bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Politics and Resistance
Authors: Bandyopadhyay Sekhar , Chaudhury Anasua Basu Ray
Published: June 2022

The chapter critically examines the roles of the United Central Refugee Council under the Communist Party of India’s leadership and the Sara Bangla Bastuhara Sammelan under Praja Socialist Party’s leadership in the massive refugee satyagraha of March–April 1958. It looks at the forms of resistance and modes of mobilisation, and assesses their revolutionary potential. It also unpacks the contradictions between different layers of political leadership in this refugee movement, shows how the caste question was deliberately suppressed by the Leftist leadership, although it was very much present in the structure of the movement. It also looks at the movement led by Jogendranath Mandal’s East India Refugee Council that deliberately raised the caste issue and examines critically the consequences of its rightward political drift. Finally, it tries to explain why the Dalit refugees were ultimately abandoned by the bhadralok political elite, forcing them to go to Dandakaranya.
What Is a Person, and What Is Gender?
Authors: Vanita Ruth
Published: June 2022

This chapter expands my earlier work on the debate between female philosopher Sulabha and philosopher-king Janaka. Here, the debate is examined in its context in the Mahabharata. It is preceded by other debates between male sages, which analyse the nature of the living being (jīva) and the body. Sulabha’s analysis of gender, based on Sāṅkhya philosophy, grows out of her analysis of a person (vyakti) as an expression (vyakti), not a permanent reality. She discusses how a foetus develops, acquiring sex and gender at birth. In addition to gender, she addresses the unreality of varṇa and āshrama; she herself flouts the social conventions attached to all these categories.
Rebirth, Sex-Change, and Masculinities
Authors: Vanita Ruth
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines different masculinities (Shikhandin, Bhishma, and Arjuna), and views the Shikhandini story through the lens of rebirth. Born into a revenge-driven family, Shikhandini wrestles with the same issues that she did in her former lifetime as Amba—marriage, gender, suicide, grief, life as a king’s daughter. After the sex-change, Shikhandin is a character singularly uninterested in dialogue and driven by rage alone. This chapter contests some commentators’ view that Shikhandin is a mother Goddess taking revenge on Bhishma who is the ‘worst patriarch’ and thus demon-like. Through close readings, I demonstrate that Shikhandin is a lacklustre warrior and the incarnation of a demon (rākṣasa) with the enflamed masculinity of a yakṣa. Unlike other transgender figures such as Bhangashvana, Shikhandin is inclined to fear and rage, not love.
Trans-Imperial Islam in the Crucible of War
Authors: Murray-Miller Gavin
Published: June 2022

Chapter 7 examines France’s North African empire during the years of the First World War, noting how trans-imperial movements fueled by the war destabilized and outwardly challenged notions of a bounded “French North Africa.” As recent histories of the First World War have shown, the conflict was characterized by the intensification of imperial struggles after 1914 as the Entente and Central Powers struggled for global dominance. With Germany fomenting anti-colonial revolutionary movements across Africa and the Middle East as part of its war strategy and the Ottoman Empire declaring a global jihad, both France and Britain faced the prospect of colonial revolts in their Muslim empires. In this context, expressions of solidarity among North African Muslims evident on the eve of the war were radicalized, especially as German agents offered material assistance to Muslim activists. Algerian and Tunisian dissidents took to the press and set up revolutionary committees in Switzerland, Istanbul, and Berlin. They espoused notions of Wilsonian self-determination and spoke in the name of an Algerian-Tunisian Muslim community demanding postwar independence. Pan-Islamism and North African Muslim unity came together in this anti-colonial campaign, demonstrating the extent to which opposition assumed both an intra-imperial and trans-imperial dimension as the war progressed. By examining newspapers and magazines published in French, German, and English, this chapter follows North African activists who used the aid offered by Germany and the Ottoman Empire to pursue their own anti-colonial platforms.
Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness
Authors: Simpson Hannah
Published: June 2022

This book explores Beckett’s representation of physical pain in his theatre plays in the long aftermath of World War II, emphasising how the issues raised by this staging of pain speak directly to matters lying at the heart of his work: the affective power of the human body, the doubtful capacity of language as a means of communication, the aesthetic and ethical functioning of the theatre medium, and the vexed question of intersubjective empathy. Alongside the wartime and post-war plays of fellow Francophone writers Albert Camus, Eugène Ionesco, Pablo Picasso, and Marguerite Duras, it resituates Beckett’s early plays in a new conceptualising of le théâtre du témoin or a ‘theatre of the witness’. These are plays concerned with the epistemological and ethical uncertainties of witnessing another’s pain, rather than with the sufferer’s own direct experience. They raise troubling questions about our capacity to comprehend and respond to another being’s pain. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework of extant criticism, recorded historical audience response, theatre and affect theory, and medical understandings of bodily pain, this book argues that these plays do not offer any easily negotiable encounter with physical suffering, and instead push us to recognise the very ‘otherness’ of another being’s pain even as it invades our own affective sphere. In place of any comforting transcendence or redemption of endured pain, they offer a starkly sceptical, even pessimistic probing of what it is to witness another’s suffering.
Instruments of Reform
Authors: Ceadel Martin
Published: June 2022

Reformers have had a choice of political instrument since parties and pressure groups both emerged during England’s Cavalier Parliament. There have been twelve partisan configurations, in all but one of which parties have selected certain issues and left the rest to groups, which worked with independent-minded backbenchers. The first five configurations—structured by attitudes towards the court, James II, the Hanoverian succession, George III, and the social order—left considerable policy space for non-partisan reformers. During the exceptional sixth configuration, the era of the first two reform acts, groups agitated so effectively that parties accepted some of their demands: in the process the Tories were transformed into Conservatives and the Whigs into Liberals, while the scope for group and backbench activism was reduced. The seventh configuration saw both parties become more disciplined and develop broad alternative programmes, causing many groups to affiliate with one or the other. The eighth configuration, the era of two world wars, was complicated by Labour’s gradual supersession of the Liberals and by continuous international crisis. The ninth, 1945–70, saw Labour and the Conservatives dominate the domestic agenda. During the tenth and eleventh configurations, both parties first became more extreme, partly to manage the trade union movement, and then, with that most powerful of groups tamed, moderated their ideological positions. The twelfth, since 2016, has seen the parliamentary system become dysfunctional, the two main parties fragmenting internally over how to interpret and respond to the Brexit referendum.
J.S. Mill and Protestant Nonconformity
Authors: Kinzer Bruce
Published: June 2022

J.S. Mill’s reform politics and the politics of most Protestant Nonconformists had a good deal in common. They shared an anti-clerical bias, a commitment to religious liberty, an advocacy of free trade, a hostility to unearned distinction, and a leaning towards moral idealism. Yet Mill took issue with the stance taken by many Nonconformists on the question of drink, and his promotion of ‘secular’ education was not aligned with the Nonconformist preference for ‘non-sectarian’ instruction. This chapter, without neglecting the reasons why they often occupied common ground, argues that Mill’s criticisms sprang from a metropolitan sensibility averse to the provincialism of Protestant Dissent. It also seeks to show that rather narrow political considerations governed Mill’s assessment of Nonconformity’s significance before 1840, whereas social and cultural issues chiefly shaped his perspective on Dissent in the decades that followed. A fundamental change in Mill’s standing within the political and intellectual culture of his time decisively influenced this shift in perspective.
Pressure From Within
Authors: Kramer Molly Baer
Published: June 2022

The organized animal protection movement emerged in England in the early nineteenth century. As with all organized movements, it has experienced internal disagreements and schisms throughout its history. Such conflict is a natural part of all associative life, a regular feature of religious, political, reforming, and all other causes. But much can be learned by examining such splits and attempts to avoid them. What do these interactions, their origins, and their outcomes reveal about the motivations, priorities, and minds of the reformers? How did policy and principle interact? Could internecine bickering and schism have any positive impacts? This chapter examines and compares key episodes of schism in the anti-vivisection and anti-hunting movements in England in the mid-twentieth century.
What Is aRaij? Translating Counter-Sovereignties in Twenty-First-Century Assam
Authors: Dowdy Sean M.
Published: June 2022

A robust understanding of vernacular politics in Assam today requires parsing the significance of collective political agency, namely in the figures of the raij (‘the people’ or ‘public’) and the raijmel (‘public assembly’). Drawing on long-term fieldwork and archival sources, this chapter proposes three ethnographic translations of these interlocked concepts: first as a disenchanted notion of ‘polity’, second as a slightly more enchanted notion of an ‘exhortatory public’, and third as a ritual instance of ‘interregnum’. By untangling the historical knotting of collected people to the intergenerational demands of kingly and king-like authority throughout the region, the chapter arrives at a novel analytic: an idea of transitory ‘counter-sovereignties’. The chapter thus proceeds with an analysis of the ritual and temporal dynamics of people’s rule in contemporary Assam. It concludes with reflections on the uptake of the category of the raij in mass-mediated publics and its recontextualization in neoteric social movements.
By the Ballot
Authors: Sharma Saba
Published: June 2022

This chapter looks at how the process of an election constructs and reinforces ideas of citizenship, drawing from fieldwork conducted during the Assam assembly elections in 2016, in Kokrajhar district of the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD). Ideas of citizenship are evoked throughout elections, both in campaigns and through reflections on people’s reasons for casting votes. The chapter examines the performative value of an election as a moment of political theatre, the questions it raises about legitimacy and belonging, who can participate and who is addressed in the campaign, and the give and take between politicians and voters linking to notions of patronage. These complex interactions between voters and politicians give us a glimpse into the everyday practices that constitute citizenship.
The Triumph of Emptiness
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: June 2022

In this book, Mats Alvesson aims to demystify some popular and upbeat claims about a range of phenomena, including the knowledge society, consumption, branding, higher education, organizational change, professionalization, and leadership. He contends that a culture of grandiosity is leading to numerous inflated claims. We no longer talk about plans but ‘strategies’. Supervisors have been replaced by ‘managers’, managers are referred to as executives. Management is about ‘leadership’. Giving advice is ‘coaching’. Companies become ‘knowledge-intensive firms’. The book views the contemporary economy as an economy of persuasion, where firms and other institutions increasingly assign talent, energy, and resources to rhetoric, image, branding, reputation, and visibility. The book develops a framework for understanding the contemporary age and its institutions, critically examining some of these predominant ideas, considering how economic growth and higher consumption are, but should not necessarily be seen as key sources of increased satisfaction; why education is seen as something positive that leads to higher qualifications, and is assumed to be needed to an increasing extent by both individuals and society to the extent that many take for granted; how current and future working life is permeated by grandiose views of a knowledge economy and a knowledge-intensive society, and why a greater degree of professionalization, with an emphasis on leadership in the creation of effective organizations sounds fine, but also creates problems. Alvesson demonstrates that many conditions and developments in these three areas can be better understood in terms of grandiosity, illusion, and zero-sum games. This provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.
Introduction
Authors: Cuttica Cesare
Published: June 2022

In early modern England, democracy was seen as something more than one of the three classical forms of government. It was identified with a way of life that had catastrophic consequences on State and Church. Democracy’s deleterious effects on the public and private spheres of a commonweal had political, religious, moral, economic, and epistemic repercussions. The main reason for this series of very negative considerations is that the anti-democratic literature presented in this book drew a fundamental distinction—nowadays lost—between ‘the many-headed multitude’ and ‘the people’. It was thus assumed that in a democratic polity the former, not the latter, ruled. Anti-democratic criticism was not only the result of aristocratic ‘revulsion for democracy’ widespread from ancient Greece onwards. Nor was it simply empty abuse or a shorthand for the overturning of the social order. It was the establishment’s response to what it viewed as both internal and external agents of democratic subversion, and to actual democratizing aspirations in theory and in practice. The Introduction elucidates that in early modern England popular government was associated with different things, and with various mouthpieces. It then explains how scholars have not asked what democracy stood for, nor have they enquired into why democracy was unceasingly criticized. They have not examined how criticism of popular government was articulated, nor have they addressed the ways in which different authors depicted the people and their leaders. They have also failed to investigate which political concerns and social prejudices informed anti-democracy. In order to tackle these questions, this book looks at how democratic ideas and practices were challenged and construed in public discourse during a historically decisive seventy-year period.
The Anti-democratic Paradigm (Late 1630s–Early 1640s)
Authors: Cuttica Cesare
Published: June 2022

Chapter 6—like Chapter 1—focuses on a specific and decisive historical phase, the late 1630s to early 1640s, to assess the type of anti-democratic discourses that inundated the public sphere in an England on the verge of war. Besides illustrating the period’s particular context of unrest, and connecting anti-democratic ideas with the political events of the day (for example, the Protestation), this chapter casts light on some important continuities with the central decades of Elizabeth’s reign. It then elucidates how democracy was associated with the mission of urban petitioning ‘democrats’ (including the Independents), who were thought to have the upper hand over monarchy. Above all, it concentrates on some significant issues that, influenced by Hobbes’s reading of rhetoric and oratory, were portrayed as the backbone of democratic regimes. Most importantly, it deals with two pivotal shifts in the perception of democracy and its tyrannical character. First, the conflict between royalists and parliamentarians led the anti-democratic narrative to portray Parliament as a cradle of popular tyranny. Second, although democratic government remained a prominent target in political debates, the unprecedented popular ferment of the early 1640s stimulated a change. As a result, some people were prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of democracy as a representative government grounded on parliamentary foundations and on the participation in politics of a limited number of rational people. This opening—which chiefly entailed the consolidation of popular sovereignty—still excluded the plebs, women, the monstrous many-headed multitude. To define their government, writers made increasing use of the highly disparaging, terror-soaked ‘ochlocracy’ (‘government of the rabble’).
Degenerates
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

From the late nineteenth century, violent criminality became the subject of various scientific debates and by the time the First World War erupted, modern criminology could provide a coherent system of knowledge to determine the meanings and categories of physical violence. One of the most important milestones in the scientization of individual criminal behavior was the publication of Cesare Lombroso’s theory of the “born criminal,” which elicited much debate in Europe, especially as it went against prevailing liberal views that contended that crime was the expression of free will and the individual needed to take full responsibility for his or her actions. Whilst Lombroso’s concept of an inherent criminal behavior did not find universal approval, as this chapter shows, his claims about the connection between physiognomy and delinquent tendencies did. Various German and Austrian experts, such as Paul Julius Möbius and the French-Austrian psychiatrist Bénedict Augustin Morel argued that degeneracy and physical appearance were indeed correlated and that environmental and behavioral influences, such as inadequate upbringing, alcoholism, or drug taking led to degeneration, which could then be inherited by future generations. Even so, criminologists argued that not all degenerate individuals would commit crime, but due to their degeneracy they were less resistant to external influences and thus would not always be able to resist the temptation to criminal behavior. Court-appointed experts in turn used degeneracy to explain behaviors such as Rudolf Kremser’s.
Fat Ones, Rich Ones, Jews, and Gendarmes
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

Violent collective behavior, as this chapter reveals, was not uncontrollable and did not destroy everything that stood in its way. Rather, it had a specific language of violence that was clearly influenced by the situation on the home front and a language that provided it with clear targets. Those who were perceived not to be suffering or making sacrifices for those on the front line were often subject to violent outbursts by the crowd. These targets included Jews, for whom hatred was strengthened by traditional anti-Semitic imaginary, patrons of cafés, who were (perceived to be) eating luxury food items such as cakes in a provocative manner, fat people, the wealthy, and even places of entertainment, such as cinemas and music halls. These figures and places formed a collective whose mere existence in the eyes of the mob symbolized a mockery of their wartime suffering. The mob, in these cases, utilized collective violence to create a new order that they perceived to be more just.
The Russian Hunter
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

South Tyrol was (and still is) a predominantly agricultural area, with low levels of urbanization and industrialization. The area was also located on the front lines of the battle and there was thus a great military presence in the area, with soldiers going back and forth and putting a great strain on the local economy, supplies, and infrastructure. Thus, collective violence in the region was aimed at opposing the military, the urban areas, and anything that was deemed foreign in the countryside. Russian prisoners of war in particular were singled out as the enemy. Locals feared that they were spreading venereal disease and the inhabitants of the region were also worried about the moral influence of these prisoners of war, especially when it concerned the female population. Thus, women fraternizing with Russian prisoners of war were ostracized and accused of corruption. The populace of South Tyrol also attacked thieving and begging soldiers, and “hunted” down escaping prisoners. The perpetrators of these “hunts” were often barely adult youths, playing out their masculine fantasies in the absence of older male figures.
The Victors and the Vanquished
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

“Defeated” Austria and “victorious” Czechoslovakia followed different paths following the end of the First World War, and the different contexts of defeat and victory shaped collective violence in the two countries. The two countries also differed in the social group that epitomized the special ethical legitimacy that came to symbolize the new order. In Austria, the group that became the symbol of new order were the war invalids, their disfigured bodies in society representing their sacrifice and wartime suffering, their presence in the public space heightening the impact of protest. However, it was not only war invalids who were visible on the streets of Vienna, but also the “enemy”: British, French, and Italian soldiers whose presence and actions often led to violent outbursts by the local population. In contrast, in Czechoslovakia officers of the victorious powers were not attacked; to the contrary, they took important positions within the newly formed Czechoslovak army. In Czechoslovakia, it was not the war invalids who came to symbolize the new order, but members of the Sokol and the legionnaires, who had fought against the imperial army for independence, often enjoying the approval of onlooking crowds as they took the task of building the future into their own hands.
A Slapped Factory Owner
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

Collective violence, this chapter suggests, helped to organize postwar societies in both Austria and Czechoslovakia, although largely because of the “defeat” and “victory” narratives in the two countries violence was framed differently. In Czechoslovakia, violence was interpreted as being in the service of a new beginning and ran along national lines, aimed at Jews and Germans. Whilst in Austria violence could at times be directed at the different nationalities, for example the Czechs but also at the Jews, the fault lines ran along the left-right political divide. This social and political tension meant that otherwise ordinary situations could easily turn into violent confrontations. Anti-Semitism, we argue, also had divergent roles in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Whilst in Czechoslovakia anti-Semitism had a new, specifically Czech national narrative, after the war, once the state stabilized in the 1920s, it did not play a role in national politics. In contrast, in Austria anti-Semitism was persistent, albeit at different levels, throughout the interwar period and it divided the spectrum of the political parties and helped to distinguish the various camps.
The Wild East
Authors: Konrád Ota , Kučera Rudolf
Published: June 2022

The context of victory and defeat not only shaped popular, spontaneous violence, but also influenced the behavior of uniformed units that consisted of collectives of young men who had often experienced combat during the war. The impact of victory and defeat, and the unusual social environment that prevailed within the closed military and paramilitary units gave violence committed by these groups a special dynamic. This chapter examines violence committed by these groups acting as a unit, focusing on Austria, the Czech lands, and in Slovakia. In Slovakia, especially, primarily Czech war veterans—many of whom were part of the Czechoslovak legions—tried to realize their vision of the victorious state in the southern part of Czechoslovakia. In terms of uniformed violence, the inhabitants of both Austria and Czechoslovakia were confronted by a similar experience, and uniformed violence was an integral part of the everyday experience of the public sphere.
From Epistemic Contextualism to Epistemic Expressivism
Authors: Chrisman Matthew
Published: June 2022

This chapter identifies a parallel between epistemic contextualism and ethical speaker-relativism, in order to argue that a promising way out of two of the primary problems facing epistemic contextualism is one already explored in some detail in the ethical case—viz., expressivism. The upshot is an argument for epistemic expressivism, modelled on a familiar form of ethical expressivism. This provides a nondescriptivist option for understanding the meaning and communicative role of knowledge attributions, which arguably better captures the normative nature of epistemic discourse than descriptivist competitors like invariantism and contextualism.
‘El Sabio Jacob Abendana’ and the Spanish Translation of the Mishnah
Authors: Kaplan Yosef
Published: June 2022

Two particularly gifted Jewish translators were active in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century: Rabbi Jacob Jehuda Leon (Templo) and Rabbi Jacob Abendana, both from Hamburg. They worked separately on Spanish translations of the Mishnah. Both translations were never published and are no longer extant. Abendana’s translation became available to Christian scholars, including Surenhusius who used it for his own Latin translation. This essay argues that the twenty-two quotations from the Mishnah in Spanish in Abraham Pereyra’s Espejo de la Vanidad del Mundo (Amsterdam, 1671), may have been extracted from Abendana’s translation. The character and quality of the translation, which remains faithful to the rules of Spanish syntax, are very similar to two citations of Avot quoted in Abendana’s sermon in memory of two conversos who died at the stake.
‘Ancient Rabbis Inspired by God’
Authors: Roebuck Thomas
Published: June 2022

The edition of Mishnah tractate Joma published in 1648 by Robert Sheringham (1602–1678) was an exceptional achievement, albeit a strange one. Taking its cue from translations and editions of Mishnah tractates that had been produced in the Netherlands, Sheringham’s book was the first of its kind to be published in England. Sheringham’s book was also, however, an outlier among English Mishnaic scholarship, and has seemed to evince an unusual degree of sympathy for Hebraic traditions. This chapter places this strange work into context through an analysis of Sheringham’s practice as a reader of the Mishnah and his sources (especially the Babylonian Talmud and Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishnah). It demonstrates that Sheringham saw the Mishnah as a key with which to unlock the centrality of Jewish traditions within the culture of the ancient world, an approach which drew mixed reactions from Sheringham’s contemporaries.
Social, Not Sexual
Authors: Wignall Liam
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines differences between community members and non-community participants to identify how each group conceptualizes kink in terms of sex and sociality. Non-community participants primarily frame kink as a sexual activity, actively distancing themselves from social aspects of kink or incorporating kink as part of a master identity narrative. Community members understand kink to be a sexual activity, affording sexual arousal and pleasure, and a social activity, describing the benefits of community engagement and emphasizing feelings of belonging. Differences in how they interact with kink sociosexual networking sites (SSNS) are also discussed. Non-community participants use kink SSNS more functionally to seek kinky sex. Community members are likely to invest more into their kink SSNS profiles, using the sites in ways that mirror everyday social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, as well as to seek kinky sexual encounters. However, the social motivations are more prevalent than the sexual motivations.
Musical care in adulthood
Authors: Procter Simon , DeNora Tia
Published: June 2022

Adulthood is in some senses the most neglected phase of life, despite being in most cases the longest: there is often an assumption that this life stage is when we are least in need of care. Nevertheless, adulthood requires work for its achievement and sustaining, often in the face of significant challenges, which may include the need to care for both ourselves and others. Written from two perspectives, music therapy and cultural sociology, this chapter considers four aspects of musical care—that associated with self-care, that associated with familial or emotional ties, that is associated with industrialized and commercialized provision, and finally ‘music therapy’ in the broadest sense—specifically intentional musical forms of care provision, whether these are professionalized or not. Particular attention is paid to ‘lay musical expertise’—i.e., the skills and knowledge that people who are not trained as musicians or therapists nevertheless bring to musical actions and interactions within musical care. It is argued that viewing music as intervention is inadequate for capturing the fine threads of how musical care gets performed within adulthood. There is a need for research that pays detailed attention to the sometimes momentary instances of musical interaction between people. This chapter proposes the use of ethnographic and ethnomusicological approaches to learn more about the everyday use of music as a means of care by and for adults, and the chapter calls for further interdisciplinary work in this area.
Understanding of Cognitive States
Authors: Miller Scott A.
Published: June 2022

Theory of mind involves understanding of both cognitive states (e.g., beliefs, perceptions) and affective states (e.g., emotions, empathy). This chapter addresses the first of these topics. It begins with a further discussion of second-order false belief, followed by an overview of several other often used measures of cognitive understanding. In each instance, mastery develops gradually across the grade-school and adolescent years, and thus well beyond the time period for first-order developments. Indeed, in some instances performance is not perfect even in adulthood. The concluding sections of the chapter then address the contexts in which such understanding develops and is expressed. Included are discussions of culture (still an understudied variable), language, executive function, parenting (clearly important), and siblings.
Social Investment or Childcare on the Cheap?
Authors: Morgan Kimberly J.
Published: June 2022

Governments have expanded early childhood education and care (ECEC) in recent decades—often in the name of social investment—yet some do so in ways that are more congruent with social investment objectives than others. To explain these differences, this chapter analyzes ECEC expansions in six countries—France, Germany, Ireland, Slovenia, New Zealand, and Norway—whose systems differ in terms of quality, accessibility to low-income families, and the quality of work for ECEC staff. Two factors explain these differences. One is whether ECEC programs are administered by educational or social welfare administrations, which shapes protagonists involved in program expansion. Left political power is the second factor influencing the nature of ECEC expansion: Left and right governments have expanded spending on ECEC in recent years, yet only left parties do so in ways congruent with social investment goals. These governments are therefore more likely to develop programs that invest in children, their parents, and ECEC workers.
The Decolonial Virtues of Ethnospeculative Fiction
Authors: Moya Paula M. L. , Larkin Lesley
Published: June 2022

Proposing that there is no account of an apocalypse that is not also an argument—albeit a negative one—for how the world should be organized, this chapter turns to apocalyptic, postapocalyptic, and dystopian speculative fiction to discuss its ethical potential in the classroom. Introducing “ethnospeculation” as one of the most significant modes through which authors, readers, teachers, and students communicate with each other, the authors highlight the way critical practices of reading and writing developed by literary critics in the academy can cultivate virtue in the service of promoting justice. Drawing on literary works from several different ethnic communities, they argue that such comparative study contributes to a repository of wide-ranging practices and behaviors that constitute what can be considered “virtuous” or “good” in different societies. In this way, ethnospeculative fiction provides an invaluable space within which to examine ethical certainties and explore fundamental values.
Proselytes of a New Nation
Authors: Katsikas Stefanos
Published: June 2022

The purpose of this book is to explore the conversion of Muslims to Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Orthodox Christianity) during the Greek War of Independence and the life of the converts during the war and the first three decades of the postindependence years (1821–1862). The book looks at the neophytes’ relations with the Greek and Ottoman states, as well as the ways in which the neophytes merged into Greek society. Since Greek national identity is inextricably linked to Orthodox Christianity, the book discusses the extent to which conversion assisted the neophytes’ integration into Greek society. The book aims to delve into the little-researched field of religious conversions in the Balkans in modern times, with emphasis on the conversion of Muslims to Christianity. The Greek case is not the only case in the modern Balkans where Muslims converted to Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. Pomaks, Bulgarian-speaking Muslims, were subjected to forcible conversion during the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and in the 1940s, whereas in the Cold War era, the Bulgarian communist authorities initiated programs aimed at religious and ethnic assimilation of Pomaks and Turkish-speaking Muslims. Conversions of Muslims to Christian Orthodoxy also occurred in Serbia, Romania, and elsewhere in the Balkans. Yet, while Balkan historiography has focused on the Islamization of Christians in the region during the Ottoman period, it has paid little attention to the inverse process of Christianization of Muslims in the age of nationalism.
A Superpower Dies in Bed, 1979–1990
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: June 2022

The United States suffered geopolitical setbacks in 1979 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the pro-American ruler of Iran, the Shah. During the ensuing decade American fortunes recovered while those of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc declined. In particular, communist economies experienced stagnation. A new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, revived détente with the United States. His efforts to reform the communist political and economic systems led, unintentionally, to the peaceful overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, which together ended the Cold War.
Sources of Sustainability in the Early Modern World
Authors: Caradonna Jeremy L.
Published: June 2022

This chapter explores the early history of sustainability, both the concept and the word itself. The main argument is that sustainability, as a concept, and later as a movement, emerged out of a crisis in forestry that occurred concurrently in numerous parts of the world, from Western and Central Europe to Japan, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. The 18th century witnessed a growing awareness about environmental change and humankind's relationship to that natural world.
The Industrial Revolution and Its Discontents
Authors: Caradonna Jeremy L.
Published: June 2022

This chapter takes a critical look at the narrative of progress that defined the Industrial Revolution and has in many ways continued to shape the modern world. The argument is that anthropogenic climate change and unsustainability is a direct consequence of a fossil-fuelled, growth-oriented economic system. The chapter demonstrates that critics of growth, consumption, and environmental degradation existed in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and came from all walks of life and diverse political viewpoints.
The Future
Authors: Caradonna Jeremy L.
Published: June 2022

This chapter concludes the book by sketching out ten key challenges for the sustainability movement going forward: creating a shared vision for the future, moving past neoclassical economics, increasing resilience, addressing inequality, restoring and safeguarding natural systems, tackling climate as well as other environmental problems, fighting greenwashing, and avoiding politicization. The book thus ends by connecting past, present, and future and offer some guidance on where the sustainability movement can go in the 2020s, 2030s, and beyond.
China and the Globalization of Legal Education
Authors: McConnaughay Philip J. , Toomey Colleen B.
Published: June 2022

This chapter explores the potentially profound impact on global legal education of Peking University’s experimental law school, the School of Transnational Law (“STL”), in Shenzhen, China. The closest Mainland neighbor of Hong Kong, Shenzhen was China’s first “Special Economic Zone.” Its rapid economic transformation (1980–2020) from agriculture and manufacturing into perhaps the world’s leading center of technological innovation has been remarkable, largely without the support of a pre-existing legal infrastructure (i.e., published laws with a well-developed legal profession, judiciary and public administration). Hong Kong, one of the world’s leading centers of sophisticated financial services, in contrast, achieved its economic power with the support of a well-developed common law legal system and infrastructure established during British rule. Today, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are principal China gateways to the global north and south and part of China’s Greater Bay Area, the nine cities of the Pearl River Delta that constitute the world’s most populous single metropolitan area, interconnected by advanced systems of communications, transportation and energy that portend an integrated economy competitive with any in the world. The consensus among China leadership is that the Greater Bay Area’s sustained economic development and international engagements depend on a fully developed legal infrastructure capable of serving the advanced economy and multiple legal and commercial systems and traditions characteristic of the region. It is the mission of Peking University’s School of Transnational Law to develop a program of legal education designed to produce a legal profession capable of providing these services. STL is changing the nature and purpose of Chinese legal education in the process.
The Paradox of Survivor Leadership
Authors: Dang Minh
Published: June 2022

This chapter focuses on the dilemmas faced by movement leaders. It argues that lived experience expertise is essential for social movements but that survivors face a double bind. How should survivors of sexual or gender violence bring their experience to the movement when this leadership and advocacy expose the individual to the male-centric social gaze that permeates wider society and which constantly generates narratives that reduce the agency of survivor-activists to the “gory details” of their past experiences? A second dilemma, the chapter contends, emerges if we are to take seriously standpoint epistemology—the fact that what we see and know is based on who we are and where we stand. The challenge is clear: how to cultivate crucial movement allies from communities that lack the unique perspective that comes from lived experience of human trafficking. These dilemmas also emerge within survivor movements, making it all the more important for cisgender women to explicitly look for opportunities to empathize and educate themselves about the experiences of survivors who are nonbinary or transgender women and men.
“A Different Kind of Weapon”
Authors: Gray Felicity
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines how most civilian protection programs—including those of the UN and AU—rely on the use of armed peacekeepers, based on the logic that a credible threat of retaliation will dissuade would-be perpetrators from harming civilians. It identifies limitations with this status quo and offers instead a nonviolent civilian protection approach that is rooted in a wide range of nonviolence practices and strategies. The goal is to reduce overall levels of harm and threat. This more extensive and integrated approach allows the chapter to explore the alternative set of dilemmas that may emerge were this approach to be adopted. By putting the Responsibility to Protect literature into conversation with the strategic nonviolence literature, the chapter goes against the dominant trend of international civilian protection practice.
Raising the Stakes
Authors: Poling Gregory B.
Published: June 2022

This chapter examines the dynamics that fueled the rapid escalation of the South China Sea disputes from 2009 to 2014. These included the extended continental shelf claims of Malaysia and Vietnam, the subsequent elevation of the nine-dash line as the formal demarcation of China’s claims, and the steady increase in violent standoffs involving Chinese law enforcement vessels. The chapter traces the Obama administration’s attempts to respond to these rising tensions, which coincided with and eventually undermined its “Pivot to Asia,” starting with the failure to prevent China’s takeover of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. The chapter concludes with the filing of the Philippines’ landmark arbitration case against China.
Subjective Well-Being
Authors: Fabian Mark
Published: June 2022

The study of subjective wellbeing has grown substantially in recent decades and is now seeking to influence public policy. The complexities of this new application have revealed weaknesses in the foundations of the field. Its operationalist epistemology was appropriate given its historical context, but undermines its ability to explain the mechanisms by which policy can improve subjective wellbeing. Likewise, the field’s deliberate avoidance of the evaluative element of “wellbeing”—what is “good for” somebody—leaves it poorly equipped to engage with the ethical and political complexities of policymaking. The present volume provides the theoretical depth that the field of subjective wellbeing is lacking by integrating psychological, philosophical, economic, and political perspectives on wellbeing. The end result is a rich and ethically sensitive theory of subjective wellbeing that can underpin scholarly research, inform therapy and self-help, and guide wellbeing public policy.
The Subjective Wellbeing Production Function
Authors: Fabian Mark
Published: June 2022

This chapter commences the elaboration of a theory of subjective wellbeing that addresses the shortcomings of the philosophical and psychological perspectives canvassed in chapters 1 through 3. The theory has two parts. The first is the subjective wellbeing production function—a model of wellbeing as outcome. The second is the coalescence of being—a model of the process by which subjective wellbeing is achieved. This chapter introduces the production function, which is then elaborated on in chapters 5 through 8. It is composed of three “dimensions”—hedonia, eudaimonia, and conscience—which correspond intuitively to the sense that life is pleasant, fulfilling, and valuable, respectively. The chapter describes each of these dimensions and their subcomponents, as well as key parameters that affect the operation of the function, namely emotional wellbeing, nihilism, sensitivity to relative status, and attention.
Eudaimonia
Authors: Fabian Mark
Published: June 2022

Eudaimonic accounts of wellbeing have a rich and storied history in philosophy and psychology. This chapter opens with an explanation of the similarities and differences between these theories. The rest of the chapter focuses on psychological perspectives, especially that of self-determination theory. This body of psychological literature provides an enormous amount of insight into the nature of subjective wellbeing, especially how to get it. The chapter reviews the most important of these approaches, namely the ones focusing on basic psychological needs, the motivation spectrum, the notion of self-concordant goals, and the evolutionary underpinnings of our psychological makeup.
The Coalescence of Being
Authors: Fabian Mark
Published: June 2022

This chapter outlines the coalescence of being in full, drawing extensively on a wide range of theories and findings in psychology. The core of the process is the harmonization of the actual, ideal, and ought selves, an idea from self-discrepancy theory. Self-determination theory is then integrated to provide a deeper understanding of how these self-concepts map onto the motivation spectrum and basic psychological needs. The end result of coalescence is a state of generalized flow. The middle of the chapter embellishes this theoretical core with additional insights from the psychology of goal setting, self-verification theory, development psychology, and the automatization of behavior. The final section is a long analysis of how coalescence leads to all the elements of the subjective wellbeing production function.
Conclusion
Authors: Fabian Mark
Published: June 2022

The conclusion provides a summary of each chapter and the book’s central thesis, namely that SWB is a kind of generalized state of flow, and can be modeled as a combination of the subjective wellbeing production function (a model of SWB as an outcome) and the coalescence of being (a model of SWB as a process). The conclusion opens by referring back to Alexandrova’s “better implicit logic for construct evaluation,” which motivated the content of chapters 3 through 10. The conclusion then argues that those chapters have furnished the well-specified and ethically sensitive theory of wellbeing that Alexandrova requested. The theory of subjective wellbeing that gives this book its title sets the field up for its ongoing transition out of the laboratories of the ivory tower and into value-laden applied contexts, notably public policy. The book ends on an optimistic note, arguing that wellbeing is rightfully ascending in importance and influence across scholarly and policy contexts.