bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mediating disputes under the Mental Capacity Act 2005: relationships, participation, and best interests
Authors: Lindsey Jaime , Danbury Chris
Published: June 2024

This article analyses the use of mediation to resolve mental capacity law disputes, including those that arise in the healthcare context. It draws on original empirical data, including interviews with lawyers and mediators, and analysis of a mediation scheme, to argue that mediation has the potential to be an effective method of resolution in mental capacity law. It highlights the relationship benefits of mediation while acknowledging the challenges of securing P’s participation and best interests. The final section of the article considers how mediation can operate in one of the most challenging healthcare environments, the Intensive Care Unit. The article emphasizes that the challenges we see in mediation are not unique and exist across the spectrum of Court of Protection practice. Therefore, the article concludes that mediation may be used effectively but the jurisdiction would also benefit from a clearer regulatory framework in which it can operate.
Carbon monoxide cooling in radiative transfer modelling of supernovae
Authors: McLeod Collin , Hillier D John , Dessart Luc
Published: June 2024

Carbon monoxide (CO) emission has been observed in a number of core-collapse supernovae (SNe) and is known to be an important coolant at late times. We have implemented a chemical reaction network in the radiative-transfer code cmfgen to investigate the formation of CO and its impact on SN ejecta. We calculate two 1D SN models with and without CO: a BSG explosion model at one nebular epoch and a full time-sequence (50–300 d) for a red supergiant explosion. In both models, CO forms at nebular times in the dense, inner regions at velocities <2000 km s$^{-1}$ where line emission from CO can dominate the cooling and reduce the local temperature by as much as a factor of 2, weakening emission lines and causing the optical light curve to fade faster. That energy is instead emitted in CO bands, primarily the fundamental band at $\sim 4.5 \mathrm{\mu m}$, which accounts for up to 20 per cent of the total luminosity at late times. However, the non-monotonic nature of the CO cooling function can cause numerical difficulties and introduce multiple temperature solutions. This issue is compounded by the sensitivity of the CO abundance to a few reaction rates, many of which have large uncertainties or disparate values across literature sources. Our results also suggest that, in many SNe, CO-level populations are far from their local thermodynamic equilibrium values. Unfortunately, accurate collisional data, necessary to compute non-local thermodynamic equilibrium populations, are limited to a few transitions.
An update on central nervous system tumors in germline replication-repair deficiency syndromes
Authors: Das Anirban , Ercan Ayse Bahar , Tabori Uri
Published: June 2024

DNA replication-repair deficiency (RRD) arises from pathogenic variants in the mismatch repair and/or polymerase-proofreading genes. Multiple germline cancer predisposition syndromes in children and young adults, including constitutional mismatch repair deficiency (CMMRD), Lynch, polymerase-proofreading deficiency, and rare digenic syndromes can lead to RRD cancers. The most frequent brain tumors in these children are high-grade gliomas. Embryonal tumors like medulloblastoma have also been described. Lower-grade tumors are reported from cancer surveillance initiatives. The latter has an extremely high rate of malignant transformation. Novel functional assays quantifying the genomic microsatellite indel load have been demonstrated to be highly sensitive and specific for the diagnosis of RRD cancers and children with germline CMMRD. Importantly, RRD brain tumors uniformly harbor high mutation and microsatellite burden. High T-cell infiltration makes these aggressive cancers amenable to immune checkpoint inhibition, irrespective of their germline genetic background. Synergistic combinations are reported to be successful in patients failing checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. Future directions include the development of innovative approaches to improve immune surveillance for RRD brain cancers. Additionally, the use of novel tools including circulating tumor DNA and quantifying microsatellite indel load over time can be useful to monitor disease burden and treatment responses in patients.
The Vacuum in Practice
Authors: Wright Aaron Sidney
Published: June 2024

This introductory chapter introduces readers to the subject matter and conceptual apparatus explored in the succeeding chapters. It introduces the concepts of vacuum in quantum theory and relativity, and physicists’ difficult, paradoxical expressions of the meaning of empty space. This chapter situates the book in the history of science literature and explains the methodology of studying scientific practice. In order to give a sense of the scope and framing of this book, the introduction discusses key concepts. It describes “theoretical physics” and “objects of theory,” a term for the entities which appear in physicists’ theories. This chapter continues with a narrative overview of the structure of the book and a brief discussion of paths not taken. To set the stage for the text to come, this chapter includes a brief prologue on the history of the aether—the material substance of light waves which pervaded all of space.
Weisskopf, Schwinger, Feynman: Vacuum Loops and Fluctations
Authors: Wright Aaron Sidney
Published: June 2024

After World War II, the vacuum state was given a central role in the “paper tools” and the ontology of relativistic quantum theory. In dialogue with Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf developed a view of “zero-point fluctuations” as primary, and developed the use of perturbation methods to connect field theory to measurements. Julian Schwinger made “vacuum expectation values” the center of the new “renormalized” Quantum Electrodynamics—the vacuum state became the reference point for comparisons of theory to observation. Vacuum fluctuations were a major impediment to Richard Feynman’s diagrammatic approach to QED; he wished they could be eliminated from the theory. But between Weisskopf’s interpretations and Schwinger’s methods, they were a challenged Feynman had to meet. Feynman’s elegant trees and stick diagrams grew to include loops and bubbles of vacuum phenomena. Though there was no unified interpretation of vacuum phenomena, they became indispensable to the practice of relativistic quantum theory.
Epilogue
Authors: Wright Aaron Sidney
Published: June 2024

The epilogue connects the history of the vacuum in the twentieth century preceding chapters to twenty-first century vacuum physics. It considers topics including the following: the new gravitational wave astronomy; the Casimir effect and quantum optics; the experimental measurement of the Higgs boson; inflationary cosmology; string theory; and the multiverse. Today, the vacuum remains at the center of theoretical physics
The Void
Authors: Wright Aaron Sidney
Published: June 2024

This concluding chapter collects several threads from the preceding chapters to answer the question: how did the vacuum become a central object for theoretical physics? The overarching answer is that it was because of theoretical physicists’ practices. The moment-by-moment descriptions of physicists’ practices makes the vacuum appear as a wavering, unstable, entity. Why then did physicists so often appear confident in the vacuum’s existence? Following Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s analysis of the experimental life sciences, this chapter argues that the vacuum’s unbounded character may in fact be an explanation for physicists’ realism. This leaves open the question of what attitude to take toward the reality of the vacuum from a historians’ retrospective view. This chapter addresses itself to those with realist leanings, and concludes by arguing that the history of objects of theory like the vacuum places new limits on realist commitments, but is consistent with realism.
The Focus Theory of Hope
Authors: Chignell Andrew
Published: June 2024

Most philosophers now agree that hope for a specific outcome involves more than just desire plus the presupposition that the outcome is possible. This chapter argues that the additional element of hope is a disposition to focus on the desired outcome in a specific sort of way. The chapter surveys the debate about the nature of hope in the recent literature, offers objections to some important competing accounts, and describes and defends the view that hope involves a kind of focus. It concludes by considering some key advantages to this account of hope, including that it makes sense of the intuitive thought that there are moral and pragmatic norms on hope that go beyond the norms on desires and beliefs.
A Black Existential Reflection on Hope
Authors: Gordon Lewis R.
Published: June 2024

This chapter explores some existential paradoxes of hope as a virtue contextualized through several challenges raised from Black existentialism, a philosophy of existence and freedom attuned to the challenges to thought and action posed by Euromodern colonialism and its concomitant antiblack racism. These challenges include theodicean rationalizations of dehumanization, enslavement, exploitation, and hope as a naïve virtue. Arguing that optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin, the chapter examines the idea of existential commitment, which transcends optimism and pessimism, through a discussion of infinite resignation, potentiated double consciousness, and radical love in which there may be hope, ironically, for hope in a hopeless world.
Created and Fallen Hope
Authors: Swenson-Lengyel Willa
Published: June 2024

The task of this chapter is to give an answer to the question “Is hope a virtue?” that takes a protestant account of faith seriously and does not ultimately elide hope and faith. To do so, the argument turns away from eschatological reflection to theological anthropology. The chapter argues that hope should be understood as a created capacity of humans as limited and desirous creatures, a capacity which helps people make sense of their own lives amid a world always beyond them. Simultaneously, this capacity is, in reality, fallen and warped, making hope fundamentally ambivalent in human life. Given this analysis, hope can be virtuous, but is always incompletely so and requires explicit defense against the tendencies of fallen hope. Christian hope should be understood as a distinctly this-worldly and non-assured activity, geared toward projects and commitments to goods in this world.
Adapting Environmental Hope
Authors: Thompson Allen
Published: June 2024

How is hope possible in the face of unfolding, impending, and irreversible anthropogenic global environmental change? Saving historic nature (the ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate conditions characteristic of the Holocene) cannot be the object of the virtuous person’s environmental hopes. Nonetheless, a disposition to hope well is a virtue, and hopes about life on Earth under new and unstable environmental conditions should not be abandoned. A virtue of environmental hope for the Anthropocene is possible but requires that the objects and even the concept of hope itself be adapted. We should embrace but pass through despair to grieve the loss of significant parts of historic nature, yet we must act as though we can save it. Then we should develop a radical hope akin to courage that human capacities for adaptation and flourishing are up to challenges presented by very difficult conditions of a new ecological world order.
“In My World, No One’s Got a Job with an Australian Company”
Authors: Piller Ingrid , Butorac Donna , Farrell Emily , Lising Loy , Motaghi-Tabari Shiva , Tetteh Vera Williams
Published: June 2024

This chapter examines participants’ experiences with finding work. Against the background of migrant disadvantage in the labor market, the chapter critically examines the widespread assumption of migrants’ human resource deficits, including limited English-language proficiency, inferior qualifications, and lack of local experience. Findings turn these deficit assumptions on their head and show that the supposed deficit is “made in Australia.” When migrants are excluded from the labor market based on their English-language proficiency, English is treated as a global construct that is independent of a particular context and the requirements of a particular role. Migrants’ supposed English-language deficit becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that may be used to gatekeep any kind of job, regardless of actual communication requirements. For professional migrants, the linguistic deficit that is attributed to them in the destination country is further exacerbated through the skills-recognition process, which devalues their existing credentials and professional experience.
“Our Life Is Becoming Colorful Again”
Authors: Piller Ingrid , Butorac Donna , Farrell Emily , Lising Loy , Motaghi-Tabari Shiva , Tetteh Vera Williams
Published: June 2024

This chapter explores participants’ experiences with naturalistic language learning through everyday interactions. Learning a new language in interaction with native speakers is widely imagined as an ideal form of language learning. However, this is not how participants experienced it. Establishing new networks and finding opportunities for sustained interactions constituted a major barrier. These difficulties were compounded by a lack of common topics. Interactions early in participants’ settlement were particularly problematic and often involved misunderstandings, which sometimes destroyed participants’ confidence in their English and in themselves. The chapter examines how participants dealt with the associated negative emotions of anxiety and shame resulting from problematic interactions. The chapter also illuminates how participants regained confidence in their language and in themselves over time. For many, finding legitimacy involved a turning point interaction, which provided supportive practice opportunities and validated them as speakers.
Clean Risks
Authors: Hempstead Katherine
Published: June 2024

This chapter describes the automobile insurance market in the postwar period and the growing interest of the federal government in the insurance industry. Insurers initially opposed the call for compulsory insurance, arguing it amounted to a private tax on the right to drive. Auto insurance became a policy issue that attracted the attention of Congress, resulting in a series of hearings and investigations covering insolvencies, underwriting practices, and the liability system. A newly activist consumer movement helped to amplify the criticism of insurance industry practices. Congressional attention also focused on the adequacy of state regulation and the McCarran-Ferguson Act. State regulators sought to oppose federal involvement and looked to the industry for support. The insurance industry itself was divided, with some companies supporting federal no-fault reform efforts while others opposed them. Ultimately federal efforts to reform auto insurance failed, but federal scrutiny of the insurance industry would persist.
The Challenge to Fairness
Authors: Clifford Damian
Published: June 2024

Data protection law is inherently intertwined with the notion of fairness. Determining what is ‘fair’ however is context-dependent. In addition, those processing personal data are not invested in compliance and, perhaps more fundamentally, the complexities of the framework require a level of commitment to ensuring fair processing given the vagueness of what is considered fair and/or unfair. The challenge then is that although data protection law aims to provide an environment in which data subjects can make subjective choices, it affords controllers significant latitude and arguably allows them scope not to comply in a meaningful manner. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this disconnect via the fairness and accountability mechanisms provided for in data protection law. To demonstrate this disconnect, the analysis in part explores the development of Emotional Artificial Intelligence as a case study through the lens of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Introduction
Authors: Baturo Alexander , Anceschi Luca , Cavatorta Francesco
Published: June 2024

A personalist regime is a type of dictatorship where its leader is unrivalled in terms of personal influence and control. In the post–Cold War period, personalist, as well as personalizing, regimes have become increasingly common. They include Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Uganda, Sudan, and Kazakhstan, amongst others. Personalist regimes are no longer a niche subject, and this chapter argues that it remains conceptually and empirically useful to categorize such regimes as personalist first and foremost, not merely as civilian dictatorships with strong personal power of their leaders. The chapter outlines the most common challenges in the study of personalist regimes, and reviews existing scholarly arguments on the origins, development, characteristics, and demise of personalist regimes specifically, and personalist rule across all dictatorships more generally. With the assistance of several graphs, it also introduces the overall framework of the book. First, it offers an integrative approach that allows for the study of personalism across all dictatorships, as well as for the study of personalist regimes, a subtype of dictatorship, specifically. Second, it includes the full range of personalist rule, from regimes still in a personalistic situation, to personalist regimes, to regimes that can be described as sultanistic. Third, it systematizes the most important attributes of personalist rule. In the final section, the chapter explains the structure of the book and its common themes.
Personal Rule in Party Regimes
Authors: Gill Graeme
Published: June 2024

This chapter analyses personal rule in communist party regimes in the USSR, China, and North Korea. In these regimes most decision-making was collective in nature and the dictator rarely made decisions alone. Nevertheless, the decision-making process was shaped overwhelmingly by the personal nature of power and the position of the dictator. This does not mean that institutions played no role in politics, but shaped the role they did play. Dictators in all three countries were the focus of elaborate personality cults, and this was one basis of their personal authority, along with policy and transactional considerations. Finally, some consideration is given to the question of succession.
Chavismo in Venezuela
Authors: Araya Ignacio Arana
Published: June 2024

In 1999, Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela—one of the wealthiest and oldest functioning Latin American democracies—under the promise of developing a participatory democracy. However, he slowly turned the country into a dictatorship. This chapter argues that Chávez’s project was authoritarian from inception because it consisted of placing himself indefinitely at the centre of Venezuelan politics by transferring power from state institutions and civil society organizations to himself and his inner circle. In doing so, Chávez’s political project became a living example of how personalism can become the main cause of regime change. Authoritarianism became radicalized once Maduro took power in 2013 and has contributed to turning Venezuela into a poor, quasi-failed state.
The Putin Regime in Russia
Authors: Petrov Nikolai
Published: June 2024

This chapter charts the development of the Putin regime in Russia from 1999. While the regime is clearly personalist, it is also characterized by important elements inherited from the Soviet nomenklatura system as well as those that belong to a newer category, namely that of a mafia state. The chapter describes the significant growth in power, capacity, and reach of institutions that make up the so-called big presidency, while other institutions have weakened considerably over time. The chapter provides details about the most important members of Putin’s inner circle and how Putin attempted to counter various governance problems that appeared as the regime got more personalized, and it also argues that the Putin regime reached its maturity around 2014–2015, when the transition occurred from legitimacy based on electoral and economic performance to one primarily based on his leadership.
The Lukashenko Regime in Belarus
Authors: Frear Matthew
Published: June 2024

President Alexander Lukashenko is Europe’s longest-serving political leader; Belarus is often dubbed Europe’s ‘last dictatorship’. This chapter addresses Lukashenko’s rise to power and the consolidation of his non-democratic regime through circumvention, subordination, and commandeering. The political system adapted and changed to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century by drawing on a variety of elite groups and opportunistically appealing to a range of potential supporters in society. As the nationwide protests of 2020 demonstrated, the regime’s room for manoeuvre has narrowed and Lukashenko’s personalist rule increasingly depends on repression, the siloviki, and Russia’s willingness to support it for its survival.
Succession in Personalist Regimes in Africa
Authors: Brossier Marie
Published: June 2024

Drawing from the scholarship on autocratic and personalist regime survival, breakdowns, and leadership succession, this chapter examines the personalization of power and its succession outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2020. Through its focus on two cases of hereditary successions in Gabon and Togo, the chapter aims to explain why hereditary successions of power are rare by identifying three main mechanisms that constrain the succession of power to a designated family member. It also shows that hereditary succession might resolve succession crises instigated by the leader’s death in a personalist regime, but might also alter the nature of the autocratic rule as the balance of power between the incoming ruler and the ruling elite changes.
The Gaddafi Regime in Libya
Authors: Kamel Amir Magdy
Published: June 2024

The regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi has ruled Libya for more than four decades, since the 1969 Revolution. Fuelled by hydrocarbon rents, Gaddafi has designed the Jamahiriya political system that gave him direct power over public institutions, particularly those related to security issues; limited power over the functioning of the energy sector; and a more indirect role in day-to-day politics and policymaking processes. More broadly, Gaddafi’s rule was rooted in, and driven by, informal arrangements underpinned by local and tribal fidelities. This chapter explores how different pillars of personalism interacted within the Libyan context, evaluates the extent of regime personalization in Gaddafi’s regime, and discusses the consequences of the leader’s rule for Libya’s political trajectory.
Justifying and Challenging Territoriality in Private International Law
Authors: Mills Alex
Published: June 2024

Private international law (PIL) essentially deals with the question of how, in the field of private law, we should regulate relationships and resolve disputes which have connections with more than one legal system, distinguishing between the institutional aspects of regulation (jurisdiction) and the substantive aspects (applicable law). Traditionally, a decision is made about which legal system (or systems) should govern based on a range of connecting factors. Among these factors, territorial connections (the location of relevant acts, events, or things) have historically had the most significant influence, reflecting an approach to PIL which understands the subject as concerned with the division and allocation of state authority and adopts a ‘spatial’ conception of that authority. Private international law theory and practice has also, however, explored a range of alternative techniques, including the characteristics or wishes of the parties themselves, as well as other approaches which reject altogether the idea that PIL should focus on allocational questions. This chapter asks why territoriality plays such an important role in PIL, and considers whether it should. The chapter begins with an examination of the role of territoriality in PIL history and theory. It then considers various arguments which might be raised to justify territoriality in private international law, suggesting that they may also justify traditional PIL techniques. The chapter also, however, addresses the question of whether these justifications hold up against the challenges presented to territoriality by modern globalization, in particular whether territoriality can provide certainty, coherence, and effective regulatory constraint.
Plurality of Laws and Conflictof Laws: Reconciling through Recognition?
Authors: Roughan Nicole
Published: June 2024

The interactions of Indigenous and state legal orders present a limit case for the prospect of reimagining conflict of laws to respond to relations between state and non-state legal orders. The present chapter argues that interactions of state and Indigenous legal orders in common law settler states cannot legitimately be addressed through the doctrines and tools of conflict of laws. It responds to recent developments in conflicts theory, which seek to bridge traditional distinctions between the categories of domestic and foreign. It argues that claims based on Indigenous legalities contest the very public authority that the state also claims. Key cases reveal the significance of law’s connections with persons and places; law’s relations to political communities; and law’s roles in relations between communities. These suggest that a model for relating these legal orders needs to institutionally recognize the interdependence of state and Indigenous legal orders, not one’s recognition by another.
Court Proceedings
Authors: Cochrane Vivien , Hayes Will
Published: June 2024

This chapter considers the issues that can arise during court proceedings which may impact on the ability to rely on legal professional privilege. There are two potential issues at play: first, matters discussed in open court are no longer confidential, so there is a risk of privilege being lost as a result of confidentiality being lost; secondly, the defendant or their legal representative may disclose privileged material or information in circumstances which expressly or impliedly allow its use by the other party or the court, thereby waiving privilege over that material and potentially all other material relating to the same issue through collateral waiver. Much of the focus of this chapter is on the principles of loss and waiver of privilege, whether deliberate or inadvertent, at court during criminal proceedings and the practical implications of decisions which may be taken during the conduct of a trial, in particular during live evidence. It considers the position arising from disclosure by both the defence and the prosecution.
On the usage of the premodifier learning among scholars and practitioners
Authors: Örtenblad Anders
Published: June 2024

This chapter offers some evidence on the popularity of, mainly, the learning premodifier. The evidence is presented both in the form of statistics and practitioners’ voices. The chapter is divided into two sections. The first section presents some quantitative print media indicator studies, measuring the yearly frequencies of a set of multiword terms, all with learning as the premodifier. These studies show that the frequency of texts containing such multiword terms in some cases seems to be stable, while in other cases it seems to be declining. The second section offers some accounts from people who work in organizations that, in some form or another, have come under the notion of a term where learning is the premodifier. The vast majority of these work in “learning cities.” These cities are members of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities, organized by UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. This section gives an idea of the use of terms among practitioners, as well as a glance at how term(s) have been put into practice. The chapter uses the information from both sections to consider whether any of these terms are in fact management fashions.
Learnification, premodifiers, and learning(s)
Authors: Papastephanou Marianna
Published: June 2024

As a premodifier of important nouns, “learning” has been extremely popular in academic and public contexts. This popularity has gone hand in hand with undesirable implications that are often theorized with the term “learnification.” This chapter registers political operations of learning as a premodifier and a premodified noun that promote learnification. It aims to reveal blocked possibilities of acknowledging normatively ambiguous, multiple learnings and the normativity of notions other than learning. To this end, a brief account of learnification and its connection to the normativization of learning is first offered. Then it is shown that learnification is promoted through the use of learning as a premodifier that specifies and qualifies a noun, as well as through the use of learning as a term premodified by other predicates. These operations (learning as premodifier and premodified) reproduce learnification at the expense of alternative and more complex outlooks on learning.
Recognition in a learning world—topics of global education
Authors: Redecker Anke
Published: June 2024

This chapter focuses on the learning challenges of our globalized world, like increasing transculturality, digitality, glocalization, and inhomogeneity. A pedagogical focus on recognition can concern asymmetries of power. Looking at diversity, transculturality, and glocality, the topos of “learning world” implies promises, challenges, and risks, suggesting that learning per se could be installed as a universal remedy to solve global problems like discrimination and exploitation. We can ask which discourses determine learning processes, and we can try to problematize and transform these discourses with the aim of establishing an inclusive climate of recognition and respect in a not merely learning, but educative world, which is focused on critical reflection. Even in digital scenarios learning can be ambiguous and ambivalent, both suppressing and empowering. Learning to deal sensefully and responsibly with others, the other, and oneself is based on irritation, uncertainty, and conflict, which can enable us to (re)think our attitudes and positions. In an educative world the critical subject questions the modes, aims, and limits of learning in global contexts.
What is learning that an organization (or anything else) can do it?
Authors: Holmes Leonard
Published: June 2024

This chapter locates the rise in the use of “learning” as a premodifier in the context of a wider learning turn in the discourse and practices of education, employee development, and other arenas of organizational management and public policy. Given the claims made for learning within the learning turn, the chapter subjects the use of the term to conceptual analysis, and identifies major problems which undermine the possibility of rational enquiry and debate. To overcome pessimism, it argues that an interdisciplinary approach is required, based on adequate and coherent meta-theorization. It then suggests that critical realism, the philosophy of natural and social science, affords a meta-theorization for and of learning, and presents an outline sketch of the key elements of such an approach.
Is learning viewed as a synonym of training?
Authors: Poell Rob F.
Published: June 2024

This chapter aims to investigate whether learning is viewed as a synonym of training, for a better understanding of terms with learning as a premodifier (and why “training” is not used in the same way). Based on trend analysis of learning and training literatures and content analysis of ten most-cited articles, it concludes there is no real evidence that learning is used as a synonym for training. Clearly, however, learning has overtaken training in attention given to both terms in the literature. The shift to learning fits in the now dominant discourse about self-responsibility (self-direction, self-management, self-reflection, autonomy). This could explain why “learning” has become more popular than “training” as a premodifier: focusing on what people can/should do for/by themselves rather than what experts organize for them. Unless one thinks of both terms as synonyms, which the learning-network theory shows is not a good idea, “learning” fits better than “training” with the self-responsibility focus in education and management.
The learning economy
Authors: Cotsomitis John A.
Published: June 2024

The goal of this chapter is to explore the use of learning as a modifier in contemporary economic discourse. Specifically, it focuses on the use of learning as a modifier in the framework of the learning economy as articulated by Bengt-Åke Lundvall in the early 1990s. Despite its perceived importance, there is a lack of focus in the existing literature on how learning takes place in the learning economy. The chapter attempts to fill this gap by linking the concept of the learning economy to the considerable literature on learning in cognitive science, and exploring the meaning and function of learning as a modifier to economic performance at the individual, organizational, and macroeconomic levels of society. A heuristic of interactive learning is introduced in which people construct cognitive structures to build meaning through a process of assimilation and accommodation in context-specific interaction with their social, cultural and physical environment.
The global learning economy
Authors: Hertel Frederik , Wicmandy Michelle
Published: June 2024

This chapter presents a critical review of the global learning economy (GLE). It aims to show the reader how “learning” as a concept is applied as a modifier in the field of economics. Modifiers serve as adjectives to adjust the meaning of another concept or expression, often as a premodifier or postmodifier. However, the chapter shows that when learning is applied as a modifier of economics, learning will itself require modification to suit the context of economics. Consequently, it argues that modifiers in research will consist of a dialectical interplay between an adjective and the following concept or expression. So the concept or expression (research in economics) is not only being modified by, but also modifying the adjective (learning) that is functioning as a modifier. Developing this analysis of the GLE entails introducing a much broader discussion of the connections between research and rhetoric. A pragmatic language approach will be applied as the analytic method in the following chapter.
Being alone together
Authors: Reynolds Michael , Vince Russ
Published: June 2024

This chapter considers the meaning of “learning” in the terms learning group and learning community, and critiques the assumptions of individual learning that are common in learning groups/communities. The terms learning group and learning community convey an underlying assumption of mutuality, togetherness, and belonging. However, the chapter argues that this togetherness is more about personal learning within a group/community than it is about understanding the social and organizational grouping in which learning is both encouraged and restricted. While reflection on personal learning in a group/community is common, reflection on social structures, oppressive relations, and the consequences of emotional contagion are rare. The “learning” in learning groups/communities reinforces learning alone and ignores how the complex politics of communities affects people’s social and emotional experience of learning together. Using examples from the literature and from the authors’ own practice, the chapter shows how power, conformity, and control—as well as prescribed and/or expected emotions surrounding learning—undermine and seek to individualize communities and groups. It speculates on what a critical notion of “learning” as a prefix would mean for groups and communities.
Equality and Moral Status
Authors: Jaworska Agnieszka , Tannenbaum Julie
Published: June 2024

There are three key questions about moral status as it relates to moral equality: (Q1) Is there a sufficient basis B of moral status that could justify the extension of equal moral status among humans beyond cognitively unimpaired adults, to include babies and those with severe, permanent cognitive impairments? (Q2) Is there a necessary basis B of moral status, possessed by most humans but not most animals, that justifies the moral inequality between individuals from these two groups? (Q3) Do different degrees to which beings exhibit B engender different degrees of moral status? We first distinguish types of moral status and describe challenges in finding affirmative answers to (Q1) and (Q2), including for our own proposal. We then object to the possible principles underlying the Continuity View, which answers (Q3) in the affirmative. We thereby resuscitate the Discrete Interval (aka, Threshold) View, which answers (Q3) in the negative.
The Basis of Children’s Moral Equality
Authors: Floris Giacomo
Published: June 2024

Much of the literature on basic equality has focused on the question of what grounds the equal moral status of persons, typically understood as fully competent adults. However, less has been said about what justifies the equal moral status of those human beings who do not hold a wide range of sophisticated cognitive capacities, such as severely cognitively disabled human beings and children. This chapter contributes to filling this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of children’s moral equality. Specifically, I argue that children’s moral equality is entailed by a commitment to a kind of respect which requires providing children with those social conditions that foster their development into well-adjusted adults who hold a proper and stable capacity for moral personality. This is because unequal consideration and treatment precludes, or at least is a significant obstacle to, the provision of some goods that are crucial to the cultivation of a proper and stable capacity for moral personality. Children’s moral equality, then, is a constitutive requirement of what is owed to them qua moral status-holders.
Introduction: Rise of the International
Authors: Devetak Richard , Dunne Tim
Published: June 2024

This chapter introduces the purpose of the volume which is to investigate how the concept of ‘the international’ emerged in Western discourses. The motivation for the volume grows out of a convergence in the disciplines of history and international relations, with the former undergoing an ‘international turn’ and the latter taking a ‘historiographical turn’. The first section of the chapter briefly outlines the ways in which the international has been conceptualized in international relations. The second section describes the intellectual strategy employed, which is to treat the international as an object of historical rather than theoretical enquiry. The chapter identifies two elements in this strategy. First, by taking inspiration from the so-called ‘Cambridge method’, it seeks to historicize the international. Second, by recognizing the multiple geographical and institutional contexts in which the concept has emerged and been used—including the global context—it seeks to pluralize the international. The final section of the chapter outlines the structure of the book with brief descriptions of individual chapters.
Grotius on Duties in the International State of Nature
Authors: Glanville Luke
Published: June 2024

This chapter examines Hugo Grotius’s contribution to the development of a notion of what we might term an international state of nature, and especially his insistence that the duties that actors owed each other in this international realm were very different from those that obtained within civil society. In the sixteenth century, theorists writing within a range of traditions had posited solemn and demanding duties to assist and rescue vulnerable subjects of other rulers from tyranny and persecution. In the early seventeenth century, Grotius explicitly subordinated such duties to the duty to seek the preservation and advantage of one’s own state. No state was bound to accept trouble or inconvenience for the sake of vulnerable outsiders. Positive duties to care for the needs and welfare of others were explicitly confined to the realm of civil society. An examination of Grotius’s argument helps us to appreciate the contingent roots of an understanding of international duties that remains widely accepted today.
Natural Law and the Rise of the International
Authors: Devetak Richard
Published: June 2024

This chapter provides an account of the way that natural law theory contributed to the rise of the international as a separate and distinct realm of political life. It argues that natural law’s early modern transformation—tracking from Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius through Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf to Emer de Vattel—enabled a clearer distinction between domestic and international politics as two spheres of political life. The chapter begins by identifying two ‘acts of scission’ that initiated the transformation: the detheologization of natural law and the demarcation of a state of nature from the civil condition made possible by the conceptualization of the sovereign territorial state. Overlaid on these acts of scission were the language, interest, and office of the diplomat and statesman and the introduction of discourses of the balance of power, laws of war, diplomacy, and treaty-making into the space demarcated as the state of nature. In consequence, a conception of the international emerged in the constitution of the states-system as a sphere of life possessing its own rules, norms, and institutions and a distinctive form of political morality, namely reason of state.
From Counsellor to Theorist, or the Real History of Realism
Authors: Walter Ryan
Published: June 2024

The language of ‘interest’ was used in seventeenth-century Europe to make the actions of states and empires calculable. In England, the key source was Henri duc de Rohan’s D’Linterest des Princes et des Estats de la Chrestiente, published in France in 1638, and in England in 1641 as A Treatise of the Interest of the Princes and States of Christendome. Studying its reception reveals the development of a counselling discourse that was fixated on preserving the balance of power and hence the individual and shared liberties of Europe’s polities. This interest analysis is presented as a more promising starting point for investigating the emergence of ‘realism’ than the usual candidates, Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes.
Discovering Bentham’s International
Authors: Cello Lorenzo
Published: June 2024

This chapter recovers Jeremy Bentham’s conception of ‘the international’ as it emerges from his published and unpublished manuscripts on the subject. It suggests that his fame as a utopian or idealist thinker should be reconsidered in light of the many ‘realist’ and pragmatic aspects that characterize his international thought. These become more apparent when we understand the complex nature of his utilitarian mode of reasoning: a form of ‘moral casuistry’ grounded in the principle of utility that made available a new mode of thinking about things international. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first shows that both Bentham and his arch-enemy, the Swiss diplomat and jurist Emer de Vattel, saw the legal equality between states and the mutual respect for each other’s sovereign power to form government as a precondition for any peaceful future. The second finds that Bentham’s most well-known work on international law—Principles of International Law—is, properly speaking, not his work. The third examines his late unsuccessful plan to write a ‘New Vattel’, an international legal code that could surpass and replace Vattel’s Law of Nations.
Empire, Nation, and the International in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Atlantic
Authors: Ford Lisa , Benton Lauren
Published: June 2024

This chapter explores the emergence of the international at the complex intersection of imperial, national, and treaty law in the nineteenth century. Highlighting the case of the Flor de Loanda, a slave ship caught near Rio harbour in 1838, the chapter reveals the improvised and fragmented interface of multiple legal regimes as the British Empire sought to assert its interests and police the Atlantic slave trade against Portugal and Brazil. The case shows not only that nothing like a coherent system of international law existed as actors used legal arguments from competing legal systems and jurisdictions, but also that an understanding of nineteenth-century international order cannot be derived purely from the doctrines of the law of nations. Rather, the Flor de Loanda case shows that, in order to understand international ordering in the early nineteenth century, we must pay careful attention to endemic jurisdictional disputes among empires and emerging nation-states.
The Bandung Imaginary
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: June 2024

Every notion of the ‘international’, ‘global’, or ‘world’ has a certain social imaginary built into it, which determines or delimits the questions that can be posed of that object, what practical/political problems are seen to be most pressing, and what possibilities there might be for action and change. This chapter traces the transformation whereby an ‘imperial’ imaginary of the international was challenged and replaced by an alternative conception of the international—the Bandung imaginary. Central to this imaginary was its to challenge the global colour line in an effort to reorder the world. This chapter is about Bandung and its global imaginary, but also about its subsequent eclipse.
Climate and Capitalists
Authors: Sluga Glenda
Published: June 2024

A new environmental history is focusing on global governance. This chapter studies the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, seen through the roles of the British economist Barbara Ward and anthropologist Margaret Mead, exceptional actors in a unique set of scientific, political, and economic networks. It argues that by putting Mead and Ward back into this international history of the origins of global environmental governance, we gain a new historical perspective on how the international domain of politics has been imagined to include the environment, and who counted—women as much as men, economists, anthropologists, and business. Adding Mead and Ward allows us to see the importance of networks in all their problematic historical messiness and the changing ‘knowledge regimes’ of environmental thinking. In the early 1970s, those ‘regimes’ emerged in relation to a series of implicit questions: Was the environment in crisis? What place should the developing world have in the development of a global response? Was overpopulation more critical than pollution? What was the role of economic policy and science? Was the world simply interdependent, or more fundamentally ‘planetary’ in the interdependence of all living things? Was ‘no growth’ the solution? And who in the international scheme of things got to decide or imagine?
Obligation as Moral Necessitation and Nötigung
Authors: Klemme Heiner F.
Published: June 2024

The text examines the development of the concept of obligation between Leibniz and Kant, focusing on the perspectives of Baumgarten, Meier, and Wolff. It highlights Baumgarten’s amplification of Wolff’s psychological approach to motivation, where the notion of necessitation underscores the strength of causes driving action. In contrast, Kant’s emphasis on necessitation as dependence on the principle of autonomy and the validity of pure reason shapes his distinct perspective on obligation, diverging from the psychological realm and deriving our radical moral independence from inclination. Kant’s interest lies in the possibility of a good will, necessitating an a priori normative framework founded on pure reason. While Baumgarten’s focus remains on inducing free action, Kant’s concern is establishing the possibility of a categorical imperative within the dichotomy of pure reason and empirical concepts. This juxtaposition reveals Kant’s departure from Baumgarten’s psychological emphasis and the principle of sufficient reason.