bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The popular wisdom about jokes
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes three related claims about derogatory jokes that are found in popular wisdom; sources include newspapers, blogs, and incidents of hostile environment harassment. The first claim is about the nature of derogatory jokes: They are harmless fun. The second and third claims attempt to explain why audiences take offense when someone is “just joking,” i.e., doing something that is supposedly harmless. Racist, sexist, and other derogatory jokes may offend if the joker is someone who does not belong to the derogated group (Wrong Joker), or if they are told to the wrong audience (Wrong Audience). Audiences can be wrong because of their social identity or because they misunderstand the harmless nature of jokes. Thus, jokers generally apologize for causing offense, but not for telling derogatory jokes. The chapter uses Joel Feinberg’s work distinguishing harm and offense to argue that these three claims are consistent with each other.
Humor and hostility
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that joking derogation invites reliance on stereotypes by encouraging System 1 cognitive processing, as opposed to System 2 cognitive processing. In other contexts, good moods have been shown to encourage the use of System 1, and being amused by a joke is one way of being in a good mood. This makes jokes a particularly effective means of derogation. The chapter also explores mechanisms by which derogatory joking may encourage System 1 processing; social conflict and interpreting humor are both thought to increase cognitive load, and critical thinking about the joke is further discouraged by the reward system. The chapter also discusses the relevance of dual-process theory to Robert Stalnaker’s concept of the common ground, arguing that the common ground of a conversation will be less carefully constructed if participants are using System 1.
Laughing at derogatory jokes
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that laughing at a belittling joke welcomes an idea into the common ground. Accepting a proposition into the common ground of a conversation can fall along a scale from grudging to enthusiastic, and the degree of welcome given to a proposition channels the subsequent course of the conversation. Welcoming in general has a moral dimension—one can grudgingly welcome someone who should be welcomed warmly, and enthusiastically welcome someone who should be greeted coolly. Similarly, laughter can be assessed from a moral point of view. Furthermore, others may be more likely to accept the claim conveyed by a joke too, since the actions of a group of one’s peers encourages conformity. Others laughing at a demeaning joke also increases the impact of public humiliation. So, even if we feel amusement at a belittling joke, we should moderate our laughter.
Bird Spirit Guides
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

In Christianity, God incarnates not only in Jesus the human but also in the body of a dove who perches on Jesus and descends to the apostles at Pentecost. Many other humans have felt the Spirit leading them in the forms of birds. For psychologist Carl Jung, a dove spoke in a crucial dream. For author Helen Macdonald, recovery from the death of her father came through a goshawk. Black Elk, the Lakota wise man, received his vision from an eagle, while African American Alice Walker found the spirit in domestic hens. A Sufi Muslim epic poem, The Conference of the Birds, uses the species characteristics of thirty different birds to teach its lessons, and both Hindus and Buddhists have comparable books where birds speak wise teachings.
Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere
Authors: Billard Thomas J
Published: February 2024

This introductory chapter opens with a description of the National Center for Transgender Equality’s (NCTE) work on the day President Donald J. Trump announced his ban on transgender military service. In doing so, it illustrates in brief the range of communicative activities practiced by NCTE and how they fit together into a coherent set of strategic practices aimed at saturating the communication system with voices in support of transgender equality. Building on this example, the chapter analyzes how the transition to a networked public sphere and related changes in the structure of the contemporary communication system have required social movements to develop new activism strategies. In encapsulating the system-level argument in one extended case, this chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book to unfold by taking apart and deeply analyzing the system’s component pieces.
Welcome to the National Center for Transgender Equality
Authors: Billard Thomas J
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes three contexts that shaped the National Center for Transgender Equality’s (NCTE) work during the early years of the Trump presidency. First is the temporal context; the early Trump years represented NCTE’s “golden age,” when it was at its largest, most productive, and most influential. Second is the geographic context. NCTE’s location in Washington, DC, impacted what kinds of communicative activities it participated in, what kinds of media it targeted in its activism, and what kinds of issues it chose to engage in. Third is the movement context. The transgender movement is a “hybrid movement”—a movement that identifies with and operates within multiple social movement fields simultaneously and non-exclusively. This hybridity impacted NCTE’s relationships to other LGBT organizations and the communicative work it succeeded at. This chapter addresses each context, offering the novel concept of “media imprinting” to make sense of how these contexts affected NCTE’s strategic activities.
How Mass Media Still Matter
Authors: Billard Thomas J
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the organizing logic of the National Center for Transgender Equality’s (NCTE) mass media-focused activism. It explains how mass media strategies fit into NCTE’s broader approach to making change in the networked public sphere. Some activities followed best practices inherited from mass media activists of yore, while others innovated on these strategies to enhance their efficacy in the digital media environment. Still other activities were wholly new, developed to suit the new relationships between mass media and social movements enabled by the chimaeric media system. Ultimately, managing mass media was necessary to ensure that the communication system’s central organ was not circulating messages harmful to the transgender movement into the broader communication system and was instead promoting the flow of pro-transgender messages to the various communicative avenues influenced by mass media. At the same time, managing mass media required managing other domains of the communication system, as well.
Contesting “Re-Sinicization”
Authors: Han Enze
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on the promotion of Chinese language education in Southeast Asia, using Thailand as an example to examine how the Chinese government has pushed for an export of China’s soft power. It demonstrates how, through the promotion of its language and culture, the Chinese government aims to propagate its own versions of political history, particularly on issues that relate to the “One China Principle” and others that affect China’s perceived national interests. The chapter discusses how Beijing competes with Taipei in education outreach to the Yunnanese Kuomintang community in Northern Thailand, and contextualizes the phenomenon of “re-Sinicization,” as well as pointing out some of the contestations against the Chinese government’s re-territorialization of the overseas Chinese community in Southeast Asia.
Migration Encounters
Authors: Han Enze
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the issue of how the mass movement of people from China in recent years has left unintended consequences on host countries and their local communities. Using Thailand as its focus, the chapter situates this mass movement of people within the context of the long history of migration from China to Southeast Asia, while emphasizing the similarities and differences between these different waves of Chinese migration to the region. The chapter specifically discuss three categories of such population movement: tourists, businesses, and students. It then considers the changing perception towards the Chinese in Thailand and explores how to explain such changing perceptions with a view of the Chinese migration history to Southeast Asia.
Piles
Authors: Berg Anne
Published: February 2024

Chapter 9 details the collapse of the Nazi waste regime and surveys the landscape of piles it left in its wake. Focusing on the last months of the war and the hellscape of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, this chapter illustrates how the economic logic that had tied together labor and murder became unhinged; even murder became chaotic. Nonetheless, through the rot of death and violence of implosion, Germans held on to ideas about cleanliness and order that had powered the Nazi waste regime, reaffixing the stigma of filth to survivors and displaced persons, reimagining themselves as a nation of rubble-clearers and rebuilders. Cleaning up the mess of war, first forced to and then with self-satisfied conviction, Germans all but erased the evidence that the Nazi regime’s extractivist rationality had recorded in a landscape of piles.
What Is Diversity?
Authors: Hebl Mikki , King Eden
Published: February 2024

This chapter begins with a description of a racial discrimination lawsuit filed against the National Football League for allegedly conducting a fake interview of a Black coach after already informally hiring a White one. This example provides a backdrop for specific and detailed definitions of the complex and socially charged concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. For the purpose of this book, diversity is defined as the extent to which a group of people includes members that differ in socially meaningful ways from each other at work. Equity is defined as the existence of fair and just practices within organizations so that all members can thrive. Inclusion is defined as the process of ensuring that people from different backgrounds are invited to and appreciated in the workplace. The chapter explores metaphors for thinking about diversity and details the organization of the book.
Organization-Level Discrimination
Authors: Hebl Mikki , King Eden
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers organization policies, procedures, and practices that may discriminate against particular groups of people. These structures are described in terms of barriers to getting jobs, fair compensation, and inequitable promotion opportunities. The processes and procedures that underlie such selection, compensation, and promotion employment decisions reflect forms of organizational biases that undermine or directly contradict efforts to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations. This chapter argues that it is important to identify the policies, procedures, and practices throughout the talent management cycle that get in the way of diversity, equity, and inclusion in order to specify strategies for change.
The Attraction–Selection–Attrition Model Applied to Working Together
Authors: Hebl Mikki , King Eden
Published: February 2024

This chapter describes a framework for thinking about organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy and action. The attraction–selection–attrition model specifies the components of the talent management cycle in which DEI efforts may be directed. The chapter argues that it is critical for DEI strategic goals to be reflected in thoughtful approaches for enhancing DEI in terms of increasing employee attraction, enhancing employee selection, and reducing employee attrition. There are many reasons why existing programs do not yield the desired outcomes—beliefs are difficult to change, systemic structures perpetuate the status quo, and other crises can usurp resources. This chapter focuses on two barriers to change that organizational psychologists have identified as being particularly crucial: a lack of support from top-level leaders and the positioning of the program.
Final Reflections on Working Together
Authors: Hebl Mikki , King Eden
Published: February 2024

Individuals’ actions can make a difference with regard to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This chapter urges readers to engage in individual and collective action toward the ideals of DEI. The primary takeaways of the book are reviewed: the realistic, financial, and moral imperatives for DEI; individual and organizational underpinnings of bias; and individual and organizational strategies for addressing bias in attraction, selection, and attrition. Readers are reminded that countless candles can be lit from a single flame and that one person can kindle enormous change.
Ten-o-Three
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter treats the relocation by Wilfred Talbot Smith of his “profess house” of the Ordo Templi Orientis from Winona Blvd in Hollywood to a mansion at 1003 S. Orange Grove Blvd in Pasadena. Jack Parsons begins to live openly with Helen’s teenaged half-sister Sara Northrup, and Helen Parsons begins to be in a relationship with Smith, which pushes Regina Kahl to leave for Texas. More OTO adherents move into 1003 S. Orange Grove and attempt communal living and free love. Domestic conflicts again are communicated to Aleister Crowley by letter; he redoubles his efforts to isolate Smith from the members and remove him from leadership of the OTO. Crowley’s negative assessment of Smith is amplified by Germer, whose hatred of Smith is long-standing. Smith is deposed in favor of John Parsons and leaves for a “magical retirement” on a remote California ranch. Helen Parsons gives birth to Smith’s son Kwen; she follows Smith into retirement.
Demanding Witness
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

Demanding Witness investigates how the trauma of female characters is represented and received in four Greek tragedies about homecoming: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, and Euripides’ Heracles and Helen. Through discussions of modern trauma concepts alongside historical and literary analyses of these plays, this book examines how and why female characters’ expressions of psychological pain are hotly contested, silenced, and suppressed by other characters and sometimes by the plot of the play itself. Demanding Witness argues that tragic representations of female noncombatants’ trauma after war expose the ripple effects of violence that wars create, even for individuals and communities distant from the fighting. Yet female characters’ trauma is also difficult to recognize and address because doing so challenges social hierarchies and ingrained power structures. As a result, these characters’ testimonies bring about a conflict of witnessing for other characters and the audience. By shifting focus to the returning hero’s wife and the women he enslaves, Demanding Witness calls attention to the detrimental effects of structural and chronic forms of trauma in addition to trauma caused by discrete, catastrophic events. Demanding Witness argues that recognizing women’s trauma in these tragedies requires questioning how Greek society was organized through hierarchies that privilege the hero’s story of trauma and recovery to the exclusion of other types of stories and experiences.
Twelve Movements
Authors: Egeler Matthias
Published: February 2024

In twelve movements, this chapter presents a critical dialogue between core points of theorizing about landscape, religion, and the supernatural and the rich empirical material from the historic region of Strandir in the Icelandic Westfjords. Tackling “time and memory,” “repeating patterns,” “identity formation,” “morality,” “labor,” “playfulness and adventure,” “power and subversion,” “sound,” “emotions,” “coping with contingency,” “home and unhomeliness,” and “nature and environment,” it shows the central importance of some insights of theory to date while critically reevaluating and reframing others. Thus, it explores some of the main elements that characterize what Diana L. Eck has termed the “grammar of sanctification” of the landscape.
Telling Different Stories with the Same Data
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses how the same data can serve as the foundation for different narratives. During COVID-19, for example, many were vaccinated, but there were racial gaps in vaccine uptake. Was vaccination, then, successful or not? The answer depends on the interpretation of the data. This reflects the importance of working to shape narratives around data to support stories that help build a healthier world.
Political Decisions and Science
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

The chapter addresses the fundamentally political nature of the choices that people make about health. The chapter notes that public health practitioners should take caution in what they say—always speaking thoughtfully—given the greater influence the field now enjoys in the political space because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Should We Be More Upset by This?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the shortcomings of COVID-19 vaccination efforts. It examines why there was little activism on behalf of a more effective vaccine rollout. The chapter suggests that to achieve a more effective federal intervention on behalf of health, it is necessary to agitate for it, to demand better, or risk facing more failures by those in power to fully support the public’s health.
Why Did We Close Schools?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the decision to close schools during the pandemic even after it became clear they were not hot spots for disease transmission. The chapter suggests the decision was informed by the precarious nature of the United States’ educational infrastructure, the politics of school board governance, and unclear thinking about the values of in-person versus remote learning.
Time for an Ethics Refresh?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines Western attitudes toward the ethics of expedited vaccine approval. Russia and China’s choice to start vaccinating their populations before the completion of Phase 3 trials reflected a very different ethical approach to vaccination and drug development. But could the West learn from their approach?
Digital Surveillance
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This explores the uses of digital technology in tracking and slowing the spread of disease. It examines how such technology was used during COVID-19, a time that revealed both the promise and pitfalls of using digital surveillance as a public health tool, with civil liberties concerns emerging as a key issue.
Profits and Profiteering
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the vast profits made by some during the COVID-19 pandemic. These include companies that provided medical equipment and protective masks, drug companies that developed treatments and vaccines, and, less laudably, medical misinformers willing to use anti-vaccine demagogy to grow their audience. The chapter examines how the pandemic opened new markets and raised questions about how the profit motive should factor into the work of supporting public health.
HIV and COVID-19
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter compares the COVID-19 pandemic with the challenge of AIDS. The two crises both had profound implications for how the public health system responds to disease at the social and political level. The chapter asks whether the experience of COVID-19 will reshape many of the core approaches of public health the same way HIV did.
A COVID-19 Poverty Surprise
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the intersection of COVID-19 and poverty in the United States. It observes how federal COVID-19 relief helped lower the poverty rate and suggests that this success reflects how the national poverty rate can be lowered if the United States chooses to do so. All it takes is the political will.
Now What?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter asks, What comes next after the challenge of COVID-19? It suggests that the wisdom to answer that question lies in having the humility to reflect on what was learned during the pandemic—what was done right and wrong—to envision and start to build a better future at this turning point moment.
Historical Persistence and Russian Foreign Policy
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

The conceptual framework of the book utilizes a broad historical perspective on Russian foreign policy and an eclectic analytical approach that combines realism’s focus on military and economic power with constructivism’s emphasis on ideas and national identity. There are discernable patterns in Russian foreign policy over time, including economic backwardness, a huge territory with permeable frontiers, insecure borders requiring buffer zones, a multinational society, location between Europe and Asia, an identity that is neither fully European nor fully Asian, and a highly centralized authoritarian political system unconstrained by legal structures. Policy toward the Pacific has been shaped by geopolitical structural factors, domestic political institutions, cultural perceptions of Asia and the Pacific, and the agency of powerful autocrats. Broad measures of regional power over time are presented, and Russia’s power in the Pacific region is assessed historically and in comparison to other regional great powers. The time frame for analysis is the past century and a quarter, from Russia’s early modernization in the late nineteenth century to the present.
Defining “Socialism”
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter defines “socialism” as coming in degrees along two axes: the degree to which the means of production are collectively owned and controlled, and the degree to which wealth is distributed in an egalitarian fashion. Democratic socialist states are defined as systems with a fairly significant degree of both. Data are presented to indicate that, on this definition, the Nordic countries are significantly more socialist than, for example, the United States. It is also noted that countries from the former Soviet bloc, while having significantly egalitarian distribution of resources, failed to have genuinely collective ownership of the means of production, given that these states were not run democratically.
Moral Philosophy Background and the Master Arguments
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents a moral framework within which to evaluate the dispute between capitalism and socialism. The chapter proposes that we should choose the system that better promotes human well-being, so long as the system does not violate the moral rights of individuals. This claim provides the basis for the Master Argument for Socialism and the parallel Master Argument for Capitalism, arguments which provide the structure for the issues considered in the rest of the book. Complications concerning what better promotes well-being are considered, as well as complications concerning what it means to say that an individual has a moral right. The chapter adopts an approach to these questions adapted in large part from the account of rights presented by Ronald Dworkin.
The Progress Argument
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

Defenders of capitalism point out, correctly, that human well-being has increased dramatically over the past two centuries. Since this time period also corresponds to the rise of capitalism, many are quick to draw the inference that capitalism explains the increases in well-being, and they assert that if we were to move in a socialist direction we would undermine this progress. This chapter argues that this inference is too quick and that the evidence does not support the claim that capitalism explains rises in global wealth and life expectancy. One problem for the capitalist argument: there were comparable rises in wealth and life expectancy in the state socialist countries of China and the Soviet bloc. The chapter suggests that the real explanation for the increases in well-being is more likely to be the scientific revolution rather than the capitalist economic system.
Many (Krishna-Centric) Mahabharatas
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 2 surveys Mahabharatas in regional South Asian languages that were composed between 800 and 1700 CE. While this chapter discusses some Mahabharatas that are unconcerned with Vaishnava bhakti, the chapter’s overview of Assamese, Bengali, Bhasha, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu retellings shows that there was a virtually continuous centering of the Mahabharata tradition around Krishna in premodern South Asia. This chapter highlights two major themes of the book. The first is that regional Mahabharata poets transform the narrative of the epic into a Krishna-centric work of emotional bhakti in very similar ways including merging the Krishnas of the Mahabharata and Vrindavan and presenting Krishna as a loving, all-powerful god whose main concern is the Pandavas’ safety. The second is that devotional Mahabharata poets regularly utilize expressions of Vaishnava bhakti from their own local literary cultures.
Beginning with Bhakti
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 5 argues that Villiputturar uses invocations that commence thirty-seven of the fifty chapters of the Tamil Pāratam to firmly anchor his Mahabharata retelling in the bhakti literature of the Shrivaishnava religious community in South India. After providing a history of the use of invocations in Tamil literary works, this chapter asserts that the markedly Shrivaishnava invocations in the Pāratam are a direct response to the more ambiguous invocations in Kampan’s twelfth-century Tamil Irāmāvatāram, a Ramayana retelling that is often categorized as a work of Vaishnava bhakti. The chapter then shows how Villiputturar’s invocations place the Pāratam in a Shrivaishnava bhakti context and reframe the narrative of the epic as a Shrivaishnava kṛṣṇacarita. Finally, this chapter examines of some of the Pāratam’s chapters without invocations and discusses why Villiputturar skips invocations in these chapters of his poem.
Organizing Religious Practices
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

This chapter delves into the practice of the relational meeting and the listening campaign. In making the case that these practices are lived religious practices, it draws on two recent trends in scholarly literature by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and some Christian theologians and ethicists: lived religion and practice theory. The first section defines “lived religion” and “religious practices.” The second section turns to the relational meeting and the listening campaign themselves and makes the case that they can be seen as lived religious practices. The final section explores how these two organizing religious practices are deeply embedded in relationships of power and how centering the political role of sacred values can transform the entire practice of BBCO.
Our Political Relationship with Sacred Value
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

This chapter begins with an example that illustrates a common presupposition: sacred values are incommensurable (in a bad way) with other political values—and so they simply cannot be sources of group solidarity, especially in group conflict on matters of sacred value. This is incommensurability problem and it presumes a monist theory of value. The first section explores this problem and shows that it leads to the problem of moral horror. In the second section I explore Robert M. Adams’s work on moral horror and contrast it with a social practical account. The third section elaborates my account of social practical reasoning, sacred value, and the ethical life of Spirit. The fourth section offers a political role of sacred values grounded in an account of social practical reasoning. The final section applies the lessons from my framework of social practical reasoning and teases out implications for questions of agency.
Introduction
Authors: Nichols Tom
Published: February 2024

What is “the death of expertise?” This chapter explores the nature of the problem—and explains why, despite the traditional tensions that have always existed between elites and laypeople, the rejection of established knowledge in the twenty-first century is a qualitatively new phenomenon, one that threatens political stability in democratic nations. The chapter also suggests why the death of expertise is intimately tied to democracy. The latter part of the chapter previews the book and offers synopses of the coming chapters.
Conclusion
Authors: Nichols Tom
Published: February 2024

The concluding chapter reviews the current state of the problem and suggests some solutions—but with a warning of darker days ahead for expertise and knowledge. The chapter includes examples drawn from Brexit, the COVID pandemic, and other events. The book ends with thoughts on repairing the social contract between experts and citizens, and warns of the danger to liberal democratic governments if the “death of expertise” continues to undermine democracy.
Evidence for Change in Narrative Identity
Authors: McLean Kate C.
Published: February 2024

The evidence for change in narrative identity is reviewed with a focus on studies of repeated narration, or whether stories are repeated over time. Longitudinal evidence for change in the ways that stories are narrated is reviewed, as well as evidence for change in how particular stories are told over time. Speculations about what change and stability might signal about identity development are offered, as are different conceptualizations of change over time—seismic change and change by degrees. Methodological challenges are discussed to the study of narrative change, as well as the lack of evidence for profound and sustained change in the current literature.
The Agency in Resistance
Authors: McLean Kate C.
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the complexity of agency in storytelling, arguing that agency must be viewed in terms of one’s place in society. First, the capacity and responsibility to resist harmful master narratives are discussed as kinds of personal agency. Interpersonal and sociopolitical contexts that support and nurture resistance are discussed. Second, this chapter draws special attention to how agency is employed and weaponized depending on where one sits in the social structure. In particular, the responsibility to resist oppressive master narratives rests not only with those who are oppressed but also with those who are the oppressors.
Digital Technologies and Public Procurement
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert
Published: February 2024

The digital transformation of the public sector has accelerated, fuelled by the ‘shift to digital’ during the pandemic and advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). States are experimenting with technology, seeking more streamlined and efficient digital government and public services. However, there are significant concerns about risks and harms to individual and collective rights under new modes of digital public governance. Several jurisdictions are attempting to regulate digital technologies, especially AI. However, regulatory effort primarily concentrates on technology use by companies, not government. The regulatory gap underpinning public sector digitalization is growing. Public procurement emerges as a ‘regulatory fix’ to govern public sector digitalization. As it controls the acquisition of digital technologies, procurement is expected to ensure that the public sector is a ‘responsible buyer’ and user. Procurement should ‘regulate by contract’ so that public sector digitalization is trustworthy, ethical, responsible, transparent, fair, safe, cyber secure, etc. Procurement standards and best practices could then be forms of soft regulation to shape digital technology markets. Bringing together insights from political economy, public policy, science and technology studies, and legal scholarship, this book demonstrates that procurement cannot perform this gatekeeping role effectively. Relying on ‘regulation by contract’ creates a false sense of security in governing the transition towards digital public governance. It leaves the public sector exposed to the ‘policy irresistibility’ that surrounds hyped digital technologies. The book demonstrates this through a detailed case study of procurement digitalization as a site of unregulated technological experimentation. The book proposes an alternative regulatory approach.
The Two Roles of Procurement in the Transition Towards Digital Public Governance
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the position of public procurement and its roles in the broader transition towards digital public governance. First, it describes how, within the emergent model of risk-based regulation in the European Union and the United Kingdom, procurement is being assigned a gatekeeping role to discipline the adoption and use of digital technologies by the public sector and to promote goals such as transparency, trustworthiness, or explainability. The chapter explores the extent to which selected putative goals of digital regulation pose challenges for implementation through procurement—which will be assessed in detail in Part II of the book. The chapter then frames procurement as a site of technological experimentation, as procurement is itself an area of public sector activity currently undergoing digitalization. Digital procurement thus offers a useful case study to understand the broader challenges, issues, and limitations in the leveraging of procurement to regulate public sector digitalization—which will be developed in Part III. This chapter thus lays the foundation for the analysis of the gatekeeping and experimentation roles of procurement in the transition towards digital public governance in the remainder of the book.
Procurement Tools for Digital ‘Regulation by Contract’
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on the procedural and substantive procurement tools that could be used for digital ‘regulation by contract’ to assess their suitability for the task. It takes a cradle-to-grave view of the mechanisms and principles of procurement that could be activated to create or enforce digital regulation requirements. It primarily assesses whether procurement tools could effectively operationalize digital regulation goals without simply transferring regulatory decisions to economic operators—as the primary purpose of the gatekeeping role is to discipline their behaviour and to operate as a market-shaping or norm-setting mechanism. The chapter shows that, in the absence of externally determined mandatory requirements, limitations in the permitted prescriptiveness of procurement requirements significantly raise the complexity or simply make it impossible to use procurement tools effectively for digital regulation purposes.
Identifying Emerging Risks in Digital Procurement Governance
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the main governance risks and legal obligations arising from the adoption of digital technologies. These revolve around data governance, algorithmic transparency, technological dependency, technical debt, cybersecurity threats, risks stemming from the long-term erosion of the skills base in the public sector, and difficult trade-offs due to the uncertainty surrounding immature and still changing technologies within an also evolving regulatory framework. The chapter offers a critical assessment of both the need to recognize the new risks and to factor their assessment into decisions on whether to adopt digital technologies. The chapter also makes links with the changing nature and displacement of governance risks, which can create opacity and difficulties in the identification of technology-enabled corrupt or anticompetitive practices.
The Politics of Governance and State Capacity
Authors: Hickey Sam , Sen Kunal
Published: February 2024

The question of what role the state should play in delivering and enabling development has long been at the heart of development theory and policy debates. The mainstream response from the 1990s until the late 2000s was dominated by the ‘good-governance’ agenda, which used conditionality to encourage developing countries to adopt of a particular set of reforms aimed at reducing the state’s role in development. This agenda was heavily criticized from the outset, and by the end of the 2000s even those development agencies that had led the good-governance agenda conceded that it had performed at best partially, often because of a lack of fit with the incentives facing political elites in developing countries. Since around 2010, the search has been on for a more realistic governance agenda, involving a shift away from widespread public-sector reform programmes to more problem-solving initiatives, and including a growing focus on the role that specific pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness might play in delivering development. This chapter sets out how a key plank of the good-governance agenda—public-sector reforms—played out in Africa, and the role of elite incentives and ideas in shaping the extent to which reforms were adopted and implemented. It then moves on to examine how certain key state agencies in Africa were supported by international development agencies and political rulers to become pockets of effectiveness that delivered on their mandates, with a particular focus on finance ministries, central banks, and revenue authorities. It shows how bureaucratic performance, governance, and state-building are profoundly shaped by political settlements.
Technology in Financial Markets
Authors: Dell'Erba Marco
Published: February 2024

In recent years, technology has emerged as a disruptive force in the economy and finance, leading to the establishment of new economic and financial paradigms. Focusing on blockchain technology and its implementations in finance, this book proposes a novel theoretical approach to disruption. Relying on complexity science, it develops a dynamic perspective on the study of disruptive phenomena and their relationship to financial regulation and the law. It identifies the intrinsic interconnections characterizing the ‘multidimensional’ technology-driven transformations, involving commercial practices, capital markets, corporate governance, central banking, and financial networks. From this perspective, it considers how they are reflected at the level of contract law, financial law, corporate law, and central banking law. The book adopts a unique comparative approach, and explains and clarifies the factual and historical dimensions underlying the emergence of the crypto-economy. Blockchain technology is a useful case study for two reasons. First, it exemplifies the way each subpart of the financial system—commercial practices, financial markets, corporations, central banking, networks—and consequently each subcategory of financial regulation evolves on an individual basis. Second, it shows how such subparts evolve together, bringing about systemic transformations and ultimately leading to the creation of new economic and financial paradigms. The book takes into account both of these perspectives, analysing the evolution of each subpart and emphasizing the interconnected transformations. In doing this, it adopts the structure of an ascending climax, starting from contracts and escalating to increasingly broad dimensions, in particular capital markets, corporate governance, central banking, and financial networks.
The Underlying Complexities within the Line of Disruption
Authors: Dell'Erba Marco
Published: February 2024

This chapter adopts complexity science to explain the technological disruption affecting multiple dimensions of the financial system (contractual, financial, corporate governance, and financial networks at the level of central banks and shadow banking). It also provides a historical contextualization of technological changes, and characterizes technology—in particular the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System—as one of the responses to the financial crisis of 2008. Since then, a series of events have happened in the financial system which are characterized in this chapter as ‘the line of disruption’. Finally, this chapter identifies the layers of complexity as they emerged in the new paradigm, and as they will be developed in the book. Furthermore, it identifies a static and a dynamic approach to technological changes and more generally to the transformative stages of capitalism.
Concluding Remarks: What’s Next?
Authors: Dell'Erba Marco
Published: February 2024

After answering the key questions from a static and dynamic perspective, this chapter considers the way complexity affects regulatory responses to disruption. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of approaching the regulation of disruptive technologies as a foundational case study for regulating disruption more generally, including disruption brought by sustainability, and considers the intersection between technology and sustainability, which leads to the emergence of sustainable digital finance. Finally, this chapter identifies the next step in the technological and societal disruption, namely the creation of a new synthetic universe, the ‘metaverse’. Here, blockchain will likely be the foundational layer, and DeFi the finance of the metaverse. The chapter considers these further developments and anticipates the forthcoming legal challenges in this field.
Third Conversation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

The narrator and his wife Laura hold a dinner party for their friends Martin, Tamsin, and Carl. Soon the conversation turns to Dostoevsky and his relation to existentialism is discussed from the perspectives of Catholic theology and critical theory. There is also discussion of film versions of Dostoevsky’s novels, with particular reference to Robert Bresson, and of the use of colours in his novels. Laura offers a critical view of Dostoevsky’s representation of women, with particular reference to Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. Interspersed in the chapter are two conversations between Dostoevsky and the narrator; the first offers the writer’s response to existentialism, the second presents his view of what, in his time, was called ‘the woman question’.
Sixth Conversation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

A seminar on Dostoevsky’s anti-Semitism and its relation to the rise of Nazism prompts the narrator to read what Dostoevsky wrote about the Jewish question. He is shocked by the writer’s anti-Semitism, though he notices that he nevertheless affirms the possible brotherhood of Jews and Russians in principle. In the seminar itself, the speaker highlights both the explicit anti-Semitism of the Diary of a Writer and anti-Semitic elements in the novels; he also argues that Dostoevsky played a significant role in the formation of Nazi ideology. This is challenged by those attending the seminar, including the narrator’s friend Carl, who puts the view that literature is never a primary element in shaping societal movements. At the end of the seminar, the narrator is joined by Dostoevsky, who acknowledges his guilt but also pushes back against aspects of the views proposed by the speaker, ending with the suggestion that the narrator look at Solovyov’s views about Jewish–Christian reconciliation as a necessary precondition of God’s Kingdom, conceding that they may be correct.
Epilogue
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

In a short epilogue, the narrator attends Easter worship and reflects on what it now means to him in the light of his conversations with Dostoevsky. Some weeks later, he and his wife visit Glasgow’s Botanical Gardens where they meet Dostoevsky. No words are spoken, but his wife recognizes Dostoevsky and the narrator is required to explain the conversations he has been having to his wife and undertakes to write them up for her.
Introduction
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

The introduction explains the way in which Dostoevsky is fictionalized in the Conversations, comparing this with other fictionalizations of the author in literature, biography, and film. Issues relating to Dostoevsky’s Christianity are considered and attention is drawn to the limits of any ‘theology’ that might be derived from his writings. How much the Dostoevsky represented in the Conversations reflects the historical Dostoevsky is considered, and there is an explanation of who the narrator is, and what function he performs. A brief discussion of the merits of the Constance Garnett translation, used in the Conversations, follows, and the chapter ends with a list of the abbreviations used.
Commentary on the Third Conversation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

The commentary includes discussion of Dostoevsky and film, Dostoevsky and existentialism, and ‘the woman question’. With regard to film, Dostoevsky’s novels have attracted many filmmakers, in Russia and globally, and key examples are considered, notably Robert Bresson, who adapted several Dostoevsky novels for the screen. Dostoevsky is widely associated with existentialism and was approvingly cited by Jean-Paul Sartre in the lecture that popularized existentialism. However, Dostoevsky’s conception of the human personality was markedly different from Sartrean existentialism, as Simone de Beauvoir noted. The importance of the woman question in Dostoevsky’s novels and publicist writings is discussed at length. The relation of the sexes is perennially present in literature, but in Dostoevsky’s case this is sharpened by nineteenth-century debates about women’s emancipation. Although aspects of his views are traditional and sentimental, he also embraced and promoted other aspects of women’s emancipation, especially with regard to education, while exposing the roots of male violence against women.
Commentary on the Fifth Conversation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

The commentary contains the first of three discussions of Dostoevsky’s politics, the philosopher V. S. Solovyov, and ‘living life’, i.e. the vitalist element in Dostoevsky’s world view. The commentary tracks the development of Dostoevsky’s political views and his post-Siberia faith in tsar, people, and Orthodoxy and his analysis of the threat to Russia from Western liberal ideas and their radical application by Russian nihilists, as portrayed in The Possessed. The claim that Russia is a ‘god-bearing’ nation is examined and it is argued that, against some commentators, this is not Dostoevsky’s own view, without significant qualification. The career and thought of V. S. Solovyov and his relation to Dostoevsky are introduced, and his sophiological speculations are commented on. His speeches on Dostoevsky show how he developed Dostoevsky’s social thought in a universal, rather than narrowly nationalistic, direction. Lastly, it is argued that Dostoevsky, like Solovyov, saw human history as developing a movement that is found in the immediate experience of life, linking human destiny to that of the cosmos as a whole.