, and with parents’ formal education levels similar to national averages. Since the early 2000s, parents’ main reasons for homeschooling have shifted from an emphasis on religious or moral instruction to a somewhat more emphasis on concern about institutional school environments and the academic instruction in schools. Empirical research shows that the home educated, on average, perform above average in terms of academic achievement, social and emotional development, and success into adulthood (including college studies). However, there is scholarly debate about whether enough well-controlled studies have confirmed these overall benefits. Some theories have been proposed to explain the apparent positive effects. They include the concept that elements such as high levels of parental involvement, one-on-one instruction, low student-to-teacher ratios, effective use of time, more academic learning time, customization of learning experiences, and a safe and comfortable learning environment that are systemically a part of home-based education are conducive to children thriving in many ways. However, more research is needed to test these theories.
The Palestinian K-12 Education System: History, Structure, Challenges, and Opportunities
Authors: Hussein Anwar , Wong Shelley , Bright Anita
Published: September 2022

The Palestinian education system in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) reflects a long and complex history of control by other countries: the colonial British Mandate over historic Palestine (1917–1948); the Jordanian government over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (1948–1967); the Egyptian government over the Gaza Strip (1948–1967); and the Israeli occupation (1967–1993). This external control has resulted in multiple forms of apartheid, including restrictions on freedom of movement as a means of control over Palestinian lands and people. Beginning in 1967 at the end of the Six-Day War, the Israeli government took control of Palestinian educational systems, controlling the entire educational experience of Palestinian students, including curriculum, construction, and maintenance of schools, and employment of educators. In 1993, after the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority took charge of the Palestinian education system. Although with the development of the first Palestinian curriculum, the Palestinian Authority has made many innovative breakthroughs in education, they are severely restricted by the Israeli occupation. They do not have the right to build or renovate schools (or other buildings) without Israeli building permits. The current apartheid system is a multifaceted economic blockade, with walls, checkpoints, and armed military guards denying Palestinian students and teachers access to a range of essential services, such as education and healthcare. All of these restrictions of movement and encroachments by the Israeli government and military represent violations of the United Nations human rights conventions.

Given its history, the Palestinian educational system faces many challenges, including the marginalized status of the teaching profession, the quality of teacher education programs, implementation of the education strategic plan, and others. Despite the numerous systemic challenges and obstacles under occupation, Palestinian educators continue to demonstrate tremendous tenacity, creativity, innovation, and optimism.
Environmental Education for Climate Justice: An Indian Perspective
Authors: Dutta Deborah
Published: September 2022

Climate change as a global crisis looms large in the public imagination, along with a widespread acknowledgement of a need to develop educational interventions and strategies that can help people engage with the climate emergency. However, conventional environmental education (EE) for a large part has remained focused on climate literacy and techno-scientific determinism, thus lacking the conceptual tools to engage with the sociopolitical, cognitive, and normative aspects of climate crises. Given the abstract, temporally stretched, and geographically diffused and distributed nature of the issue, the challenge for educators goes beyond an epistemic framing to encompass value-laden ideas of social justice, ecological sustainability, and collective well-being. Pedagogical efforts need to radically expand their reach to include context-specific, historical trajectories and development narratives that have shaped the current debates in climate mitigation and adaptation. The environmental discourse around climate change has been problematic in the Global South given that those discussions tend to eclipse the more pressing, local issues of pollution, soil degradation, water scarcity, or waste management. However, a growing understanding of the complex linkage between climate and other environmental issues has prompted newer forms of discourse and engagement. India faces daunting challenges as a large agrarian economy poised to bear the brunt of climate related events, alongside the material aspirations of a growing middle class. Nevertheless, numerous grassroots experiments are offering pathways for an alternate view of development and well-being through examples of resilience and adaptation. A historical and spatially grounded discussion of the climate change debates along with an exploration of promising initiatives can guide the design of EE for climate justice.
Financing the Indian Ocean Slave Trade
Authors: Wint Hollian
Published: September 2022

The finances underpinning the traffic in enslaved people across and around the Indian Ocean is one of the least understood factors of the trade. Comprehension of this complex history requires a consideration of all stages of the slave trade: enslavement mechanisms, the traffic and transportation of captives, and the uses of enslaved labor and capital. It also requires a broad definition of finance. Circulations of capital and credit underpinned the traffic in enslaved people, as much as the trades in Indian Ocean commodities that accompanied human trafficking. The role and business organization of merchant networks is a crucial part of this history. Muslim merchants could draw on a common faith and kinship to organize their commercial relationships, but they also relied on extensive networks of Islamic law. Gujarati merchants pooled capital and labor within extended kinship networks but disputed financial transactions in imperial courts. Both networks, however, depended on their African partners and agents to supply captives and established those relationships through gift-exchange, debt, or manumission. Thus, financial mechanisms, such as debt and pawnship, that were internal to slave-supplying societies were central to enslavement. On the other end of the trade, slave-owners in various Indian Ocean societies mobilized their slaves as security for loans, as credit that could be used to finance trading expeditions that produced more captives or to underwrite agricultural production on slave plantations. Yet credit networks also facilitated the social mobility of enslaved individuals in the Indian Ocean world (IOW), enabling some individuals to participate in commercial life and purchase property and sometimes even their own freedom.

Europeans entering the IOW initially participated in and drew upon these existing financial structures of enslavement, trafficking, and slavery. Yet plantation agriculture and artisanal industries that European, Asian, and African societies developed during the long 19th century both intensified Indian Ocean slave trades and demanded new forms of capital investment. In this context, some European capital came from the Atlantic trade. British anti-slavery activities ultimately put an end to the legal traffic of captives across the Indian Ocean, though illegal trades, new forms of bondage, and internal slaveries continued into the 20th century. British interventions disrupted Indian Ocean financial networks more broadly, resulting in new forms of indebtedness in East Africa.
Civilization and Statehood
Authors: Delatolla Andrew
Published: September 2022

The modern state is often discussed within the context of its domestic institutions and structures or as a product that is shaped by the international system. From these discussions, attempts to define and theorize statehood have led to assumptions that the modern state is a universal product, sharing structural and normative similarities across geographies and societies. However, many of these assumptions are developed from the unique histories of European state formation and statehood, from which an ideal type is produced. By looking at these histories in relation to the global transformations of the 19th century, it is possible to interrogate how conceptions of modern statehood—derived from European histories and experiences—have been consistently upheld as a civilizational benchmark for other, non-European and non-Western states, to achieve.

Beginning with a discussion on European state formation, it is evident that the conceptions and frameworks of statehood—including the development of national identities, territorialization, institutions, and organizing and ordering mechanisms, often discussed in the abstract—are the products of particular historic normative, structural, and institutional developments. These histories lay the foundation for how the modern state has been conceived, theorized, and framed, affecting not just Europe but global politics. The article subsequently discusses how modern statehood, based on the European experience of state formation, became a benchmark of civilization. Upholding statehood as the pinnacle of social, political, and economic development and progress in comparison to the underdeveloped “nature” of societies and polities outside of Europe, imperialism, and colonialism was considered a justified practice. In the first instance, the uncivilized character of societies and polities outside of Europe became entangled in racial-biological explanations of social and political development, supposedly confirming scientific racist explanations of underdevelopment. In the second instance, imperialism and colonialism were tethered to 19th-century civilizing projects, a means to organize societies and polities in a manner that reflected or mimicked the European state. While the discourses related to imperialism and colonialism, along with scientific racism, became outmoded in the 20th century, they remained apparent in practices associated with the League of Nations mandate state system, development, and state building. In the context of these practices, the concept and framing of modern statehood, as an abstract and ideal type founded on European histories of state formation, continued to be used as a benchmark for international recognition and a measurement for progress and development. Charting the continued relationship between civilization and statehood, the case of Palestine is explored, examining the politics and discourses of civilization related to statehood and Palestinian nonrecognition.
Hafting Technology in the Stone Age of Southern Africa
Authors: Veall Margaret-Ashley
Published: September 2022

Composite, multi-component tool technologies held together by means of a join (or haft) have a well-established record within southern Africa, temporally spanning the region’s Middle Stone Age through the Later Stone Age to historic and ethnographic narratives. The use of hafting adhesives, the glue of composite technologies, is a similarly well-established phenomenon, ensuring that users can create reliable, maintainable tools. The main organic components of these malleable technologies are sourced from plant exudates, including resins, gums, and latexes derived from several plant families, alongside animal fats, waxes, and inorganic minerals.

Hafting adhesive finds within southern Africa’s archaeological record broadly fit into three categories: complete or relatively complete hafted implements, trace on inserts, and lumps of material. The frequency and location of these largely organic artefacts are invariably associated with differential preservation and regions where significant archaeological surveys have been conducted since the 1960s. Compositional information of hafting adhesives, however, comes from disparate sources: a handful of archaeometric studies on chemical composition from Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age contexts as well as historic and ethnographic observations. Ethnographic accounts have provided models in the complexity of adhesive manufacture and ingredient acquisition, while archaeological case studies in chemical composition of adhesives emphasize differences in adhesive production and the use of resources that are wholly absent from the records of the last two centuries. Despite these discrepancies, research demonstrates that these components of composite tools remain high-value commodities in their own right and more than a step in the chaîne opératoire of a composite implement.
The British Army in Colonial America
Authors: McCurdy John G.
Published: September 2022

The British army was an important part of colonial America and contributed to the coming of the Revolution. Although the number of British soldiers in North America was meager in the 17th century, this changed with the creation of a standing army and expansion of the British Empire. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) brought thousands of regular troops to the colonies, and many remained in America after the war ended. Life as a redcoat reflected contemporary society and the soldiers had a tenuous relationship with Indigenous peoples. The army became a flashpoint between Britain and the colonies in the 1760s and, with the Boston Massacre, a cause for independence. During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), British soldiers fought in numerous theaters, aided at times by Hessians and Loyalist militias. Despite victories at Charlestown, Long Island, and Philadelphia, the British army was defeated at Yorktown. Following the Revolution, the British army slowly evacuated the United States but remained in Canada and the Caribbean until the 20th century.
Muslim–Buddhist Relations and Buddhism in Muslim Sources until the Mongol Period
Authors: Akasoy Anna Ayse
Published: September 2022

The history of Muslim–Buddhist relations has long been underexplored or been dominated by impressions of hostility. Recent scholarship has revealed a long history of contacts, often against the backdrop of trade, mission, and imperial expansion. How early these encounters took place and what their earliest shape was depends on views regarding the westward spread of Buddhism, the religious landscape of pre-Islamic Iran, and the nature of early Islam. Medieval Muslim authors sometimes associated the religious traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia with Buddhism or Indian religions in general. The early Abbasid period (8th–10th centuries) was especially significant for the development of Muslim knowledge of Buddhism. Details about the religion, including descriptions of the Bamiyan Buddhas and religious practices, can be found especially in geographical and historiographical literature, but also book catalogues and surveys of different religions. The family of the Barmakids, formerly keepers of the Buddhist Naw Bahār in Balkh, rose to great power at the Abbasid court and represents the integration of Buddhist elites into the cosmopolitan caliphate. A version of the Life of the Buddha, known as the story of Bilawhar and Būdhāsaf, began to circulate in the Middle East at around the same time. One of the difficulties in assessing Muslim descriptions of Buddhism is to reconstruct and historicize categories of religion and religious taxonomies.
English in the U.S. South
Authors: Hazen Kirk
Published: September 2022

English in the U.S. South contains a wide range of variation, encompassing ethnic, social class, and subregional variations all within the umbrella term of Southern English. Although it has been a socially distinct variety since at least the mid-19th century, many of the modern features it is nationally known for developed only after 1875. Lexical variation has long distinguished the U.S. South, but new vocabulary has replaced the old, and subregional variation in the U.S. South is no longer important for lexical variation. Social class still plays an important role in grammatical variation, but the rise of compulsory education limited previously wider ranges of dialect features. Despite traditional scholarship’s primary focus on lexical and grammatical language variation in the U.S. South, phonological variation has been the main area of scholarship since 1990s. Within phonological variation, the production of vowels, the most socially salient features of the U.S. South, has been a heavily studied realm of scholarship. Prosodic, consonant, and perception studies have been on the rise and have provided numerous insights into this highly diverse dialect region.
Volcanoes and the Human and Physical Geographies of Risk
Authors: Donovan Amy
Published: September 2022

Volcanic risk is highly complex, and incorporates social, economic, physical, infrastructural, and cultural elements. It is also high stakes, but low probability—making it particularly challenging for governments to manage. Substantial advances in the understanding of volcanic processes, hazards, and monitoring signals can enable scientists to forecast volcanic activity in many cases, but high levels of uncertainty remain. Volcanology itself is a relatively young science, emerging in the 20th century following the growth of the geological sciences in the post-Enlightenment period. Crises in the late 20th and early 21st century have demonstrated the complexity of applying uncertain scientific models in particular, local, and politically challenging contexts. Volcanology continues to make advances in integrating disciplines—particularly in the combination of physical hazard science with impact assessment, and increasingly with the social sciences. Volcanic eruptions can also substantially alter the power dynamics in a particular context, as volcanologists’ forecasts can become all-consuming for local populations. This is challenging both for scientists and for political officials and populations coming to terms with the threat they may face. The critical geography of disasters, as it incorporates these issues of relationality, must also learn from the action research literature and develop and deploy interventions that can change the emerging possibility spaces within an emergent disaster assemblage. Understanding the relational processes of sociomaterial disasters through an “imaginations” lens can enable interventions to be identified at an early stage.
Natural Hazards Governance in Zambia
Authors: Silengo Mitulo
Published: September 2022

Zambia, like many other developing nations, is grappling with the challenges of development in the context of climate change. The development–climate change–disaster nexus has emerged as one of the most intractable problems that countries such as Zambia are currently facing. The most common hazards are usually hydro-meteorological in nature. These are floods and droughts. Climate change is responsible for causing weather-related disasters and in making communities more vulnerable to the effects of disasters. Zambia, like many developing economies that are dependent on climate-sensitive sectors, such as agriculture and natural resources, is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In responding to the challenges of climate change, the government has developed adaptation strategies and plans. The Zambian government has made strides in aligning development planning with disaster risk management. The mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction has been outlined in the Zambia Vision 2030 and the National Development Plans. The National Climate Change Response Strategy was developed to respond to the challenges that climate change and variability pose on the Zambian economy. It offers a coordinated response to climate change issues in the country, envisaging Zambia as “a Prosperous Climate Change Resilient Economy.” The Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit under the Office of the Vice President is the institution responsible for disaster risk reduction and management in Zambia. It responds to natural, human-induced, and complex hazards. The legal framework for disaster risk management (DRM) in Zambia is provided by the Disaster Management Act No. 13 of 2010 (GRZ, 2010). Its provisions are operationalized by the Disaster Management Policy of 2015 and the Disaster Management Manual of 2015. As a way of domesticating the Sendai Framework, the government has development a National Disaster Risk Management Framework. The goals of this framework are to prevent and reduce existing risks in the country through the implementation of integrated and inclusive economic, social, cultural, health, legal, education, political, environmental, structural, and institutional measures. Although major achievements have been made in setting up the legal and institutional frameworks for disaster risk governance, gaps in the localization of DRM programs, especially at local and community levels, still exist. The absence of such programs and lack of awareness of disaster risks contribute to the vulnerabilities of communities at the local level. In order to reduce their vulnerability, strengthening local-level structures is necessary. Such structures can only be articulated by a robust disaster risk governance framework that is decentralized to local levels.
Lowering effect of combined sweet potato and onion intake on plasma quercetin concentration and underlying mechanism involving intestinal β-glucosidase activity
Authors: Nuka Erika , Takahashi Masako , Okitsu Masami , Nayama Chisako , Nishijima Honomi , Sogawa Ryutaro , Kawabata Kyuichi , Terao Junji , Mukai Rie
Published: September 2022

A combined intake of cooked sweet potato and fried onion in humans was found to suppress the increase of plasma quercetin metabolite concentration. Experiments using rat β-glucosidase indicated that excess carbohydrate digestion products, especially glucose-containing saccharides, interfere with the deglycosylation of quercetin glucosides during intestinal epithelial uptake. Combined meals of sweet potato and onion may lower the bioavailability of onion quercetin glucosides.
Inherency and agency in the origin and evolution of biological functions
Authors: Newman Stuart A
Published: September 2022

Although discussed by 20th century philosophers in terms drawn from the sciences of non-living systems, in recent decades biological function has been considered in relationship to organismal capability and purpose. Bringing two phenomena generally neglected in evolutionary theory (i.e. inherency and agency) to bear on questions of function leads to a rejection of the adaptationist ‘selected effects’ notion of biological function. I review work showing that organisms such as the placozoans can thrive with almost no functional embellishments beyond those of their constituent cells and physical properties of their simple tissues. I also discuss work showing that individual tissue cells and their artificial aggregates exhibit agential behaviours that are unprecedented in the histories of their respective lineages. I review findings on the unique metazoan mechanism of developmental gene expression that has recruited, during evolution, inherent ancestral cellular functionalities into specialized cell types and organs of the different animal groups. I conclude that most essential functions in animal species are inherent to the cells from which they evolved, not selected effects, and that many of the others are optional ‘add-ons’, a status inimical to fitness-based models of evolution positing that traits emerge from stringent cycles of selection to meet external challenges.