bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nuclear Proliferation
Authors: Solingen Etel
Published: April 2018

This chapter reviews existing theoretical tools for predicting proliferation or nonproliferation, spanning a range of agents across levels of analysis. It then distills relevant considerations for exploring future scenarios in East Asia. The region provides a good laboratory for understanding failed past predictions and for identifying conditions for potential transformations of its nuclear order. The final section extracts lessons for relying on cutting edge scholarship to map out proliferation futures. A promising research agenda attentive to complex systemic effects, dynamics of the global economy, regime survival, norm,s and institutions has replaced older accounts. Yet a unified field theory capable of predicting proliferation may not be in our grasp.
The Global South and International Security
Authors: Abrahamsen Rita , Sandor Adam
Published: April 2018

This chapter shows how areas of the global South have moved from the periphery to the center of academic and policy debates about international security. It argues that speaking about the global South as a singular, uniform unit is fraught with difficulties, analytically and politically, and that areas of the global South are occupying an increasingly central, yet ambivalent and contradictory position, within contemporary international security. On the one hand, the global South appears in the figure of the “weak state” as a major threat. On the other, the global South performs as the “intervener state” by contributing the majority of personnel to peacekeeping missions in the world’s trouble spots. The chapter seeks to capture this contradictory position of being part problem, part solution. It concludes that the global South is likely to continue to occupy a central place within international security and that the contradictions are likely to multiply.
Expertise and Practice
Authors: Neumann Iver B. , Sending Ole Jacob
Published: April 2018

The relationship between the study and practice of security has not only changed considerably over the last 20 years, but has also become more varied, where ever more actors perform ever more specialized tasks of both analyzing and providing security. Once dominated by a principle of segmentary (territorially delimited) differentiation, we argue that the relative strength of the national framing has declined and that functional differentiation has increased over the last three decades, resulting in transnationalization in what is increasingly a market for security expertise and a proliferation of types of actors engaged in knowledge production surrounding security (e.g. International Crisis Group) as well as the practice of security. Resulting from this proliferation, there will be category-defying practices of security, for example the move toward “hybrid warfare” and in the realm of cyber security.
Humanitarian Intervention
Authors: Welsh Jennifer M.
Published: April 2018

This chapter examines the ethical and political controversies that have accompanied humanitarian intervention (coercive interference by outside actors to address humanitarian suffering within the sovereign jurisdiction of a state). It begins with a historical discussion of the development of humanitarian intervention as a political (rather than legal) practice distinct both from interstate war and formal empire, and how issues of mixed motives, inconsistency, and uncertainties around appropriate scope have affected its legitimacy. The next section examines how humanitarian intervention was “multilateralized” through changing Security Council practice after the end of the Cold War and the development of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect. The chapter concludes by analysing how material and psychological factors are constraining the practice of humanitarian intervention in our contemporary era, despite the normative power of individual-centric notions of security.
Intelligence and International Politics
Authors: Jervis Robert
Published: April 2018

Intelligence is central to foreign policy; although it uses secret sources, its general task parallels that of social science: to understand the world. Intelligence in the broadest sense depends in part on the observer’s theories about state behavior. Secrecy is at the heart of intelligence: gaining access to information that is kept hidden; hiding what the state is thinking and what it knows about the other side; abetting deception as well as trying to detect others’ deceptions. Secrecy and democracy often clash, creating tensions for democratic regimes despite the fact that they can make better use of their intelligence services than dictatorships. Although national leaders need intelligence, the incentives and outlooks of the two groups often conflict. Intelligence activities have multiple effects on foreign policies both increasing and decreasing international conflict. The twenty-first century presents new technologies and new problems that both increase and decrease the role of secrecy.
Counter Insurgency
Authors: Long Austin
Published: April 2018

Counter insurgency has been a major component of warfare for more than half a century yet Western strategies and doctrines have scarcely advanced. While this could indicate convergence on a successful formula, the lack of success in western counter insurgency campaigns from Algeria and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan suggests the opposite. This chapter reviews the history and current state of counter insurgency in both theory and practice. It traces the evolution of counter insurgency from colonial policing through the Cold War and the resurgence of counter insurgency after the attacks of September 11, 2001. It concludes with observations on the limit of counter insurgency in the twenty-first century.
Feminist Security and Security Studies
Authors: Sjoberg Laura
Published: April 2018

Feminist approaches use gender lenses to look for gender in international security, and observe what is then made visible. In Security Studies the word “gender,” refers to more than someone’s apparent sex; it refers to the divisions that we see and make between those understood to be men and those understood to be women and also the ways those traits operate in social and political life—at the individual level, in social interaction, in workplaces, in organizations, in politics, etc.This chapter takes stock of Feminist Security Studies, accomplishing three tasks: First, it situates Feminist Security Studies within and around security studies, substantively, intellectually, and categorically. Second, it discusses some of the major contributions of Feminist Security Studies, in general terms and with examples. Finally, it looks for the potential futures of Feminist Security Studies itself and security studies more broadly with the integration of feminist theorizing.
Maritime Security
Authors: Percy Sarah
Published: April 2018

From China’s claims in the South China Sea and its dispute with Japan over Senkaku Island to Canada’s concerns over melting sea ice in the Northwest Passage and how best to secure its Arctic region, maritime security issues rest at the heart of many core strategic disputes. Maritime insecurity can also take unconventional forms, stemming from criminal threats at sea that can have an impact upon national security. Both challenges have a long history, and both intersect the crucial issues or rules, order, and ungoverned spaces. this chapter examines this nexus of challenges, providing the analytical tools needed to forecast what is and is not likely to change. The chapter concludes by considering the relationship between continuity, change, and contingency in the future of maritime security.
Global Health and Security
Authors: Peterson Sue
Published: April 2018

Health and security are obviously related: pathogens may kill significant numbers of people, gut military forces, or significantly damage the economy. But the increased mobility of people and goods wrought by globalization, the emergence and re-emergence of a host of infectious diseases, unprecedented refugee flows, and the contemporary bioterrorist threat make disease control less susceptible to national solutions than in the past. Moreover, efforts to link health and national security tend to privilege defense against pathogens that might threaten the developed world and do little to improve global cooperation on pressing health issues. Nevertheless, early efforts to trace the national security implications of infectious disease have produced positive outcomes, including successfully attracting attention and resources to health issues and producing a wave of academic interest in health as a global governance issue.
Regional Security Complexes and Organizations
Authors: Legrenzi Matteo , Lawson Fred H.
Published: April 2018

Regional dimensions of international security have become increasingly salient since the end of the Cold War. Some groups of states have coalesced into regional formations that resemble classic security communities. Several analytical concepts have been proposed to explain this trend, including revised theories of security community, security regimes, security complexes, and modes of security governance. Regional security complexes offer a useful framework for explicating the dynamics of interstate threats and governments’ coordinated responses to external danger. The utility of the concept can be illustrated by surveying recent scholarship on the cross-border spread of civil wars and disputes over water. Regional security complexes also provide insight into the formation and resurgence of regional security organizations, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
International Criminal Accountability and Transnational Advocacy Networks (TAns)
Authors: Schmitz Hans Peter
Published: April 2018

Transnational advocacy networks (TANs) focused on human rights advocacy have played a significant role in making prosecutions of former government officials for major crimes a norm in international politics. Tthe idea initially emerged in the twentieth century following both World Wars. A more sustained movement toward international criminal responsibility spread from the post-authoritarian context of Latin American transitions of the 1980s. While proponents of such trials have argued that they deter future atrocities and are less costly than humanitarian interventions, many of the claims about the trials’ impact require more research. Considering research across a wide-range of transnational issues, the key lessons for TANs include moving beyond “naming and shaming” approaches, giving local populations more control over trials and other post-violence measures, and accepting that prosecutions rarely address root causes of widespread violence and should be part of a broader mix of measures designed to represent a true break with the past.
Critical Security Studies
Authors: Hendershot Chris , Mutimer David
Published: April 2018

This chapter intends to provoke the present in order to motivate an unsettling and un-settled future for Critical Security Studies (CSS). To be unsettling CSS must (continue to) commit to unconventional inquisitiveness through refusing discipline and embracing reflexive accountability. To be un-settled, CSS must do the serious work of decolonizing. The need to decolonize as an effort to support indigenous sovereignty may create the unsettling possibility that CSS does not have a future. To imagine that CSS has no future is to take reflexive account of the colonial complicities of Anglo-European scholarship, while becoming open to fostering more meaningful collaborations with Indigenous people. Being unsettled and becoming un-settled must be a collaborative effort among all knowledge producers in order to critically confront the past, present, and future problems of doing and thinking (through) security.
Constructivism
Authors: Barnett Michael L.
Published: April 2018

This chapter provides a brief overview of constructivist international relations theory and explores how it can help explain two of the most important transformations in international security over the last century: the growing belief that the “human” should be an object of security, and the expanding metropolis of different kinds of actors whose goal is to produce security for all individuals in the name of “humanity” and the “international community.” The introduction to the chapter provides a quick background to the sociological context that gave birth to constructivism. Section 7.2 provides a brief conceptual overview of constructivism, with particular attention paid to those attributes that might be useful for students of international security and that will be relevant for the historical analysis in Section 7.3, which concerns the expansion of international security from a state-centric exercise to a growing role for the “international community” to defend “humanity.”
What Is a PARIS Approach to (In)securitization? Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology
Authors: Bigo Didier , McCluskey Emma
Published: April 2018

This chapter sets out the burgeoning research program taking place as part of a “PARIS” approach to studying processes of (in)security and (in)securitization. PARIS is an acronym for Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology. The chapter outlines how a PARIS approach highlights the study of how different bodies of knowledge are labeling security, examining the tensions and controversies between and within practitioners and disciplinary fields in these labeling practices. It analyses different intellectual ways to study the relationship between the “security” label and the boundaries of “security” practices alternatively labeled by others freedom, mobility, violence, or privacy. The chapter concludes by conceptualizing the relation between security and insecurity as a mobius strip; a metaphor which demonstrates how one can never be certain what constitutes the content of security and not insecurity. A PARIS approach thus calls for the study of everyday (in)securitization processes and practices.
Çatalhöyük
Authors: Bosch Eva
Published: April 2018

This photo essay outlines the experimental work undertaken in summer 2007 in Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, Turkey, while the author was the artist in residence. The work done in this Neolithic settlement led to the discovery of a sun clock, i.e. a beam of light present in each dwelling entering from the roof and drifting like a sun dial to different areas of the house. The parallelogram of light produced by the beam created a pattern of light and shadow, showing the archaeological importance of shadows and their power to reveal aspects of people’s lives in the settlement. Based on the study of the shadows observed and filmed in Çatalhöyük indoors and outdoors, this chapter examines the functions and purposes of selected shadows that show how approaching archaeology from an artist’s viewpoint can enhance interpretation, understanding, and the production of knowledge.
Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood
Authors: Börzel Tanja A. , Risse Thomas , Draude Anke
Published: April 2018

This chapter serves to introduce the central concepts of the handbook, to briefly delineate its contributions to the state of the art, and to lay out the rationale behind its various sections. We begin by discussing the central concepts of the handbook, ‘limited statehood’ and ‘governance’. We argue that ‘areas of limited statehood’ where central state authorities lack the capacity to uphold the monopoly over the means of violence and/or to enforce the law, can be found everywhere and are not confined to what the literature erroneously calls ‘fragile’ or ‘failed’ states. However, areas of limited statehood are neither ungovernable nor ungoverned. Instead, we find an enormous variation that includes badly governed places but also ‘good governance’ in areas of limited statehood. If institutions are flexible enough to adapt to local conditions, effective and legitimate governance is likely to emerge where people trust each other and accept their ‘governors’.
Violent and Criminal Non-State Actors
Authors: Berti Benedetta
Published: April 2018

This chapter takes stock of the main scholarly and policy debates pertaining to the rise of violent and criminal governors. First, it delves into the reasons that drive these actors towards investing in governance; emphasizing the usefulness of governance provision to extract resources, enhance control, built legitimacy, and fulfil state-building aspirations. Second, the chapter briefly accounts for the main variations in the types of governance configurations established by criminal and violent actors, focusing on when and where these actors act as governors; what types of services they are likely to provide and to whom, as well as on how governance itself is delivered. This cursory examination, along with an analysis of the relationships these groups build while acting as governors, allows us to reflect on the impact of these non-state governors on the civilian population under their rule, as well as on the notions of sovereignty and statehood more broadly.
Food Security
Authors: Liese Andrea
Published: April 2018

Despite demonstrable success in achieving food security, undernourishment persists at an unacceptable level. This chapter studies the governance of food security from the perspective of (limited) statehood: Is the provision of food security affected by limited capacity of states to set and enforce rules and the lack of the monopoly over the means of violence? Can external governance actors compensate for limited statehood and provide for or contribute to food security themselves? If so, how, and under which conditions? The chapter argues that limited statehood undermines the effectiveness of food security governance in at least three ways. First, many governments certainly lack the capacity to provide effective governance structures to ensure agricultural productivity and equal access to food. Second, food insecurity is strongly linked to war and armed conflict. Third, the lack of a monopoly over the means of violence complicates external actors’ governance activities.
International Legal Order
Authors: Krieger Heike
Published: April 2018

The phenomenon of governance in areas of limited statehood has had a particularly strong impact on the development of international law after 1990. If—on a large scale—states lack the capacity to control the means of violence and to implement and enforce central decisions it is most likely that this bears serious consequences for the international legal order. The chapter inquires into these consequences and analyses the changing discourses about statehood. As a response to the phenomenon of limited statehood, the international community had to address the challenge how and to what extent external actors could step in in order to perform government functions. This triggered debates about the legal basis and about the legal limits for such activities. While the period after 1990 was characterized by approaches which relativized the sovereignty of fragile states, more recent developments point to a re-emphasis of state consent
Critical Approaches
Authors: Sjoberg Laura , Barkin Samuel
Published: April 2018

This chapter looks for the contributions in both actual and potential intersections between critical theorizing and work on governance in areas of limited statehood. It does so, first, by giving a brief introduction to what the broad-brush idea of critical approaches includes, and what those approaches share. From there, it moves on to the contributions to the study of governance in areas of limited statehood from critically oriented theory, focusing on three approaches: feminist theory, post-colonial/decolonial theory, and post-structuralist theory. These three approaches are chosen as a focus because they provide an interesting cross-section of potential implications. The chapter concludes by considering the relationships among the various contributions of critical theorizing to thinking about governance in areas of limited statehood.
The Scientific Method and the Social Hierarchy of Objects
Authors: Bourdieu Pierre
Published: April 2018

In this short piece, which exemplifies his long-standing commitment to epistemic reflexivity, Bourdieu pinpoints one of the primary means of censorship in scientific disciplines: namely, the “social hierarchy of objects” dictating that certain objects be considered worthy of investigation (such that even redundant and scientifically insignificant accounts of these may yield “material and symbolic profits” for the researcher), while others are taken as trivial, vulgar, or otherwise unworthy. Reflecting on the “silence that enshrouds” the latter, Bourdieu sketches the broad outlines for a study of the division of scientific objects into categories like “noble or vulgar, serious or futile, interesting or trivial.” Underpinning this discussion is his unwavering commitment to the goal of scientific autonomy, which demands that scientists choose their objects based on scientific considerations alone, without regard for commercial, political, or cultural pressures, disciplinary fads and fashions, professional considerations, or other solicitations originating outside the scientific field.
Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Education
Authors: Weininger Elliot B. , Lareau Annette
Published: April 2018

Decades after the publication of his key works, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of education remains the object of persistent misunderstanding. A coherent account of this work must distinguish, at minimum, two phases to Bourdieu’s thoughts on education. During the early period, Bourdieu asserted the salience of both self-selection and institutional selection in shunting students into class destinations that echoed their class origins. However, these works were uniformly devoted to identifying the peculiarities of the (then) contemporary French system, considered to be an exemplar of a distinct (“traditionalistic”) institutional form. In contrast, Bourdieu’s later work sought to develop a model of the relation between education and social inequality that had significant cross-national scope. This work de-emphasized the role of self-selection, and developed a substantially more nuanced account of the relation between education and social mobility. What Bourdieu terms the “scholastic mode of reproduction” in this period denotes a system in which children from the upper reaches of the class structure are systematically advantaged in the pursuit of social rewards by virtue of their inherited cultural capital, yet nevertheless face a real risk of downward mobility. For this reason, we term it a theory of “imperfect social reproduction.”
The Transdisciplinary Contribution of Pierre Bourdieu to the Study of the Academic Field and Intellectuals
Authors: Charle Christophe
Published: April 2018

Bourdieu’s contribution to the study of the academic field and intellectuals rests on a series of novel concepts and methodological rules. This chapter focuses on three. The first is Bourdieu’s use of history and the historical method, which he combined with sociology to produce a method for establishing critical distance between researcher and empirical object. The second is Bourdieu’s penchant for international comparisons. Contrary to the objections of critics, his studies drew frequent parallels between the intellectuals at the heart of his studies and their foreign counterparts—including Prussian intellectuals of the eighteenth century; German academics during the Weimar period; and contemporary Belgian, American, and German intellectuals. The third feature is Bourdieu’s insistence on an organic link between the study of the intellectual field and the study of the field of power. This link held the key, in his view, to the political and social commitments accompanying the intellectual role.
The Poverty of Philosophy
Authors: Burawoy Michael
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract Marx and Bourdieu embark from similar criticisms of philosophers as suffering from the illusion that ideas make history—what Marx calls ideology and Bourdieu calls scholastic reason. Accordingly, both turn from the logic of theory to the logic of practice. However, where Marx sees the relations of production as leading to class struggle and revolution, Bourdieu sees bodily practice as instilling symbolic domination through habitus. This leads Marx and Bourdieu to adopt divergent views of history, divergent approaches to social change, divergent roots of symbolic domination, and divergent perspectives on contentious politics. If the followers of Marx seek to explain the quiescence of the working class by developing theories of cultural hegemony, will the followers of Bourdieu build a research program that focuses on the internal contradictions and external anomalies of Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic domination?
Bourdieu and Schutz
Authors: Atkinson Will
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract This chapter considers the relationship between the sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu and Alfred Schutz. It begins by making plain the shared rootedness of many of their ideas in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and tracing the different directions in which they took that influence, given the dissimilar states of the intellectual fields they were positioned in. It then goes on to compare the two thinkers on philosophical anthropology and epistemology, making the case that Bourdieu’s relational worldview fills in significant gaps in Schutz’s account. However, the author subsequently argues that Schutz’s vocabulary can, in turn, help plug holes in Bourdieu’s perspective too, pushing the latter toward becoming a “relational phenomenology.” These holes are, first, the sketchy depiction of conscious activity associated with the concept of habitus and, second, the neglect of how individual lifeworlds are structured by multiple fields.
Pierre Bourdieu and the Unthought Colonial State
Authors: Poupeau Franck
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract This chapter considers how Bourdieu’s early experiences in French-occupied Algeria influenced his later development of a theory of the state. Bourdieu was conscripted into the French army, but stayed for many years to do advocacy and research on behalf of the Algerian people. In particular, he lived and studied among the Kabyle, a Berber people in northern Algeria. Poupeau argues that no understanding of Bourdieu’s theory of the state is complete without considering Bourdieu’s research during France’s occupation of Algeria. This “unthought colonial state,” grounded as it was in physical violence, shaped Bourdieu’s later elaboration of a state whose power derives from its monopoly of symbolic violence.
Bourdieu and the Sociology of Intellectual Life
Authors: Medvetz Thomas
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract Having grown up in the relative cultural backwater of Béarn, in southwestern France, Pierre Bourdieu found himself wrenched and jolted by his earliest encounters with French intellectual society. His perceptions, tastes, and dispositions offered constant reminders that he had not been made for this world. But the same disjuncture yielded productive insights and made Bourdieu into an accidental anthropologist of intellectual life. This chapter thematizes “the social relations of intellectual life” as a linchpin of his work, first tracing the sociobiographical roots of this interest and dividing Bourdieu’s career into four successive but overlapping phases, each defined by a particular approach to the subject. The chapter then highlights several moments in his theory where the focus on intellectual life holds the key to its deeper purpose or meaning. A key task for sociology after Bourdieu is to develop a more advanced theory of “intellectual practical sense.”
Is a Bourdieusian Ethnography Possible?
Authors: Sallaz Jeffrey J.
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract This chapter argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s research program is less compatible with ethnography than it first appears. Bourdieu was critical of structuralism, that perspective on the social world that prioritizes general patterns over lived experience, whereas ethnography claims as its raison d’être the elucidation of lived experience. A close reading of Bourdieu’s entire body of writings, however, reveals multiple reservations about the ethnographic method. At various points Bourdieu argues that ethnography is partial knowledge, impotent knowledge, and dangerous knowledge. This chapter elaborates each of these critiques, and gives ethnography a chance to respond. Ultimately, it concludes that it is possible to do ethnography from within the Bourdieusian research program. But ethnographers must take care to contextualize their field data in its extra-local context; they should deploy systematic research designs; and they must exercise reflexivity as to how one’s position as a scholar shapes one’s experience of others’ social worlds.
Tensions, Actors, and Inventions
Authors: Arnholtz Jens
Published: April 2018

Chapter abstract This chapter argues that Bourdieu’s sociology of the state outlines an interesting research program, which focuses on innovation and transformation rather than only domination and reproduction. The chapter begins by presenting some of the epistemological and conceptual elements found in Bourdieu’s sociology of the state. The chapter then goes on to focus on his often overlooked sociohistorical approach to state formation, which involves a research program that emphasizes structural tensions that encourage transformation, specific actors that drive these transformations, and concrete inventions that created the state as a new social phenomenon. As such, the chapter aims not only to present Bourdieu’s sociology of the state, but also to argue that his sociology is much more dynamic, processual, and focused on transformation than is usually assumed in presentations of Bourdieu.
On the Reception of Bourdieu’s Sociology in the World’s Most Equal Societies
Authors: Hjekllbrekke Johs , Prieur Annick
Published: April 2018

This chapter discusses the reception of Bourdieu in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which are three of the richest, but also most egalitarian, societies in the world, with strong welfare state traditions. The sympathy toward Bourdieu’s thinking in Scandinavia may be linked to a resonance for his critique of domination and of neoliberalism; the strong resistance his thinking also has encountered stems from a denial of its relevance for Scandinavia. Finding identical oppositions in Scandinavia from those found in France would imply a pre-construction of the kind that Bourdieu relentlessly warned against; nevertheless, it may be argued that if his models are applicable in Scandinavia, which is so different from France, they should be applicable everywhere. The chapter presents works from the three fields where the use of Bourdieu’s models has been most important in Scandinavia: education, cultural consumption, and power and the elites.
Reading Bourdieu in South Africa
Authors: von Holdt Karl
Published: April 2018

Pierre Bourdieu is the quintessential theorist of domination and social order. South Africa presents an exemplar from the Global South—fractured, contested, disputative, disorderly, violent. This chapter examines Bourdieu’s concepts of order through the jagged realities of South African society, at the same time exploring South African society through the conceptual lenses provided by Bourdieu, and in the process rethinking both. The author uses this double reflection to rethink Bourdieu from a Southern perspective, recovering a potent passage from Bourdieu regarding the “margin of freedom” from the tyranny of habitus and field provided by the concept of symbolic power. The chapter reconstructs the concept of political field to provide for multiple overlapping, mutually unintelligible, and subversive fields of practice occupying the same social space, thus accounting for double meaning, ambiguity, violence, and subaltern agency in the making and unmaking of social order.
Bourdieu in the Post-Communist World
Authors: Pop Liliana
Published: April 2018

The collapse of the communist regimes in the former Soviet bloc and the subsequent economic, political, social, and cultural transformations opened up new challenges for social science research. Working with the methodological and conceptual tools of Pierre Bourdieu, including habitus, field, capital, symbolic power, hysteresis, and the logic of honor, among others, scholars have defined and addressed four clusters of important research questions: the possibility of systemic change and the emergence of “capitalism without capitalists”; mechanisms for legitimacy and stability, new configurations of stratification and lifestyles; marketing selves, the informal economy, and nationalism; and state-level strategies for redefining positions in the international political field. This chapter shows that, although much remains to be done across these areas, works that use Bourdieu’s insights to analyze post-communist regimes have provided more nuanced accounts and fuller explanations than those available in mainstream literatures, making up in salience what they lack in number.
Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations
Authors: Cohen Antonin
Published: April 2018

Over time, Pierre Bourdieu became an emergent reference in international relations—quite paradoxically, given that Bourdieu himself did not pay much attention to international relations as such. This chapter exhaustively reviews the works of Bourdieu in search of the international, both as a dimension of social capital and as a social space across societies. It then retraces how pioneering scholars used the theory and concepts of Bourdieu to develop their analysis of transnational processes. It also assesses the more recent blossoming of scholarship using Bourdieu in international relations, sometimes at the risk of inconsistency with the theory of Bourdieu. It finally suggests a coherent reconstruction of a theory of transnational fields based on Bourdieu for further research. Throughout the chapter, the notion of field serves as a golden thread to go back to its genealogy, to be found, surprisingly, in international relations.
Taxation in the Greco-Roman World
Authors: Kaye Noah
Published: April 2018

This article surveys taxation in the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia Minor in the Near East, focusing on the Seleukid Empire and the Attalids of Pergamon. It argues that the study of Hellenistic systems and habits of taxation can tell us much about the distribution of sovereignty in these composite, multiscalar kingdoms. The negotiation of fiscal rights and privileges in these kingdoms drew cities, kings, courtiers, priests, and soldiers into frequent, even ritualized interactions. The article discusses taxation’s role in the competition over territory and resources, both interstate and internal, while also highlighting the role of taxation in the articulation of each state’s sovereignty claims on communities and individuals. Key sources are reviewed, both epigraphic and archaeological, including cuneiform documents from Hellenistic Babylonia and Greek inscriptions from Asia Minor (Anatolia) and Coele-Syria (Levant).
Increasing antigen presentation on HSV-1-infected cells increases lesion size but does not alter neural infection or latency
Authors: Russell Tiffany A. , Velusamy Thilaga , Tseng Yeu-Yang , Tscharke David C.
Published: April 2018

CD8+ T cells have a role in the control of acute herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection and may also be important in the maintenance of latency. In this study we have explored the consequences of boosting the efficacy of CD8+ T cells against HSV by increasing the amount of an MHC I-presented epitope on the surface of infected cells. To do this we used HSVs engineered to express an extra copy of the immunodominant CD8+ T cell epitope in C57Bl/6 mice, namely gB498 (SSIEFARL). Despite greater presentation of gB498 on infected cells, CD8+ T cell responses to these viruses in mice were similar to those elicited by a control virus. Further, the expression of extra gB498 did not significantly alter the extent or stability of latency in our mouse model, and virus loads in skin and sensory ganglia of infected mice were not affected. Surprisingly, mice infected with these viruses developed significantly larger skin lesions than those infected with control viruses and notably, this phenotype was dependent on MHC haplotype. Therefore increasing the visibility of HSV-infected cells to CD8+ T cell attack did not impact neural infection or latency, but rather enhanced pathology in the skin.
How Familiarity Warps Representation in Face Space
Authors: Chauhan Vassiki , Gobbini M. Ida
Published: April 2018

Recognition of familiar as compared to unfamiliar faces is robust and resistant to marked image distortion or degradation. Here we tested the flexibility of familiar face recognition with a morphing paradigm where the appearance of a personally familiar face was mixed with the appearance of a stranger. The aim was to assess how categorical boundaries for recognition of identity are affected by familiarity. We found a narrower categorical boundary for the identity of personally familiar faces when they were mixed with unfamiliar identities as compared to the control condition, in which the appearance of two unfamiliar faces were mixed. Our results suggest that familiarity warps the representational geometry of face space, amplifying perceptual distances for small changes in the appearance of familiar faces that are inconsistent with the structural features that define their identities.
Expressed vomeronasal type-1 receptors (V1rs) in bats uncover conserved mechanisms of social chemical signaling
Authors: Yohe Laurel R. , Davies Kalina T. J. , Rossiter Stephen J. , Dávalos Liliana M.
Published: April 2018

In mammals, social and reproductive behaviors are mediated by chemical cues encoded by hyperdiverse families of receptors expressed in the vomeronasal organ. Between species, the number of intact receptors can vary by orders of magnitude. However, the evolutionary processes behind variation in receptor number, and also its link to fitness-related behaviors are not well understood. From vomeronasal transcriptomes, we discovered the first evidence of intact vomeronasal type-1 receptor (V1r) genes in bats, and we tested whether putatively functional bat receptors were orthologous to those of related taxa, or whether bats have evolved novel receptors. We found that V1rs in bats and show high levels of orthology to those of their relatives, as opposed to lineage-specific duplications, and receptors are under purifying selection. Despite widespread vomeronasal organ loss in bats, V1r copies have been retained for >65 million years. The highly conserved nature of bat V1rs challenges our current understanding of mammalian V1r function and suggest roles other than conspecific recognition or mating initiation in social behavior.
Stratification of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients: a crowdsourcing approach
Authors: Kueffner Robert , Zach Neta , Bronfeld Maya , Norel Raquel , Atassi Nazem , Balagurusamy Venkat , di Camillo Barbara , Chio Adriano , Cudkowicz Merit , Dillenberger Donna , Garcia-Garcia Javier , Hardiman Orla , Hoff Bruce , Knight Joshua , Leitner Melanie L. , Li Guang , Mangravite Lara , Norman Thea , Wang Liuxia ,   the ALS Stratification Consortium, Xiao Jinfeng , Fang Wen-Chieh , Peng Jian , Stolovitzky Gustavo
Published: April 2018

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease with substantial heterogeneity in clinical presentation with an urgent need for better stratification tools for clinical development and care. In this study we used a crowdsourcing approach to address the problem of ALS patient stratification. The DREAM Prize4Life ALS Stratification Challenge was a crowdsourcing initiative using data from >10,000 patients from completed ALS clinical trials and 1479 patients from community-based patient registers. Challenge participants used machine learning and clustering techniques to predict ALS progression and survival. By developing new approaches, the best performing teams were able to predict disease outcomes better than currently available methods. At the same time, the integration of clustering components across methods led to the emergence of distinct consensus clusters, separating patients into four consistent groups, each with its unique predictors for classification. This analysis reveals for the first time the potential of a crowdsourcing approach to uncover covert patient sub-populations, and to accelerate disease understanding and therapeutic development.
Personalized Regression Enables Sample-Specific Pan-Cancer Analysis
Authors: Lengerich Benjamin J. , Aragam Bryon , Xing Eric P.
Published: April 2018

In many applications, inter-sample heterogeneity is crucial to understanding the complex biological processes under study. For example, in genomic analysis of cancers, each patient in a cohort may have a different driver mutation, making it difficult or impossible to identify causal mutations from an averaged view of the entire cohort. Unfortunately, many traditional methods for genomic analysis seek to estimate a single model which is shared by all samples in a population, ignoring this inter-sample heterogeneity entirely. In order to better understand patient heterogeneity, it is necessary to develop practical, personalized statistical models. To uncover this inter-sample heterogeneity, we propose a novel regularizer for achieving patient-specific personalized estimation. This regularizer operates by learning two latent distance metrics – one between personalized parameters and one between clinical covariates – and attempting to match the induced distances as closely as possible. Crucially, we do not assume these distance metrics are already known. Instead, we allow the data to dictate the structure of these latent distance metrics. Finally, we apply our method to learn patient-specific, interpretable models for a pan-cancer gene expression dataset containing samples from more than 30 distinct cancer types and find strong evidence of personalization effects between cancer types as well as between individuals. Our analysis uncovers sample-specific aberrations that are overlooked by population level methods, suggesting a promising new path for precision analysis of complex diseases such as cancer.
Molecular architecture of the mouse nervous system
Authors: Zeisel Amit , Hochgerner Hannah , Lönnerberg Peter , Johnsson Anna , Memic Fatima , van der Zwan Job , Häring Martin , Braun Emelie , Borm Lars , La Manno Gioele , Codeluppi Simone , Furlan Alessandro , Skene Nathan , Harris Kenneth D. , Hjerling Leffler Jens , Arenas Ernest , Ernfors Patrik , Marklund Ulrika , Linnarsson Sten
Published: April 2018

The mammalian nervous system executes complex behaviors controlled by specialised, precisely positioned and interacting cell types. Here, we used RNA sequencing of half a million single cells to create a detailed census of cell types in the mouse nervous system. We mapped cell types spatially and derived a hierarchical, data-driven taxonomy. Neurons were the most diverse, and were grouped by developmental anatomical units, and by the expression of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. Neuronal diversity was driven by genes encoding cell identity, synaptic connectivity, neurotransmission and membrane conductance. We discovered several distinct, regionally restricted, astrocytes types, which obeyed developmental boundaries and correlated with the spatial distribution of key glutamate and glycine neurotransmitters. In contrast, oligodendrocytes showed a loss of regional identity, followed by a secondary diversification. The resource presented here lays a solid foundation for understanding the molecular architecture of the mammalian nervous system, and enables genetic manipulation of specific cell types.
xAtlas: Scalable small variant calling across heterogeneous next-generation sequencing experiments
Authors: Farek Jesse , Hughes Daniel , Mansfield Adam , Krasheninina Olga , Nasser Waleed , Sedlazeck Fritz J , Khan Ziad , Venner Eric , Metcalf Ginger , Boerwinkle Eric , Muzny Donna M , Gibbs Richard A , Salerno William
Published: April 2018

Motivation

The rapid development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has lowered the barriers to genomic data generation, resulting in millions of samples sequenced across diverse experimental designs. The growing volume and heterogeneity of these sequencing data complicate the further optimization of methods for identifying DNA variation, especially considering that curated highconfidence variant call sets commonly used to evaluate these methods are generally developed by reference to results from the analysis of comparatively small and homogeneous sample sets.

Results

We have developed xAtlas, an application for the identification of single nucleotide variants (SNV) and small insertions and deletions (indels) in NGS data. xAtlas is easily scalable and enables execution and retraining with rapid development cycles. Generation of variant calls in VCF or gVCF format from BAM or CRAM alignments is accomplished in less than one CPU-hour per 30× short-read human whole-genome. The retraining capabilities of xAtlas allow its core variant evaluation models to be optimized on new sample data and user-defined truth sets. Obtaining SNV and indels calls from xAtlas can be achieved more than 40 times faster than established methods while retaining the same accuracy.

Availability

Freely available under a BSD 3-clause license at https://github.com/jfarek/xatlas.

Contact

farek@bcm.edu

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Deciphering human ribonucleoprotein regulatory networks
Authors: Mukherjee Neelanjan , Wessels Hans-Hermann , Lebedeva Svetlana , Sajek Marcin , Ghanbari Mahsa , Garzia Aitor , Munteanu Alina , Farazi Thalia , Hoell Jessica I , Akat Kemal , Tuschl Thomas , Ohler Uwe
Published: April 2018

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) control and coordinate each stage in the life cycle of RNAs. Although in vivo binding sites of RBPs can now be determined genome-wide, most studies typically focused on individual RBPs. Here, we examined a large compendium of 114 high-quality transcriptome-wide in vivo RBP-RNA cross-linking interaction datasets generated by the same protocol in the same cell line and representing 64 distinct RBPs. Comparative analysis of categories of target RNA binding preference, sequence preference, and transcript region specificity was performed, and identified potential posttranscriptional regulatory modules, i.e. specific combinations of RBPs that bind to specific sets of RNAs and targeted regions. These regulatory modules encoded functionally related proteins and exhibited distinct differences in RNA metabolism, expression variance, as well as subcellular localization. This integrative investigation of experimental RBP-RNA interaction evidence and RBP regulatory function in a human cell line will be a valuable resource for understanding the complexity of post-transcriptional regulation.