bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
End-of-Life Decisions
Authors: Csikai Ellen L.
Published: June 2013

End-of-life decisions occur throughout the lifespan and involve many aspects of the dying process. As medical technology continues to advance and produce the ability to prolong life almost indefinitely, individuals and families are asked to make increasingly complex choices about what treatments best correspond to their conceptions of how they wish to die. Discussions may occur around issues of advance care planning (including living wills), use of life-sustaining medical treatments, hospice and palliative care, organ donation, and physician-assisted death. Such discussions may be held with family and health professionals and decisions made about how to handle care at the end of life in advance of a serious, life-limiting illness, and, at the other end of the continuum, when treatment aimed at a curing a serious illness is no longer effective. These discussions take place in a variety of health settings and social workers are often asked to facilitate the process particularly at critical decision points in serious illness. End-of-life decisions create a need for attention to medical aspects as well as to psychosocial consequences. In addition, decisions may be complicated by policy considerations, particularly about including health insurance and federal and state policies governing coverage. Social workers play pivotal roles in ensuring that informed consent has taken place and individuals and families have access to needed resources to improve quality of life at the end of life. They also have a duty to safeguard individuals’ rights to confidentiality and self-determination in end-of-life decisions. Regardless of the setting or immediacy of planning need, working with individuals and families who face end-of-life decisions a high degree of commitment and competency given the profound implications of decisions that affect life and death.
Palliative Care
Authors: Otis-Green Shirley
Published: June 2013

Palliative care is an emerging medical field characterized by attention to the improvement of quality of life and function for those with serious or progressive illness. It is an inherently interdisciplinary field dedicated to the relief of suffering (whether physical, social, psychological, or spiritual in nature), with a holistic, person-centered, and family-focused perspective, and attentive to cultural diversity and the value of relationship as a prerequisite to empathic communication. Palliative care has a systems perspective—recognizing the interconnectedness of the patient, family, and community. Primary palliative care interventions include providing emotional support, counseling, care planning, and family conferencing. Palliative care is essential at times of transition, such as when there are changes in treatment, prognosis, or setting. Although not limited to those facing end of life, palliative care is especially vital during this time of increased vulnerability. Palliative care is a broad philosophical approach to care that includes hospice and bereavement care, and it should be delivered concurrently with treatment for advanced illness. As the population ages and the current health care system becomes ever more costly, the philosophical foundation of palliative care is increasingly viewed as offering an alternative approach to the current fragmented and bureaucratic US medical model. Palliative care providers seek to expand access to personalized, quality care and create a more just and sustainable health system. All of these factors make palliative care a natural fit for social work. Palliative social workers are involved in all aspects of the expanding field of palliative care—as clinicians, educators, researchers, and policymakers—where they contribute their systems expertise and advocate for improved delivery of care. Many of the publications reviewed in this bibliography stem from work supported in part by the Social Work Leadership Development Awards, funded by the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America, whose leaders have been especially prolific and have made great progress in moving the field forward.
Chronic Illness
Authors: Fennell Patricia , Rieder Bennett Sara Lynne , George Shane
Published: June 2013

The epidemic of chronic illness has been among one of the fastest-growing challenges facing the health-care system in recent decades. Medicine is undergoing a paradigm shift as chronic illnesses have become more prevalent than acute illness, a change that has occurred due to a number of factors. Improvements in medical care have transformed previously fatal illnesses into chronic conditions for individuals at all ages, as well as contributed to an increasingly aging population living with chronic illness. Public health advances, such as availability of cleaner water, health-care access, and vaccinations, have also decreased childhood mortality. At the same time, social changes, such as increasingly sedentary lifestyle and food insecurity, have led to a higher prevalence of some conditions, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, communicable illnesses, including the COVID-19 pandemic, present a greater challenge for chronically ill populations. Access to health care during such crises can influence treatment and management of existing conditions. Chronic illness is a major global challenge that exists within various global systems. Factors that pertain to the chronic illness experience can be compounded by their intersections with different social contexts as well. As such, systemic issues can play a role in how chronically ill people experience and manage their health. This article provides an overview of major topics and references in the study of chronic illness. Given the complex biopsychosocial nature of chronic illness, this article focuses on surveying multidisciplinary and cross-cultural views of chronic illness.
Forensic Social Work
Authors: Ashford José B.
Published: June 2013

The practice of social work is inextricably linked with having knowledge of law and law like systems of governance. Social work has a long-standing history of providing services to individuals falling through the cracks of our legal systems. Forensic social work is a subspecialty of social work that focuses on the application of social work knowledge and skills to legal issues in civil, criminal, and administrative forums. The practice of social work in these legal forums is consistent with narrow definitions of forensic social work. Broader definitions include interventions that support the implementation of court and legislative mandates in community and organizational settings. This article examines literature in social work and in the behavioral and social sciences that can inform the practice of forensic social workers in performing investigations, assessments, and other interventions within narrow and broad definitions of forensic social work. This article also focuses on describing classic and emerging scholarship in forensic social work practice, including some scholarship on the intersection of law in social work practice, and on the education and certification of forensic social workers.
Practice Interventions with Adolescents
Authors: Ruffolo Mary C.
Published: June 2013

Intervening in the lives of adolescents is challenging. Social work practice with adolescents involves working not just with the adolescents but also with their families, schools, and neighborhoods. Helping adolescents to confront adversity and develop mechanisms that promote resiliency is critical, especially for adolescents who are at risk of emotional or behavioral problems. There is a wide range of effective interventions in working with adolescents experiencing internalizing disorders, externalizing disorders, or substance abuse disorders. These interventions include: behavioral therapy, brief strategic family therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, family focused therapy, interpersonal therapy, motivational enhancement interventions, multidimensional family therapy, multidimensional treatment foster care, and multisystemic therapy. Many of these effective interventions address unique challenges faced by racial and ethnic minority youth, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth, youth with comorbid conditions, and youth who experience traumatic events. Disseminating these evidence-based interventions in a range of child-serving systems, addressing system inequities, and addressing disparities in service access and outcomes are critical issues facing practitioners, researchers, administrators and policymakers working with adolescents and their families.
Epistolography (Ancient letters)
Authors: Thorsteinsson Runar M.
Published: June 2013

The term “epistolography” refers to the practice and art of writing letters or epistles, derived from the Greek words epistolē (a letter) and graphein (to write). The term applies to letter writing in general, but this article is concerned with epistolography in the ancient Mediterranean world and, in particular, early Christian epistolography. Letters were of great importance as communicative tools in the ancient world, whether for private, administrative, legal, diplomatic, didactic, dogmatic, or propaganda purposes. Basically, the letter constituted a written communication between two or more individuals who were separated by distance or by social status. Its primary function was to make or maintain contact, provide information, give instructions, or make requests. A letter could also be used as part of a literary work. Ultimately, the purpose of the letter depended on the nature of the relationship between sender(s) and recipient(s). While extant letters from Antiquity show considerable formal flexibility, as a rule, epistolographers followed certain standard conventions for writing letters, including dividing the text into the three parts of opening, body, and closing. They could also apply formulaic expressions that were designed and known to be appropriate for certain occasions and social relations. The fact that most of these formulaic expressions were optional, or existed in several versions depending on the occasion and relation concerned, gives modern interpreters the opportunity better to understand the specific setting and situation in which the letter was written, and hence its content. Systematic research into ancient epistolography started at the end of the 19th century, and it is very much alive today, in classical as well as in biblical studies. In both cases, it was mostly thanks to the pioneering work of the German scholar Adolf Deissmann that the interest in the discipline came about.
Lord's Prayer
Authors: Yieh John
Published: June 2013

The Lord’s Prayer is a model prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to say as a group (Luke 11:2a, b). It reflects Jesus’ concerns for God’s holiness, God’s kingdom, and God’s will, and tells his followers which physical and spiritual needs they can ask God, their heavenly Father, to help meet. As a community prayer, it gives Christians identity, solidarity, and confidence as the beloved children of God. As a ritual practice, it strengthens the believers’ filial relationship with God, sets priorities for their missions, and provides divine reassurance, inner peace, and eschatological hope to support their daily struggles with the contingencies of their lives and the evil in the world. This prayer summarizes Jesus’ central message regarding the kingdom of God, so it is a major source for scholarly research on the historical Jesus. With its prominent use in catechisms and liturgies, it has shaped the belief and worship of the church so deeply that an increasing number of recent studies are devoted to its interpretation and influence in the history of reception and its particular role in liturgical theology and spiritual formation.
Priest/Priesthood
Authors: Kugler Robert
Published: June 2013

The topic of priests and priesthood in ancient Israel and early Judaism focuses the concentration of biblical scholars like few others, for to say anything sensible about the matter requires taking a stand on the related, contested issues of what can be known of ancient Israel’s and early Judaism’s history and the date and purpose of key literary traditions in the Hebrew Bible. Thus there are few points of consensus among those studying Israel’s priesthood, and virtually every general treatment of it showcases the author’s broader views on Israel’s and early Judaism’s history and literature. Yet there is one point of broad agreement (with some significant exceptions). Dating the so-called Priestly Work (parts of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers concerned especially with priestly, purity, and cultic matters) to the Persian period, many scholars take its portrait of the hierarchy of the priesthood in the days of wandering between Egypt and the land of Canaan as a reflection of the actual order under Achaemenid (Persian) rule. The Aaronites, descendants of Levi, were at the pinnacle of priestly power, providing the ruling high priest and altar priests, while their Levite brethren who could not trace their lineage back to Levi through Aaron only assisted the Aaronites in temple service in subservient and largely menial roles. Most scholars also credit Levites in this period with performing as judges and scribes. Beyond this narrow consensus, however, there are few agreements, leaving the history of the priesthood prior to and after the early Persian period a matter of debate. This is especially the case with respect to the centuries leading up to Persian rule. Making any attempt to reconstruct this period in the priesthood’s history is difficult because of the concomitant uncertainty among scholars regarding the historical reliability of the biblical text, which is the main evidence for Israel’s history before the Persian period. The lack of consensus for the following periods, the Hellenistic and Roman eras, has mostly to do with the fact that the office was so contested by vying claimants to it; indeed, the literature addressing it is tendentious in the extreme. To give readers bibliographic access to these debates, this article covers general surveys, the priesthood in cross-cultural perspective in Antiquity, and general histories of the priesthood. It continues with period-specific bibliographies of works addressing the history of the office with a focus on the texts that provide the most substantial evidence for the priesthood in each period.
Gnosticism
Authors: Denzey Lewis Nicola
Published: June 2013

The term “Gnosticism” can be utilized broadly, to characterize any religious movement based on an internal, individualized recognition (“Gnosis”) of one’s divine inner “spark” that links an individual with a higher divine force. In this sense, moments of “Gnosticism” have emerged at various historical periods. In a more narrow sense, however, most scholars of Gnosticism presently consider it a phenomenon that peaked in the 2nd century of the Common Era in the Roman Empire and that characterized one side of a division in the formative early Christian movement. Beyond that, there is currently no consensus concerning what “Gnosticism” was, how we might define its parameters, and whether it is correct to identify it as an ancient religious mentality at all. European scholarship—with significant academic centers studying Gnosticism in Scandinavia, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy—tends to be more positivist, employing the term “Gnosticism” or “Gnosis” without apparent apprehension. In the United States, many scholars have been more reticent about employing the term, often placing it within quotation marks to signal a profound discomfort with a term that reifies a field of study largely invented in the early modern period. However, attempts to replace the term “Gnosticism” with something more accurate have so far not produced satisfactory results. A second issue in the field has been the question of primary sources. Up to the mid-20th century, studies of Gnosticism were hampered by the paucity of original texts from “Gnostics” themselves. The greatest source for reconstructing Gnosticism was the work of their opponents, Christian heresiologists. In 1945, however, the global study of Gnosticism was set on a new path by the discovery of a set of twelve 4th-century codices near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. These texts, known as the Nag Hammadi Library or the Nag Hammadi Codices, contained approximately fifty-two documents, some of which were previously known, and some of which had until that point, been entirely lost. Although not all of the Nag Hammadi documents are “Gnostic” as such, many of them were ascribed to Gnostic authors in our extant heresiological writings. The translation and study of the Nag Hammadi documents has dominated scholarship since that time, largely replacing any attention to the work of Christian heresiologists. A concerted effort has been made at international collaboration and the expeditious production of critical translations of the codices, producing impressive results. However, the scholarship that has been produced remains largely highly specialized and technical, making teaching Gnosticism at the undergraduate level more challenging.
Midrash and Aggadah
Authors: Visotzky Burton , Kamine Benjamin Haber
Published: June 2013

Midrash (Hebrew: מדרש) is ancient rabbinic interpretation of scripture. Aggadah (Hebrew: אגדה) is rabbinic narrative. The two terms are, however, often used interchangeably to refer to those many aspects of rabbinic literature that are not related to Jewish behavior or law (Hebrew: הלכה). Rabbinic literature here refers to works composed by the rabbis in Late Antiquity, from approximately 70 ce (Common Era) up to 1000 ce (an arbitrary end point). From the time that Y. L. Zunz addressed the literature in 1832, academic study of Midrash and Aggadah has been ongoing. In the earliest years it was part of the great project of Wissenschaft des Judentums (Scientific study of Judaism), and it included historical-critical studies, philological inquiries, anthologies, translations, and critical editions of texts. More recently, scholars have compared midrashic and aggadic methods of interpretation and narration with those of religious and cultural groups contemporary with the rabbis: Hellenism and Roman paganism, patristic and Syriac Christianity, and early Islam. Throughout the study of Midrash and Aggadah, scholars have written on the theological significance of the field. Current scholarship focuses on literary interpretation of Midrash and Aggadah and the implications of their oral performance and on sensitivity to the discursive structures of rabbinic narrative, as well as the very methodologies used to study the field. Feminist and gender criticism, particularly focused on placing rabbinic narrative within the values and culture of the rabbis and their contemporaries, has also been applied to the study of these literatures, and the growth of such criticism has expanded scholarship to include work in disability studies and queer studies. The mid-20th century to date, in particular, has been a time of ferment and, since the 1970s, the study of Midrash and Aggadah has expanded broadly.
Early Mahayana
Authors: Drewes David
Published: June 2013

In recent decades the study of early Mahayana has witnessed significant upheaval. Western scholars have abandoned the old theories that the Mahayana originated from a lay reaction to the arhat ideal or from the Mahāsāṃghika nikāka and advanced a range of new ideas. Gregory Schopen suggested in 1975 that the Mahayana developed with the creation of special shrines dedicated to the worship of Mahayana sutras. Following Schopen, other scholars have argued that the shift from oral to written textuality enabled or influenced the development of the Mahayana in various ways. In place of the lay origin theory, most scholars now believe the exact opposite, that forest-dwelling or ascetic monks were the Mahayana’s primary agents. Several scholars in recent years have shifted attention away from Sanskrit versions of Mahayana sutras to early Chinese translations, which often preserve more primitive forms of these texts. A 1st-century Prajñāpāramitā manuscript and a 1st- or 2nd-century manuscript of a previously unknown Mahayana sutra have recently been discovered that promise to shed new light on early Mahayana, the former manuscript now being the oldest datable evidence for Mahayana that we possess.
Practical Knowledge
Authors: Hunter David
Published: June 2013

A person typically knows what she is doing when she does something intentionally, and she usually knows this without having to observe herself. This so-called practical knowledge raises many philosophical questions. Does intentional action require practical knowledge and, if so, what is the strength of this requirement? What is it about intentional action that requires it, since a person can be doing something unintentionally without knowing about it? What is the source or ground of this knowledge? How is it related to observation, bodily sensation, and proprioception? How is a person’s practical knowledge connected to the reasons she has for acting and to practical reasoning more generally? In what sense, if any, is a person’s practical knowledge the “cause” of what it understands, as Anscombe famously claimed? While the notion of practical knowledge was central to the theory of action in the middle decades of the 20th century, it lost this place in the 1960s. But the last ten years has seen a renewed interest in the notion. This article aims to chart both the early debates and the recent discussions of practical knowledge. While it organizes the literature according to certain questions and topics, other ways to organize the literature are possible and nearly all of the texts would fit equally well under several headings.
Abortion
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: June 2013

Questions concerning the moral and appropriate legal status of abortion are among the most important issues in applied ethics, and answering those questions involves addressing some intellectually very difficult issues. First, many alternatives exist concerning what nonpotential properties suffice to give something moral status. These include (a) having the capacity for thought, (b) having the capacity for rational thought, (c) possessing self-consciousness, (d) being a continuing subject of mental states, (e) being a subject of nonmomentary interests, (f) being an agent, (g) being a moral agent, (h) having consciousness, (i) having both consciousness and desires, and (j) being able to use a language. Deciding which of these, or other alternatives, correctly identifies nonpotential properties sufficient to give one moral status is not at all an easy matter. Second, another crucial and very challenging issue is this. Suppose that property P gives an entity moral status. If something will, in the normal course of development, acquire property P, does that entity then have moral status by virtue of that potentiality? This question, which appears to be crucial for determining the moral status of abortion, is presently the object of serious philosophical disagreement. Finally, given certain answers to the preceding two questions, the moral status of abortion may depend upon answers to questions in areas outside of ethics. Suppose, for example, that something begins to have moral status only when it acquires a capacity for thought. Then the question is when developing members of our species first acquire that capacity. Answering that question, however, depends upon answering philosophical and scientific questions about the nature of human minds, because it may be crucial whether, as some philosophers believe, substance dualism is right, and the human mind is an immaterial entity, or whether, on the contrary, either property dualism or physicalism is correct. If substance dualism is right, then determining when a human first acquires the capacity for thought may depend upon philosophical or religious arguments, whereas if either property dualism or physicalism is correct, the answer will depend instead upon the outcome of demanding scientific investigations in neurophysiology and psychology.
Nonexistent Objects
Authors: Azzouni Jody
Published: June 2013

The issues that nonexistent entities pose for metaphysics and philosophy of language are among the oldest in philosophy, dating back to Plato and Parmenides. These issues arise because of the very natural view that true statements and false statements have the status they have only because they are about objects—broadly speaking—and they’re true (or false) depending on whether they describe those objects correctly or not. If, however, statements are about something nonexistent, it seems they cannot be true or false because there is nothing for them to be true or false of—the very phrase “something nonexistent” sounds oxymoronic. It even strikes some that attempts to say something meaningful about a nonexistent object (or some nonexistent objects) cannot succeed because there is nothing for such statements to be about. And yet we say meaningful things about nonexistents daily: “Sherlock Holmes is more famous than any real detective,” “There are as many gods as goddesses in Greek mythology,” “Hob and Nob are thinking about the same nonexistent witch.” The philosophical tangles that arise when trying to explain our talk about the nonexistent show up everywhere in philosophy, and not just in discussions of fictions, hallucinations, or dreams. If one is a proponent of nominalism in philosophy of mathematics, for example, then one has to explain (or explain away) the usefulness, the indispensability even, of mathematical statements, because such statements—on the nominalist’s view—are not about anything real. The literature on the nonexistent is a bewildering maze of strategies for circumventing or dissolving the problem of how we talk about what doesn’t exist. The key to understanding how influential concerns with nonexistence have been in philosophy is seeing the wealth of different solutions (often implicit in a particular philosophical tradition) that have been invented to solve the puzzle of how we talk, think about, and even perceive what does not exist.
Art and Knowledge
Authors: Young James O.
Published: June 2013

A long-standing debate in philosophy of art concerns the question of whether art is a source of knowledge. The debate can be traced back to Plato 1941 and Aristotle 1987 (cited under Historical Contributions). Some philosophers have maintained that artworks are valuable solely as a source of pleasure or pleasing emotions. These philosophers include formalists, who believe that audience members value the experience of artistic form as a source of intellectual pleasure or aesthetic emotion. Other philosophers have maintained that works of art have content, and that audience members can acquire knowledge by experiencing (viewing, hearing, or reading) these works. Philosophers who believe that a work of art can be a source of knowledge differ about the ways in which art makes knowledge possible. In this article, those who defend the view that art is a source of knowledge will be called cognitivists. Those who maintain that art is not a source of knowledge, or not a significant source of knowledge, will be called anticognitivists.
Moral Naturalism and Nonnaturalism
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: June 2013

Understood broadly, the debate between naturalists and nonnaturalists in ethics concerns the question of how morality, and in particular moral value, is related to the natural world. In contemporary philosophy, this is usually seen as primarily a metaphysical issue, though in the past the term “nonnaturalism” was sometimes applied to intuitionist positions in epistemology. Moral naturalists can be divided into two categories, realist and nonrealist. Realist naturalists believe that moral properties are a subset of natural properties, or are in some sense identical with or constituted by such properties. Nonrealist naturalists believe that although we can speak of moral properties, those properties are not themselves real in the way that natural properties are: their attribution may be the result of, say, our expressing certain attitudes we have, rather than our detecting certain properties “out there” in the world. This nonrealist view can still be described as a form of moral naturalism, since it seeks a naturalistic account of morality. However the metaphysical debate is understood, some account of what it is for a property to be natural will be required. This debate continues, but one position, influenced by G. E. Moore, identifies the natural properties in some way with those properties that feature in scientific explanations, or that are in some sense reducible to or constructible from such properties. That of course raises the question of what counts as a science. The term “naturalism” is also often used to refer to theories, usually neo-Aristotelian, according to which value is bound up with human nature.
Immanuel Kant: Ethics
Authors: Denis Lara
Published: June 2013

The ethical theory of Immanuel Kant (b. 1724–d. 1804) exerted a powerful influence on the subsequent history of philosophy and continues to be a dominant approach to ethics, rivaling consequentialism and virtue ethics. Kant’s ethical thought continues to be studied in itself, as a part of his critical system of philosophy, in its historical context, and in relation to particular practical questions. Kant’s writings and lectures display the influence of the Stoics, Rousseau, Crusius, Wolff, Hutcheson, Hume, and others; Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bradley, Greene, Habermas, and Rawls are among the many philosophers whose moral philosophies can be read (in part) as responses to Kant. Salient foundational features of Kant’s ethics include: its a priori method, its conception of the will as autonomous, its categorical imperative, its theory of freedom, and its account of moral motivation. Kant maintained that foundational moral principles must be a priori, not based on observation or experience. Kant takes the moral law to be legislated by the will to itself. Unlike holy beings, human beings experience morality as a constraint upon our wills. For us, the moral law is a categorical imperative. All ethical duties are ultimately grounded in this supreme moral principle. If we are bound to obey the moral law, we must be capable of doing so; Kant holds that, even assuming causal determinism in the phenomenal world, morality reveals our (noumenal) freedom to us. Kant attributes moral worth only to action done from duty (i.e., from respect for the law), not from inclination. Significant aspects of Kant’s fully developed ethical theory include its rich theory of virtue and the virtues, its taxonomy of duties (which include duties to oneself as well as to others), its distinctive conceptions of the highest good and human evil, and its connections with Kant’s philosophies of history, religion, and human nature. Many of Kant’s own discussions of particular duties, virtues, and vices are controversial. For example, Kant appears to condemn all lies as violations of a duty to oneself. This entry focuses on Kant’s ethics rather than Kantian ethics more broadly. Despite that, it includes a number of pieces that apply, extend, or revise Kant’s ethics in some ways, as well as interpretations of Kant’s ethics that some commentators may object stray too far from Kant’s own stated views. Kant’s political philosophy is discussed only peripherally here, save for the section on the Doctrine of Right of the Metaphysics of Morals.
Economic History
Authors: Davis James
Published: June 2013

The study of medieval economic history has a rich pedigree and has led to major, wide-ranging debates about the nature and causes of economic change. Many of the books and articles listed in this article consider the transformation of the medieval economy, often on a broad chronological canvas, from the end of the ancient world to the creation of notable feudal institutions and thence to the emergence of the Early Modern world and protocapitalist organizations. A number of renowned scholars from the early to mid-20th century left their mark on this subject, including Henri Pirenne (b. 1862–d. 1935), Marc Bloch (b. 1886–d. 1944), Michael Moissey Postan (b. 1898–d. 1981), and Georges Duby (b. 1919–d. 1996), and they greatly influenced succeeding generations of historians. In addition, the debates of medieval economic history have often been shaped by numerous theories and approaches founded in the disciplines of economics, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, and geography. However, the strength of the subject still resides in rigorous analysis of the archival evidence. Many scholars have trawled through this material to produce important detailed, empirical case studies, based on specific localities or regions; a number of these are highlighted in this bibliography and are frequently based on English manors, villages, and towns due to the wealth of documentation that survives for that country. Much work concentrates on agricultural structures, demographic trends, and commercial growth. Some events stand out as significant for structural economic change, not least the dramatic intervention of the Black Death in the mid-14th century, but also wars, famines, and the discovery of new international trade routes. However, most economic historians also recognize that their subject is about understanding the everyday lives and material circumstances of ordinary people and their households. Medieval economic history concerns not only the elite, seigneurial estates, long-distance trade, wealthy merchants, and financial institutions but also peasant agriculture, living standards, technology, local trade, urban economies, and social conflict. This bibliography mostly concentrates on medieval Europe, 400–1500, but in the last section suggestions for readings on a more global scale are given.
Queens
Authors: Woodacre Elena , Shadis Miriam
Published: June 2013

As the wives, mothers, and daughters of kings, medieval queens acquired their status in one of two ways, either through marriage or, less commonly, through inheritance. The experience of being a queen, in particular as partner to the king, the development of the office of the queen, and the role of queen regent evolved over time with medieval monarchy, and queenship varied across regions as different legal codes and customs informed female inheritance. Women who became queens through marriage often shared the experience of straddling two cultures and two families (natal and marital), and, thus, they were alien outsiders who simultaneously had the greatest access to the center of power, the king. Often women who became queens were not native to the territory with which they became associated and, thus, the names by which they are known, for example, Blanche of Castile, may be misleading: Blanche, who was from Castile, was queen of France through marriage. Queens thus served as intercessors, patrons, and cultural innovators as well as operated as great lords, as rulers, and often, but not always, as mothers. The historiography of medieval queenship is equally varied, beginning with positivist-inspired biographies of the 19th century and subsequently influenced by developments in social history during the 1960s and 1970s and by interdisciplinary and feminist approaches in recent decades. Currently, scholarship simultaneously seeks to recover the histories of individual queens, to understand the specifics of the queen’s office within the institution of the monarchy, and to understand how gender operated at the highest levels of political, cultural, and economic power in the Middle Ages. The first principle of organization for this article is chronological, with sections on Early Medieval Queens (Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Germanic) and Merovingian Queens and Carolingian Queens. Because queens were always queens of a realm, however, and because the extent (and number) of European monarchies on both the continent and in Britain changed radically in the post-Carolingian era, the remainder of the article is organized both geographically and chronologically, with sections on England (General, Anglo-Norman Queens, Plantagenet Queens, and Lancastrian, York, and Early Tudor England); Scotland, France (sections on Capetian France and Valois France), Germany and Early Medieval Italy, Scandinavia, and the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (sections on Iberia generally as well as Crown of Aragon, León-Castile, and Portugal). In some instances, queens who have merited extensive scholarship are treated in separate sections. The article concludes with sections on the liminal but comparatively important queens/empresses of Byzantium, and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. While the general focus of this bibliography is on European queens and queenship, it is important to recognize the experience and lives of royal women and queens, or their equivalents, beyond Europe, which are featured in the Global section.
Christian Mysticism
Authors: Mews Constant J.
Published: June 2013

This introductory survey offers an initial overview of some of the main branches of Christian mysticism in the medieval period, broadly conceived as 500–1450. Mysticism is itself a highly contested term. Some use it to denote a personal experience of God. Others apply it to the literary articulation of religious experience, and as induction into a way of life that sees its goal as the vision of God. Mystical theology has developed in different ways within the various branches of orthodox Christianity as much as that of the Latin West. It can be argued that mysticism is a fundamental characteristic of Christianity as formulated within Eastern forms of orthodoxy, going back to the founding fathers in the Greek and Syriac world. By contrast, mysticism in the Latin West has often been seen as a particular branch of spiritual discourse and experience, distinct from the analytic forms of theology that developed in the 12th century. In the later medieval period, mystical writing in the West was increasingly formulated in vernacular languages, often by women. The development of such discourse in the vernacular, frequently invoking images and concepts quite distinct from those of normal scholastic exegesis, encouraged a perspective on mysticism as a minority pursuit within a religious milieu, often challenging the perspectives of orthodoxy. Even if has been an established tradition of linking vernacular mystical writing to other forms of vernacular literature, it also needs to be situated as a response to the Latin intellectual tradition, as well as to currents of thought emanating from Antiquity. While the major focus here is on Christian mysticism, Jewish and Islamic mysticism was also important in both Spain and the Middle East. Christian mysticism was unusual, however, in being promoted between the 13th and 15th centuries by women as much as by men, often operating outside the academy. Since the 1990s, there has been a strong growth of interest in these female mystics, not just in the medieval period, but in the 16th century and later (and thus beyond the scope of the present bibliographical survey). This article confines itself to core texts relevant to Eastern and Western branches of the medieval mystical tradition and to English-language translations and discussions of major medieval mystical writings. Certain authors are identified simply by the most recent translation, with secondary literature offering an opportunity to pursue original critical editions. Within each section, authors are presented in a broadly chronological sequence.
Textiles
Authors: Coatsworth Elizabeth , Owen-Crocker Gale R.
Published: June 2013

Textile was a ubiquitous presence in the Middle Ages, because clothing, soft furnishings, and containers were made from it; and it was undoubtedly valued because of its labor-intensive production as well as for its beauty and the precious materials (silk and gold) sometimes used in it. However, its survival into modern times is relatively unusual, because the fibers from which it was made are organic and subject to decay; because it was subject to recycling to the point of being worn out and was thrown away or destroyed; and because outmoded items decorated with metallic thread were sometimes deliberately burned in order to recover the metal. Surviving pieces of cloth are usually archaeological textiles, or items that have survived in tombs or church treasuries as holy relics. Archaeological textiles are usually fragments, either grave finds that are extremely small, and often mineralized, but that have some context by virtue of associated human remains and grave-goods, or finds from urban excavations, which may be larger but lack context other than stratification and general place. Surviving textiles of any size are mostly garments, usually ecclesiastical vestments, in various states of completeness, alteration, and repair. Many of these were made and decorated with expensive materials: silk, gold or silver thread, embroidery, metal, and gemstones. There are also furnishings and banners. The most famous, and largest, surviving medieval textile is the Bayeux Tapestry. Surviving textiles have been studied as artifacts, in which case their fiber, spin, weave, and decoration may be identified. Individual textiles have also been studied as historical witnesses, and as artworks, especially the gold embroideries known as opus anglicanum. Textile production is attested both from archaeology, with finds of tools and tool parts, and of potential workshops, augmented by artworks, and from the documentary sources familiar to the economic historian such as accounts. Town and guild records attest the importance of the textile industry and trade to the economy and developing society of the later Middle Ages. Recent research identifies some uses of textile previously unacknowledged or dismissed as unimportant. Increasingly, the social and symbolic, as well as the economic and practical, roles of textile are being recognized, as they variously reveal, obscure, and conceal both the human body and sacred objects/images.
Risk Assessment
Authors: Pritchard Ashley A. , Blanchard Adam J. E. , Douglas Kevin S.
Published: June 2013

Violence risk assessment is the process of identifying the level of risk for future violence posed by offenders, forensic patients, and civil psychiatric patients. In each such context, whether persons are detained or released into the community is a decision governed by law. The field of violence risk assessment has witnessed tremendous growth over the past several decades. With few exceptions, its use in numerous legal settings has been upheld by courts, and in some cases professionals have positive duties to conduct risk assessments and protect potential victims. After early research findings suggesting very poor performance of clinicians in predicting violence, a great deal of research has focused on improving risk assessment. Several hundred studies have now been conducted on structured approaches to risk assessment (e.g., actuarial prediction, structured professional judgment). Similarly, a great amount of scientific attention has been paid to identifying empirically supported violence risk factors. More recently, scholars have been focusing on identifying so-called dynamic risk factors, or those that are changeable and of most relevance to intervention. Current themes in risk assessment include focusing on how risk assessment can inform risk management and risk reduction and how best to integrate risk assessment technology into actual practice.
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
Authors: Johnson Brian D. , Kozey Kathryn
Published: June 2013

Mandatory minimum penalties are criminal sentences that involve minimum punishments determined by statutory law. They can apply to specific offenses, specific offenders, or to particular combinations of offense and offender characteristics. Although mandatory minimum penalties vary by state and by type of crime, they typically require some minimum term of incarceration to be served by the offender. Some mandatory minimums apply to specific offense behavior (e.g., five years for possession of a firearm), whereas others, such as “habitual offender laws,” apply to specific categories of repeat offenders. “Three-strikes laws” are well-known examples of habitual offender laws that typically require a sentence of twenty-five years to life for a third-time violent felon. Although the US Congress repealed most mandatory minimum sentences in 1970, by 1994 all fifty states had reenacted one or more mandatory sentencing laws, and the federal justice system now has more than one hundred different mandatory sentencing provisions. Mandatory minimum sentences have been heavily criticized by academic scholars for their severity, rigidity, selective application, and widespread circumvention. These minimum sentences remain relatively popular among the general public, although they have been criticized by academics and prisoner rights groups.
Religion and Crime
Authors: Jang Sung Joon
Published: June 2013

Scholarly discussion and empirical study of the religion-crime relationship goes back to the beginning of criminological thought, though at times such discussion and study has been limited in content and crude in approach. Nonetheless, religion has rarely been incorporated into major theories of crime and criminological research. However, scientific studies of the influence of religion on crime and drug use have been increasingly conducted, particularly since the publication of Hirschi and Stark’s landmark study “Hellfire and Delinquency” (Hirschi and Stark 1969, cited under the “Hellfire” Study and Controversy), which reported no relationship between adolescent religiosity and delinquency. This rather unexpected finding drew two opposite reactions in the form of empirical research. One line of research suggested that Hirschi and Stark failed to find a significant religiosity-delinquency relationship because they analyzed the type of delinquency and data that was less likely to have a significant relationship detected. The other offered a theory explaining how the null finding confirms the spuriousness (i.e., nonexistence) of the religiosity-delinquency relationship and an empirical test of the theory. However, according to reviews of existing research—whether based on a method of traditional literature review, systematic review, or meta-analysis—a majority of studies tend to confirm significant negative associations between religion and crime and drug use. The negative associations have been found in research conducted at both micro and macro levels. To explain the micro-level relationship, researchers have mostly applied control theories or learning and socialization theories (or both), though other theoretical perspectives have been employed as well, such as general strain theory, a social capital perspective, and developmental/life-course perspectives. In testing these theories, researchers have examined bidirectional or reciprocal relationships between religion and crime rather than assuming that the religion-crime relationship is unidirectional. Macro-level research on religion and crime, on the other hand, has been conducted to test Stark’s “moral communities” thesis and other contextual effects of religion. In addition, some researchers have raised and addressed methodological issues in research on religion and crime, such as selection bias and appropriate statistical and modeling approaches to properly estimate the religion-crime relationship. Although negative associations between religion and crime tend to have been empirically established by previous studies, the “criminology of religion” as a subfield is still in its infancy.