bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Validation of N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirator Decontamination Methods Available at a Large University Hospital
Authors: Wigginton Krista R , Arts Peter J , Clack Herek L , Fitzsimmons William J , Gamba Mirko , Harrison Katherine R , LeBar William , Lauring Adam S , Li Lucinda , Roberts William W , Rockey Nicole C , Torreblanca Jania , Young Carol , Anderegg Loïc G , Cohn Amy M , Doyle John M , Meisenhelder Cole M , Raskin Lutgarde , Love Nancy G , Kaye Keith S
Published: December 2020

Background

Due to unprecedented shortages in N95 filtering facepiece respirators, healthcare systems have explored N95 reprocessing. No single, full-scale reprocessing publication has reported an evaluation including multiple viruses, bacteria, and fungi along with respirator filtration and fit.

Methods

We explored reprocessing methods using new 3M 1860 N95 respirators, including moist (50%–75% relative humidity [RH]) heat (80–82°C for 30 minutes), ethylene oxide (EtO), pulsed xenon UV-C (UV-PX), hydrogen peroxide gas plasma (HPGP), and hydrogen peroxide vapor (HPV). Respirator samples were analyzed using 4 viruses (MS2, phi6, influenza A virus [IAV], murine hepatitis virus [MHV)]), 3 bacteria (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Geobacillus stearothermophilus spores, and vegetative bacteria), and Aspergillus niger. Different application media were tested. Decontaminated respirators were evaluated for filtration integrity and fit.

Results

Heat with moderate RH most effectively inactivated virus, resulting in reductions of >6.6-log10 MS2, >6.7-log10 Phi6, >2.7-log10 MHV, and >3.9-log10 IAV and prokaryotes, except for G stearothermohphilus. Hydrogen peroxide vapor was moderately effective at inactivating tested viruses, resulting in 1.5- to >4-log10 observable inactivation. Staphylococcus aureus inactivation by HPV was limited. Filtration efficiency and proper fit were maintained after 5 cycles of heat with moderate RH and HPV. Although it was effective at decontamination, HPGP resulted in decreased filtration efficiency, and EtO treatment raised toxicity concerns. Observed virus inactivation varied depending upon the application media used.

Conclusions

Both moist heat and HPV are scalable N95 reprocessing options because they achieve high levels of biological indicator inactivation while maintaining respirator fit and integrity.
Cybersecurity in Japan
Authors: Bartlett Benjamin
Published: December 2020

Two recent trends have been visible in Japanese politics: the increasing importance of politicians versus bureaucrats in policymaking, and the increasing willingness of the Japanese government to expand its authority and capability in dealing with national security. While these trends have affected Japanese cybersecurity policy as well, those effects have been limited. Much of the drafting of cybersecurity policy is done within a cabinet body primarily staffed with bureaucrats seconded from three ministries and one agency: METI, MIC, MOD, and NPA. And while the capabilities of the JSDF and the conditions under which it can operate have been expanded, as of yet there has been little sign that potential trade-offs between priorities are being resolved in favor of national security. The purpose of this chapter is to explain how bureaucratic politics and these trends in Japanese politics have shaped Japanese cybersecurity policy over time.
Al-Nahda’s Local Test
Authors: Lamloum Olfa
Published: December 2020

After some 10 years in power and more than two years in control of several municipalities, the previously banned Tunisian Islamist party al-Nahda has had a unique trajectory as a Sunni Islamic political movement in the wake of the Arab uprisings. This chapter examines that trajectory from a local perspective, focusing on two popular districts of Greater Tunis, al-Tadamun and Douar Hisher, historic strongholds of al-Nahda. The aim is to understand the mutations through which this central actor has passed in Tunisia, examining the evolution of its social action and its repertoire of political legitimization. The chapter outlines the tensions marking its institutionalization in terms of generational dislocation and the alienation of its popular base. In doing so, it traces the recomposition of local power and its underlying arrangements in relegated urban margins 10 years after the fall of Ben Ali’s authoritarian regime.
The Place of Islam in the Foundation of Modern Social Theory
Authors: Sunar Lutfi
Published: December 2020

The relation between Islam and the West has a long history, full of confrontation. Islam always represents the closest “other” for the West, and being otherized is not only a cultural but also a strategic matter. Controlling and shaping the perceptions of Islam are essential for continuing the political hegemony of the West. On this basis, the 19th century witnessed the spread of Western hegemony throughout the world, including the Middle East. In this period, although Western expansion faced considerable resistance in Muslim societies, the political, economic, military, scientific, intellectual, and cultural influence of modernity spread all over the world. The encounter between Muslim societies and the West went beyond the sheer geographical dimension. The Western vision, founded and reinforced by orientalism, considers Islam as a suppressed enemy who may make a comeback. This chapter will question the place of Islam in modern social theory. The central thesis is on Islam being not only the other of the modern Western identity, but also a founder of the modern world. By discussing the central place of Islam in the debates of social theory’s founders such as Tocqueville, Marx, and Weber, Islam as part and parcel of the modern world will become apparent.
Shifting Family Patterns
Authors: Dennerlein Bettina
Published: December 2020

Based on a historically informed comparative perspective, the chapter critically reviews topics and debates in research on the issue of family with a view to the Middle East and North Africa region. It outlines different trends in the field and discusses the limits of specialized knowledge production on the topic, as well as the potential contribution of area-specific perspectives in family studies more broadly. The chapter unfolds the complexity of findings from qualitative research in history as well as the social sciences and describes its uneasy relationship with macro-perspectives on family change and demography. Special attention is paid to critical concepts and new paradigms emerging from the field that tie in with feminist and gender theories.
Ethnic Identity, Memory, and Sites of Violence
Authors: Larkin Craig
Published: December 2020

The Arab uprisings may have contributed to a newly “sectarianized” Middle East, yet more broadly this must be recognized as part of resurgent identity politics in which state exclusion, repression, and violence occur across ethnic, religious, and political divides. The mobilization of ethnic identities—the creation of distinct collectivities based on narratives of common descent—is as evident in nationalist diatribes throughout the region as it is in minority rights campaigns for equality or cultural autonomy. Ethnic identity formation requires both mnemonic discourses and specific sites in which social memories, imaginaries, and practices can be embedded and collectively performed. This chapter examines how geographies of violence—sites of historic trauma, loss, and displacement—are reappropriated through commemorative practice and martyr memorialization, which help shape contemporary ethnic narratives of identity and resistance. From Kurds in Irbil to Copts in Egypt to Palestinians inside Israel, each community attests to spatial exclusion and violence and finds ways of inhabiting and reimaging past trauma, to shape historical narratives and contemporary political expediencies. This chapter explores some of the key scholarship around this theme before examining the growing proliferation of martyr museums in the region.
Introduction
Authors: Light Ryan , Moody James
Published: December 2020

This chapter provides an introduction to this volume on social networks. It argues that social network analysis is greater than a method or data, but serves as a central paradigm for understanding social life. The chapter offers evidence of the influence of social network analysis with a bibliometric analysis of research on social networks. This analysis underscores how pervasive network analysis has become and highlights key theoretical and methodological concerns. It also introduces the sections of the volume broadly structured around theory, methods, broad conceptualizations like culture and temporality, and disciplinary contributions. The chapter concludes by discussing several promising new directions in the field of social network analysis.
Social Network Experiments
Authors: Brashears Matthew E. , Gladstone Eric
Published: December 2020

What is the most effective way of determining causal processes involving social networks? Many, if not most, network researchers would argue that networks have a causal impact on individual and collective outcomes, but identifying causal relationships in networks is notoriously challenging. This chapter provides an overview of experimental designs and gives several examples of how experimental methods can be employed in social network research. Experiments provide unsurpassed certainty in causal identification by allowing the researcher to control all aspects of the process while in many cases substantially reducing data collection costs. Moreover, with the aid of computers, the internet, and a little creativity, it is often possible to collect highly reliable data from online samples with the aid of crowdsourcing services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. With the aid of these tools, the opportunities have never been better for showing the causal relevance of network structures.
Dyadic, Nodal, and Group-Level Approaches to Study the Antecedents and Consequences of Networks
Authors: Agneessens Filip
Published: December 2020

Social network analysis encompasses a variety of methods to study the social relations and social interactions between individual units in a group. This chapter offers an overview of the types of research questions that can be answered with social network analysis and discusses appropriate statistical methods and network sampling approaches to answer such questions. Six basic types of models are identified, based on two criteria: (1) whether the researchers are interested in the antecedents of networks and/or their consequences and (2) the appropriate level of analysis, in particular the dyadic, nodal, or group level. Extensions and variations of these six basic models are discussed, for example models where networks take on the role of mediator or moderator, as well as models that incorporate multiple levels of analysis and models that integrate network antecedents and network consequences simultaneously.
Causal Inference for Social Network Analysis
Authors: Frank Kenneth A. , Xu Ran
Published: December 2020

Causal inference in any science is about differentiating among alternative explanations. To discern among these explanations one needs good theory, good data, and models that can support scientific discourse about the mechanisms of an effect. This chapter delineates how this general process can be contextualized to make causal inferences for social network analysis. Specifically, the chapter focuses on two fundamental processes associated with networks: the influence of network members on one’s belief or behavior, and the selection of network members with whom to establish a tie. The chapter discusses how these two different yet intertwined processes create challenges for causal inferences, and possible approaches and techniques that can be undertaken to mitigate potential bias. Finally, given the almost inevitable debates about causal inferences for social network analysis, the chapter implores network scientists to use transparent scientific models and sensitivity analysis to inform the discourse for sense-making by research communities and practitioners.
Networks, Kin, and Social Support
Authors: Gauthier G. Robin
Published: December 2020

Family relationships and the emotional and instrumental exchanges embedded within them are among the most important sources of social support available to individuals throughout the life course. This chapter provides an overview of three approaches to family research that conceptualize families as networks. The basic idea throughout the chapter is that family structure is not a sufficient proxy for a person’s access to social support, but network approaches offer a potential solution. First, the chapter discusses approaches that render the language of families as systems into configurations of network structures, with a focus on how to measure the capacity for social support embedded within them. The discussion then turns to research that employs a more inclusive understanding of family, widening the definition of what “counts” as kin. The chapter ends with a discussion of a new approach to measuring family relationships rooted in a network theory of social roles.
Maps of Science, Technology, and Education
Authors: Börner Katy
Published: December 2020

For centuries, cartographic maps of earth and water have guided human exploration. They have marked the border between the known and the unknown, firing the imagination and fueling the desire for new knowledge and new experience. Today, science maps serve as visual interfaces to immense amounts of data, depicting people, objects, and their (social) relationships in ways that allow us to effectively discern apparent outliers, clusters, and trends. This chapter motivates and exemplifies the general process by which maps of science, technology, and education are created. It uses a theoretical visualization framework to review and compare different maps and the data mining and visualization workflows used to create them. It also showcases the value of (interactive) data visualizations to make data-driven decisions.
Network Visualization
Authors: Moody James , Light Ryan
Published: December 2020

This chapter provides an overview of social network visualization. Network analysis encourages the visual display of complex information, but effective network diagrams, like other data visualizations, result from several best practices. After a brief history of network visualization, the chapter outlines several of those practices. It highlights the role that network visualizations play as heuristics for making sense of networked data and translating complicated social relationships, such as those that are dynamic, into more comprehensible structures. The goal in this chapter is to help identify the methods underlying network visualization with an eye toward helping users produce more effective figures.
Networks and Neo-Structural Sociology
Authors: Lazega Emmanuel
Published: December 2020

This chapter introduces a neo-structural theoretical framework in sociology. It shows how social and organizational network analyses help explore the use of personalized relationships for management of cooperation dilemmas. Notions and measurements of relational infrastructures show how members navigate social processes (including solidarity, control regulation, and learning) to transform them into social capital of their collective. Focus on regulation helps develop a neo-structural institutionalism, tracking, for example, institutional entrepreneurs with high, heterogeneous and inconsistent forms of social status, who punch above their weight in normative controversies by exploiting oppositional solidarities and rhetorics of sacrifice. This framework leads to new examination of social inequalities by introducing dynamic and multilevel relational infrastructures, with notions such as organizational stratigraphy, dynamic invariants, multilevel status of vertical linchpins, intermediary-level social niches, and synchronization costs.
Deuteronomy, Hosea, and the Theory of Northern Origins
Authors: Arnold Bill T.
Published: December 2020

Deuteronomy appears to share numerous thematic and phraseological connections with the book of Hosea from the eighth century bce. Investigation of these connections during the early twentieth century settled upon a scholarly consensus, which has broken down in more recent work. Related to this question is the possibility of northern origins of Deuteronomy—as a whole, or more likely, in an early proto-Deuteronomy legal core. This chapter surveys the history of the investigation leading up to the current impasse and offers a reexamination of the problem from the standpoint of one passage in Hosea.
The Impact of Adam and Eve on Popular Culture’s Understandings of Women’s Roles and Evolution
Authors: Sanders Theresa M.
Published: December 2020

This chapter looks at two areas of popular culture that frequently refer to Adam and Eve: society’s ongoing rethinking of the role of women and the dispute between evolutionary biologists and creationists. Movies like Fig Leaves (1926) and Adam’s Rib (1949) illustrate how contentious the “battle of the sexes” can be. These movies use Adam and Eve as shorthand for “man” and “woman” and avoid coming to any definitive conclusions about proper gender roles. Regarding the debate between evolution and creationism, the chapter explores the Creation Museum in Kentucky and the 2014 debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. Both Nye and Ham attempted to integrate faith with knowledge, mirroring the story of Eden itself.
The Afterlife in the Bible and Popular Culture
Authors: Garrett Greg
Published: December 2020

This article explores beliefs about the afterlife and how they are informed by religious and cultural narratives. If the Bible contains little definite information about Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, then how is it that so many of us are able to readily envision them? The scattered information about the afterlife from religious texts is supplemented by our reading, viewing, and consumption of other forms of culture. Stories of the afterlife and of angels, demons, ghosts, vampires, and zombies remain popular. Perhaps more important, stories of the afterlife are often used as ways to shape stories about this life, adding resonance to narratives from Batman to Harry Potter by appropriating or echoing the powerful plots, themes, and characters of the afterlife. Thus even a reader or viewer who does not believe in the dogma of Purgatory may be powerfully affected by stories using the trope of Purgatory.
Moses and Popular Culture
Authors: Schearing Linda S.
Published: December 2020

The story of Moses occurs in a plethora of popular culture mediums (fiction, songs, films, television, video games, comics, digital internet sources, etc.). This essay examines three themes in which Moses as a cultural artifact plays a crucial role in contemporary popular culture: visualizing Moses (Moses in film), learning from Moses (Moses as metaphor or analogy), and laughing at or with Moses (Moses in humor). Such a survey shows graphically the elasticity of Moses as a multivalent cultural artifact that has both influenced and continues to influence American culture. Indeed, while some extract religious meaning from the Moses story, others see parallels between Moses’ struggles and their own.
Improvising on the Canon through Jazz Music and Biblical Interpretation in American Popular Culture
Authors: Moss Andrew
Published: December 2020

The chapter explores the resonances of jazz music, artistry and artists with biblical allusion and interpretation. It outlines the role that jazz played in American popular culture with reference to African American culture and the development of jazz from the American spirituals tradition. It examines representations of the Bible in jazz works by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson, and Ed Summerlin, including exploring the genre of “sacred jazz.” It moves from an exegetical analysis of jazz works in relation to the biblical text to a broader theological interpretation of biblical themes in improvisation. Drawing on Philip Bohlman’s analysis of music cultures, it articulates how improvisation shapes the cultural and religious identity of jazz music. Using the examples of John Coltrane and Sun Ra it argues that contemporary discussions of human freedom, liberation, and constraint are resourceful methodological tools for current biblical interpretations of jazz music.
How American Newspaper Comic Strips Portray God, Angels, and Humans
Authors: Greenspoon Leonard
Published: December 2020

The comic strip as a mainstay of print and more recently online media is an American invention that began its development in the last decades of the 1800s. For many decades in the mid-twentieth century, comic strips were among the most widely disseminated forms of popular culture. With their succession of panels, pictures, and pithy perspectives, comics have come to cover an array of topics, including religion. This chapter looks at how the Bible (Old and New Testament) figures in comic strips, focusing specifically on three areas: the depiction of the divine, renderings of specific biblical texts, and how comic strips can function as sites in which religious identity and controversies play out. Relevant examples are drawn from several dozen strips. Special attention is also paid to a few, like Peanuts and BC, in which biblical imagery, ideology, and idiom are characteristically portrayed in distinctive ways.
Theme Parks
Authors: Bielo James S.
Published: December 2020

This chapter examines the phenomenon of biblically inspired theme parks. Like Disney and other variants, biblical theme parks create experiential portals to other lifeworlds. They imagine, materialize, and choreograph stories from Christians’ sacred texts in order to heighten visitors’ relation of intimacy with scripture by conjuring particular, ideologically charged scriptural pasts. To illustrate this argument, the chapter outlines the history of the modern theme park and presents a case study analysis of a creationist theme park in the US state of Kentucky: Ark Encounter. Ethnographic work with park designers and participant observation at the park demonstrates how this site of religious tourism mobilizes strategies and imperatives of immersion that are resonant with the culture of entertainment more broadly.
Touring Creation Museums, Featuring Dinosaurs in Eden, Philandering Aliens, and the Flood That Changed Molecular Reality!
Authors: Ziegler Valarie H.
Published: December 2020

This chapter describes creation museums as alternative natural history museums that replace evolutionary theory with young-earth creationism, which holds, first, that Genesis 1 depicts God creating the earth and all life forms less than ten thousand years ago, and, second, that Noah’s catastrophic worldwide flood (Genesis 6–9) established the earth’s present topology and fossil record approximately four thousand years ago. Creation museums claim to interpret the Bible as literal history and contend that a careful study of flood geology will prove the truth of the Bible. An examination of the Ark Encounter, the spectacular creation museum of Answers in Genesis, reveals that the exhibits routinely supersede scripture with the wholesale fabrication of historical information. For young-earth creationists, nevertheless, the museum simply feels true and functions as a pilgrimage site.
The Ten Commandments, Postcards, and Methodological Issues and Opportunities
Authors: Langston Scott M.
Published: December 2020

Understanding the relationship between the Bible and popular culture requires a multidimensional approach that recognizes and integrates the various factors involved in particular uses of the Bible. Rather than studying these features in isolation from each other, focusing on their dynamic interplay demonstrates how biblical texts function as but one of many components in larger cultural productions. Furthermore, it shows how popular culture can act as a filter that selects and excludes elements of a biblical text for its own purposes, while transforming the text’s meanings. Popular uses of the Bible frequently reflect keen insight into biblical texts and often create innovative readings that go beyond academic methodologies, purposes, and abilities. Scholars therefore can learn much about the Bible from popular culture. Gilded Age and Progressive Era picture postcards of the Ten Commandments reflect this interplay, illustrating how factors such as capitalism, Victorian gender norms, American Protestant Christianity, and American exceptionalism combined to shape biblical expressions and uses.
Nicolas Roeg’s Retelling of Judges 16 in Samson and Delilah (1996)
Authors: Blyth Caroline
Published: December 2020

This chapter considers popular understandings of Samson and Delilah’s relationship in Judges 16, arguing that readers’ interpretations of this relationship are often guided by the discourses, beliefs, and ideologies dominant within their own sociocultural context. The chapter first offers an overview of some common interpretive traditions surrounding this biblical story, which appear to draw upon those familiar tropes of feminine treachery and masculine vulnerability. Specifically, it suggests that interpreters’ reading strategies for the Judges 16 text are constantly negotiated and shaped by readers’ own heteronormative assumptions and discourses of gender and sexuality. In the subsequent section, the chapter focuses on a cultural retelling of this biblical story—Nicolas Roeg’s 1996 movie, Samson and Delilah—and considers the ways that this contemporary cultural text likewise employs these same tropes, imbued with the cultural flavors of the time, to offer a portrayal of Delilah as a postfeminist femme fatale whose erotic allure proved too hot to handle for “new man” Samson. Considering interpretive and cultural afterlives side by side, the chapter demonstrates the complexities of the reading process and the multiple threads—those sociocultural discourses, ideologies, and trends—that occupy and direct readers’ interpretations of the biblical text.
David and Bathsheba in Children’s Bibles and Adult Novels
Authors: Gunn David M.
Published: December 2020

The chapter traces the story of David and Bathsheba in two forms of popular writing: children’s Bibles and Bible-based novels for adults. An account of the ubiquity of children’s Bibles in American life since the mid-nineteenth century is followed by brief surveys of recent scholarship on both the children’s and adults’ genres. The main body of the work traces changing ways this story of sex and murder has been presented to children while preserving a favorable view of David and the shifting treatments by novelists, leading toward both romance and sardonic irreverence, with Bathsheba emerging as a subject in her own right especially since the 1980s.
Jesus and Postsoul Satire on the Small Screen
Authors: Thurman Eric
Published: December 2020

This essay explores how Aaron McGruder’s television show Black Jesus uses satire to critique constructions of race and religion in twenty-first-century America. It begins with an overview of representations of Jesus in popular media, highlighting both the dominant convention of depicting Jesus as white and the increasing racial diversity of representations in pop culture artifacts. The essay suggests that McGruder’s show is best understood as an example of postsoul satire, that is, forms of comedy produced by African American humorists that target stereotypes within black culture as well as the persistence of white racism. To support this claim, the essay discusses how the show’s humor satirizes white-dominated society, including representations of a white Jesus, as well as the ideals of black masculinity expressed in hip-hop culture and gangsta rap. The essay concludes by situating McGruder’s satire in the context of antiracist work by Black Lives Matter activists.
Creation in American Popular Culture
Authors: McGrath James F.
Published: December 2020

The biblical creation accounts have always held the interest of interpreters, but during the history of the United States, major social and scientific changes have framed and profoundly influenced interpretations. Study of the reception history of the early chapters of Genesis provides ample illustration of the mutual interplay of influence between scriptural text and culture, artist and consumer, science and society, in a tangled web whose threads help us to understand our history and ultimately ourselves, as well as hopefully the texts in Genesis. There is benefit to focusing on music, television, film, and visual art that engages with the text of Genesis as well as with controversies about those stories at the divergence between those sacred texts as traditionally understood and aspects of modern life including (but not limited to) the natural sciences. In doing so we can obtain a clearer picture of the cultural impact and importance of Genesis and issues surrounding its interpretation than is easily accessible through a direct look at debates about either the text or modern science. The controversies themselves are often so entangled and heated as to thwart attempts at analysis. The ripples of broader cultural impact on the arts, and in genres of storytelling such as science fiction, illuminate the bigger picture as well as clarifying what aspects of the interpretation of these texts persist in driving controversy and maintaining the attention of North American culture in particular.
Property in Human Body Parts
Authors: Pila Justine
Published: December 2020

This chapter surveys the current legal position concerning property in bodies and bodily materials. Of especial relevance in the current age of advanced genetic and other bio technologies, it looks beyond property in bodies and their materials ‘as such’ to consider also (a) the availability of rights of personal and intellectual property in objects incorporating or derived from them, and (b) the reliance on quasi-property rights of possession and consent to regulate the storage and use of corpses and detached bodily materials, including so-called ‘bio-specimens’. Reasoning from first principles, it highlights the practical and conceptual, as well as the political and philosophical, difficulties in this area, along with certain differences in the regulatory approach of European and US authorities. By way of conclusion, it proposes the law of authors’ and inventors’ rights as simultaneously offering a cautionary tale to those who would extend the reach of property even further than it extends currently and ideas for exploiting the malleability of the ‘property’ concept to manage the risks of extending it.
Temporality of Authoritarian Regimes
Authors: Libman Alexander
Published: December 2020

The chapter surveys the existing research in political science and other social science disciplines investigating the temporal dynamics of authoritarian regimes. The chapter’s primary focus is on the incremental changes occurring in autocracies between their emergence and collapse, which has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature so far. The chapter looks, in particular, at the evolution of authoritarian regimes toward individual or collective rule; at the regime cycles, caused, for example, by authoritarian elections; and at succession crises associated with death or resignation of leaders. Furthermore, it addresses the question of whether authoritarian regimes are better able to implement long-term and future-oriented policies than democracies. The chapter identifies a number of gaps in the literature on authoritarian dynamics relevant to future research.
Humanism in Africa
Authors: Masolo D. A.
Published: December 2020

This chapter shows that the idea of humanism in contemporary African thought takes as its backdrop the historical interaction between Africa and foreign cultural and political invasions of the continent since the Middle Ages. Christianity and Islam, before European political invasion, introduced novel concepts and values of the human person and human life, introducing with them new political and social concepts and structures. The emerging synchrony and sometimes tensions between these and indigenous African worldviews have seen African philosophers and political visionaries reaching out to indigenous African modes of thought, whether secular or with some supernatural inclinations, as reservoirs of better concepts of human nature that will heal a world broken by unsound concepts of human nature that not only resulted in unsound epistemological and other philosophical theories, but also produced the injustices of domination, racism, and inequality across the globe. Grounded in the idea of the relational nature of humans among themselves and with nature, African philosophers and thinkers have argued that the well-being of human and non-human reality depends on developing and defending the values of mutual dependency.
Coloniality, Racialization, and Epistemicide in African Youth Mobilities
Authors: Kalemba Joshua , Farrugia David
Published: December 2020

This essay explores the experiences of Black African youth migrating to and working in an Australian regional town using the concepts of epistemicide and coloniality of labor. Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with twenty Black African youth in Australia, colonial violence is highlighted by demonstrating how these young people negotiate Australia’s immigration regime which seeks to produce docile, colonial subjects of value to the Australian national labour force. This essay argues that aspects of epistemicide are enacted when young immigrants are required to position themselves as desirable residents under terms that eliminate their existing ways of knowing themselves and the world. Meanwhile they occupy devalorized positions critical to economic transformations taking place because of deindustrialization. Conclusions reflect on the value of producing knowledge from African youths’ position as a critical step toward uncovering colonial violence and realizing a decolonized Youth Studies.
Ontological Well-being and the Effects of Race in South Africa
Authors: Soudien Crain
Published: December 2020

The concept of ontological insecurity draws attention to uncertainty, instability, and threats to autonomy, as these relate to people’s identities. It has connections to the idea of practical consciousness or the cognitive and emotive anchors that enable people to feel secure. The experience of racism has important implications for ontological insecurity. Racism as an experience profoundly dehumanizes a person. Despite the multiple affinities ontology has with questions of race and inequality, the idea of ontological insecurity has not been used widely in discussions of social difference. The concept can help explore the effects of prejudice and discrimination as they relate to a person or group’s whole sense of being. These ideas are used to analyze data from the South African Social Attitudes Surveys conducted between 2003 and 2016. In the surveys young South Africans report feelings of dampened capacity—a diminishing of their self-confidence. Race was a factor in these feelings; however, it was not determinative in a totalizing sense.
The Unfinished Emancipation of Egyptian Youth in the 2011 Uprising
Authors: El Naggare Amani
Published: December 2020

This essay explores how emotions, understood as social rather than individual phenomena, catalyze or suppress new youth-led group identities in the second phase of decolonial emancipation. Decolonial emancipation is understood as a long process that begins with national liberation from colonial oppression and continues, into a second phase, as independent nations experiment with forms of self-actualization. Egyptian youths’ aspirations, actions, and attempts to realize a second phase of decolonial emancipation are studied through two key events: the 2011 mass uprising that centered on Tahrir Square and which prized open the Egyptian political sphere, and the 2013 military intervention which curtailed full emancipation. Emotions as social phenomena were fundamental to youth emancipation in the period 2011–2013, catalyzing historical momentum for youth to imagine a different society through a form of enlightenment, but also stalling the revolution through social and historical trauma and misplaced trust.
Youth, Social Contracting, and the Postcolony
Authors: Everatt David
Published: December 2020

Social contracts are concerned with the legitimacy of the state over the individual. The social contract offers mutual benefit and reciprocal obligation and is intrinsic to liberalism’s assertion that freedom is normative and encroaching on freedom requires justification. The social contract is both a philosophical idea and a toolkit for defusing conflict and tying participants to core liberal values. Talk of new social contracts, including intergenerational contracts, focus on maintaining a peaceful status quo, not transcending it. For the Global South in general, and youth in particular, the experience is more contract and less social. There seems little opportunity for southern youth to move from the margins to center stage, mimicking the inability of the Global South to do the same. Southern youth bear the brunt of limited economic opportunities, precarious employment, inequality, racism, and violence, compounding their marginalized place in society. What value can social contracting play beyond a short-term band-aid, unless it incorporates a fundamental rupture with the past?
Intersectionality, Black Youth, and Political Activism
Authors: Collins Patricia Hill
Published: December 2020

For youth who are Black, Indigenous, female, or poor, coming of age within societies characterized by social inequalities presents special challenges. Yet despite the significance of being young within socially unjust settings, age as a category of analysis remains undertheorized within studies of political activism. This essay therefore draws upon intersectionality and generational analyses as two useful and underutilized approaches for analyzing the political agency of Black youth in the United States with implications for Black youth more globally. Intersectional analyses of race, class, gender, and sexuality as systems of power help explain how and why intersecting oppressions fall more heavily on young people who are multiply disadvantaged within these systems of power. Generational analysis suggests that people who share similar experiences when they are young, especially if such experiences have a direct impact on their lives, develop a generational sensibility that may shape their political consciousness and behavior. Together, intersectionality and generational analyses lay a foundation for examining youth activism as essential to understanding how young people resist intersecting oppressions of racism, heteropatriarchy, class exploitation, and colonialism.
Islam, Nationalism, and Democracy in AsiaNations under Gods or Gods under Nations?
Authors: Tudor Maya
Published: December 2020

Islam is no more dangerous to democracy than any other religion. This article elaborates this argument by showing how the varying centrality of religious identity in founding nationalisms has influenced democratic development in the three Asian countries with the largest Muslim populations in the world. In Pakistan, a fusing of the majority religion with national identity at the country’s founding hindered the consolidation and endurance of democracy, both because religious leaders gained broad powers for undermining minority rights and because the ideas for legitimating second-class status for minorities gained broad acceptance. In Indonesia and India, where the founding national identity was clearly separated from the religion of the majority, these deeply religious societies managed to create and maintain democracies. It is the closeness of association between religion and national identity that threatens democracy.
Military Politics in Muslim Societies
Authors: Lotito Nicholas J.
Published: December 2020

This article explores the role of the military in perpetuating authoritarianism in the Muslim world. Using cross-national data, the article demonstrates that military repression of large-scale protests has been more likely in Muslim-majority states than elsewhere. It offers three explanations for violent military responses to protests: chronic insecurity and political violence, exceptionally high levels of foreign military assistance, and military organizational cultures that favor authoritarian responses to unrest. The article finds no support for claims that Islam as a culture or religion has any systematic effect on military behavior. Several cases of successful democratization in the region demonstrate that authoritarianism is not an immutable feature of Muslim-majority societies.
Lifelong Learning for Professional Survival
Authors: Doesschate Philip C.
Published: December 2020

Adjusting to change can be difficult for anyone. A commitment to continuous learning can help in coping with change. This chapter presents a picture of real lifelong learning in a field that has undergone dramatic changes. The author, Philip Doesschate, has had wide-ranging experience in the information technology field over almost five decades. As he recalls his career accomplishments and challenges, he identifies a set of personal life lessons from his work in this rapidly changing field. During his career, Doesschate has worked in numerous roles, industries, and specialties, on projects of small to significant size, using many different computer languages, operating systems, application frameworks, architectures, application packages, and analytical tools. The lessons illustrate issues not only of staying current but also of mastering new approaches as they evolve to meet customer needs and expectations.
Units and Methods of Comparison
Authors: D’Alberti Marco
Published: December 2020

This chapter presents an historical analysis of the changes of legal systems and comparative approaches in order to examine the units and methods of comparison in administrative law. It mainly deals with France, Great Britain, the US, and Italy, with some hints at other national legal systems. The chapter also pays attention to the supranational legal context—mainly European Union (EU) law and global law—which has expanded since the 1990s. As the chapter shows, comparison concerning these legal orders has significantly changed over time due to their transformations. At the same time, comparison has influenced those changes.
Parliamentary Regimes
Authors: Ip Eric C.
Published: December 2020

This chapter focuses on parliamentary regimes. Parliamentarism, in its various forms, has the distinction of being the most widespread type of democratic government in the world. The chapter recounts the origins of parliamentary government in England, the cradle whence it was adopted and modified, in many different ways, in the rest of Europe, and was exported in tandem with the British Empire’s expansion. It next contrasts parliamentarism with presidentialism, highlighting the higher levels of executive-legislative comity in the former, and showing that the most consequential function of legislative assemblies under parliamentarism is not to legislate or even to scrutinize, but to make or break governments, which are typified by a countervailing power to convene or dissolve assemblies. The chapter then underscores the reality that parliamentary systems are not monolithic. It exhibits the variation and diversity in the universe of parliamentary regimes in the provisions for the head of state, the head of government and the cabinet, parties and elections, parliamentary control of government, and judicial review of administrative action. Finally, it concludes with a summary of major findings.
Presidential Regimes
Authors: Bocksang Hola Gabriel
Published: December 2020

This chapter focuses on the concept, architecture, and control of presidential regimes from the perspective of comparative administrative law, acknowledging that such an analysis is only possible with support of national administrative law, constitutional law, and political science. It first examines the essential premises of the nature of a presidential regime. What is called by this name is essentially a modern construction, built on an essential separation of functions and a complex of relationships woven among them. Next, the chapter deals with the architecture of administration in presidential regimes. Various perspectives are possible. Here, three will be considered: generative, governmental, and organizational. Lastly, the chapter discusses administrative control in presidential regimes—a crucial issue for comparative administrative law.
Authoritarian Regimes
Authors: Yap Po Jen
Published: December 2020

This chapter examines authoritarian regimes in relation to the configuration of political power/parties that is central to how autocracy is practised and sustained within the respective constitutional system. First, it discusses dominant party democracies—semi-democratic regimes that have been ruled by the same dominant political party or coalition since the nation’s independence or transition to a new constitutional system. Next, the chapter explores independent military democracies. In such democracies, the military is an independent branch of government and is not under the firm control of the civilian government. Finally, there are the communist regimes, where elections are a sham, and all levers of state power—the executive, the legislature, the military, and the judiciary—are subjected to the singular control of the country’s Communist Party. These three regime types are not exhaustive of all the authoritarian configurations of power in the world, but they are the predominant ones in Asia, from which this chapter’s case studies are drawn.
Administrative Power
Authors: Biddulph Sarah
Published: December 2020

This chapter compares the respective roles of administrative institutions and administrative power on the one hand, and other governmental institutions and powers on the other, in dealing with drug use, possession, and trafficking in China and Victoria (Australia). Comparison of these two jurisdictions provides both opportunities and challenges. Though one is a nation-state, the other a sub-national state within a federation, both have jurisdiction to regulate drug use-related harms and offending. There is thus comparability in terms of jurisdiction. More importantly, the opportunities and challenges for comparison stem from the divergence in fundamental political system; one authoritarian and one liberal democratic, and the nature of the relationship between state and citizen that flows from this. This divergence has implications for selection of both comparative methodology and the subject matter of comparison.
The Rule of Law
Authors: Napolitano Giulio
Published: December 2020

This chapter focuses on the rule of law dimensions that are most relevant to administrative law. While the rule of law is an old ideal, interest in it has gained renewed energy in recent years as a fundamental standard for evaluating a wide variety of contemporary institutional arrangements and legal regulations. As such, the chapter first discusses the traditional opposition between the rule of law and administrative law and its revival. It then analyses the main manifestations of the rule of law in contemporary administrative law. Thereafter, the protection of the rule of law in privatized and contracted out areas are examined. Finally, this chapter sheds light on the rule of law in European and global administrative law.