bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Against Ethno-Theory
Authors: Agawu Kofi
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines the rationale for an ethno-theory (a species of theory distinguished by its greater fidelity to the way native musicians think and talk about their music) and concludes that ethno-theory is a limited and limiting discourse for African musicology. Since ethno-theory in principle announces a difference from theory, the chapter first inquires into the distinction between the two and suggests that the line separating them is weak. It is argued that giving pride of place to indigenous categories of thought, including the words and formulations of indigenous musicians, should represent the beginning rather than the end of a theoretical proceeding. The chapter describes earlier efforts by ethnomusicologists (Feld, Misonu Amu, and others), including situations in which experts disagree, and asks why African musicologists have not invested in ethno-theory. It suggests that a larger cosmopolitan theory seems to be of greater interest to African musicology (like Nketia) than the more confining ethno-theory. Without undervaluing indigenous knowledge, nor underestimating its role in self-affirmation, the chapter nevertheless argues against ethno-theory because of its precarious status and because of the exoticizing temptations that attend its construction. Parallel critiques of ethnophilosophy by African philosophers suggest further why African musicologists may wish to be wary of ethno-theory.
How Journalists Might Care
Authors: Robinson Sue
Published: June 2023

Chapter 4 explores the how of trust-building theory: How do we enact an identity-aware care through engagement practices so that we build trust in public information? This chapter offers the example of listening-to-learn literacies, a group of engagement strategies being employed across many initiatives, programs, and projects around the world. In these literacies, listening is centered as the primary construct and a way for journalists and their audiences to better learn. These trust projects expanded the work of media literacy into four spaces: the civic space (which would include K–12 spaces of literacy learning), the journalistic professional space, the social amateur sharing space (such as Facebook), and the technological space (such as algorithms).
How Journalists Can Listen to Learn and Learn to Listen
Authors: Robinson Sue
Published: June 2023

Chapter 5 takes up two specific cases that focus on listening to learn. One is Citizens Agenda, a collaboration between Hearken, Trusting News, and the Membership Project to train more than 100 newsrooms in specific outreach to communities ahead of the November 2020 presidential election. The second is the implementation of a set of four trust-building modules for reporting classes that have PowerPoint presentations, discussion prompts, readings, exercises, and assignments created from this data. The trainers, journalists, professors, and journalism students for both projects were all either interviewed or surveyed about challenges, logistics, and strategies, and the trainings recorded and analyzed. Both were deemed successful overall but with caveats about constraints and disappointments, especially during the global pandemic and unusual news cycle happening from 2019 to 2021, when these were implemented.
Dealing with Threats to Health and Welfare
Authors: Tashi Kelzang T.
Published: June 2023

This chapter focuses on family and individual concerns and examines the ways in which people deal with threats to everyday life, health, and welfare posed by a range of supernatural entities. It demonstrates that it is not only the weak Buddhist presence but also the dearth of healthcare services in the village that have left the utility of Bon rituals unchallenged and ever relevant to the villagers. The chapter concludes that the ubiquity of the idea of fluctuating five life elements, the shamanic worldview of sharing this world with nonhumans, and the rituals concerning the placation of the supernatural beings, predominantly the domain of Bonpos, reveal that Bon is central to Golengpas’ ways of dealing with life’s everyday anxieties and misfortunes.
Languages
Authors: Massicotte Claudie
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines the involvement of Ferdinand de Saussure and other linguists in the study of Smith’s séances, introducing her glossolalic inventions from her Martian and Sanskrit to her Ultra-Martian and Uranian languages. It suggests that the medium’s linguistic creations influenced Saussure’s later theorizations of signification and shaped some of the first encounters between psychoanalytic and linguistic concepts—encounters that would later define Jacques Lacan’s conception of the unconscious. Here again, Smith’s séances come to provide a different lineage for the discovery of the unconscious: contrasting the linguistic exuberances of mediums with the loss of language among early hysterics, the chapter argues that mediums’ unconscious appeared shaped by higher powers of creativity and knowledge, thus differing from the more symptomatic and disabling forces of the hysterics’ unconscious.
Morality and what we ought to do
Authors: Bittner Rüdiger
Published: June 2023

There is no moral ought. For one thing, a morality of what one ought to do cannot account for the reason-giving force of moral judgements. For another, autonomy properly understood excludes our being subject to moral requirements. It is often argued that our common moral understanding is committed to there being things we ought to do—which is true, but does not decide the matter. That commitment itself lacks sufficient grounds, as among other things Aristotle’s example of a moral theory without ought shows. It is also argued that without moral requirements the ideas both of guilt and of blame will be lost—which is true again, but no cause for concern: we are better off without them.
Practical reason is about good things for somebody to do
Authors: Bittner Rüdiger
Published: June 2023

To say that something is good ‘for somebody’ to do is not to say that the person would benefit from doing it, it is just to indicate whose doing it we recommend. And to say that something is ‘good’ for somebody to do is not to say, as W.D. Ross suggested, that the person’s doing it would be an event which is simply good, an explanation that Thomson rejected as itself meaningless. Nor is it to say, as T.M. Scanlon proposed, that there is some reason for the person to do it—its being good to do may by itself be a reason for doing it and not just indicate that there is one. It is to say, following an idea of Spinoza and the Stoics, that doing it joins the series of things that proved helpful.
Doing Religion
Authors: Omer Atalia
Published: June 2023

This chapter exposes the integrated approach to development/peacebuilding and how religion is relevant to this integration; religion’s role in providing healthcare, education, and other services correlates with the possibility of peace. Religious actors as implementing partners are the key to the utilitarian intersection of peacebuilding/development. The chapter sketches a typology of such religious actors. The emphasis on doing rather than knowing religion signals the horizontalization of virtuosity as a utilitarian rather than a normative (postsecular) intervention in peace/development. It burdens the individual with the task of producing social transformation and often requires that the individual undergo a spiritual and religious formation.
Survival Piety
Authors: Omer Atalia
Published: June 2023

The chapter examines what it means to theorize religion within the neoliberal frame, shifting the focus from a prosperity gospel to piety of survival or pious resiliency. If the prosperity gospel preaches wealth, neoliberal resiliency links survival with piety and reforming subjectivities to be more conducive to keeping the peace. Pious survival exposes the very spirituality of survival and peace practices as well as how they unfold within a neoliberal frame that depoliticizes religion/culture through a reductive analysis of the causes of conflict (and poverty) and singles out the religious as the key to unlocking local buy-in. The chapter challenges the limits of the language of “partnership” central to the postsecular turn to religious actors. It argues that this concept invisibilizes those on the margins by overlooking historical injustices and their long-term impacts. In distinction, a social justice and solidarity lens prioritizes the margins—or, in the language of liberation theology, it commits to a “preferential option for the poor.”
Does Justice Have Anything to Do with Religion and the Practice of Peace?
Authors: Omer Atalia
Published: June 2023

This chapter challenges the realist constraints on religion and peace praxis as delimiting the discourse of justice. The chapter examines why the realist and utilitarian neoliberal approach relies on non-intersectional and nonfeminist accounts of religiosity. The instrumentalist model likewise promotes thin and depoliticizing versions of the “public good.” Triangulating the findings, especially from the Philippines (including interviews with Indigenous peoples), with decolonial and Indigenous studies shows that merely eliciting Indigenous epistemologies does not go deep enough into people’s capacity to decolonize their imagination of an alternative future. This capacity involves shifting outside the realist questions of what works and how to harness religion better to maintain peace and security. Decolonizing the imagination requires border thinking, theological disobedience, Indigenous criticality, and interculturality. Yet the empirical findings reveal that the interlinking of Indigenous cultural and material survival constitutes resistance to the ongoing forces of colonial erasures and divisions and thus points to (nonevolutionary) decolonial openings.
A Lineage So Grandly Historic
Authors: Faucett Bill F.
Published: June 2023

John Sullivan Dwight, born in Boston the midst of the War of 1812, was the scion of an old and respected New England family. The first Dwights arrived in the mid-1630s; John Sullivan Dwight belonged to the branch that settled in Shirley, Massachusetts, a musically advanced town. His parents’ early exposure to music deeply affected him and his siblings, and a passion for music was a hallmark of the Dwight family. Although they were nominally religious, Dwight was born and raised on Court Street, a cultural beehive that gave him ample contact with music in a secular setting. He was ideally positioned to experience music—which was generally employed for worship, for dancing, and for social gatherings—as it emerged in America as a vehicle for artistic expression and intellectual and emotional engagement.
Musical Awakenings
Authors: Faucett Bill F.
Published: June 2023

After schooling at the historic Boston Latin School, Dwight matriculated at Harvard University. There he read constantly and immersed himself in his studies. The German language especially was a subject of tremendous interest. But besides academics, there was at Harvard an underground network of music enthusiasts, and, although not officially sanctioned, music contributed substantially to the life of the university. Dwight learned several instruments and led the Arionic Society and the Pierian Sodality, Harvard’s nascent music clubs. Following a nine-month stay in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he tutored and briefly ran the local lyceum, Dwight continued his education at Harvard Divinity School and published “On the Proper Character of Poetry and Music for Public Worship,” an advocacy piece that insists on higher standards for church music and changes to the rituals of the contemporary church. Dwight’s tastes and expectations for good music were quickly rising.
The World Idealized
Authors: Faucett Bill F.
Published: June 2023

Dwight’s friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and the emergence of New England Transcendentalism deeply affected his thinking and writing. Other forces contributed as well, including William Gardiner, whose The Music of Nature (1837) gave Dwight a usable analytical language. According to Dwight, Gardiner opened the door “to a new branch of literature, musical  criticism.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Thomas Carlyle also offered powerful aesthetic stances that Dwight could emulate. Dwight’s friendship with George Ripley, a pivotal figure in Transcendentalism, also intensified. During several scandalous religious skirmishes, Dwight was at Ripley’s side, and Ripley taught Dwight how to take (and throw) a punch. As Dwight made his first forays into music journalism, his own masterful volume, Select Minor Poems Translated from the German of Goethe and Schiller (1839) appeared. Carlyle wrote, “No Englishman, to my knowledge, has uttered as much sense about Goethe and German things” as had Dwight.
Dwight on the Issues
Authors: Faucett Bill F.
Published: June 2023

Dwight’s Journal addressed innumerable topics, but some had a special appeal to Dwight. He allotted space to several major Civil War events—the Emancipation Proclamation, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and others. Virtuosi, wind bands, and monster concerts he thought especially vulgar, and he took out his ire on Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Patrick S. Gilmore. Dwight battled off and on with “A Native Musician,” who penned letters that were published in the Journal, bringing to the fore Dwight’s seeming preference for German musicians. Although Dwight is sometimes considered harsh toward American musicians, he regularly supported them in the Journal, and he often raised money for them via benefit concerts. Contemporary music got plenty of coverage, but despite his strong attitudes against modernist music and its composers, Dwight nevertheless maintained a positive outlook. He never lost faith in long-cherished Transcendentalist ideals that stipulated that music could improve society, the individual, and the self.
The Last Transcendentalist
Authors: Faucett Bill F.
Published: June 2023

When Dwight’s Journal folded, Dwight still had a dozen years of life remaining. With his daily toil behind him, he set about becoming Boston’s most formidable music historian through his contribution to The Memorial History of Boston (1881), an article on “Handel’s Messiah,” and his first major essay on J. S. Bach. Dwight also penned a significant portion of the authoritative History of the Handel and Haydn Society and wrote “Common Sense,” a thirty-page tract in which he railed against the “metaphysical and moral systems [that] spring up like the successive or alternate growths in forests.” “Common Sense” is Dwight’s final apologia on behalf of Transcendentalism. But he was to have one more significant crack at music criticism when he wrote for the Boston Evening Transcript. In the span of nine months, Dwight produced at least fifty-nine columns, many of which showed him at his most perceptive.
Introduction: An Overview of Islamism in Central Asia
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

The introduction presents the two sets of questions that motivate this book. First, what drives Islamist emergence and mobilization, that is, under what conditions does Islam become the language and the defining character of political opposition movements? Why has such mobilization taken place in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, whereas in Kyrgyzstan, civil Islam—rather than Islamism—has predominated? And why have three distinct waves of Islamism emerged and mobilized in Central Asia, from the 1980s through the 2010s? Second, why do some Islamist organizations achieve relatively high mobilization, attracting a mass following, whereas many others remain fringe groups or disappear altogether? What strategies do Islamists employ to win a social base? Are ordinary people attracted to any of the multiple Islamist movements that have surfaced? The chapter also reviews the book’s country cases and the Islamist movements within each country, as well as the research methodology.
The Russian Revolution and Muslim Mobilization
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 2 first presents the Islamic context of pre-Soviet Central Asia, showing its foundations, common culture, and also variations by region within Central Asia on the eve of the Russian Revolution. The chapter then discusses the implications of the Revolution and the onset of Bolshevik control over Central Asia and argues that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union laid the foundations of Islamist opposition through its atheist policies and assault on Islam. From 1917 to 1926, albeit inconsistently, the onset of religious repression, new Muslim ideas about Islam’s role in politics, and growing space to associate under a weak Bolshevik state triggered the emergence of multiple forms of Muslim mobilization. However, absent an expressly Islamist ideology, no Islamist movement emerged during this era. This chapter also reveals that varied Soviet implementation of religious repression led to higher contestation over Islam in certain regions.
The Atheist State
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 3 examines the consequences of Soviet persecution of Islam from 1927 onward and argues that fluctuations in this persecution motivated and enabled nascent Islamic mobilization by the last quarter of the twentieth century. Militant atheism resulted in the catastrophic destruction of Islamic institutions and public practices but generated significant contention and resistance, primarily in the Uzbek Ferghana Valley and Tajik republic. Soviet policy also, paradoxically, created the possibility for Islam to revive by inconsistently repressing religion. Minimal associational space emerged with Stalin’s creation of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM), which also opened channels for the spread of Islamic literature from the Middle East. Khrushchev renewed religious persecution but otherwise increased associational space. Under Brezhnev, Party leaders silently recognized their failure to eradicate Islam and other religions. Incomplete repression together with marginal increases in space allowed the reemergence of religious actors. They became agents of Islamic revival, often credited with “saving Islam.”
A Democratic Islamic Party Confronts an Extremist Secular State
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 6 explains the emergence of a second wave of Islamism in Tajikistan. In the early to mid-2000s, postwar associational space was greater but religious repression was again growing, generating widespread discontent. This second wave entailed the rebirth of the postwar IRPT, which became a legal party and a peaceful, democratic opposition force in the country. The chapter argues that the IRPT, as it had a decade earlier, successfully mobilized followers despite harsh regime repression because it had deep sacred authority, developed transcommunal networks that spanned much of the country, and adapted its ideas to Tajikistan’s local political concerns and particular Islamic norms. The IRPT grew steadily until it was banned in 2015. This chapter also discusses other variants of the second wave, which were more extreme and sometimes violent. These Islamists had little authority, narrow networks, and radical ideas; they failed to mobilize widely.
Seeking Justice and Purity
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

The USSR’s brutal religious repression, followed by a marginal opening of associational space that allowed Islamist ideologies from the Middle East and South Asia to spread to the Uzbek republic, led to underground religious entrepreneurship. Mostly hujra students, these entrepreneurs created an Islamist opposition movement at the end of perestroika. Chapter 8 explores the content, trajectory, and limited success of Adolat and the Islamic Revival Party of Uzbekistan—organizations comprising the first wave of Uzbek Islamism. These groups’ young leaders—most notably Adolat’s Tohir Yo’ldosh—lacked deep sacred authority, although they did construct some Islamic authority through their association with the revivalist imam Shaykh Abduvali Qori. The Uzbek first wave also lacked networks beyond the Ferghana Valley. Adolat’s puritanism and antisystemic, albeit nonviolent, challenge to President Karimov alienated many and ended in the regime’s destruction of the movement. The chapter ends with a survey of Karimov’s anti-Islamic politics, which bred an emergent second Islamist wave, beginning in the mid- to late 1990s with the nonviolent pro-caliphate party, Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami.
Emergent Islamism in Kyrgyzstan
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 12 explores the shift in Kyrgyzstan from 2005 to 2020, as its political and religious environment gradually became more repressive. It examines the conditions fostering Islamist emergence, namely, targeted religious repression, especially of ethnic Uzbeks, together with the diffusion of Islamist ideologies by new religious entrepreneurs. It then explores two paths that followed: contention between the state and the ethnic Uzbek community, as several imams preached the virtues of a caliphate without founding a movement, and the growth of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami. HTI, a transnational pro-caliphate party, had initially failed to gain adherents in Kyrgyzstan. By the mid- to late 2000s, however, HTI’s criticism of Kyrgyzstan’s corrupt “democracy” resonated with some. The chapter explores the strategies HTI used to mobilize support inside Kyrgyzstan: drawing on local imams’ sacred authority, using ethnic Uzbek networks, and adapting its ideas to Kyrgyzstani concerns about corruption, injustice, and oppression of Uzbeks.
Society and Islamist Ideas in Kyrgyzstan
Authors: Collins Kathleen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 13 argues that focus group discourse revealed greater politicization of Islam among ordinary Kyrgyzstanis during President Bakiyev’s rule than previously. Under Bakiyev, religious repression and injustice escalated and angered ordinary people, especially ethnic Uzbeks. Kyrgyzstani respondents also revealed the influence of Islamic missionaries, both foreign and local, who had introduced puritanical and political interpretations of Islam. Overall, focus group and interview discourse demonstrated that anger at religious repression and injustice coincided with finding some Islamist ideas attractive. Yet, in Kyrgyzstan, as elsewhere, not all Islamist ideologies and movements resonated; only a minority of respondents approved of an Islamic state or viewed a caliphate and Islamic courts as ideal. HTI had sympathy but minimal support. Most simply sought justice. Many Kyrgyzstanis favored a greater Islamic influence on politics, through de-secularization and creation of a more Muslim society and polity, but opposed radicalism and especially violence.
Roman Inequality
Authors: Cohen Edward E.
Published: June 2023

This book explores how a small number of male and female slaves, and some free women, at Rome in the first and second centuries ce prospered in business amidst a population of generally impoverished free inhabitants and of impecunious enslaved residents. It focuses on two anomalies to which only minimal academic attention has been previously directed: (1) the paradox of a Roman economy dependent on enslaved entrepreneurs who operated, and sometimes achieved personal affluence, within a legal system that supposedly deprived unfree persons of all legal capacity and human rights; (2) the incongruity of the importance and accomplishments of Roman businesswomen, both free and slave, successfully functioning under legal rules that in many aspects discriminated against women, but in commercial matters were in principle gender-blind and in practice generated egalitarian juridical conditions that often trumped gender-discriminatory customs. Slaves’ acquisition of wealth was actually aided by a surprising preferential orientation of the legal system: Roman law—to modern Western eyes counterintuitively—privileged servile enterprise to the detriment of free enterprise. This volume also examines the casuistry through which Roman jurists created “legal fictions,” facilitating a commercial reality utterly incompatible with the fundamental precepts that legal experts (“jurisprudents”) continued explicitly to insist upon.
Servile Imperialism
Authors: Cohen Edward E.
Published: June 2023

Just as the structure of private Roman life and law mandated the conduct of commerce through the master’s allocation of critical functions to his slaves and former slaves, and the exclusion of free persons from mercantile roles, considerations of reliance, loyalty, continuity, and control motivated the princeps to administer his imperium essentially through his slaves and former slaves. And just as within the private Roman household, where for slaves of economic talent and accomplishment (even after “manumission”) the boundary between freedom and slavery was often somewhat imperceptible, analogously for important imperial slaves, gaining “freedom” was an oxymoron. Imperial slaves of skill and accomplishment tended, as they progressed in their careers, to take on a formally “free” status as liberti—but in reality they remained members of Caesar’s family, still dependents of their master, evoking the same envy and fear from free persons that they often aroused when still formalistically enslaved. Yet, markedly successful slaves serving in the emperor’s administration did enjoy significant rewards while still enslaved; thereafter they often became markedly successful “freedmen.” Still, the phenomenon of Servile Imperialism should not be exaggerated, either in its scope or its longevity. Slaves’ ascendancy arose, and reached its acme, in the first century ce, and thereafter declined, although persons not born free continued to hold important administrative positions well into the third century.
Investment Crowdfunding
Authors: Schwartz Andrew A.
Published: June 2023

Investment Crowdfunding presents a comprehensive guide to this exciting new online marketplace for entrepreneurial capital, authored by the leading global expert in the field, Professor of Law and Fulbright Scholar Andrew A. Schwartz. This timely book analyzes American law—in particular the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act and Regulation Crowdfunding—and compares it to the legal regimes in the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand. The book marries theory with on-the-ground research to give lawyers, students, scholars, and policymakers a one-stop shop for everything they need to know about investment crowdfunding, its regulation, and how to improve it. Its prescription is liberal in the classical sense: policymakers should mainly rely on private ordering and financial incentives to govern and police the market, and employ law and regulation to enhance the efficacy of private ordering.
Introduction
Authors: Schwartz Andrew A.
Published: June 2023

In the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012, the United States amended the federal securities laws to authorize investment crowdfunding, an inclusive new way for entrepreneurs to get the capital they need to build and grow startup companies. Entrepreneurs now have the ability to solicit investments directly from the broad public—the “crowd”—simply by posting an idea to an investment crowdfunding website (known as a “platform”) and asking each person to pitch in a small amount. Investment crowdfunding is open to all entrepreneurs and investors (unlike traditional venture capital and angel investing, which is legally limited to wealthy, so-called “accredited” investors), and the idea has spread around the world over the past decade. This chapter introduces the subject and provides a road map for the remainder of the book.
National Party Organizations and Party Brands in American Politics
Authors: Heersink Boris
Published: June 2023

National Party Organizations and Party Brands in American Politics reassesses the role and influence of national party organizations in American politics. This book argues that the Democratic and Republican National Committees (DNC and RNC) have particular roles that previous scholarship has ignored: party leaders turn to the DNC and RNC after electoral defeats with the goal of using these institutions to reshape their party’s brand. Politicians believe such a brand—the basic understanding voters have of what a party stands for—helps mobilize voters and, because of this, care deeply about what kind of party image their national committees promote. Through qualitative case studies covering the history and development of the DNC and RNC between 1912 and 2016, this book shows that the committees have had major influence on when, and how, parties tried to adjust their positions on important issues such as civil rights, Prohibition, economic policies, and foreign affairs. In addition to the qualitative historical assessments, it also relies on new quantitative data measuring DNC and RNC activity across time on the basis of a content analysis of more than 40,000 New York Times articles covering both committees. These data help illustrate temporal changes in committee activity, often in response to the demands or lack of interest of American presidents serving as party leaders. National Party Organizations and Party Brands in American Politics showcases the importance of national party organizations in American political development throughout the 20th century and beyond.
The Biology and Ecology of Streams and Rivers
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

A major textbook on running waters, promoting understanding of the nature of rivers as ecosystems, and detailing the biodiversity and natural history of their biota. The book takes a primarily biological approach to river ecology, dealing with scientific questions about rivers but referring throughout to possible applications and approaches to management. The notion of a habitat templet refers to the suite of environmental factors that face lotic organisms and the adaptations and traits that enable their survival in such challenging environments. How does the complex, patchy nature of whole-river networks impinge on the population dynamics of lotic organisms and the nature of communities? Species interactions and food web linkages determine the flow of energy and material through communities and lead on to the ecosystem processes of river metabolism (the balance of whole-river primary production and community respiration) and the ecology of nutrients. The book stresses river systems as ‘open’ ecosystems, exchanging energy and materials with the land and with downstream systems. How can rivers be a sustainable part of the natural capital on which we all depend? In a final chapter the book takes a forward-looking view of river ecology, which is progressively devoted to applied questions. The Biology and Ecology of Streams and Rivers seeks to provide knowledge and understanding necessary for their, and our, future. We need to appreciate ‘what rivers do for us’ and reverse the deterioration of running waters in an increasingly thirsty, hungry and changing world.
Rivers as ecological systems
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

Streams and rivers as ecological systems are distinct from all others and have played a pivotal part in the development of human societies. They form a network of habitats connected by flow, coalescing into bigger rivers downstream. They are a dynamic part of the hydrological cycle, draining the landscapes with which they are closely linked and carrying precipitation and organic and inorganic materials downstream. They are architects of the landscape and are extremely ‘open’ systems. Running waters vary profoundly over a range of spatial and temporal scales and harbour a diversity of living things out of proportion to their relatively limited spatial extent. Most lotic species live on or in the stream bed, though some inhabit the water column. Many species occupy both aquatic and terrestrial habitats during their lives. River organisms are mostly (though not exclusively) small and short-lived and often have obvious adaptations to life in the flow.
The habitat templet
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

The habitat templet consists of the physicochemical and biological features of rivers and streams that determine the conditions for life, selecting living things that can both colonise and thrive. Species of differing size and longevity may exploit lotic habitats in quite different ways, while key factors operate at different scales. We consider the geomorphology of rivers, their flow and the hydraulic forces that act on organisms and their habitat. The substratum varies in coarseness and composition, largely depending on flow and sediment transport. The chemistry of running waters is influenced strongly by the geology, soils and vegetation of the catchment and varies widely, from soft water of low ionic strength to mineral-rich systems. Water temperature and oxygen concentration are fundamental factors affecting individual organisms, their populations and distribution, and ecosystem processes. The habitat templet is progressively affected by human activities.
River biota
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

The river biota ranges widely in size (over 16 orders of magnitude), though most of its constituents are small and inconspicuous. Their biodiversity is impressive relative to the surface area of the globe covered by running waters. Microorganisms are numerous and dominate ecosystem processes like decomposition. They consist of viruses, bacteria, Archaea, fungi and smaller algae. There are then larger algae, lower and vascular plants. These are joined by protozoans and small metazoans (multicellular animals). Larger invertebrates include flatworms, molluscs, crustaceans and leeches. The most abundant animals are often insects, some aquatic only as larvae, some as both larva and adult. Fish are the most conspicuous and diverse vertebrates. Amphibians are numerous but highly threatened. Many birds depend on freshwater habitats, about 70 species being running-water specialists. There are many semi-aquatic mammals, two orders of fully aquatic mammals (river dolphins, and dugongs and manatees), while many others depend directly on rivers.
Matching the habitat templet
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

Some features of species are ‘adaptative’ in particular environments. Many have respiratory mechanisms enabling life where oxygen availability is low, while some lotic organisms resist drying. Adaptations to the flow (including body shape) or for filter-feeding are common. Appropriate behaviour is important, as is the life cycle. Feeding mode allows the allocation of animals to various ‘functional feeding groups’, though dietary generalism is widespread. The biological features of organisms have been called ‘species traits’ and may be advantageous in particular situations—these include body size and shape, longevity, mode of respiration and others. The occurrence of the different traits in an assemblage can then be assessed in different environments, to test theoretical expectations (e.g. whether traits conferring resistance to drought are prominent in systems prone to drying). Such expectations have been only partially met—possibly because different combinations of traits may be ‘alternatives’ enabling survival in any one environment.
Population ecology
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

Population ecology concerns the distribution and abundance of single species. Distribution is evident at different spatial scales and is dynamic, patterns relating to environmental features (e.g. flow, substratum, water chemistry). These also affect numbers, although density-dependent regulation, and/or the patchy nature of the habitat, may also be important. Large-bodied species (the ‘megafauna’) are widely in decline. Density-dependent regulation occurs in some stream fish and benthic invertebrates, though disturbances by extremely high or low flows impose density-independent mortality. Organisms may survive disturbances in refugia of various kinds, however, so recovery can be rapid. Downstream drift of individuals in the flow is contentious in many species, though populations usually persist and are not permanently displaced downstream. The existence of local populations of the same species in different parts of the stream network may increase overall survival if they can be ‘rescued’ by dispersal among them—a key process in metapopulation ecology.
New horizons
Authors: Hildrew Alan , Giller Paul
Published: June 2023

This chapter looks at developments in running-water ecology and management. A suspected biodiversity crisis in running waters is driven by pollution, flow modifications, overexploitation, climate change, invasive species and other factors. Large migratory fish and mammals (the ‘megafauna’) are particularly at risk. Invasions are exacerbated by world trade and the linking of separate river catchments via artificial waterways. Emerging contaminants include pharmaceuticals, plastics and numerous industrial chemicals. Biomonitoring is adopting new (molecular) methods of assessing biodiversity, and identifies individual stressors (beyond organic wastes) and multiple stressors. Quantifying the ‘ecosystem services’ from rivers provides a basis for their conservation. Services can be provided by organisms acting as ‘ecosystem engineers’ (e.g. beavers can be part of natural flood defences). Rivers feed back on the climate by producing the greenhouse gases nitrous oxide and methane. Increasing water scarcity is the greatest threat to rivers. We briefly mention skills likely to be useful in the future.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the Czech Constitution
Authors: Kosař David , Vyhnánek Ladislav
Published: June 2023

Czechia is an outlier in Central Europe, as it has not witnessed significant democratic backsliding since the fall of communism. Still, it is a fragile democracy. This chapter examines why is it so by analysing the evolution of the Czech constitutionalism and putting it into broader social and political context. It thus explores not only historical pedigree of the 1993 Constitution, key constitutional principles (such as the democratic principle, the rule of law, human rights, and separation of powers) and institutions, but also the transformation of Czech constitutionalism, often resulting from personal politics, conventions, informal institutions, and constitutional narratives and sentiments. It shows how major political and societal conflicts have shaped the Czech constitutional system and the Czech constitutional identity. By doing so this chapter provides an informed view of how the Czech polycentric constitution actually works and what its main challenges are.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the Polish Constitution
Authors: Szwast Michal , Szwed Marcin , Starski Paulina
Published: June 2023

This chapter undertakes the challenging task of sketching key features of the ‘Gestalt’ of the Polish Constitution of 1997 in times in which the fundaments of Poland’s constitutional order have become severely contested. It sheds light on the origins of the Polish Constitution of 1997 considering different strands and stages of Poland’s constitutional development before addressing the rigidity and evolution of the Polish Constitution. Beyond that, it depicts major aspects of the dismantlement of the Polish constitutional order occurring since 2015—a disturbing caesura in Polish constitutionalism. The chapter then continues with elucidating some basic concepts of Polish constitutional law as established before the illiberal reconfiguration of the Polish state by the ‘United Right’ government and the simultaneous political capture and instrumentalization of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal thereby illustrating the axiology of the ‘real’ Polish Constitution of 1997: in that regard, it focuses on the supremacy of the Polish Constitution, the concepts of ‘sovereignty’, the ‘common good’ and the ‘nation’, the notion of the ‘democratic state ruled by law’, the constitutional protection of human rights, the separation of powers, the ‘form’ of the Polish state as envisaged by the 1997 Constitution and the concept of ‘constitutional identity’.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the Spanish Constitution
Authors: Comella Victor Ferreres
Published: June 2023

This chapter gives an account of the basic principles and institutions of the Spanish constitutional order. It first describes the process of transition from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy culminating in the enactment of a new Constitution in 1978. It explains the bargaining process at the constitutional table and the foreign influences that helped shape the constitutional text. It then turns to the evolution of constitutional practices, driven by the interpretations of the Constitutional Court, and discusses the problems associated with the rigidity of the amendment procedures. The chapter next examines the basic principles of the Constitution, including the rule of law, fundamental rights, and democracy, and the structures of government. In particular, it discusses the interactions between parliament and the government and the role of the king, as well as the distribution of power between the centre and the regions. In this connection, the chapter focuses on the ways the constitutional system has tried to accommodate the political, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the country, and to respond to the Catalan secessionist movement that has emerged in recent years. The chapter ends with the issue whether there is a constitutional identity in the Spanish legal system that should be entrenched against other normative orders, such as that of the European Union.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the Swedish Constitution
Authors: Bull Thomas , Cameron Ian
Published: June 2023

This chapter explains the origins, evolution, and basic structures of the Swedish constitution. It examines inter alia how historical factors have influenced the present (1974) constitution, the basic features of the Swedish state, the role of the constitution in the Swedish legal order, and the constitutional identity of Sweden. Sweden belongs to the group of states practising political constitutionalism, and the constitution emphasizes parliamentary sovereignty. Government is collective, and administrative agencies operate with a high level of autonomy. The constitutional role of the courts was originally limited, however, this has increased as a result of societal developments and EU/ECHR membership.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the Swiss Constitution
Authors: Biaggini Giovanni
Published: June 2023

The chapter sets out the structure, the basic concepts, and the evolution of the Swiss constitution from when it was first conceived until today. It describes the significant developments in the creation of the first constitution of 1848 and its later amendments and full revisions of 1874 and 1999. The chapter shows how the Swiss Confederation was built on the basis of the constitution and how fundamental principles such as democracy, rule of law and federalism have shaped and remain important cornerstones of Swiss constitutional law until today. It delves into the institutional organization of the federation, assessing both political and judicial actors and their role in the constitutional order. Eventually, it explains how constitutional identity has been elaborated and is understood from a legal perspective.
The Evolution and Gestalt of the British Constitution
Authors: Loughlin Martin
Published: June 2023

This chapter presents an account of the historical development of the British constitution. Situating it in the context of an evolving tradition of European constitutional practice, it seeks to explain the British constitution by presenting it as a distinctive variant of the European way of governing. By focusing on its unusual history and unique characteristics, including its unwritten character and adherence to a basic principle of parliamentary sovereignty, it highlights the difficulties experienced by the British in participating in the creation of a ‘common public law of Europe’ through the project of continuing European integration.
Introduction
Authors: Knight Frances
Published: June 2023

The Introduction begins with a brief sketch of the life of Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) who is famous as the originator of the Garden City movement. He has previously been seen largely within the history of town planning, and the Introduction discusses the existing historiography, revealing that he continues to influence thinkers and theorists of various types. The purpose of the book is explained, which is to provide a biographical study of Howard that locates him within his religious context, shaped by Congregationalism, overlaid by influences from Spiritualism and other new religious movements. It is argued that understanding his religious context sheds new light on Howard’s personality and motivations, ideas which will be explored further throughout the rest of the book.
The Early Years of Exploration 1850–1876
Authors: Knight Frances
Published: June 2023

This chapter begins by exploring Ebenezer Howard’s childhood as the son of confectioners in the City of London, and discusses his education, and early employment as the secretary of Joseph Parker, the well-known Congregational minister of the Poultry Chapel. Parker and his context are discussed in some detail. The second half of the chapter discusses Howard’s years in America, first as a farmer in Nebraska, and then as a shorthand writer in Chicago. In these years he read widely and developed intellectually, and he made an important connection with the American Spiritualist Cora Richmond.
The Days before To-morrow 1890–1898
Authors: Knight Frances
Published: June 2023

This chapter explores the period during which Howard was working on the book that outlines the Garden City idea, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform which was published in 1898. Family issues, the support of Lizzie Howard, and that from London’s Congregational community are discussed, together with Howard’s interactions with London’s land and housing campaigners. Howard’s promotion of his ideas through public meetings and talks in churches are highlighted, and the early drafts of the book are discussed. The content of the book is analysed, together with its launch and reception at Rectory Road Church, and the publication of the revised edition, Garden Cities of To-morrow in 1902.
The Path to the First Garden City 1899–1904
Authors: Knight Frances
Published: June 2023

This chapter explains how the Garden City Association developed from being in 1899 a tiny band of like-minded friends who were mainly within the London Congregational community, to a nationally significant organization that was able to found the first Garden City at Letchworth in 1903. Explanatory factors include the particular culture of the fin de siècle, the sustained support from the press, Howard’s own skill as a publicist able to maintain support from many quarters, the interest and involvement of women and the robust management of the first Garden City from Ralph Neville and Thomas Adams. The chapter discusses the final years and death of Howard’s wife Lizzie. It also considers the ways in which Howard, and some of his ideas, became increasingly marginalized, as power began to shift towards the directors of the Garden City Pioneer Company.
The Spiritual Life of the First Garden City 1904–1918
Authors: Knight Frances
Published: June 2023

The chapter poses the question of how religion re-rooted itself in the newly created community of Letchworth Garden City. It analyses the range and diversity of religion in the town in the years before the First World War. Letchworth Free Church, the early ecumenical experiment that faltered as individual nonconformist denominations were established, is discussed. In addition to this, Letchworth’s particularly liberating spiritual atmosphere, which provided a fertile environment for Quakers, the Alpha Union, Theosophy, and various forms of free thought is explored. The chapter investigates Letchworth’s Roman Catholic community, under the leadership Adrian Fortescue, its intriguing parish priest, and concludes with a discussion of the impact of the First World War on the town. Other figures significant in Letchworth’s religious history discussed here include Charles Purdom, Juliet Reckitt, Annie Lawrence and Bruce Wallace.