bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
CCM.FF-K3.2011: Final report for the CIPM key comparison of air speed, 0.5 m/s to 40 m/s
Authors: Müller Harald , Caré Isabelle , Lucas Peter , Pachinger Dietmar , Kurihara Noboru , Lishui Cui , Su Chun-Min , Shinder Iosif , Spazzini Pier Giorgio
Published: March 2017

The CCM.FF-K3.2011 comparison was organized for the purpose of determination of the degree of equivalence of the national standards for air speed over the range 0.5 m/s to 40 m/s. An ultrasonic anemometer and a Laser Doppler anemometer were used as transfer standards. Nine laboratories from three RMOs participated between July 2013 and July 2015—EURAMET: PTB, Germany; LNE-CETIAT, France; INRIM, Italy; VSL, The Netherlands; E+E, Austria; SIM: NIST, USA; APMP: NMIJ/AIST, Japan; NIM, China; CMS/ITRI, Chinese Taipei. The measurements were provided at ambient conditions. All results of independent participants were used in the determination of the key comparison reference value (KCRV) and the uncertainty of the KCRV. The reference value was determined at each air speed separately following `procedure A' presented by M G Cox. The degree of equivalence with the KCRV was calculated for each air speed and laboratory. Almost all reported results were consistent with the KCRV.

Main text

To reach the main text of this paper, click on Final Report. Note that this text is that which appears in Appendix B of the BIPM key comparison database kcdb.bipm.org/.

The final report has been peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the CCM, according to the provisions of the CIPM Mutual Recognition Arrangement (CIPM MRA).
International comparison CCQM-K84—carbon monoxide in synthetic air at ambient level
Authors: Lee Jeongsoon , Moon Dongmin , Lee Jinbok , Lim Jeongsik , Hall Brad , Novelli Paul , Brewer Paul J , Miller Michael , Murugun Arul , Minarro Marta Doval , Qiao Han , Shuguo Hu , Konopelko L A , Kustikov Y A , Kolobova A V , Pankratov V V , Wasserman I I , Zav'yalov S V , Efremova O V , Pavlov M V , Mitchell Gerald , Guenther Frank , Walden Jari , Aoki Nobuyuki , Shimosaka Takuya , Tatiana Mace , Lagler F , Borowiak Annette
Published: March 2017

Carbon monoxide (CO) is reported to mainly be emitted from industries, transportation, and burnings for various usages. Its atmospheric lifetime varies from weeks to months, depending on the mixing ratio of the highly reactive hydroxyl radical. Even though the ambient level of CO varies as a function of regional sources, the mixing ratio ranges from 30 nmol/mol to 300 nmol/mol at the marine boundary layers and from 100 nmol/mol to more than 500 nmol/mol in urban areas(1). In order to study temporal trends and regional variations of the level of CO, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/Earth System Research Laboratory-Global Monitoring Division (NOAA/ESRL-GMD(2)) has played a key role as the designated Central Calibration Laboratory (CCL) within the frame of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) program. NOAA/ESRL-GMD provides natural air standards, analyzed for CO, to WMO GAW participants. Since the structure of WMO traceability chain appears hierarchical and explicit all over the world, WMO intends to improve the CO measurement compatibility to up to 2 ppb (in case of extensive compatibility goal: 5 ppb, GAW report No. 213(3)) in order to ensure compatibility through the GAW network. Nevertheless, accurate measurement of CO at an ambient level has proven to be difficult due to the lack of stability in cylinders. For these reasons, it is necessary that measured results are compared among the values assigned by various NMIs.

This key comparison was initially proposed to be aimed at a CO/N2 standard in the 2010 CCQM meeting by KRISS. With participation of FMI, NOAA, and Empa, a modified scheme of CO/air standards was developed for the purpose of atmospheric observations and co-operative support to WMO/GAW activities. Therefore, the purpose of the comparison is to support the measurement capability of CO at an ambient level of 350 nmol/mol. Further, this key comparison is expected to contribute to the establishment of traceability to a single scale of CO between NMIs by means of harmonizing the results from different national standards. The Empa result lies in a different report.

Main text

To reach the main text of this paper, click on Final Report. Note that this text is that which appears in Appendix B of the BIPM key comparison database kcdb.bipm.org/.

The final report has been peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the CCQM, according to the provisions of the CIPM Mutual Recognition Arrangement (CIPM MRA).
Jack Kerouac and Translingual Literature
Authors: Melehy Hassan
Published: March 2017

Known primarily as the author of On the Road (1957), the novel most closely associated with the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) also wrote extensively about his French-Canadian heritage. A native of the large francophone community of Lowell, Massachusetts, he faced the dilemma of writing in a foreign language, English, while one of his motives to write was to memorialize a community assimilating to U.S. society and speaking French less and less. The recent publication of his two short novels in French from the early 1950s, La nuit est ma femme (The Night Is My Woman) and Sur le chemin (Old Bull in the Bowery), provides evidence that the preoccupation with travel informing On the Road is deeply tied to his sense of cultural and linguistic exile. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Quebec to New England in the 19th and early 20th centuries practiced survivance, cultural survival, especially through maintaining fluency in French and adhering to Catholicism while living among a Protestant majority. These customs of the Quebecois diaspora had begun in Canada: following the 1763 annexation of Lower Canada to Britain at the end of the French and Indian War, francophones resisted immense pressure to assimilate, both official and unofficial. Narratives of displacement from France and subsequently Quebec persisted in folklore and literature on both sides of the border through the 20th century.

In early 1951, Kerouac drafted La nuit est ma femme, telling the story of Michel Bretagne, a French Canadian from New England who wanders around the eastern United States with a sense of homelessness. Narrating in a French that reproduces the southern New England dialect, Michel laments that neither of the languages he speaks really belongs to him. The text develops the theme of cultural and linguistic mixing and its discovery through travel. Shortly after completing La nuit est ma femme, Kerouac brought this theme to On the Road, famously composing the novel on a roll of paper in three weeks in April 1951. Contrary to legend, he did extensive rewriting before his landmark work was published: Sur le chemin, which he drafted in late 1952, offers an “on the road” story about Franco-Americans and was by his own account a key part of the rewriting process. During this time, he elaborated his theory of “spontaneous prose,” writing quickly and in an improvisational manner as a way of conveying geographic, cultural, and linguistic movement. In the wake of On the Road’s depictions of the expanses of the United States, including its geographic place in North America, Kerouac turned to Franco-American New England. His next book, Dr. Sax (1959), takes place in Lowell and features lengthy passages in French; the novel’s central concerns are his community’s relationship to a legacy of displacement and the conflict between clinging to the past and creating something new. If there is a principal thrust in Kerouac’s writing, it is to challenge American literature to recognize its transnational and translingual character.
Australian-American Literary Connections
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: March 2017

Within the literary connections between Australia and the United States, the more traditional notion of “influence” gained a different kind of intellectual traction after the “transnational turn.” While the question of American influence on Australian literature is a relatively familiar topic, the corresponding question of Australian influence on American literature has been much less widely discussed. This bi-continental interaction can be traced through a variety of canonical writers, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Brockden Brown, through to Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry Adams, and Mark Twain. These transnational formations developed in the changed cultural conditions of the 20th and 21st centuries, with reference to poets such as Lola Ridge, Karl Shapiro, Louis Simpson, and Yusef Komunyakaa, along with novelists such as Christina Stead, Peter Carey, and J. M. Coetzee.

To adduce alternative genealogies for both American and Australian literature, Australian literature might be seen to function as American literature’s shadow self, the kind of cultural formation it might have become if the American Revolution had never taken place. Similarly, to track Australian literature’s American affiliations is to suggest ways in which transnational connections have always been integral to its constitution. By re-reading both Australian and American literature as immersed within a variety of historical and geographical matrices, from British colonial politics to transpacific space, it becomes easier to understand how both national literatures emerged in dialogue with a variety of wider influences.
Twenty-First-Century West Indian Fiction
Authors: Harrison Sheri-Marie
Published: March 2017

West Indian fiction in the 21st century continues a tradition begun in the late 1990s as the fourth generation of Anglophone Caribbean writing. Though West Indian writing dates back to the early 19th century, West Indian literature began coalescing into a discrete field of study in the 1930s, motivated in large part by the political imperatives of anti-colonialism, political independence, and decolonization. Much of the fiction published in the late 90s to the present continues to adhere to the realist mode of representing Caribbean life—both in the region and in diaspora—as well as thematic engagements with decolonization, cultural nationalism, migration, diaspora, race, class, gender, and sexuality. Historical novels, modernist narratives, coming-of-age stories, and neoslave narratives remain significant features of West Indian fiction, in ways that are geared toward negotiating sovereign realties for individuals and communities that share a history of colonial domination, slavery, indentureship, and more recently, depleted cultural nationalisms.

In the last decade, scholars in the field have begun the work of theorizing the recent fictional output as constituting its own discrete moment in literary development. What is distinct about contemporary writing is the way in which some authors have begun to ironically rework now-familiar forms, themes, and politics of West Indian writing. Some recent West Indian fiction produces atypical, often incomprehensible, and ultimately dissonant conclusions designed to complicate the political priorities of previous generations. This ironic approach typifies 21st-century West Indian fiction’s skepticism about the nation building and identity politics developed in previous waves—in particular, the conflation of identity with sovereignty. At the same time, this fiction doesn’t simply reject earlier modes: one of its defining aesthetic features is a re-inhabitation of the central forms and politics of preceding waves, in order to complicate them.

The central feature of the fourth generation of West Indian fiction, then, is a continued engagement with the region’s history of colonization, slavery, and decolonization that is also marked by critical and self-reflexive engagements with the Caribbean literary tradition.
The New Public Management and Public Management Studies
Authors: Ferlie Ewan
Published: March 2017

The New Public Management (NPM) is a major and sustained development in the management of public services that is evident in some major countries. Its rise is often linked to broader changes in the underlying political economy, apparent since the 1980s, associated with the rise of the New Right as both a political and an intellectual movement. The NPM reform narrative includes the growth of markets and quasi-markets within public services, empowerment of management, and active performance measurement and management. NPM draws its intellectual inspiration from public choice theory and agency theory.

NPM’s impact varies internationally, and not all countries have converged on the NPM model. The United Kingdom is often taken as an extreme case, but New Zealand and Sweden have also been highlighted as “high-impact” NPM states, while the United States has been assessed as a “medium impact” state. There has been a lively debate over whether NPM reforms have had beneficial effects or not. NPM’s claimed advantages include greater value for money and restoring governability to an overextended public sector. Its claimed disadvantages include an excessive concern for efficiency (rather than democratic accountability) and an entrenchment of agency-specific “silo thinking.”

Much academic writing on the NPM has been political science based. However, different traditions of management scholarship have also usefully contributed in four distinct areas: (a) assessing and explaining performance levels in public agencies, (b) exploring their strategic management, (c) managing public services professionals, and (d) developing a more critical perspective on the resistance by staff to NPM reforms.

While NPM scholarship is now a mature field, further work is needed in three areas to assess: (a) whether public agencies have moved to a post-NPM paradigm or whether NPM principles are still embedded even if dysfunctionally so, (b) the pattern of the international diffusion of NPM reforms and the characterization of the management knowledge system involved, and (c) NPM’s effects on professional staff working in public agencies and whether such staff incorporate, adapt, or resist NPM reforms.
Organizational Learning and Adaptation
Authors: Greve Henrich R.
Published: March 2017

Organizational learning theory is motivated by the observation that organizations learn by encoding inferences from experience into their behavior. It seeks to answer the questions of what kinds of experiences influence behaviors, how and under what circumstances behaviors change, and how new behaviors are stabilized and have consequences for organizations’ adaptation to their environment. Organizational learning research has as key mechanisms innovations and other triggering events that lead to major behavioral change, knowledge accumulation and experimentation that encourage incremental change, and interpretations that guide each of these processes. Organizational learning research has gained a central position in organizational theory because it has implications for organizational behaviors that also affect other theoretical perspectives such as institutional theory, organizational ecology, and resource dependence.

Key research topics in organizational learning and adaptation are (a) organizational routines and their stability and change, (b) performance feedback and its consequences for organizational search and change, (c) managerial goal formation and coalition building, (d) managerial attention to goals and organizational activities, and (e) adaptive consequences of learning procedures. Each of these topics has seen significant research, but they are far from completing their empirical agenda. Recently, organizational learning research has been very active, especially on the topics of routines, performance feedback, and attention, resulting in a strong increase in learning and adaptation research in management journals.
Audience Segmentation Techniques
Authors: Smith Rachel A.
Published: March 2017

A premise in health promotion and disease prevention is that exposure to and consequences of illness and injury can be minimized through people’s actions. Health campaigns, broadly defined as communication strategies intentionally designed to encourage people to engage in the actions that prevent illness and injury and promote wellbeing, typically try to inspire more than one person to change. No two people are exactly alike with respect to their risk for illness and injury or their reactions to a campaign attempting to lower their risk. These variations between people are important for health messaging. Effective campaigns provide a target audience with the right persuasive strategy to inspire change based on their initial state and psychosocial predictors for change. It is often financially and logistically unreasonable to create campaigns for each individual within a population; it is even unnecessary to the extent to which people exist in similar states and share psychosocial predictors for change. A challenging problem for health campaigns is to define those who need to be reached, and then intelligently group people based on a complex set of variables in order to identify groups with similar needs who will respond similarly to a particular persuasive strategy. The premise of this chapter is that segmentation at its best is a systematic and explicit process of research to make informed decisions about how many audiences to consider, why the audience is doing what they are doing, and how to reach that audience effectively.
Communicating about Biofuels and Climate Change
Authors: Cacciatore Michael A.
Published: March 2017

Biofuels are produced from biomass, which is any organic matter that can be burned or otherwise used to produce heat or energy. While not a new technology—biofuels have been around for well over 100 years—they are experiencing something of a renaissance in the United States and other countries across the globe. Today, biofuels have become the single most common alternative energy source in the U.S. transportation sector with billions of gallons of the fuel produced annually.

The expansion of the bio-based economy in recent years has been intertwined with mounting concerns about environmental pollution and the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere. In the United States, for example, biofuels mandates have been championed as key to solving not only the country’s increasing energy demand problems and reliance on foreign oil, but also growing fears about global climate change.

Of course, the use of biomass and biofuels to combat global climate change has been highly controversial. While proponents argue that biofuels burn cleaner than gasoline, research has suggested that any reductions in CO2 emissions are offset by land use considerations and the energy required in the biofuels-production process. How publics perceive of climate change as a problem and the use of biomass and biofuels as potential solutions will go a long way toward determining the policies that government’s implement to address this issue.
Veto Player Approaches in Foreign Policy Analysis
Authors: Oppermann Kai , Brummer Klaus
Published: March 2017

The main contribution of veto player approaches in Comparative Politics has been to the study of policy stability and change. Specifically, the argument is that the possibility and conditions for policy change in a given polity and issue area depend on the configuration of veto players and veto points. Most notably, veto player approaches have introduced a general conceptual tool kit that has facilitated the comparative analysis of the dynamics and obstacles of policy change across (democratic and non-democratic) regime types and public policy areas. However, in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), references to veto players and veto points tend to be hardly systematic and are mainly used to highlight domestic constraints on preference formation, decision-making, or responses to international crises. Hence, the theoretical and empirical potential of veto player approaches for FPA has not yet been systematically explored. Against this background, the article makes the case that “taking veto players seriously” has a lot to offer to the study of foreign policy. While there are differences between applying veto player approaches in public policy and in FPA (e.g., with respect to the more informal process of foreign policy decision-making or the larger policy discretion of the agenda setter in foreign policy), those differences must not be overdone. Indeed, they point to certain shifts in emphasis and specific methodological challenges for veto player studies in foreign policy, but do not call into question the basic explanatory logic of veto player approaches or their transferability from one field to the other. What is more, the article shows that multiple links between veto player approaches and FPA theories can be established. Generally speaking, veto player approaches have immense potential in reinvigorating comparative foreign policy analysis. More specifically, they can be linked up to FPA works on the role of parliaments, coalitions, or leadership styles as well as on those discussing change, effectiveness, or fiascos in foreign policy.
Beliefs and Foreign Policy Decision Making
Authors: Schafer Mark , Smith Gary
Published: March 2017

How do the beliefs of leaders affect foreign policy decision-making processes and outcomes? This question has been central to the study of foreign policy decision making (FPDM), yet it receives scant attention in the broader international relations literature. Although many controversies and debates surround the issue of specifically how political leaders’ beliefs affect foreign policy decisions and outcomes, there is one key assumption in this literature that is universally accepted: leaders matter. Individual leaders, their unique beliefs, and their distinctive cognitive limitations affect both the quality of the decision-making process and the direction of the foreign policy outcomes. The beliefs and images leaders hold act as powerful frames and limitations to incoming information. Despite the rich history of the field, scholars who study beliefs still have much more work to do to expand the generalizability of the qualitative findings in the literature. Scholars need more data, deriving from more sources, for more leaders, so that they can generate larger and more comprehensive datasets. Indeed, there is a great opportunity to expand this field of research and to paint a clearer picture of the decision-making process.
Gender and Foreign Policy
Authors: Henshaw Alexis Leanna
Published: March 2017

While explicit efforts at gender mainstreaming in foreign policy are relatively recent, a view of foreign policy through a feminist lens illustrates that foreign policy has always been gendered. Feminist scholarship in this area suggests that masculinity has historically shaped foreign policy in important ways, while the increased presence of women in national governments, government cabinets, and the diplomatic corps has produced some notable change in policy outcomes.

An examination of two key concepts related to policymaking and gender—securitization and gender mainstreaming—shows how gender issues have come to the forefront of national and international security agendas since 2000. In particular, the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda promulgated by the United Nations has obligated individual states to address gendered security issues, and dozens of countries have responded with their own National Action Plans. While these national efforts have led to some improvement in the status of women and related humanitarian outcomes, feminist scholars generally agree that the WPS agenda has stalled in its efforts to produce transformative change. As a way forward, feminist foreign policy stances promise to produce more comprehensive outcomes, though a backlash toward gender mainstreaming and the re-emergence of more traditional security threats has led to questions about the future of such efforts.
Performance Consultants in Sport and Performance Psychology
Authors: Tod David
Published: March 2017

Since the 1890s, the field of applied sport psychology has gained increasing visibility within the sport and exercise science, psychology, and mainstream communities. Associated with this enhanced visibility has been an increase in the numbers of education and training pathways, registration and licensure schemes, and people offering services. At the same time, there has also been increasing recognition that applied practitioners operate in a range of domains, including sport, where there is a need for clients to respond to stressful, often competitive, environmental demands and perform to high levels, such as the performing arts and music, business, medicine, the military, and public speaking. These practitioners do not need to be interested in sport, and they come from a diverse range of backgrounds.

As sport and performance psychologists have emerged and formed a loose and porous community, researchers have documented their technical and personal competencies, the ways in which they help clients, the principles guiding their development toward expertise, and some of the ethical and other demands placed on them as helping professionals. This knowledge can be used to identify ways that these individuals can be helped to develop their knowledge, skills, and character so they can form salubrious relationships with clients and assist performers across various domains to achieve their goals and resolve issues.
Neighborhood Watch
Authors: Chenery Sylvia
Published: March 2017

Neighborhood Watch or Home Watch is internationally regarded as the largest voluntary crime prevention activity in the world. It is typically citizen instigated and police facilitated, with local groups having substantial autonomy in the organization and leadership, some with access to support and materials from overarching national organizations, contingent upon adherence to basic common standards. The local group presents itself as a partnership of people coming together to try to make their community safer, and it is primarily seen as a scheme coordinated between local citizens and their police. The relative autonomy of local groups is reflected in a variety of working collaborations with local or municipal authorities, voluntary agencies, and private business. Neighborhood Watch aims to empower people to protect themselves and their properties and to reduce the fear of crime by means of improved home security, greater vigilance, increased guardianship, and reporting of incidents to the police, and by fostering a community spirit. A further aim of the organization is to improve police and community liaison by developing effective two-way communication processes by which Neighborhood Watch leaders can disseminate up-to-date information among the members. Examples of Neighborhood Watches are now to be found in many parts of the world, and while initially schemes were launched exclusively by the police, as time and the organization have progressed, active citizens are now often initiating the establishment and organization of their own schemes. The closer linkage between police and the Neighborhood Watch organizations is reflected in the fact that the United Kingdom’s Neighborhood Watch national headquarters is located within an operational police station.
Journalistic Depictions of Violence Against Women in Mexico
Authors: klein Alice
Published: March 2017

This article analyzes journalistic depictions of violence against girls and women in Mexico in the context of several high-profile cases that have played out in the country over the past two decades. The argument is that the mainstream media uses two primary tactics to blame victims for the violence they have experienced: (a) claim that the victims are responsible for their own crimes by presenting sexist arguments that discredit their value as humans, and (b) claim that the mothers of victims of violence are also responsible for the crimes committed against their daughters by presenting sexist ideas that limit mothers and daughters to the domestic space. These tactics are used in order to continue to limit the participation of women in the public space and public life. Via interviews with mothers, activists, and journalists, this article explores the personal impact of journalistic depictions of violence against women and also looks at how journalists are working to represent women more diversely and in ways that feature their voices rather than silencing them. Part of the problem is that in Mexico, as in many countries, the mainstream media is controlled and reported on mostly by men. Given that Mexico is one of the most violent countries in the world for journalists, women are often discouraged from reporting, threatened with death, or simply made invisible because their stories are not considered important. In order to create real change in the way violence against women is represented, it is necessary to have gender parity in reporting and in ownership of media outlets. For this kind of equality to be possible, the government must offer more protection and support to journalists, and it should make gender studies courses a mandatory element of media training.
Immigration Detention and Punishment
Authors: Turnbull Sarah
Published: March 2017

The use of detention for immigration purposes is a carceral trend that continues to increase across the world and is a phenomenon no longer limited to so-called western countries or the global north. Linked to the criminalization of mass migration under conditions of globalization, immigration detention can be understood as both a policy and a practice that is directed towards the control of unwanted human mobility. The extension of tactics traditionally used in the penal system to the realm of immigration control raises important questions about the purpose, justification, and legitimacy of immigration detention. Broadly defined as the confinement of non-citizens under administrative powers rather than criminal law to achieve immigration-related aims, immigration detention is one amongst an array of border control strategies aimed at the identification of migrants, the prevention of absconding, and the facilitation of their removal. Only recently has this form of confinement become the focus of criminological inquiry. Researchers have found that immigration detention has a profound impact on those who are detained, particularly on mental and physical health as well as on more complex issues of identity, belonging, human rights, and legitimacy. Empirical research has indicated that although the detention of migrants is not punishment, it is often experienced as such, with the prison emerging as a point of comparison through which to make sense of this practice. That the “usual suspects”―poor men and women of color―are the primary populations detained raises important questions about the use of immigration detention in the service of punitive and restrictive migration control strategies that further global inequality along the familiar lines of gender, race, and socioeconomic status.
Environmental Crime
Authors: Gibbs Carole , Boratto Rachel
Published: March 2017

Environmental crime is a complex and ambiguous term for several reasons. It is sometimes used as an umbrella term for crimes related to biodiversity, wildlife, animals, natural resources, hazardous waste, banned substances, and environmental quality, but scholars have also developed typologies to capture the unique dimensions of each form of environmental crime. Disagreements regarding whether to distinguish violations of environmental laws (addressed via civil prosecution or administrative actions) from environmental crimes (criminally prosecuted), and whether to also consider environmental harms (legal activities that harm the environment) or environmental risks produce further confusion. The range of offenders also complicates this concept, as individuals, groups/networks, and powerful organizations commit environmental crimes. The degree of harm created by each actor may, or may not, be equivalent.

Given the complexities of this area of study, scholars have developed and/or tested a wide range of theoretical perspectives on and interventions to address environmental crime. Consistent with conceptual disagreements, these theoretical frameworks and corresponding interventions vary (arguably the most) based on whether the dependent variable is environmental crime (as defined by law), or environmental harm or risk defined using other criteria. However, multiple theoretical perspectives/interventions are also examined within research on these broad categories of environmental crime, harm, and risk. In order to capture the breadth of research on environmental crime, we narrow the focus of this article to pollution related crimes (e.g., hazardous waste, banned substances, environmental quality). In the following article, we offer further detail regarding conceptual discussions, legal complexities, types of offenders, types of crime, and research on this subset of environmental crimes.
Crime, Justice, and Anglo-American Comics
Authors: Giddens Thomas
Published: March 2017

Criminal justice is a perennial theme in modern comics published in the United States and United Kingdom, with dominant narratives revolving around the protection of the innocent from crime and harm or the seeking of justice outside the authority of the state. The history of the comics medium and its regulation in the mid-20th century, particularly in the United States, shows how the comics medium itself—not just its popular content—was embroiled in questions of criminality, in relation to its perceived obscenity and fears that it caused juvenile delinquency. Indeed, the medium’s regulation shaped the way it has been able to engage with questions of crime and justice; the limitations on moral complexity under the censorship of the 1954 Comics Code in the United States, for example, arguably led to both a dearth of critical engagement in crime and justice concerns, and an increased evil or psychopathy in criminal characters (because more nuanced motivations could not be depicted under the Code). From the 1980s onwards, the restrictions of the Code abated, and a broad “maturation” of the form can be seen, with a concurrent increase in critical engagement with criminological questions. The main themes of comics research around crime and comics after the 1980s include questions of vigilantism and retribution, seen as the dominant concern in mainstream comics. But other leading questions go beyond these issues and explore comics’ engagement with the politics of crime and justice, highlighting the medium’s capacity to question the nature of justice and the legitimate exercise of state power. Moreover, stepping back and considering the general relationship between comics and criminology, comics can be seen as important cultural forms of expression of moral and social values, as well as potentially alternative orders of knowledge that can challenge mainstream criminology. From free speech, juvenile delinquency, and vigilantism, to politics, culture, and disciplinary knowledge, there are significant interactions between comics and criminology on a variety of levels.
Shaping Sustainable Inclusion Policy Through Practice
Authors: Rose Richard
Published: March 2017

The challenge of providing education that is inclusive and seen as equitable for all children is one that has exercised policy makers and education professionals in most countries throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. International agreements such as UNESCO’s 1990 Jomtien Declaration and 1994 Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education were instrumental in promoting debate about the rights of children who were denied access to an appropriate schooling and who, in some instances, had no opportunity to obtain any formal education. The Education for All Goals, which were used to prioritize the development of universal primary education, and more recently the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Education Goals, which reiterated a commitment to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Goal 4), have increased the focus upon developing inclusive education. This has encouraged governments around the world to re-examine the ways in which they provide schooling for their children and young people. With such a plethora of initiatives, agreements, and advice, it is only to be expected that most national administrations have felt it necessary to respond and to demonstrate that they are taking action towards improving educational opportunities for all. However, the relationship between policy and practice is complex; and in some instances, the development of legislation has failed to provide increased equity in the manner that was intended. This article considers two distinctly different routes towards achieving inclusive education and discusses those factors that have either supported or inhibited success. In drawing upon examples from current developments in India, it additionally proposes that researchers who conduct investigations in international contexts should invest time in understanding underlying policy and cultural and historical factors that may impact upon the ways in which we interpret meaning from data.
Martin Luther’s Life, 1526–1546
Authors: Mattox Mickey L.
Published: March 2017

Luther’s life in the years after 1525 was relatively placid in comparison to the turbulence he experienced between the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses and his marriage to Katharina von Bora in 1525. To be sure, there were events and controversies aplenty, and many of them impacted the circumstances of his daily life, altered or sharpened the focus of his theological work, and influenced the shape his movement would take after his death. He remained to the end a central figure in both church and civil affairs, supporting the evangelical reform of the European churches and offering his advice—and his criticism—to any who would listen. Limitations on his travel resulting from the Edict of Worms made him a sideline player at the Augsburg Diet of 1530, but he contributed crucially to Evangelical identity through his two catechisms of 1529, as well as the Smalcald Articles he wrote to define and defend Evangelical faith and practice. The elder Luther also assumed a leading role in Wittenberg’s university. He was its most famous professor as well as its most powerfully creative thinker. In 1535 he became dean of its faculty as well. As dean, he presided over a number of important disputations dealing with such issues as ecclesiology, Christology, and the doctrine of the Trinity. He also remained little Wittenberg’s most famous and influential person, eclipsing in many ways even his own prince electors. People of low status and high sought out Dr. Luther for advice of every kind. Informally, he became a powerful patron. Luther continued as well to lecture and publish theological works during this period, notably biblical “commentaries” (typically based on classroom lectures), a treatise on the church and one on the papacy, and a harsh series of treatises against the Jews. He remained the most influential contributor to Evangelical self-understanding, opposing, for example, both the Anti-trinitarian thinkers outside his movement (Servetus, Campanus) and the antinomian thinkers within it (Agricola). The German Bible translation project he had begun at the Wartburg resulted at last in the complete “Luther Bible” (1534). Together with a team of colleagues he dubbed “my Sanhedrin,” he continued to work on this project, with the last revised edition appearing in 1545. Notwithstanding the abiding apocalyptic angst and increasing world weariness that frequently marked the works of his later years, his theological vitality continued largely unabated. The elder Luther was not content merely to repeat the settled truths he had discovered in his youth, but continued to “shake every tree” in the great forest of Scripture in his quest to know God rightly and serve him faithfully. As Luther moved into his fifties and sixties he also suffered from a steadily debilitating complex of interrelated health issues. His death at age sixty-two on February 18, 1546, left his movement without its charismatic leader and thus vulnerable to both external political attack and internal theological division. Contrary to Saxon legal practice, he designated Katharina his sole heir.
The Influence of Renaissance Humanism and Skepticism on Martin Luther
Authors: Wright William J.
Published: March 2017

When Martin Luther began his academic studies at Erfurt, Renaissance humanism and skepticism had become well entrenched in the German academic world. He also found them at Wittenberg. Starting with Petrarch, humanists appeared in Italy who acquired the skills necessary to find solutions to their needs in the content of ancient pagan classics and Christian writings. Two major groups of humanists existed after the mid-15th century with distinct solutions for the needs they felt: rhetorical humanists epitomized by Valla and Neoplatonic humanists led by Ficino and Pico. Rhetorical humanism appealed to the heart and exempted the truth of Christian teachings from skepticism. Neoplatonic humanism sought to establish absolute truth by synthesizing the wisdom of all religions and philosophies.

It is well-known today that ultramontane Renaissance humanism was imported from Italy by large numbers of students from the north who studied there. German and other northern humanists mostly followed either in the path laid by Valla or that of Ficino and Pico. Luther was a beneficiary of the Christian humanism and biblicism of the rhetorical path, which also led to the development of the loci method of learning and the educational work of Melanchthon. The Neoplatonic path led to further development of logical solutions based on both Plato and Aristotle. This path developed remarkable syntheses of Christianity with ancient and medieval philosophies and religions, mostly meant to improve Christian life. Though familiar with the Neoplatonic path, Luther did not accept its basic views.
Martin Luther and the Saxon Electors
Authors: Plummer Marjorie Elizabeth
Published: March 2017

Although born in the territory of the Counts of Mansfield, Luther’s connection to Saxony began early. He attended school in Eisenach (1498–1501), located in electoral Saxony, and enrolled in university (1501–1505) and later entered the Augustinian monastery (1505–1508) in Erfurt, an independent city with close economic and political ties to Saxony. Luther’s association with Saxony and its electors, however, was sealed with his 1508 arrival at the University of Wittenberg, followed by his return to Wittenberg in 1511, where he was to reside for the most remainder of his adult life. His relationship with the rulers in Ernestine and Albertine Saxony and their reaction to his reform movement proved fundamental to Luther’s life and career, just as Luther has become inextricably linked to the history of Saxony and Wittenberg.

Scholars have concentrated on Luther’s interactions with the elector of Saxony Frederick III, “the Wise” (1463–1525, r. 1486–1525), during the early Reformation. Less scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between Luther and the electors of Saxony during the reign of Frederick’s brother John the Steadfast (1468–1532, r. 1525–1532) and nephew John Frederick (1503–1554, r. 1532–1547), despite the vital role that these rulers played during the development of the new confessional identity. Discussions of Luther’s interaction with these Saxon electors were featured in 16th-century publications and art as well as early histories of the Reformation and of Saxony. Over the course of subsequent centuries, the relationship between Luther and the Ernestine electors has become central to the story of the Reformation and to Saxon history.
Martin Luther, Jews, and Judaism
Authors: Wendebourg Dorothea
Published: March 2017

Martin Luther was engaged with the topic “Jews and Judaism” all his life, from his earliest works until his last. The main context for his preoccupation with this topic was interpretation of Holy Scripture, particularly in his many and ample lectures on books of the Old Testament, starting with the “Dictata supra Psalterium,” his first lecture on the Psalms (1513‒1515), down to his “Lecture on the Book of Genesis” (1535‒1545). In addition, he wrote several treatises on the question of how Christian society should relate to the Jews living in its midst, most important, “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew” (1523) and “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543). These writings were, however, to a large extent also exegetical works. Altogether Luther’s attitude toward the Jews and Judaism is characterized simultaneously by continuity and by radical change: (1) continuity is obvious in his theological statements on Judaism which were based on a certain hermeneutics of the Old Testament centered in the Messiahship of Jesus Christ; and (2) change in his demands regarding the treatment of contemporary Jews which in earlier years followed his conception of the Two Kingdoms whereas in later times he came back to the traditional ideal of corpus Christianum. This change led to contradictory receptions of his statements on the topic in the course of history. All this is reflected in the research on the subject since the beginning of modern historical scholarship.
Martin Luther’s Understanding of Earlier Reformers
Authors: Haberkern Phillip N.
Published: March 2017

Throughout his career as a reformer, Martin Luther often framed his critiques of the institutional Church and his original doctrinal formulations with references—both implicit and explicit—to earlier reformers. Whether turning to medieval German mystics for the terminology to describe true penitence or Bohemian heretics for proof that others had identified the papacy as the seat of Antichrist, Luther consistently embedded himself within a tradition of religious reform as he elaborated his theology and ecclesiology. Both Luther himself and many contemporary scholars have primarily understood the earlier figures whom Luther invoked as “forerunners” whose initiatives and theological insights only reached their culmination with Martin Luther’s reformation. Such a characterization of the individuals and movements that Luther invoked as precedents for his reforms, however, potentially limits our understanding of the myriad, evolving categories that Luther employed in describing his fellow reformers, and it also obscures our understanding of the specific rhetorical uses to which they were put. It is therefore time to re-examine the multiple ways in which Luther understood his relationship to earlier reformers, and especially how that relationship came to serve as a key foundation for the construction of a counter-history of the Christian church by Martin Luther and his followers. The most significant individual for Luther’s reorientation of sacred history was Jan Hus (d. 1415), the Bohemian preacher and professor who was burned at the stake by the Council of Constance. From the Leipzig Debate up until the sermons preached on Luther’s death, Hus served as the most proximate and spectacular example of the risk and reward that came from opposition to the papal Antichrist. Over time, Luther’s numerous references to Hus reflected an evolution in his perception of the Bohemian martyr; in short, Hus graduated from a predecessor and saint to a prophet of Luther’s reforms, and his death served as a pointed warning that reformers ought not trust church councils. Jan Hus was exceptional in terms of how substantially and often Luther engaged with his theology and death. Luther’s eventual conclusion that Hus embodied the broader history of God’s faithful followers on Earth was, however, ultimately emblematic of his conception of church history as founded upon the proclamation of divine truth by individuals who refused to countenance its suppression.