bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Feminist Politics Still Needs Motherhood
Authors: Watson Amanda D.
Published: January 2020

This chapter explains why feminists must retain and critique the institution of motherhood in order to better understand its disciplinary nature, and how it separates mothers from feminism, and women from each other and themselves. The chapter outlines the constitution of care in global politics and what the author calls the “trap of maternalism.” Staging a reading of two short film commercial advertisements that explicitly lay claim to motherhood, the author draws out signifiers of contemporary motherhood and reflects on how maternal thinking and critique of the institution of motherhood can be generative of feminist political theory. Finally, the author reflects further on the potential of maternal thinking to expand feminist notions of care in masculinized spaces.
Speaking from the Margins of Motherhood
Authors: Motta Sara C.
Published: January 2020

For centuries, the knowledges of raced mother-subjects have been denigrated, denied, and misrepresented. What might it mean, then, to bring to thought and to “speak” epistemologically and politically from this place of (m)other absence? In this chapter, the author explores such a (m)other speaking through three themes and experiences. The first is interruption and/as failure, in which the messiness of motherhood and the untimely, unruliness of children becomes present in the space-times of political encounter and foregrounds the possibilities of other affectivities of play and wonder and other rhythms of spontaneity and nonlinearity to enter as underpinnings of shared (political) collaborations and creations. The second is fragility, which is an invitation to embody stillness and silence to allow the unspeakable to emerge from wounds of coloniality and foregrounds a maternal ethic of care, mutual self-fragilization, and surrender to the unknown possibilities of Nepantla pluridiversity. The third is a methodology for healing mother-lines, which enables the recuperation of the maternal as an energy, a symbol, a memory, a story, a practice of being held, of being mothered and of mothering self, others, and cosmos. Together, these moments and experiences offer enfleshed visions with which we might co-create a (geo)politics (m)otherwise.
Corruption and the Competition for Power
Authors: Gillies Alexandra
Published: January 2020

In several democratic countries, public officials sought oil money in part to finance their election campaigns. In Brazil and Nigeria, landslides of corruption followed, and billions of dollars in public funds were lost. National oil companies proved particularly susceptible to abuse. But it was not all bad news, as some democratic institutions proved their mettle. Electoral and judicial agencies worked as intended, and kept the perpetrators from enjoying their loot in peace. In the United States, the tactics were more subtle with oil companies spending handsomely on election campaigns, public advertising and lobbying.
We Know How to Fight Corruption
Authors: Gillies Alexandra
Published: January 2020

The oil boom reveals how corruption works, including the players and tactics that appear across multiple cases. These are the problem areas that need to be fixed most urgently. The boom also reveals what solutions are working and need to be scaled up. After all, every corruption case know about is a success story of some kind, or it would have remained unexposed. Taken together, these lessons can help build a smarter fight against corruption, in the oil sector and beyond.
A Brief History of Life and Brain Evolution
Authors: Coolidge Frederick L.
Published: January 2020

This chapter reviews some of the fundamentals of evolution, particularly adaptations and exaptations. Adaptations are physical or behavioral features that through natural selection aided survival and reproduction. Exaptations are physical or behavioral features that have been co-opted from their initial adaptive functions and subsequently enhanced fitness. The reuse, recycling, or redeployment of brain neurons for purposes other than their original adaption may be considered a central organizing principle of the brain. The chapter reviews the beginnings of life and presents a timeline of life through the evolution of hominins. The term hominin refers to all current and extinct relatives and ancestors of Homo sapiens, including the australopithecines and habilines, within about the last 6 million years. The chapter introduces the hypothesis that Homo sapiens survived and flourished, instead of Neandertals, Denisovans, and other hominins, because of brain shape differences, which created cognitive differences that enhanced the evolutionary fitness of Homo sapiens.
The Evolution of Learning and Memory Systems
Authors: Coolidge Frederick L.
Published: January 2020

This chapter covers many hypotheses: 1. Modern human memory systems are based on non-associative (habituation and sensitization) and associative (classical and operant conditioning) learning principles. 2. Non-associative learning evolved first, guiding formation of increasingly more complex molecules. The principles underlying habituation and sensitization are based on basic chemical and subatomic particle affinities and disaffinities. 3. The concept of sensitization should be expanded to cover reliability or steady responses to repeated stimuli. 4. In a prelife and pre-nucleotic world, selfish metabolism and reproduction were paramount. Through natural selection only four nucleotides survived to form the basis of RNA in prokaryotes, which later became modified to form double-stranded DNA eukaryotes. 5. The memory for an organism’s functions is coded with its RNA and DNA. 6. The Cambrian explosion vastly expanded the animal kingdom, beginning about 545 million years ago. It resulted from the development of unlimited associative learning, which developed on the basis of exaptation of non-associative learning principles. 7. Baddeley’s multicomponent working memory model aids in understanding of the evolution of cognition.
An Introduction to the Brain
Authors: Coolidge Frederick L.
Published: January 2020

This chapter emphasizes that human brains are the most complicated animate or inanimate system in the universe. It begins with a discussion of the definition of life and consciousness and the transition from life to consciousness. It is proposed that consciousness began with the ability to learn associatively (classical and operant conditioning) during the Cambrian period. There is a discussion of the four cell-building principles of the brain: cell proliferation, cell differentiation, cell migration, and programmed cell death. The multiple naming systems for the brain are presented: (1) Brodmann’s areas, (2) presumed function, (3) people’s names (4) regional location, (5) location and nature of the structure, and (6) gross anatomical name. The chapter reviews the four major brain lobes and their functions. It covers major structures of the limbic system and emphasizes the functional role of the brain’s fasciculi, the major connections for neural transmission, which reflects the concerted evolution of various brain regions.
The Hippocampus
Authors: Coolidge Frederick L.
Published: January 2020

All mammals have a well-developed hippocampus compared to that of fish, reptiles, and birds, although the latter still have homologous structures. The cells of the hippocampus have differentiated roles: place cells become active and rearrange themselves in new environments, which create new and stable maps of those environments. Grid cells are able to approximate distances, forming an additional neuronal basis for spatial navigation. The hippocampus and olfactory bulbs have intimately related functions. The story of patient H.M. revealed that declarative memories are consolidated by the hippocampus, but procedural memories can be established without hippocampal involvement. Declarative memories remain vulnerable to disruption and forgetting up to about 3 years after memorization. Memories consolidated during sleep are less prone to interference and more stable than memories followed by additional stimulation or learning.
Wittgensteinian Epistemology, Epistemic Vertigo, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Authors: Pritchard Duncan
Published: January 2020

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein offers a radical conception of the structure of rational evaluation, such that all rational evaluations are essentially local in that they necessarily occur relative to arational hinge certainties. Support is canvassed for the following claims: (1) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology, while the antidote to a certain formulation of Cartesian skepticism, is entirely compatible, including in spirit, with Pyrrhonian skepticism; (2) that the philosophical quietism which provides the wider context for Wittgenstein’s epistemology is very much in keeping with the core nature of Pyrrhonian skeptical techniques; and (3) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology sits very well alongside a particular way of thinking about Pyrrhonian skepticism such that it is primarily directed at our specifically theoretical commitments. As we will see, a key element to understanding how the Wittgensteinian line against Cartesian skepticism can be allied to a Pyrrhonian skepticism is the notion of epistemic vertigo.
Binary inspiral
Authors: Andersson Nils
Published: January 2020

This chapter provides a simple application of the quadrupole formula to the relevant setting of binary inspiral. The results are compared to the celebrated observations of the Binary Pulsar PSR1913+16, demonstrating the need to account for orbital eccentricity.
Beyond Newton
Authors: Andersson Nils
Published: January 2020

The post-Newtonian approximation is explained and the main issues arising in the description of inspiralling binary systems are considered. The ideas behind the effective-one-body approach to the binary problem are discussed.
Cosmic fireworks
Authors: Andersson Nils
Published: January 2020

The simulation of matter in general relativity, be it for neutron star mergers or core collapse, is discussed. State-of-the-art simulations for the dynamical bar-mode instability and neutron star merges are summarized. The inclusion of magnetic field is considered and key issues like the magnetorotational instability are explored. General gravitational collapse is discussed, and the progress toward the simulations of explosions in core-collapse studies is explained.
Whispers from the Big Bang
Authors: Andersson Nils
Published: January 2020

This chapter discusses gravitational waves in the context of cosmology, starting from a summary of the standard model for cosmology—Lambda CDM. The cosmological redshift is introduced and different ways to measure distances in an expanding universe are considered, including the idea of using binary mergers as standard ‘sirens’. Different stochastic backgrounds are considered and the use of pulsar timing arrays to detect gravitational waves is introduced. The chapter ends with a discussion of cosmological backgrounds due to quantum fluctuations, phase transitions, and cosmic strings
The Theory of Rights In Rem and Rights In Personam
Authors: Ross Alf
Published: January 2020

This chapter addresses the following questions. Are the common distinctions between right of disposal and right of claim tenable? Are the common distinctions between protection in rem and protection in personam tenable? Can the two above named distinctions be endowed with such a meaning that there exists a (necessary or natural) connection between them? It is shown that the first two questions must be answered in the negative and the third in the affirmative. This means that even if the way in which the two distinctions have been made, and the way in which one has imagined the connection between them are untenable, one nonetheless has had something important in mind which prompts investigation.
Operative Facts
Authors: Ross Alf
Published: January 2020

This chapter considers operative facts, which are defined as the complex totality of all facts that can be of relevance to a decision according to scientifically valid law. Among the operative facts, we can distinguish between those which are of specific relevance and those which are merely of conditioning (modifying, excluding) relevance. The former are also called law-creating facts and they are defined as those facts that, as a rule, give reason the specific legal effects. Among these facts are human acts which again should be divided into factual acts and legal acts or dispositions. Both groups are dealt with here. The former group include the act that is contrary to duty (the unlawful act), which is analysed independently. Acts in the latter group are always the effect of a competence. A distinction between public legal acts and private transactions is introduced but the account given is restricted only to private transactions.
The New ‘Multiplex’ Cold War in the Indo-Pacific
Authors: Doyle Timothy , Rumley Dennis
Published: January 2020

In this chapter we argue that one of the principal inhibitors of sustainable security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region is that the Cold War has yet to end. Strategic concepts and postures reflecting containment, ‘constrainment’, sphere of influence, expansionism, and territorial competition still inhabit the rhetoric not just of the regional security environment. Regional strategies can therefore be interpreted within the framework of Cold War ‘logic’, thus impeding regional security cooperation. The ‘old’ Cold War has thus been perpetuated, reinforced, and reinterpreted as a ‘new’ Cold War due to geopolitical competition over global and regional primacy. Even within this process of geopolitical competition, old geopolitical concepts such as ‘pivot’ and ‘Indo-Pacific’ have also been reinterpreted and reused to justify new strategies that ultimately continue to foster a new Cold War in the region. Indeed, the Indo-Pacific has returned as a central element of the new Cold War.
The US ‘Pivot’ in the Indo-Pacific
Authors: Doyle Timothy , Rumley Dennis
Published: January 2020

Indo-Pacific constructions within nation-states change over time. We contend that under President Obama, the US largely imagined the Indo-Pacific as a super-region or ‘non-space’; a neo-liberal ‘mare nullius’. During this earlier period, the US promoted the free flow of trade and security arrangements across this non-space, articulating a particularly non-differentiated version of globalization, a sea beyond territorialization (at least rhetorically). Under President Trump this has changed significantly: the region has shifted beyond the exclusive realm of the free market and towards a neo-mercantilist state with its first (and perhaps only) priority being economic and national security for the US. We posit that the Indo-Pacific has been refashioned as a definitive alliance, rather than Obama’s fluid zone, or ‘non-region’. In Trump’s Indo-Pacific, lesser states have been designated as either being ‘in’ or ‘out’ of this US-centred alliance—battle and trading lines are now more clearly visible.
Public health at its peak— the interwar years
Authors: Ashton John
Published: January 2020

This chapter picks up the evolution of public health in the United Kingdom in the period immediately following the First World War. The scene for initial optimism and ambition was set by the goals for reconstruction after the Great War which drove the move for ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’. The demand for resources distracted from the progress that was being made in bringing public health and health care together. Progress was made in organizational development, the appointment of the first Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health, and the construction of pioneering health centres. The stock market crash and the recession that followed halted progress until the threats of fascism galvanized action in the public sector. The chapter also covers the evolution of public health from the sanitary movement of the 1840s, through the focus on hygiene at the end of the nineteenth century, to the therapeutic era, which began in the 1930s. The origins of the New Public Health, with the central role of the World Health Organization and the convergent thinking from North America and Europe, is described. The tension between hospital-dominated medicine and the preventive orientation of public health is explored. The emergence of a consensus for transformational change to health systems rooted in public health is chronicled. At the heart is a need to reconcile primary care and public health in the face of new challenges. The shift to multidisciplinary working is underlined.
Improving health in Mersey
Authors: Ashton John
Published: January 2020

This chapter sets the scene for the pioneering work in public health carried out in the Liverpool health region from the 1980s onwards. It describes the situation that was left after the tide had gone out on the local authority-based arrangements that had served public health well for almost 150 years and identifies the green shoots of the New Public Health that was about to make its appearance. The key role of visionary and influential leaders who kept the flame alive and handed on the baton to a new generation leading to novel approaches centred on the new notion of health promotion is acknowledged. The importance of developing multidisciplinary and partnership working based on a sound analysis of the challenges to health is stressed. The strategic approach adopted, blending the science and art of public health practise on a foundation of pragmatism and broad-based support is a golden thread.
Population health care
Authors: Ashton John
Published: January 2020

This chapter addresses the value of health services as a public health measure and makes the case for the use of public health skills in health service planning. The question as to what sort of health services are most appropriate to optimize population health is explored with reference to the development of the World Health Organization Alma Ata Declaration with its emphasis on the eight elements of primary health care. The application of epidemiological thinking in National Health Service frameworks for health care is described. Examples of the use of a public health approach in health care planning include: planned parenthood and family planning services; population-based diabetic retinopathy screening; and whole-system health care transformation in the county of Cumbria. Also covered are the proactive role of the mainstream media in taking the public on a journey of change and the handling of serious clinical service failure in the form of inappropriate organ retention at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, breast screening failure in a Cumbrian hospital, and a corporate clinical disaster at the Morecambe Bay University Hospitals.
No health without mental health—mens sana in corpore sano
Authors: Ashton John
Published: January 2020

This chapter approaches the important subject of mental health and wellbeing through the lens of public health. Drawing on his own experience as a physician who specializes in psychiatry before moving into public health the author describes the struggle to move upstream from a sole focus on treating serious mental illness to the recent developments in public mental health and offers a framework for action. This draws on a historical overview of the differing emphases that have played in over the past two hundred years. This framework focuses on public health aspects as well as prevention and mitigation of harm from serious mental illness, and addresses the need for whole population approaches to mental health and mental health promotion. Examples of interventions that draw on public health interventions are given. These include the importance of planned parenthood and sexual health, the appropriate use of psychiatric expertise in support of population and community mental health, the centrality of concepts such as self-esteem, and the necessity to take a public health approach to the new challenge of dementia. Behavioural contagion, the role of the media, and the prevention of suicide are among the topics covered.
Culture, arts, and wellbeing
Authors: Ashton John
Published: January 2020

In this chapter the indivisibility of culture and the arts from health and wellbeing is explored through a variety of modalities; the power of the humanities to help us understand and explain the meaning of the challenges that affect us on life’s journey are explained; and the use of public spaces to engage with the public to promote health and wellbeing is described. Examples include: - The extensive use of the total environment of an international garden festival as a ‘health field’ for health promotion; - The value of cultural activity as a means for building peace and trust in the context of the post Northern Ireland Troubles; - An extended partnership and collaboration with the Liverpool artist and poet Adrian Henri, including an extensive programme of events to celebrate 150 years of public health in Liverpool; - The use of culture and the arts to restore public trust after serious clinical service failure; - The role of cultural facilities in providing support for dementia sufferers and their careers; and - The importance of ‘storytelling’ as a tool for public engagement and understanding of health and wellbeing.
Conclusion
Authors: Johnson Tom
Published: January 2020

The conclusion briefly summarizes the arguments of the book, before going on to consider their implications for how the social and political history of late-medieval England is to be understood as a more cohesive narrative of transformation. Specifically, it suggests that the legal structures—both local legal cultures and common legalities—discussed in the book can be understood as a part of a ‘common constitution’ that emerged in post-plague society, binding people together in a shared understanding of governance, making possible the kinds of expansive claim made by late-medieval government. In this way, the conclusion gestures towards a way of writing political history of the everyday.
Prospects of a New Normal
Authors: White Jonathan
Published: January 2020

Following a period of emergency rule, decision-makers face the challenge of drawing a line under their actions so that their unconventional measures do not compromise the polity in lasting fashion. This chapter analyses the preconditions for providing constitutional reassurance through an act of separation between the period of emergency and its aftermath. The suggestion is that the principal resources for doing so in the contemporary EU are missing. The prospect of exceptionalism will tend to endure, with important implications for the kind of authority that the political order can accommodate. The chapter addresses, through the prism of the constitutional particularities of the EU, an under-examined aspect of exceptionalism more generally—the constitutional challenges arising from the difficulty of localizing it in time.
Iterations of Technocracy
Authors: White Jonathan
Published: January 2020

What do the practices of emergency rule imply for technocracy, traditionally the cornerstone of EU legitimacy? On one view, emergency rule spells problems for technocracy, as non-scientific criteria intrude on decision-making. Yet exceptional situations are also when the claim to expertise-based governing carries furthest. Knowing how to act in such situations, and when to circumvent existing politico-legal norms, is in some ways the very measure of expertise. This chapter evaluates these two contending theses against recent EU experience, and argues they can be reconciled once we see how claims to expertise may span theoretical and practical knowledge. Emergency rule disrupts claims to scientific ‘know-that’, and encourages would-be technocrats to rely on a form of crisis expertise centred on practical know-how. This recalibration of technocracy carries significant implications, not least in detaching institutions further from public scrutiny and demanding ever more trust from citizens.
Justice and Responsibility
Authors: Campos Thana C de
Published: January 2020

Modern conceptions of justice ignore the relationship between duty-bearers and rights-holders, focusing mainly on the claimability of individual rights. This is particularly the case in medical law discussions. I argue that a deontological approach to medical law could not only create a less individualistic discussion, but also increase the probability of the realization of rights—particularly the human right to health. To demonstrate the applicability of deontological ethics in medical law, I first define and explain the modern conception of justice. To critique this modern conception of justice, I examine Kant’s and O’Neill’s deontological arguments regarding rights and duties. Then, building on Tasioulas’s deontological argument, I develop a theoretical understanding of the minimum-core-obligations that societies must fulfil if the right to health is to be feasibly claimable. I conclude by contrasting the practical implications of using either the modern conception of justice or the deontological conception of justice to interpret the minimum-core-obligations in the field of medical law.
Philosophy and Restrictions on Access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Authors: Goold Imogen
Published: January 2020

This chapter examines reproductive liberty and autonomy and considers whether constraints on either can be justified. Reproductive liberty is the view that people should be free to make their own, unfettered choices about reproduction insofar as these do not have unreasonable harmful impacts on others. This includes choosing to have children and choosing to avoid doing so. Those afflicted by infertility or inherited conditions, those who wish to create a saviour sibling, and those who prefer to use a surrogate cannot achieve their reproductive goals without Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs). If there is a lack of choices, or those choices are restricted (such as by restricting access to ARTs), then they may not be able to achieve their goals. The concept of reproductive autonomy comes into play at this point. Reproductive autonomy goes beyond the notion of merely permitting choice and demands more: that people’s choices about reproduction are facilitated.
Abortion on the Basis of a Risk of Disability
Authors: Robinson Heloise
Published: January 2020

This chapter will review different ethical perspectives on the morality of abortion on the basis of a risk of disability, and the apparent conflict between the interests of different constituencies—in particular, between those of the parents of the unborn disabled child and those of others. While it is often considered that the parents have an interest in choosing whether to avoid the perceived additional burdens which come from raising a disabled child, I argue that the parents’ interests encompass many other considerations. I suggest a broader understanding of their interests, based on limitations to the parents’ autonomy: I examine whether the parents’ choice is truly free, and whether there are significant costs to their choice which work against their own interests. I conclude that the parents’ interests, when they are more fully described, are more aligned with the interests of others than they may at first appear to be.
Property in the Body and Medical Law
Authors: Dickenson Donna
Published: January 2020

In common law, the traditional rule has been that there is no property in excised human tissue. In an era of widespread commodification of tissue, however, the practical reasons behind this position are increasingly outdated, while the philosophical grounds are paradoxical. This no-property rule has been construed so as to deprive tissue providers of ongoing rights, whereas researchers, universities, and biotechnology companies are prone to assume that once they acquire proprietary rights, those rights are complete and undifferentiated. That position can and should be remedied, drawing on a modified Lockean concept of property in what we have laboured to create, and a more sophisticated jurisprudential understanding of property in the body as a bundle of rights. Particularly in the case of women’s tissues, such as ova and umbilical cord blood, this model can offer more effective protection against the global ‘enclosures’ of bodily tissue.
Trafficking, Tourism, and Trading
Authors: Stammers Trevor
Published: January 2020

Organ transplantation has become a victim of its own success with the global need for organs outstripping supply. Organ trafficking and transplant tourism have developed as ways to circumvent the shortage. Responses from the United Nations and World Health Organization have condemned these practices and called for their elimination. There are increasing calls to permit legalized organ markets, claiming they would not only ease the organ shortage, but also reduce trafficking and transplant tourism. This chapter argues that organ trafficking, tourism, and trading are all inter-related and harm results to the vendors from all three. The arguments for legalized organ markets from philosophers, economists, and clinicians are presented and critiqued with a particular emphasis on the work of Janet Radcliffe-Richards. The criteria for an ideal organ market as outlined by Arthur Matas are then summarized and discussed, and followed by an exploration of the current situation regarding organ transplantation in Iran—the only country in the world to have a state-regulated organ market. A brief résumé of the history of organ markets is given, followed by an assessment of whether the Iranian model is one which should be followed as Western advocates of organ markets suggest, or whether it illustrates many of the problems of payment for organs of which opponents of such markets warn. It is concluded that the poor and vulnerable are overall the most likely to be the biggest losers in all forms of organ selling, whether by trafficking, transplant tourism, or trading in organ markets.
The Emergence of Family Agreements in an Ageing World
Authors: Coore Pip
Published: January 2020

In response to the ageing population, the need for adult children to care for their older parents is increasing. As reliance on adult children to provide care increases, family agreements are increasingly being entered into. Family agreements are, in essence, arrangements whereby an older parent transfers property to their adult child in exchange for a promise of ‘care for life’. This chapter identifies ways in which the law has responded to population ageing and outlines areas that require further attention. In particular, this chapter explores the emergence of family agreements to better understand whether (if at all) they adequately protect older people and their caregiving adult children from harmful outcomes.
The Global Financial Crisis
Authors: Fieldhouse Edward , Green Jane , Evans Geoffrey , Mellon Jonathan , Prosser Christopher , Schmitt Hermann , van der Eijk Cees
Published: January 2020

The Global Financial Crisis, which began in 2007–8, was the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and acted as a large shock to British politics. The economic vote is usually thought about as a short-term mechanism: a reward or punishment for the incumbent depending on recent economic conditions. In this chapter we examine how this shock played a role in the outcome of the 2015 General Election, seven years after the crisis began. The Global Financial Crisis continued to affect voting behaviour in 2015 for two reasons: first, it did long-lasting damage to perceptions of Labour’s economic competence, and second, it created a political opportunity for the Conservatives to blame the previous Labour government for the aftermath of the financial crisis.
Introduction
Authors: Pattison George
Published: January 2020

The Introduction shows how the attraction to the devout life explored in Part 1 of A Philosophy of Christian Life can be further qualified as vocation. Doing so brings the issue out of the realms of ineffable experience into the domain of language. The foundational role of language in the constitution of the self is explored with reference to Helen Keller, who found that language itself set her free by giving her the possibility of a coherent and meaningful relation to herself and to her world. Its place in human beings’ God-relationship flags up the necessity of listening and hearing, as well as attention to the rhetorical performance of language.
A Crisis of Vocation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: January 2020

The modern experience of the disenchantment of the world seems to count against the possibility of vocation/calling being anything more than an empty metaphor. The crisis of vocation in modernity is explored with reference to the Lutheran conception of vocation and its eclipse, Max Weber’s account of Protestantism and the application of the idea of vocation to a life in science, Heidegger’s attempt to reanimate philosophy through the idea of vocation, and Kierkegaard’s struggle to understand his own vocation. Each of Weber, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard proves unable to give positive content to the idea of vocation. It is seen by Weber as an irrational survival in a rationalized world, reduced in Heidegger to awareness of being thrown towards death, and fused in Kierkegaard with the creative impulse of the autonomous writer.
Prophetic Calling: At the Burning Bush
Authors: Pattison George
Published: January 2020

The chapter looks to the Hebrew Bible for resources to respond to the modern crisis of vocation. Prophecy appears as a special focus of discussion, since the prophet is who he is by virtue of being called. This is not a matter of psychological experiences of auditions but of understanding the essence of the prophet’s God-relationship. A paradigm case of prophecy is the calling of Moses at the burning bush. Salient features of this event include God’s call to Moses by name and the revelation of the divine name itself. Rejecting the traditional Christian interpretation of this in terms of being (‘I am that I am’), the chapter follows Buber’s and Rosenzweig’s interpretation, which brings the God-relationship into the domain of vocativity, exemplifying also ‘Jewish nominalism’, that is, attention to the centrality of the name in the human God-relationship.This is connected to the image of God in human beings.
Poetic Vocation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: January 2020

Like ethics, literature too is often envisaged as involving some kind of call or vocation. In lectures on Hölderlin, Heidegger provides a more positive account of calling than in Being and Time. Yet he remains unspecific as to what we are called to, and his account is therefore expanded with regard to its socio-political and theological dimensions, developed in the direct of a certain Messianism (Derrida, Caputo). This is further explored in terms of the relationship between prophecy and empire, focusing on the figure of Virgil, represented by Theodore Haecker as ‘father of the West’. In Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil, the poet epitomizes the transition from the classical world to Christianity and the relationship between poetry, empire, and messianism. This complex of ideas is seen as operative in the testimony of Ulrich Fentzloff, a parish priest whose blog gained national attention in Germany.
Existing Solutions I: The Unchanging Utility Solution
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: January 2020

In this chapter, we meet the first of the existing putative solutions to the problem of choosing for changing selves. This is the Unchanging Utility Solution and it claims that, contrary to appearances, our values do not change over time; rather, what changes is what obtains for us the things we value. The chapter argues that this will not work. It considers two objections: first, in many cases, it is not possible to identify what it is that remains constant over time when an individual’s values seems to change; second, on the most plausible response to the first objection, the putative solution gives the wrong verdict in a large range of cases.
Existing Solutions III: The One True Utility Solution
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: January 2020

This chapter considers the third existing putative solution to the problem of choosing for changing selves. This is the One True Utility Solution and it is based on the objectivist claim that there is a unique, objective utility function, and that an individual’s subjective utility for an outcome should be her expectation of the objective utility of that outcome. The chapter shows, if objectivism about value is granted, this solution will work. But it argues that the version of objectivism required is implausibly strong.
The Aggregate Utility Solution II: The Solution Itself
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: January 2020

The previous chapter concluded that we should aggregate credences and utilities first. This chapter considers how we should aggregate them. It claims that we should use the individual’s current credence function together with a weighted average of the utility functions of the individual’s past, present, and future selves. It then responds to an objection based on the partition sensitivity of the proposed solution. It proposes that an individual should aggregate the utilities assigned to those states of the world that specify everything that any of the individual’s various selves care about.
The Road Ahead
Authors: Pettigrew Richard
Published: January 2020

This final chapter of the book summarizes the conclusions of the preceding chapters and looks forward to how the Aggregate Utility Solution might be generalized so that it applies not only to the expected utility theory framework, but also to other frameworks for rational decision-making. In particular, it explains how we might extend the Aggregate Utility Solution to the framework of imprecise credences and utilities, and to the framework of risk-sensitive decision theories.
Changing Interpretative Models in Archaeology
Authors: Harding D. W.
Published: January 2020

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were periods of data collection and classification, with an emphasis on establishing chronology. For North Alpine Europe this involved a process of cross-dating with the more reliably established chronologies of the Mediterranean and Middle East. The technological Three Age System was subsequently matched by models of social progression from savagery to civilization. Synthesis and analysis progressed with Gordon Childe, whose cultural-historical model persisted into the 1960s, when the equation of artefact distributions and ethnic groups was first seriously challenged. Key contributions in the early post-war years were Hawkes’s ‘ladder of inference’ and Clark’s economic prehistory. From the late 1960s prehistory underwent ‘deconstruction’ with the advent of processual models, adopted from the United States, and the important contributions in Britain of David Clarke. These in turn gave way to an even more diverse range of ‘post-processual’ approaches, with an increasing emphasis on identity. More recently intuitive approaches signal a more fundamental departure from traditional scholarly principles.
Mobility in Prehistory and Early Historic Times
Authors: Harding D. W.
Published: January 2020

For most of the twentieth century migration and invasion were the default explanation of material culture change in archaeology. This model was largely derived from the record of documentary history, which not only recorded the Gaulish diaspora of later prehistory but the migrations that resulted in the breakup of the Roman Empire. The equation of archaeological distributions—the formula ‘pots = people’—was a model adopted and promoted by Gordon Childe, and remained fundamental to archaeological interpretation into the 1960s. Thereafter diffusionism was discredited among British prehistorians, though less so among European archaeologists and classical or historical archaeologists. Even the Beaker phenomenon became a ‘cult package’ rather than the product of settlers, and it is only as a result of more recent isotopic and DNA analyses that the scale of settlement from the continent introducing Beakers has begun to be demonstrated. Other factors in culture contact including long-distance trade have long been evident, for example, from the distribution of finds of Baltic amber from Northern and North-Western Europe to the Mediterranean, or the distribution of continental pottery and glass via the western seaways in the post-Roman period.
The Celtic Debate
Authors: Harding D. W.
Published: January 2020

The conventional assumption that the pre-Roman populations of Britain and Ireland were ethnically Celtic, and that Celtic culture survived in the north and west beyond the Roman occupation of Britain, was first challenged in the 1990s in a critical process that has sometimes since been parodied beyond the legitimate questions raised by Celtosceptics. Whilst it is true that the term ‘Celtic’ was only widely applied to speakers of a language group from the eighteenth century, the equation of linguistically Celtic speaking Gauls with Celts of ancient historians still seems archaeologically and linguistically tenable, even if the case for equating Celtic-speaking Britons with ethnic Celts is no more than inference. By the same rationale, Celtic art should refer to the art of people who might reasonably be regarded as ethnic Celts (including those who regarded themselves as Celtiberians), and not just to La Tène art, which is both chronologically and geographically restricted. The case for regarding early Irish Christian art as Celtic is largely specious, except as a product of the ‘Celtic’ church. The case for regarding the origins of the Celts as extending back into earlier prehistory carries conviction, though the further suggestion that these origins lay in South-Western Europe remains far from persuasive to many linguists as well as to archaeologists.
Penal Imaginations of Global Justice-Making
Authors: Lohne Kjersti
Published: January 2020

The chapter analyses the cosmopolitan penal imaginary building on western domestic penality, delving into the relationship between human rights sensibilities and criminal justice mentalities in the ‘fight against impunity’. Through the fieldwork in Uganda and Rwanda, the chapter describes asymmetries between the international and national criminal justice systems. It shows how international criminal justice circulates transnationally between different geographical sites via human rights NGOs and is closely linked to human rights expertise, and how human rights NGOs turn international criminal justice into issues about social justice. Applying a sociology of punishment perspective, the chapter brings out the similarities and differences in ‘penal imaginations’ between domestic and international criminal justice, and argues that international criminal justice both echoes the national and departs from it. For example, while international criminal justice relies upon retributive and expressive undertones, it makes no appeal to punitive sensibilities: a fact that can be understood in light of the close relation between international criminal justice and human rights NGOs. Yet, it is argued that human rights NGOs rely too strongly on punitive answers, and that amnesties can be just a matter of pragmatism in situations of profound violence. Thus, while the ICC has both retributive and reparative aims, the situation in northern Uganda demonstrates how international criminal justice became an impediment to peace. Moreover, the chapter reveals how a lot of practical issues had simply not been ‘thought of’ when setting up the ICC, such as acquittals and asylum-seeking witnesses.
Human Rights, Global Justice, and the Limits of Law
Authors: Nash Kate
Published: January 2020

Although international human rights law is globalizing, it has inherent limits due to the fundamental paradox through which it is being institutionalized: humans have rights as such, but citizens must give themselves the law. Moreover, sociologically, respect for human rights in practice depends on how states are structured and on the political projects of officials who act ‘in the name of the state’. It depends on material and moral resources—economic, military, legitimacy, and authority—organized across nominal divisions between state and civil society and across state borders. From a sociological perspective, the author argues that human rights are necessarily political, and that the entanglement of the ‘international’ and the ‘national’, ‘human’ and ‘citizen’, is unavoidable for the progressive construction of human rights.
Human Rights beyond the Double Bind of Sovereignty
Authors: Goodale Mark
Published: January 2020

This chapter responds to Kate Nash’s contribution by examining what she describes as the two sovereignties that shape the life of contemporary human rights: the first, the state sovereignty of the Westphalian international system within which institutionalized human rights are firmly embedded; the second, the popular sovereignty of democratic polities, which is anchored in shifting notions of citizenship, culture, and identity. As the chapter explains, this ‘double bind’ of sovereignty was already present from the time of the French Revolution, which instantiated a similar division between universal ideals and the interests of citizens living in particular nation-states. As between these two, as the chapter concludes, it would appear inevitable that the cosmopolitan aspirations of universal human rights are bound to give way to more modest articulations of rights and political action, that is, human rights understood and practised in the plural.
Dissecting the Institution
Authors: Freedman Rosa , Houghton Ruth
Published: January 2020

Institutionalism is concerned with the functioning of an institution; its internal structures and processes. The contested effects of institutionalization—or the proliferation of international institutions—on international law are well-documented, which includes the fragmentation of international law into separate legal orders, with competing institutional drivers. Within human rights, institutionalism and the extraneous effects of decision-making being made by an institution are not as frequently discussed. In his chapter, Klabbers makes an important contribution by highlighting the need to examine the functioning of human rights institutions in order to consider the effects they have on the content of human rights norms. In response to Klabbers, this comment piece emphasizes the need to differentiate clearly between institutions and actors, and indeed between different types of institutions and different types of actors, in order to explore systematically any impact on how international human rights law is developed and implemented.
Differentiating Fundamental Rights and Economic Goals
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: January 2020

We can usually protect liberty, dignity, equality, fairness, humanity, and autonomy—that is, fundamental rights—by imposing restraints on power. Variations in resources do not justify differences in protection. On the other hand, resources inevitably limit achievement of economic goals. Difficult choices must often be made when governments consider the redistribution of resources. Moreover, economic goals sometimes conflict with each other. The allocation of resources is at the heart of the political process and should be pursued through that process. It should take place in a manner that enjoys democratic legitimacy. To vindicate fundamental rights, it is necessary to persuade others to uphold universal norms. The redistribution of resources depends on winning the support of those pursuing their own interests and persuading others that, in turn, their interests are being protected. Fundamental rights differ from economic goals and different strategies are needed to secure them.