bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Authors: Rubin Allen
Published: May 2010

Like most topics in the area of mental health or mental illness, there is an enormous amount of literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Likewise, most of that literature is dated and not based on rigorous research. As with virtually any topic in the helping professions, even the empirical literature is comprised mainly of studies with serious methodological flaws. Students and scholars seeking to learn about post-traumatic stress disorder will benefit from an annotated bibliography that identifies the most recent sources that provide comprehensive coverage of the key topics and that are built on a strong empirical foundation. This annotated bibliography attempts to do that. The sources it identifies provide up-to-date, empirically based information on the history of post-traumatic stress disorder, its etiology and epidemiology, biological aspects, psychological and neurobiological theories, assessment, evidence-based interventions, cultural issues, resilience, and applications to particular traumatized populations.
Alcohol Problems: Practice Interventions
Authors: van Wormer Katherine
Published: May 2010

Since America’s war on drugs got under way in the 1980s, the government’s attention has been predominantly on illicit drugs and only minimally on alcohol problems. Yet, it is the legal drug alcohol that is associated with the majority of substance-abuse problems in American society, most notably alcohol-related traffic fatalities, child abuse and neglect, fetal alcohol syndrome, and violence. This article identifies treatment resources from the fields of social work, psychology, and counseling, with specific relevance to alcoholism treatment. Government resources available over the Internet are identified as well. An emphasis is placed on treatment interventions that are empirically based and that have served the test of time. Because European treatment approaches are different from those in the United States, where the disease model predominates, every effort has been made to include European and Australian sources written in English. The readings in this article on issues related to alcoholism treatment cover matters including the history of alcohol use, biological aspects of alcohol misuse, harm reduction, and binge drinking.
Personalization
Authors: Carr Sarah , Fisher Mike
Published: May 2010

This entry is an introduction to the concept of personalization in social care. Personalization is a way of expressing a value-based concept that is driving much of current Western welfare reform in adult services, and the specific use of the term is most notable in United Kingdom policy. In essence, the approach means starting with the individual as a person with strengths and preferences who may have a network of support and resources, which can include family and friends. Clients may have their own funding sources or be eligible for state funding. The challenge is to develop services and systems that are responsive to the individual person and that promote choice and control rather than fitting the person into traditional patterns of provision. Personalization reinforces the idea that individuals are best placed to know what they need and how those needs can be best met. The literature relating to personalization is currently emerging, both for practice and for policy. The research base to date has mainly focused on personal and individual budget schemes, but this entry also includes references to literature discussing implications for wider social care practice and policy reform issues.
Religiously Affiliated Agencies
Authors: Garland Diana R.
Published: May 2010

Religiously affiliated agencies are organizations founded by a congregation or other religious organization to provide human services. They are characterized by at least one but not necessarily all of the following variables: (1) the mission and values of the organization derive from religious beliefs and practices; (2) the organization identifies with one or more religious congregations or other religious organizations, often expressed in the organization's name and funding streams; (3) the policies reflect the organization's religious mission, such as hiring only persons who are members of a religious group or requiring or inviting staff or clients to participate in religious practices; and (4) the goal of service is that service recipients embrace religious beliefs and values, and program evaluation strategies may measure this outcome. This entry describes resources for understanding religiously affiliated social service agencies, with specific reference to social work in these practice settings.
Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Authors: Solomon Phyllis , Schmidt Lisa T.
Published: May 2010

Psychiatric rehabilitation is the use of systematic strategies and interventions to assist adults with psychiatric disabilities to become fully integrated into their communities of choice, to improve their quality of life, and to promote their own process of recovery. An adult with a psychiatric disability is an individual with a mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, a major affective disorder, or bipolar disorder, who is functionally impaired due to that disorder. Consequently these functional impairments result in these individuals being unable to achieve commonly accepted age-appropriate milestones in primary life domains, including educational attainment, employment, and intimate relationships like marriage. Psychiatric rehabilitation services are a broad spectrum of services, programs, and approaches that teach skills, modify environments, offer supports, access resources, and develop supportive networks that are necessary for increasing an individual’s capacity to assume normal roles and to be satisfied in living, working, learning, and social environments of his or her choosing. The five psychosocial evidence-based practices for persons with severe mental illness are assertive community treatment, illness management and recovery, supported employment, family psychoeducation, and integrated dual diagnosis treatment. In addition there are emerging best practices, such as peer-provided services. These service approaches incorporate the principles, values, and practices of self-determination; respect and dignity of all persons; and person-centered, strengths-based, and collaborative partnerships. Services are designed to meet an individual’s need and are sensitive to his or her cultural norms and values. These principles, values, and practices are consistent with those of social work practice. The provision of such services frequently requires combating societal stigma and discrimination directed at persons with mental disorders. These services are provided by a diversity of professional disciplines, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and rehabilitation counselors.
Islamic Philosophy
Authors: Leaman Oliver
Published: May 2010

The term “Islamic philosophy” is in itself controversial, since there are many ways of identifying the discipline. It is difficult to argue that Islamic philosophy can be carried out only by Muslims, as there were many Christians and Jews who were definitely committed to many of the techniques and principles of Islamic philosophy without being Muslims. There are some who prefer the label “Arabic” because this was certainly the scholarly language of the Islamic world during the classical period, and most Islamic philosophy was written in it, but it can be misleading to suggest that most of the philosophers were Arabs, when, in fact, the reverse was the case. A very high proportion of Islamic philosophers were and continue to be from the Persian cultural world, broadly defined. It is awkward to label Islamic philosophy Arabic philosophy, given that much of it does not take place in Arabic at all, but in any language that Muslims work in, including English. These issues may seem to be merely about language, but often they are about a lot more; the nature of the enterprise as a whole is often regarded as rather problematic in the sense that many think that Islam does not need philosophy, and philosophy does not need Islam. However, there are three main kinds of classical Islamic philosophy. There is falsafa, philosophy in the Peripatetic (mashshaʾi) tradition that models itself very much on Greek thought and a broader notion of rationality. Then there is ishraqi or illuminationist thought that distinguishes itself from falsafa and uses the concept of light as its chief conceptual device. Finally, there is mystical or Sufi thought that understands “philosophy” to be an essentially religious inquiry and one that accounts for personal religious experience.
Applied Ethics
Authors: Petersen Thomas Søbirk , Ryberg Jesper
Published: May 2010

Applied ethics is a branch of ethics devoted to the treatment of moral problems, practices, and policies in personal life, professions, technology, and government. In contrast to traditional ethical theory—concerned with purely theoretical problems such as, for example, the development of a general criterion of rightness—applied ethics takes its point of departure in practical normative challenges. Along with general overviews and journals, nine central branches of applied ethics are added, with six to eight references in connection to each branch. It should be noted that these branches constitute only a selection among the plethora of disciplines within applied ethics. Moreover, some overlap is found among the different areas.
Causation
Authors: Kvanvig Jonathan L. , Dougherty Trent
Published: May 2010

Causation is a notion that is put to work in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and even aesthetics. This bibliography addresses the main controversies surrounding this central notion itself, leaving to other entries in the relevant subfields the task of citing literature on causation relevant to the special concerns of these subdisciplines. The entry focuses on the nature of the causal relata, the objectivity of the relation, and its relation to the laws of nature, all of which have been subject to significant controversies. On the question of causal relata, the main controversy is whether it is events or facts that are related by causation, but there are alternative views as well. The ordinary assumption has been that causation is a real, objective feature of reality, but investigation of the ways in which the language of causation is context-sensitive raises questions about this assumption. In addition, a natural approach to causation is to identify it with the patterns of history that reflect the operation of laws of nature, but this regularity picture of causation has been challenged by defenders of singularity perspectives, according to which causation can occur without having any basis or connection with laws of nature. Both probabilistic and deterministic accounts will be treated, including the main alternatives in the latter camp.
Fiction
Authors: Lamarque Peter
Published: May 2010

Aspects of fiction or fictionality have long intrigued and puzzled philosophers across a surprisingly wide range of the subject, including metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. What is fiction exactly, and how is it distinguished from nonfiction? One prominent set of problems relates to fictional names (such as “Sherlock Holmes,” “the Time Machine,” “Casterbridge”), concerning how they might fit into a general semantics for natural languages. Should they be eliminated by paraphrase or should they be acknowledged as proper names, albeit referring to nonreal items? Related problems arise for ontology. Should we admit fictional entities into our ontology, affording them some kind of being (as abstract entities, perhaps, or as possible objects)? Or again, should we find ways to eliminate them? Another difficulty stems from the fact that well-developed fictional characters in realist novels can often seem more real than actual people. Not only are they spoken and thought about but they can also occupy a significant role in ordinary people’s lives, including their emotional lives. How can this be explained? How can people respond with such powerful feelings to beings they know are merely made up? Also, how is it that readers sometimes have difficulty imagining the content of stories? Philosophers writing in aesthetics about literature as an art form have explored the modes of representing fictional characters, the values storytelling might have, and the potential for works of literary fiction to convey truths about the real world. Finally, appeals to fiction are sometimes made to explain whole areas of discourse, such as mathematics or morals, where there is a reluctance to admit familiar kinds of propositions as literal truths because of their ontological commitments. Thus, “fictionalism” has been promoted: the idea that strictly speaking it is better to view the discourse as a species of fiction, even while acting as if the discourse contained straightforward truths.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Politics
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: May 2010

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.
Martin Heidegger: Early Works
Authors: McManus Denis
Published: May 2010

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is often described as one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. What is offered here addresses primarily his early work and, even so, only scratches the surface. As with all the great philosophers, there are different schools of thought on how Heidegger’s work should be read, and certain interpretive biases shape this bibliography. First, although Heidegger is perhaps the quintessential Continental philosopher, one of the distinguishing features of more recent work on Heidegger is the emergence of commentators with a background in analytic philosophy, and such “analytic” readings loom large in the present bibliography. A second and related bias is toward literature that is available in English; this bias is related to the first because “analytic” commentary is characteristically written in (or finds itself translated into) English. Although it is important to draw attention to these biases, they also ought not to be overemphasized. One reason is that there is a counter-balancing trend represented here, a trend toward placing Heidegger’s work in its historical context, both by considering his most widely-read work, Being and Time (BT), in relation to his other early writings and by tracing the role played in the emergence of BT by a set of distinctive shaping influences. This approach makes difficult any simple assimilation of Heidegger’s thought to alien traditions that might blind us to what is distinctive in his thought and some of the most interesting recent work combines a broadly analytic temper with this kind of historicist sensitivity. This bibliography divides the literature up into a number of distinct categories; but, as will be apparent, there is a certain artificiality to many of the distinctions in question. Readers should take care to read the paragraph of commentary that accompanies each set of citations, as one will find references to other relevant items listed—for various reasons—under other headings; readers ought not to assume that the topics with fewest citations “of their own” are less intensively discussed or that those citations are the most important for those topics. (The literature in this area is very large and, in constructing this bibliography, assistance has been provided by Taylor Carman, Steven Crowell, Simon Glendinning, Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Mulhall, Iain Thomson, Mark Wrathall, and Jonathan Webber.)
Intuitions
Authors: Ichikawa Jonathan , Sosa Ernest , Carter J. Adam
Published: May 2010

Philosophy often proceeds via appeals to intuition. In a prototypical instance, a theory is rejected on the basis of its counterintuitive verdict about a real or hypothetical case. A famous example is Edmund Gettier’s rejection of the justified “true belief” theory of knowledge; the dominant view was that knowledge was equivalent to justified true belief, but Gettier provided thought experiments involving subjects with beliefs derived from justified falsehoods, which happened by luck to be true—these thought experiments generally gave rise to intuitions to the effect that they described cases of justified true belief without knowledge. And on this basis, 20th-century epistemologists generally rejected the justified true belief theory. In recent decades, significant metaphilosophical attention has turned to such uses of intuitions in philosophy. What are intuitions? In what sense do arguments such as Gettier’s rely on the use of intuitions? Why should we trust them? What can they show us? This article focuses on classic and contemporary work on these and related topics.
Philosophy of Mathematics
Authors: Bueno Otávio
Published: May 2010

Philosophy of mathematics is arguably one of the oldest branches of philosophy, and one that bears significant connections with core philosophical areas, particularly metaphysics, epistemology, and (more recently) the philosophy of science. This entry focuses on contemporary developments, which have yielded novel approaches (such as new forms of Platonism and nominalism, structuralism, neo-Fregeanism, empiricism, and naturalism) as well as several new issues (such as the significance of the application of mathematics, the role of visualization in mathematical reasoning, particular attention to mathematical practice and to the nature of mathematical explanation). Excellent work has also been done on particular philosophical issues that arise in the context of specific branches of mathematics, such as algebra, analysis, and geometry, as well as particular mathematical theories, such as set theory and category theory. Due to limitations of space, this work goes beyond the scope of the present entry.
The Meaning of Life
Authors: Metz Thaddeus
Published: May 2010

For millennia, thinkers have addressed the question of what, if anything, makes a life meaningful in some form or other. This article concentrates nearly exclusively on approaches to the question taken by analytic philosophers in the postwar era, by and large omitting reference to prewar Anglo-American works, texts from other traditions such as Continental or African philosophy, and writings from nonphilosophical but related fields such as religion and psychology. Much of the contemporary analytic discussion has sought to articulate and evaluate theories of meaning in life, i.e., general and fundamental principles of what all meaningful conditions have in common as distinct from meaningless ones. This entry accordingly focuses largely on these theories, which are distinguished according to the kind of property that is held to constitute meaning in life (see Supernaturalism, Naturalism, and Non-Naturalism).
Contemporary Metaphysics
Authors: Hazlett Allan
Published: May 2010

There is no general agreement or consensus about how to define metaphysics. The word itself derives from the title of one of Aristotle’s books, one that deals with decidedly metaphysical issues, but intuitively metaphysical issues are discussed by Aristotle as much in his other works as in the Metaphysics. Contemporary metaphysics ranges over a broad set of questions: questions about what reality is like, at its most fundamental; questions about the nature of human agency and perception; questions about the legitimacy of metaphysics itself. The only way to know what contemporary metaphysics is about is to understand the relevant texts, issues, and figures. Hence this article, which presents important and influential background readings in the various subareas of metaphysics. These “areas” of metaphysics (like the various “areas” of philosophy) are deeply interconnected, to say the least. Indeed the quotes used here indicate doubts about the very idea of distinct “areas.” On this score, the artificiality of the divisions employed here cannot be overemphasized. This article is concerned with contemporary metaphysics in the “analytic” tradition, and as such it ignores some important philosophers. Most importantly, this article does not cover the historical background to contemporary analytic metaphysics, which includes the Aristotelian tradition that still shapes contemporary metaphysical thinking; the Humean empiricism and Kantian idealism to which analytic metaphysicians owe so much; and finally, the “Absolute Idealism” of F. H. Bradley (the negative reaction to which helped spawn “analytic” philosophy as we know it). Nor does it cover early-20th-century analytic philosophy, including logical positivism, or ordinary language philosophy. The aim here is to provide background reading for those concerned with contemporary metaphysics. The texts selected are mostly from the last half of the 20th century, and, for the most part, they are those that have had the most impact on contemporary debates.
Metaphysics of Mind
Authors: Byrne Darragh
Published: May 2010

Philosophy of mind addresses fundamental questions about mental or psychological phenomena. The question held by many to be most fundamental of all is a metaphysical one, often labeled the “mind-body problem,” which concerns the relation between minds and material or physical phenomena. Physicalists (and/or materialists) contend that mental phenomena are physical, or at least that they may be accounted for in terms of physical phenomena (brains, for example). Dualists deny this, maintaining that mental phenomena have fundamentally nonphysical natures, so that to account for minds we must assume the existence of nonphysical substances or properties. Nowadays physicalism is more widely espoused than dualism, but physicalists differ over which physical states/properties should be considered relevant, and over the precise nature of the relation between physical and mental phenomena. This is one of four bibliography entries on the philosophy of mind, and this particular entry concentrates on this metaphysical issue of the relation between mental and physical/material phenomena. Inevitably, there is a good deal of overlap between this and topics covered in the other three entries. For example, this entry includes authors who attack physicalism by arguing that it cannot account for the distinctive phenomenal qualities of conscious experiences; but that line of antiphysicalist argument features even more prominently in the entry on consciousness. Moreover, the other entries feature various issues that might perfectly properly be categorized as concerning the metaphysics of mind: for example, the debate between internalists—philosophers who hold that propositional attitudes (mental states such as beliefs and desires, which have representational contents) are intrinsic properties of minds/brains—and externalists, who think of certain attitudes as extrinsic or relational, is surely a question about the metaphysics of mind: but this is discussed in the entry on intentionality instead of here.
Understanding
Authors: Grimm Stephen , Hannon Michael
Published: May 2010

Understanding is a kind of cognitive accomplishment, and the objects of understanding—from people, to languages, to scientific theories, to logical proofs—are strikingly varied. As this variety suggests, debates about the nature and value of understanding occur across philosophy. In the philosophy of science, understanding is typically taken to be one of the main goods at which scientific inquiry aims; it is therefore intimately related to issues concerning scientific explanation and to debates about what it is that makes scientific inquiry distinctive. In epistemology, the interest lies in characterizing what kind of cognitive accomplishment understanding is, exactly, and how (if at all) it differs from other cognitive accomplishments such as knowledge and wisdom. In the philosophy of language, a central concern is characterizing what is involved in understanding (or grasping) linguistic items like words, sentences, or languages as a whole; similar questions about what is involved in our understanding or grasp of concepts are crucial to the philosophy of mind. Debates in additional areas will be discussed in this article, but one overarching question is whether the sort of understanding we have of scientific theories, languages, people, and the like are similar in name alone or whether they share certain essential traits. For example, one common thought is that across all of these areas understanding involves the discernment of structure of some kind. It is also commonly thought that to achieve understanding this structure must not be discerned in just any old way, but that it must be “seen” or “grasped.” Just how to understand the metaphors of “seeing” and “grasping” has been a central issue in work on understanding across disciplines.
White-Collar Crime
Authors: Simpson Sally S.
Published: May 2010

The meaning and definition of white-collar crime is deeply contested. Most criminologists recognize that white-collar crime is different from traditional “street” crime. Disagreements center on the scope of the behavior and who, ultimately, is classified as a white-collar offender. Generally, white-collar crimes are offenses conducted by guile or concealment that involve “upper world” offenders. Broad definitions of white-collar crime can include harmful acts which are not illegal (deviance) to more narrow definitions that are tied exclusively to violations of criminal law. Depending on which definition is used, white-collar offenders may include governments, businesses, chief executive officers, professionals, welfare cheats, and individuals who illegally download software or purposefully underreport income on their taxes.
Terrorism
Authors: Terry Karen
Published: May 2010

The study of terrorism is one of the most topical yet controversial issues in the field of criminology and criminal justice today. There is no single agreed-upon definition of terrorism, or of what constitutes a terrorist. Terrorism can be domestic or international, based upon single issues or broad ideologies, with or without a religious foundation, and explained from a variety of psychological and sociological perspectives. The goals of this bibliography are to expose the reader to the debate surrounding the definition of terrorism; examine the major data sources available to empirically examine terrorism issues; review major theories of terrorism from psychological and sociological perspectives; explore the link between religion and terrorism; explore who becomes a terrorist and why, as well as why some groups or movements employ terrorist tactics while others do not; and discuss domestic terrorism, including left-wing and right-wing groups and issues.
Prosecution and Courts
Authors: Forst Brian
Published: May 2010

Prosecution and courts are at the heart and center of our criminal justice system. They serve as stages of case processing that follow the police arrest and precede the delivery of convicted defendants to correctional authorities. The prosecutor, usually a politically elected official, is the chief law enforcement officer in a jurisdiction (county, state, federal) yet carries out an administrative function within the executive branch of government. To put the prosecutor and court in perspective, it is useful to think about the two million or so felony arrests made in the United States annually. About a million end in conviction and sentencing each year. What happens between arrest and sentencing is driven by the prosecutor and court adjudication system. Yet remarkably little scholarly attention is paid to prosecution and adjudication, relative to the stages before (offending and policing) and after (corrections and subsequent offender behaviors). The information that follows aims to help interested people to learn about prosecution and adjudication and the forces that shape practices in these two critical and largely hidden-from-view stages of the criminal justice process.
Rehabilitation
Authors: Huebner Beth M. , Inzana Victoria
Published: May 2010

Rehabilitation is a central goal of the correctional system. This goal rests on the assumption that individuals can be treated and desist from crime. Rehabilitation was a central feature of corrections in the first half of the 20th century. The favorability of rehabilitation programming declined in the 1970s and 1980s but has regained favor in recent years. Rehabilitation includes a broad array of programs, including mental health, substance abuse, and educational services. Specialty programs have also been developed for women, people who have been convicted of sex offenses, and individuals supervised on parole. Rehabilitation has also been introduced in the court system through the creation of specialized courts (see Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology articles such as “Drug Courts” and “Mental Health Courts”). The following literature summarizes the prominent works in this area and provides sources of reliable data on a range of treatment and rehabilitation programs.
Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
Authors: Martinez Ramiro
Published: May 2010

The study of race, ethnicity, crime, and justice usually involves research on racial and ethnic differences in crime and justice patterns or the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system. Despite recognition that racial and ethnic variations in crime and justice exist, our knowledge on the sources and consequences of this linkage is incomplete. In part this is because the categories of race and ethnicity are evolving. Also, some of the racial and ethnic categories reported by criminal justice agencies are limited or require refinement. For example, some agencies do not always use the same racial and ethnic categories, particularly with respect to Latinos/Hispanics, and code victims or offenders as either white or black. Nevertheless, although current knowledge is limited, there is still a large body of research on the relationships among race, ethnicity, crime, and justice. Criminologists tend to favor examining the impact of racial or ethnic composition, net of other social and economic factors, on violent crimes such as homicide across cities, or they will examine racial- or ethnic-specific outcomes across communities. Some social scientists also examine the effects of race and ethnicity by examining the relationship between the police and racial and ethnic minorities, or perhaps variations in sentencing and incarceration in prisons, jails, and halfway houses. However one chooses to examine race, ethnicity, crime, and justice, there are considerable racial and ethnic disparities concerning this topic across the United States.
Critical Criminology
Authors: Lynch Michael J.
Published: May 2010

Like orthodox criminology, critical criminology has developed numerous specialties, and thus it is no longer possible to describe a generic critical criminology, or to succinctly summarize this view. For this reason, this entry excludes coverage of portions of critical criminology such as critical race/racial bias, feminist criminology, violence against women, postmodern/semiotic/constitutive criminology, cultural criminology, convict criminology, and environmental justice and environmental/green criminology. Despite growing specialization, the field of critical criminology is united in its emphasis on addressing power differentials, hierarchies, and inequalities as explanations of crime, as these impact the distribution of crime over time and place, and in relation to definitions of crime and justice and processes of doing justice, as these impact the making and enforcing of laws. These power differentials also mold intermediary cultures and their relations to crime and justice. In addition, a number of critical criminology perspectives attempt to promote economic, social, and political equity to diminish the production of crime and disparities in the making and enforcement of law. Some seek to do so by empowering victims and marginalized groups, and it is this commitment to the powerless and marginalized that distinguishes critical from orthodox criminology. The bibliographic material that follows is organized to best reflect the limited segment of critical criminology that can adequately be addressed here.
Last Wills and Testaments
Authors: Cohn Samuel Kline
Published: May 2010

The testament has been an essential source for the study of the late Middle Ages and early modern period across a wide variety of disciplines, including legal history, property relations, linguistics, demography, women, marriage, the family, economy and material culture, and religious history, but especially in the study of popular piety, charity, burial choices, funerary practices, and the history of death and mentalities. Early on the testament was studied as a legal document in the evolution of contracts and property settlements, and family law. This tradition has continued and has placed the legal history of the will in larger interdisciplinary contexts using fields such as anthropology and social history, to map, in microscopic detail, marriage customs, rights of inheritance, and the emancipation of children. Particularly where no other records of a quantitative character survive, the testament has been a valuable source for evaluating relative mortalities of various plagues (despite the fact that the poor and children rarely redacted these instruments). Most fundamentally, the post–World War II period has witnessed an explosion of studies using the will to investigate popular piety, charity, death, and mentality—a history of ideas and attitudes that cuts beneath the elites and focuses on those who have left no literary works. The second and third generation of the Annales school of the 1970s, and especially Michel Vovelle (see Testaments as Sources of Popular Piety and Charity: France), fueled this new enthusiasm for the will as the principal source of a new social and cultural history of mentalities. Historians have often used wills for more than one purpose, uncovering demographic trends, burial choices, and changes in piety. Thus, the divisions in this entry are heuristic: titles have been placed in categories depending on their emphasis or their most striking conclusions.
Revolutionary England, 1642-1702
Authors: Covington Sarah
Published: May 2010

The 17th century is one of the most important periods in England’s history, eliciting highly charged and often ideologically driven debates among scholars. The story of England, as it was told during the 19th century, was central in defining British identity and creating a national myth, known as Whig history, of triumphant progress toward liberty. Not surprisingly, the 20th century revised this history in accordance with contemporary ideologies that included communism, while the 1970s witnessed a further revisionist turn when Conrad Russell, most notably, asserted the contingent nature of the causes leading to the war, in response to the traditional position that emphasized long-term events originating in a division between the crown and an oppositional parliament. This position has, unsurprisingly, been amended in recent years. Meanwhile, another shift has extended the midcentury upheavals to include the “Three Kingdoms” approach, which decenters England in its readings and incorporates Scotland and Ireland into the larger turmoil. But the 17th century was not simply about the Civil War and Interregnum dominated by Cromwell; the Restoration itself was also determined by the events that preceded it, with continuities as well as the more obvious cultural and political shifts blurring the demarcating historical line. And in some respects, the revolution of 1688 served as a culminating answer to the questions raised but never fully resolved by issues earlier in the century. Whether the revolution of 1688 was truly significant or not—and it was certainly once thought to be the crowning achievement of liberty and rights—has itself provoked debate, with James II’s “absolutism” or William III’s victory convincingly modified by historians. So many debates abound, and so many figures are subject to different readings, that it is difficult to fix this period into any stable meaning without lending it heavy qualifications. As a result, it is revealing that an increasingly common subgenre in the field consists of books solely devoted not to the history of these revolutionary years, but to the debates about it—just as the names of historians such as Gardiner, Hill, Stone, or Russell have become inextricably a part of the historical narrative as well. Such debates will continue as long as the 17th century resists clear interpretation—a testament to the dramatic complexity of the time, and to the historians who continue to interpret it.
Material Culture in the Atlantic World
Authors: DuPlessis Robert
Published: May 2010

Scholarly interest in artifacts is on the rise for reasons both narrowly academic and broadly social. Yet far from being a Johnny-come-lately, research in material culture boasts a venerable genealogy. Scholars in a variety of disciplines from archaeology to textile history have long examined the objects produced by human beings in the past as well as the present, albeit from diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Some emphasize the physical objects themselves—how they are designed and produced, and the materials out of which they are made—while others study them as means to the end of understanding ideas, beliefs, and values of the societies from which they issue. Along with other humanists and social scientists, historians have increasingly begun to engage with this research and with its sources. Ethnohistory, an anthropologically informed approach that studies written documents, artworks, folklore and oral sources, ethnographic information, and artifacts, has been at the forefront of efforts to uncover material culture objects of nonliterate or nondominant populations, usually indigenous or non-European. This recent historical scholarship has been particularly interested in the complex relationships between material objects and societies: how things and people in the past have mutually shaped one another. As always, historians are also interested in when those relationships have changed and why—and when and why they have remained the same. The Atlantic, and particularly the Anglophone North Atlantic and Caribbean, have been privileged sites of much of this historical investigation. In this respect, as well as in the many disciplines, theories, methodologies, and sources drawn upon, Atlantic material culture history strongly resembles Atlantic consumption history. The two fields likewise both attend not only to what and how many goods people acquired but also to the practices that their goods enabled them to develop. Hence, beyond the works listed in this article, the student of material culture is well advised to consult those in the Oxford Bibliographies article “Domestic Production and Consumption.”
Protestantism
Authors: Pestana Carla Gardina
Published: May 2010

Protestants arrived relatively late in the Atlantic world. They founded no permanent settlements until the early 17th century, giving the Roman Catholics a head start of more than a century. Though always outnumbered by Catholics in the Atlantic world, Protestants did become a significant minority. Before 1800, they came to dominate the northern reaches of the eastern Americas and were a presence on every continent touching the Atlantic. The history of Protestantism in the Atlantic world has thus far been written largely as a history of English (later British) expansion, in part because Britain was ultimately the most successful of the Protestant states to expand into the Atlantic world in the Early Modern era. French Protestants (Huguenots) were active in the early phase, before their government excluded them from its colonies; later they would move into the Atlantic world as refugees, usually going to British-controlled destinations. The Dutch and English were therefore the major Protestant colonizers. Relatively little has been written on the Dutch case to date. The historiography of Protestantism in the British Atlantic has been dominated by the mainland North American colonies that would become the United States; and some key questions have been driven by issues of concern in that nation’s historical narrative (such as the separation of church and state). Diversity was one of the hallmarks of the Protestant Atlantic. First the Three Kingdoms of England (and Wales), Scotland, and Ireland generated a varied population of (mostly) Protestant settlers, as well as some Irish and English Catholics. The Dutch similarly carried the diversity that marked their experience in Europe into the colonies, although the Dutch West India Company, like the British monarchy, attempted to limit that spread. The colonies established by both the English and the Dutch eventually played host to a wide variety of immigrants from various European locations, so that the variation among European Protestantism was re-created in the wider Atlantic world. Scholars have explored many of these churches and sects within an Atlantic context.
Activity Patterns in the Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampus during and after Awakening from Etomidate Anesthesia
Authors: Butovas Sergejus , Rudolph Uwe , Jurd Rachel , Schwarz Cornelius , Antkowiak Bernd
Published: May 2010

Background

The anesthetic properties of etomidate are largely mediated by gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptors. There is evidence for the existence of gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptor subtypes in the brain, which respond to small concentrations of etomidate. After awakening from anesthesia, these subtypes are expected to cause cognitive dysfunction for a yet unknown period of time. The corresponding patterns of brain electrical activity and the molecular identity of gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptors contributing to these actions remain to be elucidated.

Methods

Anesthesia was induced in wild-type and beta3(N265M) knock-in mice by intravenous injection of 10 mg/kg etomidate. Local field potentials were recorded simultaneously in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus using chronically implanted electrode arrays. Local field potentials were sampled before, during, and after anesthesia.

Results

In the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of wild-type mice, intravenous bolus injection of etomidate evoked isoelectric baselines and subsequent burst suppression. These effects were largely attenuated by the beta3(N265M) mutation. During emergence from anesthesia, power density in the theta band (5-15 Hz) transiently increased in the hippocampus of wild types, but not in the mutants, indicating that this action was caused by the receptors harboring beta3 subunits. In both genotypes, etomidate produced a long-lasting (> 1 h after recovery of righting reflexes) decrease in theta-peak frequency. Significant slowing of theta activity was apparent in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Conclusions

Etomidate-induced patterns of brain activity during deep anesthesia mostly involve actions at beta3 containing gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptors. During the postanesthesia period, altered theta-band activity indicates ongoing anesthetic action.
Fentanyl Does Not Reduce the Incidence of Laryngospasm in Children Anesthetized with Sevoflurane
Authors: Erb Thomas O. , von Ungern-Sternberg Britta S. , Keller Kathrin , Rosner Gary L. , Craig Damian , Frei Franz J.
Published: May 2010

Background

The modifying effects of fentanyl on protective airway reflexes have not been characterized in children. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of increasing doses of fentanyl on laryngeal reflex responses in children anesthetized with sevoflurane. The authors hypothesized that the incidence of laryngospasm evoked by laryngeal stimulation is reduced with increasing doses of fentanyl.

Methods

Sixty-three children, aged 2-6 yr, scheduled for elective surgery, were anesthetized with sevoflurane (1 minimum alveolar concentration). By using an established technique, laryngeal and respiratory responses were elicited by spraying distilled water on the laryngeal mucosa: (1) before the administration of fentanyl, (2) after the administration of 1.5 microg/kg fentanyl, and (3) after the administration of a second dose of 1.5 microg/kg fentanyl. In 10 children, serving as a time control, three successive laryngeal stimulations were performed without the administration of fentanyl. The responses were assessed by a blinded reviewer.

Results

The study was completed in 60 patients. The incidence of laryngospasm was not reduced when up to two successive doses of 1.5 microg/kg fentanyl were administered. The incidence of laryngospasm lasting for more than 10 s was 26% before receiving fentanyl, 31% after recieving1.5 microg/kg fentanyl, and 18% after receiving a second dose of 1.5 microg/kg fentanyl (P = 0.36 and 0.78, respectively). This response was similar to that observed in the time control group (P = 0.21).

Conclusion

Two successive doses of 1.5 microg/kg fentanyl did not effectively prevent laryngospasm in children, aged 2-6 yr, anesthetized with sevoflurane.
Ophthalmologic Complications in Children With Chronic Hepatitis C Treated With Pegylated Interferon
Authors: Narkewicz Michael R , Rosenthal Philip , Schwarz Kathleen B , Drack Arlene , Margolis Todd , Repka Michael X ,   PEDS‐C Study Group
Published: May 2010

Objectives:

Interferon treatment for chronic viral hepatitis C (HCV) has been associated with the development of retinopathy in 19% to 29% of adults. Our purpose is to describe the ophthalmologic complications of pegylated interferon‐α2a with either placebo or ribavirin in children with chronic HCV (the PEDS‐C trial).

Materials and Methods:

Prospective, comprehensive ophthalmologic examinations including slit lamp at enrollment and after 24 and 48 weeks of treatment of 114 children participating in a randomized clinical trial.

Results:

One hundred and twenty‐eight children were screened for entry, of whom 123 had an eye examination and no child had existing retinal disease. One hundred fourteen children were eligible and were treated. One hundred ten children had an eye examination at 24 weeks and 103 children at 48 weeks. Three of 114 subjects (2.6%) developed documented (n = 2) or possible (1) serious eye complications. One subject developed evidence of ischemic retinopathy (cotton‐wool spots) by week 24, 1 developed uveitis by week 48, and 1 reported at week 48 transient (<4 hours) monocular blindness that had occurred at week 36 with a subsequent normal examination at week 48.

Conclusions:

Ophthalmologic complications are infrequent in children who are treated with pegylated interferon‐α2a for HCV (2%–3%). Because of the potential severity of ischemic retinopathy and uveitis, prospective ocular assessment should remain part of the monitoring strategy for children who are treated with interferon for HCV.
Asymptomatic Colonization by Clostridium difficile in Infants: Implications for Disease in Later Life
Authors: Jangi Sushrut , Lamont J Thomas
Published: May 2010

Approximately 60% to 70% of healthy newborns and infants are colonized by the enteric pathogen Clostridium difficile. For reasons that remain obscure, these colonized infants show no ill effects from the potent exotoxins released by this anaerobe, in contrast to older children and adults who are susceptible to severe diarrhea and colitis. The organism is acquired in infancy, as in adults, from environmental contamination in the nursery or home environment. Between 12 and 24 months C difficile is evicted as a commensal, presumably by the gradual development of the adult colonic microflora. The carrier state is well tolerated by infants, and the immunoglobulin G antitoxin response that develops during the carrier state appears to provide durable protection against subsequent C difficile disease.