bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Do Young Children Have to Say?
Authors: Pascal Christine , Bertram Anthony Douglas
Published: February 2025

This chapter foregrounds a trans-national study in which Froebelian storytelling techniques are used to capture children’s play narratives about their COVID experiences. The study acknowledges the pandemic posed particular challenges for young children, yet often their voices are excluded from consideration. Analysis of the children’s play narratives reveals an expressed desire to regain their daily life and routines, be with their friends, have extended time to play, be outdoors, and have authentic information. It suggests responses to the pandemic should seriously consider these expressed needs. We celebrate Trevarthen’s contribution to our democratizing movement in early childhood education and the innovative ways he gives us to think about children’s minds and relationships. As we move towards a post-pandemic world, his wisdom, agency, and companionship are needed more than ever.
Universal Harmony
Authors: Trevarthen Colwyn
Published: February 2025

This chapter provides an overview of Universal Harmony. It explains that the human desire to find meaning with companions is so strong that people suffer shame and anger when people receive no trust or understanding. Most rigorous physical scientists must assume that there exists a harmony of forces in the universe they study. However, nature grows on the edge of creation, between order and chaos, and must conserve a rhythm of being in all its evolving processes and substances regardless of its fragility. The chapter then looks into the key concept of musicality that nurtures the movement of life from its beginnings.
Overture
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

An outline of some of the main themes of the book. This chapter reviews the principle of relativity and describes what is important about general relativity and what it is built upon.
The metric
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In Chapter 5 we consider a very special tensor: the metric tensor. The metric tensor encodes information about the spacetime, how distance is measured and also whether the spacetime is curved.
Causality, infinity, and horizons
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In this final chapter of this part of the book on cosmology, we study some very general ideas that allow us to think about infinity in the context of the geometry of spacetime. The conformal structure of a model universe allows us to treat its infinities as points or surfaces at the edge of spacetime. Penrose diagrams allow us to visualize the conformal structure of a spacetime, revealing particle and event horizons. Singularities can be incorporated into Penrose diagrams: they form boundaries to spacetime that can be separated from an observer by a finite interval.
Black holes
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In Chapters 25 we examine static black holes, objects that gravitate so strongly that not even light can escape their interior. Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravitational curvature doesn’t allow light to escape. The spacetime of spherically-symmetric black holes is described by the Schwarzschild metric.
Inflation
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

We apply the ideas developed in the previous chapter to the problem of the early Universe in Chapter 41, introducing the idea of cosmic inflation and showing how it solves the flatness problem.
The electromagnetic field
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In Chapter 42 we formulate a geometrical description of electromagnetism which results in a very efficient form of Maxwell’s equations in coordinate-free notation.
Gauge fields
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In Chapter 44, we examine the link between relativity and the very influential idea of a gauge in a field theory.
The Big-Bang singularity
Authors: Lancaster Tom , Blundell Stephen J.
Published: February 2025

In Chapter 50 we show the inevitability of a Big Bang from our geometrical viewpoint and its reliance on smooth spacetimes.
‘Arms Trade Law’ and the Potential of International Justice
Authors: Hamilton Tomas
Published: February 2025

Chapter 3 proposes a putative field of ‘Arms Trade Law’ and examines how some of its deficiencies demonstrate a potential role for International Criminal Law. A plurality of national and international laws—from arms embargoes, laws on state responsibility, the use of force and neutrality, humanitarian, human rights, and counter-terrorism laws, and other subsidiary areas, all (indirectly) impact the flow of weapons to atrocity situations. The chapter foregrounds the limitations of UN Security Council arms embargoes, which lack criminal accountability, are restricted to specified items, and are selectively applied. The analysis of the transnational assemblage of ‘Arms Trade Law’ reveals the strengths of International Criminal Law: as well as integrating structurally and legally with other areas, an international arms trade prosecution would offer the expressive value of condemnation. The International Criminal Court (ICC) could play a powerful symbolic role; communicating moral opprobrium against those who profit from complicit arms sales.
Overlooking Arms Brokers in the ICC’s Situation in the DRC
Authors: Hamilton Tomas
Published: February 2025

Chapter 9 evaluates the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s handling of potential arms trade cases in its Situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a formative period in the Court’s early development. Initially, the Prosecutor of the ICC took a broad approach to case selection in the DRC Situation, which included arms traders. But this approach became narrowed as the Prosecutor’s interest in brokers such as Victor Bout was abandoned in favour of prosecuting the Ituri warlords. The chapter identifies four ‘blind spots’ that are consistent with this narrowing: political viability, pragmatism, perceptions of victim interests, and horizontal selectivity. The blind spots were consistent with an ICC legal culture that prioritized what it perceived to be the more traditional, pragmatically safer military and political targets, excluding economic actors like arms brokers. The Prosecutor thus missed an early, formative opportunity for the Court to pursue a fuller spectrum of targets. The chapter highlights the need for greater awareness of arms trade liability among practitioners, to foster a broader, more inclusive approach to international criminal prosecutions.
Honour and the Economy of Credit in the Age of Revolutions
Authors: Heinzen Jasper
Published: February 2025

Eighteenth-century warfare was no exemplar of restraint. Just as armies plundered occupied territories when commanders felt that they could get away it, so captured officers and governments abused the terms of parole for their own benefit. The expansion of European military campaigns to colonial settings only complicated the standards to which belligerents could be held. Nevertheless, contracts of honour commanded respect as part of a wider economy of credit, which rewarded promise-keeping and the repayment of debts. Freemasonry, an important social invention of the Enlightenment dedicated to universal human improvement, helped members gain freedom on parole by keeping channels of communication open between enemies. The French Revolution (1789) marked a historical watershed, since it sharpened categories of alterity which undermined trust. Napoleon’s rise to power in 1799 returned honour to a place of prominence but engendered fresh debate about the duties it imposed on paroled prisoners.
Are There Errors and Biases in the Application of the Death Penalty?
Authors: Costanzo Mark
Published: February 2025

In this chapter, the author argues that society must not close its eyes to the reality of error in the justice system and that sometimes the system wrongfully arrests, convicts, imprisons, and occasionally even executes an innocent person. This is the most troubling form of error in capital cases. The chapter details some instances of wrongful execution and explores the reasons for such miscarriages of justice. The author argues that the alternative to the death penalty—life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—not only satisfies society’s goal of protecting itself, but also eliminates the risk of killing innocent people or threatening them with execution.
The Slow Death of Capital Punishment in the United States
Authors: Costanzo Mark
Published: February 2025

In the United States, death sentences and executions are both in decline. Over the past ten years, about forty new inmates are sent to death row per year, and, during the same period, about twenty-two prisoners are executed each year. The incoming residents of death row are added to the roughly 2,300 people who are already living there. Most death row inmates will not die at the hands of the executioner. Some will have their convictions overturned, many will have their sentences changed to life imprisonment without parole, many more will die of natural causes. The author argues that these numbers expose the current system of capital punishment as little more than an elaborate, cruel, and costly charade.
What Is Normativity?
Authors: Copp David
Published: February 2025

Philosophers have proposed many different accounts of normativity and of normative judgment. To evaluate these accounts, we need to have a theory-neutral characterization of what these theories are intended to explain. This chapter provides such a characterization. A widely accepted view, for example, is the reasons-fundamentalist idea that normativity can be analyzed by reference to reasons. This account is not theory-neutral for, arguably, there are reasons that are not normative in the philosophically most important sense, including reasons of games and reasons in etiquette. These are “formally normative,” but not “robustly normative.” The chapter proposes the “essential relation characterization”: for a belief, concept, property, or fact to be robustly normative, is for it to have a characteristic essential authoritative relation to decisions, choices, intentions, or attitudes. It would have this relation in virtue of its semantics, content, or nature.
Objections and Replies
Authors: Copp David
Published: February 2025

This chapter responds to several important objections to ethical naturalism. Earlier chapters discussed objections to specific naturalist views. For example, in Chapter 8, section 8.1 discussed Harman’s objection from moral explanations and Horgan and Timmons’s moral twin-earth objection against Cornell Realism; section 8.2 discussed the “because objection” against the Canberra program; section 8.3 discussed Parfit’s argument from the burning hotel against Neo-Humean Subjectivism; section 8.5 discussed Street’s evolutionary debunking argument. The book as a whole responds to the chief objection, which is that ethical naturalism cannot account for robust normativity. This chapter responds to many additional objections, under the following headings: 9.1 The “Is/Ought Gap”; 9.2 The “Open Question Argument”; 9.3 The “Argument from Queerness”; 9.4 Ethical Motivation and the Expressivist Intuition; 9.5 The Non-Empirical Character of Ethical Belief; 9.6 Parfit’s Objections; 9.7 Ardent Realism and Reference-Determination; 9.8 The Normative Question and Transparency; 9.9 The Just Too Different Objection.
Whose Morality Is Out of Order?
Authors: Xie Chaoqun
Published: February 2025

The internet, serving as a remarkable testament to human technological advancement, offers abundant opportunities for individuals to engage in social interactions and participate in various aspects of the life-world. However, it is essential to acknowledge that the online environment also creates a platform where (im)morality and aspects of human nature may manifest more prominently. This chapter explores how issues of deviance and respectability contribute to the understanding of morality and human nature in the Chinese cultural context, using a case study of a university teacher who became the target of online whistleblowing by his students for expressing different views on ancient China’s Four Great Inventions. Ultimately, this chapter aims to not only enhance the understanding of internet-mediated discursive (im)morality, but also provide insights into the intricate and nuanced relationships between (im)morality, deviance, and respectability.
Moralizing (Un)civil Behavior
Authors: Reiter Rosina Márquez , Franch Patricia Bou
Published: February 2025

This chapter explores the multiplicity of citizens’ moralizing discourses resulting from a controversial bill in Uruguay to protect vulnerable people from the dangers of second-hand smoke but excluded cannabis consumption, whose recreational use is legal and observed in public spaces. Moralizing discourses, understood as communicative practices, are examined by drawing on the notion of interpellations. A sociopragmatic analysis of a corpus of user-generated comments from the Facebook page of a Uruguayan broadsheet reporting the bill revealed four main themes around which commenters constructed moralizing discourses regarding civil and moral expectations in public space: politics and (lack of) regulation of tobacco/cannabis use, personal attacks, relational violence in public/private space, and citizen insecurity. The findings show how commenters reflexively question the contemporary social order as being increasingly permeated by relational violence. They bring into focus the moral expectancies of civility in the lived face-to-face and digital experiences of modern citizens.
From CDs to Covid-19
Authors: Gidal Marc
Published: February 2025

Chapter 5, “From CDs to Covid-19: Professional Agency in Volatile Industries,” explains changing business practices that have affected Brazilian jazz in New York between 2000 and the Covid-19 pandemic that started in 2020. It introduces theories from popular music studies, musicology, and business that view music, culture, institutions, and capitalist industries as a holistic system, and that emphasize the agency and strategies of professionals. People work in the local market that supports Brazilian jazz primarily because of their passion for the music, yet they must exercise business savvy to survive, let alone to accomplish their ambitious goals. The chapter then explains changing business practices of music venues and record labels during the 2010s in contrast to each of the preceding two decades. Starting in 2020, the experiences of musicians and presenters during the pandemic exemplify contrasting ways that they adopted new technologies and pivoted business practices.
Embracing Exile
Authors: 9780197623558  , Kraemer David
Published: February 2025

Embracing Exile is a comprehensive history of Jewish responses to and conceptions of their exiles/diasporas. Jews have, since their beginnings, been a wandering people. According to their origin story, they wandered from Ur of Chaldees to Canaan to Egypt and then back to Canaan. From there, they were exiled to Babylon, where they built their longest-lived home, one that survived until the twentieth century. Over the span of centuries, they resettled in Persia, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States, often flourishing. Thanks to these experiences, Diaspora became “natural” to Jews, and though they may have hoped for a return to their Promised Land at the End of Days, they made sense of their many homes, defending Diaspora as the realm where Jewish life could grow and Jews fulfill their covenantal obligations in the company of their God. The texts and expressions the volume documents in Defending Diaspora include biblical and rabbinic texts, philosophical treatises, Kabbalah, Hasidism, and a multiplicity of modern expressions. The book offers revised readings of the book of Esther and other biblical texts, a survey of Talmudic treatments of exile, an in-depth analysis of the thought of the Maharal of Prague, analyses of works by Philip Roth, and other modern authors, and much more. The book shows that lament has not been the most common Jewish response to diaspora and that Zionism is not the natural outcome of either Jewish ideology or history.
Biblical Narratives of Diaspora
Authors: Kraemer David
Published: February 2025

This chapter explores the beginnings of Judaism’s alternative approaches to exile, found in biblical texts themselves. These alternatives emerge from the fact that, for many Jews exiled to Babylon, “exile” was not a temporary affair. Becoming Babylonian Jews, they had to make sense of Jewish life away from the Jewish homeland. The chapter examines biblical texts, most reflecting the Babylonian experience, that support and defend diaspora. Texts include the prophet Jeremiah, who counselled Jewish exiles to settle comfortably in Babylon, and the prophet Ezekiel, who, in Babylon, experienced detailed, explicit visions of God in exile. They also include the Bible’s full narratives of Jewish life in diaspora, from the story of Joseph to the books of Esther and Daniel, all of which see diaspora as a place of Jewish triumph.
Editor’s Introduction
Authors: Garrett Don
Published: February 2025

The editor’s introduction outlines and explains Mary Shepherd’s life and writings, focusing especially on those collected in this volume: An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, the two essays published in 1828, and her letters. It details the events that led her to write (including the so-called Leslie Affair of 1805 in Edinburgh and her correspondence with John Fearn). It also provides essential background information about the three figures whose philosophical views the Essay chiefly criticizes: David Hume, Thomas Brown, and William Lawrence. It features substantive chapter-by-chapter analyses of the aims, arguments, and conclusions of that work. Finally, it provides information about Shepherd’s correspondents: Charles Babbage, William Whewell, and Robert Blakey.
Chapter the Fifth.
Authors: Garrett Don
Published: February 2025

The fifth chapter of ERCE criticizes William Lawrence’s materialism in his Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man, which he supports by appeal to the Humean account of causation found in the work of Thomas Brown. It focuses especially of Lawrence’s treatment of the “necessary connexion” between “irritability” and “living muscular fibres” and between “sensibility” and “living nervous fibres.” The chapter argues that Lawrence fails to recognize the need for separate qualities of life and mind because he fails to distinguish between two possible relations that can be meant by the term ‘necessary connexion’, one of them merely verbal and the other metaphysical and causal. Shepherd traces Lawrence’s alleged errors to his acceptance of the central features of Thomas Brown’s treatment of causation. Foremost among these is Brown’s definition of ‘cause’ as a relation essentially involving temporal antecedence and consequence between distinct objects.
Photography, Digital Media, and Technology
Authors: Fawns Tim
Published: February 2025

Broad claims about the relationship between memory and photography, media, and the Internet are often based on thin evidence, derived mainly from a small set of controlled studies. Underlying conceptions and metaphors of memory shape understandings of this relationship within research. In particular, metaphors of storage and retrieval are insufficient for understanding diverse forms of interaction with photography and media because they do not account for specific practices and contexts. Focusing on remembering rather than on memory allows for different metaphors in which diverse media interactions are important components of cognitive activity. However, it is in combining metaphors and disciplines that a richer and more comprehensive picture can be generated of how memory works in messy, dynamic contexts. Such an expansive view of memory psychology is needed to appreciate the complexity and diversity of how mind and technology are entangled in remembering practices.
Is It Possible for Justice to Be Blind When Social Media Is Everywhere?
Authors: Kleider-Offutt Heather M. , Stevens Beth B.
Published: February 2025

The impact of social media on the legal system is reviewed across different junctures of the legal process, specifically focusing on memory contamination. The factors and situations surrounding social media’s influence on eyewitness memory, trial outcomes in criminal cases, novice investigator “web sleuths,” and police investigations suggest that although Internet searching has advantages, these searches have taken some control of the investigative process away from law enforcement professionals. Immediate access to social media by anyone with a cell phone, which results in a suspect search, may serve to contaminate witness memory in criminal cases, which undermines best practice procedures employed by law enforcement to guard against memory error and misidentifications. Face recognition software is a potential solution to some of the memory contamination issues that plague human memory but is not infallible. The advantages and disadvantages of technology-based suspect searching and related ethical issues for legal system policy are discussed.
The Iteration Principle
Authors: Fisher Greg
Published: February 2025

Entrepreneurial progress entails iterating a solution in response to stakeholder feedback. An entrepreneurial journey is most centrally about learning—learning what customers want and need and learning how to deliver the solution most efficiently and effectively. Learning is useless unless a founder makes changes in response to what is learned. Therefore, a willingness to iterate is important. These changes stem from insights in the data that a founder gets from key stakeholders when experimenting. Iteration may entail making changes to products (including zooming in, zooming out, and technology shifts), customers (including changes to customer segments, needs, and channels), or business model elements (including changes to price points, value capture mechanisms, and cost structures). These different types of iterations are not mutually exclusive. It is highly likely that one type of iteration may be coupled with another type of iteration.
The Control Principle
Authors: Fisher Greg
Published: February 2025

Entrepreneurial progress entails maximizing the use of the resources that are under your control. To make meaningful progress, an entrepreneur should shift away from focusing on what they think they need to launch their venture to instead focus much more intently on what they have under their control. This includes focusing on (1) who they are, (2) what they know, (3) what they own, and (4) whom they know in figuring out how to move forward when creating and exploiting an entrepreneurial opportunity. Doing so allows an entrepreneur to build off what is immediately under their control to be able to act quickly and definitively. This could mean shifting one’s immediate aspiration to something that is smaller, more accessible, and more doable, but doing so allows an entrepreneur to create momentum. A smaller aspiration is also often the steppingstone needed to achieve the bigger, more elaborate goal.
The Integration Principle
Authors: Fisher Greg
Published: February 2025

Entrepreneurial progress entails integrating different elements of an idea into a business model. A business is a complex system with many components. Those components need to work with one another for a business to succeed. Therefore, a business needs to be understood and managed as a whole, with many different, integrated components. One way of breaking down the different components of a new venture is to conceptualize the venture’s business model and ensure that not only do the components of that business model fit together, but also they reinforce one another. A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, and it can be conceptualized with nine different building blocks covering the firm’s value proposition, customer segments, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and costs.
Introduction
Authors: Fullard Annie , Cotter-Lockard Dorianne
Published: February 2025

The mission of this book is to promote team building and facilitate rehearsal practices that bond rather than divide an ensemble. These processes liberate ensembles to create deeper, more collaborative performances. As a result, ensembles achieve a higher level of performance. The introduction answers questions about the purpose of this book, who this book is for, and background of the authors. The authors’ vision for a chamber music world is inclusive, with the aim to empower human connection. Three main roles of chamber musicians are presented, key concepts are defined, and the introduction concludes with an overview of the book.
Working Well Together
Authors: Fullard Annie , Cotter-Lockard Dorianne
Published: February 2025

This chapter addresses tension and conflict within groups, including strategies for working well together and creating a healthy environment for rehearsals and performances. These foundational skills, combined with the rehearsal techniques and strategies, heighten the excellence of ensemble performance. Foundational strategies for building collaborative teams include appreciation, inquiry, invitation, listening, energy, and collaborative dialogue. Sources of conflict include blaming, taking things personally, lack of focus, misunderstandings, assumptions, strongly held views, and not following through. The chapter concludes with strategies for working well together, such as “try every idea as if it were your own,” the rule of agreement from comedy theater improv, humor, respecting personalities, emotional intelligence, and “bring your best self” to rehearsals.
Rehearsal Playbook
Authors: Fullard Annie , Cotter-Lockard Dorianne
Published: February 2025

This chapter offers suggestions for planning and implementing a constructive and effective rehearsal. The authors place a musical spin on the sports playbook approach, which is a step-by-step plan enabling the ensemble’s organization strategy and establishing team culture. The chapter offers long-range and daily rehearsal planning guidance and organizing accountabilities. Roles are described in detail, with strategies to ensure that responsibility for the ensemble’s progress is shared. The chapter concludes with tips for healthy dialogue and communication during rehearsal. Successful rehearsal communication strategies from artists such as Earl Carlyss (former member, Juilliard Quartet) and Hyeung Sol Yoon (former member, Chiara Quartet) are included.
Nows, Thens, and Truths
Authors: Impett Jonathan
Published: February 2025

This chapter argues that education in early music must consider the present as much as the past. Rapid cultural development means that Haynes’s 2007 encouragement to maintain the initial radical ethos of early music practice is now both more urgent and more complex. Gustav Leonhardt prioritized not “authenticity” but “truth.” The recent work of Alain Badiou is used to show how this might be understood in the context of early music practice. Truths relate to a context; in the absence of eighteenth-century audiences, current practice must address the dynamic cultural context and multiple networks of musicians and listeners, as well as the ubiquitous availability of vast amounts of music and changing modes of access, both social and technological. To fail to do so will relegate the vital body of Western art music to the status of imitative icon or prestige product. Modes of artistic research are considered as a central component of such a new approach to early music education.
“Nutrition in an Age of Diet Soft Drinks”
Authors: Fidom Hans
Published: February 2025

Audio gear compromises the quality of the sounds it is meant to reproduce. In itself that may be acceptable, but its side effect is not, as it leads to relativizing the importance of sound quality in live musicking as well; yet major concert venues replace their pipe organs with organs that use loudspeakers as sound generators instead of pipes. The Orgelpark in Amsterdam counters this development with the Utopa Baroque Organ, inaugurated in 2018. Its 2,500 pipes are voiced as historically informed as possible; moreover, its radically new digital interface affords combining and blowing them in ways never possible before. Meanwhile, comparable “hyperorgans” are being built all over the world. The resulting New Organ Movement inspires musicians from all kinds of provenances to update their skills and, in turn, to demand uncompromised sound quality.
Racial Fetishism and the Alienation of Time
Authors: Paris William M.
Published: February 2025

Following on the conclusion of the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates on the distinction between racial fetishism and racism through the work of Frantz Fanon. The argument in this chapter is twofold. First, racial fetishism describes how racial injustice in the capitalist form of life not only tends to reproduce negative stereotypes of the racialized (racism), but these ideas appear to have power over practical agency because the economic relations of capitalist societies really do deprive agents of control over their conduct. Second, the loss of control over one’s conduct prevents agents from embracing novelty rather than repeating social practices inherited from the past. Utopia is the attempt to break with the inherited relations of the past and allow agents to freely develop their own justifications and reasons for how they organize their time.
Statecraft in a World of Disorder
Authors: Ross Dennis
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines today's most pressing challenges to the US-led rules-based international order. The author describes the forces that led to that order's preeminence at the end of the Cold War and the subsequent developments which have led to its gradual weakening. Both domestic polarization and external challenges from revisionist powers have heightened the constraints placed on the US to continue its role as global leader. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, and Iranian progress toward a nuclear weapon demonstrate the resolve with which other states seek to undermine the system that has guided international relations into the twenty-first century. By examining these challenges and their implications for the future of the dominance of American values on the world stage, this chapter describes why the United States no longer has the luxury to conduct statecraft poorly.
Bosnia: Finally Getting it Right
Authors: Ross Dennis
Published: February 2025

The Bush 41st administration and the Clinton administration dealt with Bosnia. Bush saw Bosnia as the wrong war at the wrong time. His objective for the war was “avoidance.” But avoidance proved unworkable, especially as the Serbs created concentration camps for Muslim men and boys. Bush supported a UN Security Council resolution that imposed sanctions and deployed European peacekeepers—but they protected neither “safe areas” nor themselves. Bill Clinton established an objective of stopping Serb aggression but without being prepared to apply the necessary means. Fear of tearing apart NATO and being drawn into a quagmire meant that the United States had ambitious objectives but was prepared to apply only limited means. The policy would remain stuck until the summer of 1995; from then until the Dayton Conference, Richard Holbrooke would orchestrate all America’s means, including the use of force to back diplomacy, to bring an end to the war.
Syria: A Debacle in Every Sense
Authors: Ross Dennis
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines the shortcomings of the Obama administration's statecraft to address the Syrian Civil War sparked by the Arab Spring in 2011. In light of the Assad regime's escalation of lethal violence against Syrian civilians, President Obama called for an end to the violence and urged the regime engage in dialogue; his exhortations culminated in an August 2011 declaration that Assad had lost his legitimacy and had to leave. Obama's unwillingness to do more than impose sanctions was the beginning of a larger pattern to the administration's Syria approach, the objective of which became avoiding American military commitment. In August 2012, he established a red line on the use of Syrian chemical weapons; when Assad ran roughshod over that line in 2013, Obama approved covert assistance to the opposition but in a halting, indecisive manner. At every potential decision-point, Obama chose not to act, convinced that Syria would become for the United States a new Iraq. This chapter underscores that while the Obama administration had means at its disposal to effectively weaken Assad's grip on power, it chose not to use them, with devastating consequences for the Syrian people and American regional interests.
Conclusion: Statecraft and New National Security Challenges
Authors: Ross Dennis
Published: February 2025

This chapter explains that statecraft is often done poorly, with ill-defined or inappropriate objectives, because the right questions are not asked. Remarkably, hard questions about the essence of an objective are rarely posed; instead, objectives are often adopted out of habit or drift. While truly effective statecraft goes beyond the formulaic, the author describes a checklist of fundamental questions, the debate of which forms the foundation of sound statecraft. Asking hard questions about the meaning of an objective and the means that the United States or others have to achieve it often seems a lost art. Similarly, recognizing the relationship between stakes and feasibility can also do much to define the right objectives. The higher the stakes, the more ambitious the objective (and means) because the cost of failing is too high. The lower the stakes, the more feasibility is likely to determine the objective. The chapter features discussions of how statecraft must be leveraged to counter the transnational threats of climate change, pandemics, and cyber warfare, where traditional national security officials may not even understand the right questions to ask. In all three cases, public–private partnerships will be essential.
Introduction
Authors: Jumet Kira D. , Mekouar Merouan
Published: February 2025

This chapter discusses the evolution of the idea for the edited volume and the existing literature on fieldwork in repressive and/or illiberal states. It identifies and explains the need for a book that focuses on the challenges faced by scholars native to these types of states when conducting research in their home countries, and it defines terms such as “native scholar,” “repressive country,” and “illiberal country.” The authors explain academic neocolonialism and neo-imperialism, as well as the impact of colonial histories and neo-imperialism on the countries and contributors represented in the book. Finally, the summaries and organization of chapters are presented in the following four categories: (1) gender and associated societal expectations; (2) race, ethnicity, and belonging; (3) legal threats and red lines; and (4) exploitation.
Doing Research on the Margins
Authors: Shah Syed , Yousaf Farooq
Published: February 2025

In Pakistan, where the military establishment tacitly controls the national narrative on major issues, investigating rights violations on the country’s peripheries, particularly in the areas where Pashtun and Baloch ethnic groups are based, is often difficult and risky. For native researchers, researching Pashtuns in the border regions often involves the risk of retribution from state security agencies, having to overcome a strict sociocultural barrier preventing access to female respondents, and navigating expectations by interviewees that researchers will “stay true” to the political struggle of the Pashtuns. This chapter addresses the challenges faced by native researchers conducting fieldwork in the Pashtun border regions of Pakistan. The chapter also discusses strategies the authors used to mitigate these difficulties. One of the limitations of this chapter is that its findings and conclusions cannot be generalized to female native researchers, who face even more challenging sociocultural and political barriers than their male counterparts.
Lacan in Vietnam
Authors: Nguyen Cuong
Published: February 2025

The Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), known for its intolerance toward freedom of expression and political dissent, has employed draconian laws and coercive surveillance measures to silence and punish civil society activists and regime critics for many decades. In this chapter, the author addresses Vietnamese scholars’ disposition toward self-censorship, perpetuated by the “will I get into trouble if I write about this” conundrum. He also engages in a critical reflection on his own experiences walking the thin line between the fear of regime threats to his family and professional career and the desire to pursue academic freedom. Furthermore, the author explains how the necessary practice of self-censorship by native scholars undermines the value of their work on Vietnamese history, politics, and society in the eyes of the international academic community. He also elaborates on how a Lacanian psychoanalysis helped him manage anxiety in the field.
Walking a Fine Line
Authors: Nazarova Dilafruz , Nozimova Shahnoza
Published: February 2025

In this chapter, the authors outline the convoluted legal instruments that the ruling regime in Tajikistan has developed to intimidate native researchers, especially if their research is politically sensitive. They observe that the institutional legacy of the highly centralized system of higher education inherited from the Soviet Union, coupled with the nature of the current regime, negatively impacts the state of field research in, and about, Tajikistan. Scholarly research is challenged by various legal and institutional barriers ranging from the highly bureaucratized process for earning academic credentials to direct threats to academic freedom through institutional penalties and individual criminal prosecution. Such policies and practices of intimidation and control force native scholars to exercise self-censorship and to choose their research agendas carefully. The authors offer insights from their personal experiences, along with anecdotes from other native academics, on how they navigated these risks in the course of their fieldwork.
What Does One Do with the Nightmares?
Authors: Díaz Reyes María José
Published: February 2025

In this chapter, a Nicaraguan anthropologist revisits various incidents she experienced in her home country, including an attack on her place of employment and threats to her sister. The author recounts her mother’s pleas to her to leave the country to ensure her safety. She also describes securing a doctoral scholarship abroad and living in quasi-political exile, as well as the obstacles encountered when returning home for fieldwork. As part of her self-reflection, the author poses the following questions: How does one conduct fieldwork when the social fabric of one’s own community includes state actors and paramilitaries that wish, and are able, to detain the researcher? What does it take to avoid danger? Can one, or does one, need to be “neutral”? Finally, what does one do with the nightmares? Are they ethnographic data or are they material for a psychoanalyst?
Just Andraé
Authors: Darden Robert F. , Newby Stephen M.
Published: February 2025

Crouch’s dissatisfaction with Light’s insistence on outside producers and arrangers finally led to Just Andraé, an album that was originally planned to be a solo project. But Crouch and co-producer Bill Maxwell quickly incorporated members of the group Sonlight, including Fletch Wiley, Hadley Hockensmith, and Harlan Rogers. Just Andraé is Crouch’s most lyrically and musically personal album. The songs cover a wide variety of styles, including the quirky “God Loves Country People,” the ominous “Lullaby of the Deceived,” and the most enduring song on the LP, “Bless His Holy Name.” While Just Andraé would not sell well, it was an influential touchstone for many young gospel artists for its willingness to take chances in the genre.
When Leaders Become Emotion Handlers
Authors: Smith Dina Denham , Grandey Alicia A.
Published: February 2025

Leaders today are expected to provide emotional support to employees who are struggling, and leaders who do are perceived as more competent than those who focus only on task-related responsibilities. Yet, many do not feel prepared to offer this type of support. This chapter presents a three-step framework to help leaders offer emotional support to employees who need help: the RAP framework—recognize, acknowledge, and provide support. It shares an observational tool for identifying employees struggling with mental health or burnout, advice on offering an empathic but professional listening ear, and guidance on seeking the appropriate resources to help that employee. The chapter equips leaders with the necessary tools to effectively navigate personal struggles in the workplace, contributing to a supportive and mentally healthy work environment.
A Fourth Amendment Press Clause
Authors: Bloch-Wehba Hannah
Published: February 2025

Programmatic national security surveillance and criminal leak investigations have created substantial uncertainty about practical and legal protections for the press against governmental investigative activity. Statutory and regulatory guidelines, such as the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, the Department of Justice Media Subpoena Guidelines, and the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, suggest that there are clear rules in place to shield journalists from unfettered investigations and demands for documentary materials, communications records, and work product. But existing protections for the press are weak and insufficient. Statutory protections are incomplete, and executive branch guidelines are typically hortatory or riddled with exceptions. And, in legal contexts in which journalists may wish to assert their own rights to be free from unlawful surveillance, First and Fourth Amendment doctrine frequently prevents them from doing so. This chapter argues that the Fourth Amendment’s overarching requirement that searches be “reasonable” can serve as a much-needed “Press Clause” for criminal procedure, enabling courts to incorporate First Amendment analysis where it is urgently needed. Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” requires courts to balance the intrusiveness of a search, the kind of information sought, and the First Amendment rights implicated by investigative activity. Although existing regulatory protections are motivated by this kind of balancing, they are wholly inadequate to vindicate First Amendment rights. The chapter thus provides a pathway toward First Amendment protections that are enforceable, strong, and predictable.
Scarcity Isn’t Fundamental; The Human Mind Is
Authors: Wilson Bart J.
Published: February 2025

In 1932 Lionel Robbins made the compelling case that the general subject matter of economic science is “that aspect of behaviour which arises from the scarcity of means to achieve given ends” and that the exchange of things is “subsidiary to the main fact of scarcity.” I argue that scarcity is not purely an objective “ascertainable fact” of the world. In fact, scarcity is subsidiary to the symbolic human mind. To perceive scarcity, a mind must be able to cognize the counterfactual in choosing to do this, but not that, to achieve one’s desired ends. The human mind, not scarcity, is the founding primitive of economic science.
Why Do Human Beings Divide Their Labor?
Authors: Wilson Bart J.
Published: February 2025

Modern economics, whether in the orthodox tradition of Paul Samuelson or the heterodox tradition of Ludwig von Mises, ultimately looks to explain economic outcomes, that is, the effects of human action. Neither has any truck with ethical valuations and moral judgments as part of their modern subjective theory of value. Both deduce a pure logic of choice. Again, following Adam Smith’s lead, I explain the division of labor with a humanomics account that is moral all the way down. Unlike Mises’s discussion of the division of labor, my account distinguishes the consequences of the division of labor from the origins of the division of labor.
Property Rights Aren’t Primary; Ideas Are
Authors: Wilson Bart J.
Published: February 2025

The current approach to the study of property in economics and political science cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. My framework does by leaving the human mind in. Since Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, the study of property rights has been to identify and measure the costs and benefits of a property right regime with a decidedly external stance: the institution imposes itself on the individual from the outside. The problem of property rights, however, also calls for inquiry from the inside out of human agency because in the study of property, ideas are primary.
The Comic Opera Heresy at Harvard
Authors: Massa, S.J. Mark S.
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines what has been called “The Boston Heresy case” of Leonard Feeney, S.J., who was excommunicated for teaching that “there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.” The ironies of the story are deep and rich, as that famous phrase in Latin (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) is part of official Catholic teaching. The further irony, of course, is that Feeney insisted on that particular teaching after he was thrown out of the Catholic Church. The episode is a major one in American Catholic history because it was one of the key episodes marking the movement of US Catholicism out of what was called the “Catholic Ghetto” and into the broad mainstream of US culture.
Overview III, 2000–2020
Authors: Norðfjörð Björn
Published: February 2025

The chapter aims for a broad and balanced overview of filmmaking activity in Iceland during the first two decades of the twentieth-first century. It begins by describing an important generational shift that took place early in the century, which was also a mostly one-sided shift in term of gender, as women directors were increasingly marginalized in Icelandic cinema. It also explains how during the aughts Icelandic filmmakers for the first time turned systematically to Hollywood genres and norms, before Hollywood producers themselves increasingly began to bring their offshore productions to Iceland during the teens. Nonetheless, art cinema continued to thrive with many notable international successes, while a documentary revival took place as well.
Democracy’s Altered Context
Authors: Youngs Richard
Published: February 2025

Chapter 2 lays out the book’s conceptual framework. It assesses the ways in which explanatory frameworks of democratization and autocratic trends need to adapt. It suggests that climate change, the COVID-19 emergency and its economic impacts, and current geopolitical conflict can be understood as critical junctures that open the possibility of political adaptation. The chapter defines two incipient adaptations that seem to merit particular attention: one relating to an empowering of state institutions, and another to a thickening of hyperlocalized citizen engagement or micropolitics. Defining these concepts, the chapter sets up a framework for analyzing the double-faced dynamics of democratic and anti-democratic politics in the chapters that follow.