bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Creativity and Mental Health
Authors: Sawyer R. Keith , Henriksen Danah
Published: December 2023

This chapter reviews research on two distinct conceptions of human creativity and mental health. On one hand, humanist psychologists argue that creativity is the peak of human experience and contributes to positive mental health. On the other hand, there exist common assumptions about a link between creativity and mental illness. Exploring those two conceptions (well-being vs. illness) in turn, the chapter looks at ideas, beliefs, and evidence on creativity and mental health. The first half of the chapter reviews studies examining the link between creativity and well-being (e.g., art therapy, flow experiences, mindfulness, meditation, healing, mental or physical wellness, PTSD vs. post-traumatic growth). In the second half, it reviews research on creativity and mental illness (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychoticism, schizotypal, personality issues, ADHD, and other areas). It concludes with an assessment about what research reveals about creativity and mental health.
Culture and Creativity
Authors: Sawyer R. Keith , Henriksen Danah
Published: December 2023

This chapter reviews studies of cultural differences in creativity. These studies are associated with anthropologists who use ethnographic methods. Research shows that creativity and conceptions of creativity vary dramatically from culture to culture. This chapter challenges the assumed universality of the Western cultural model of creativity that was first presented in Chapter 1. The imposition by Westerners of this cultural model on non-Western culture resulted in the now-debunked claim that non-Western art is “primitive” or is only “craft,” somehow lesser than Western art. The core of the chapter examines how members of different cultures have very different conceptions of what creativity is, who is creative, and what traits are associated with creativity. This review includes studies of the contrast between creativity as originality and change, versus creativity as the continuation and elaboration of tradition.
Conclusion
Authors: Sawyer R. Keith , Henriksen Danah
Published: December 2023

This chapter provides a brief summary of the book. The chapter begins by discussing new phenomena that warrant more research, such as remixes, social innovation, and internet-enabled creativity. Other possible research topics for the future include including creativity assessment, self-beliefs and well being, cultural differences, technology, and artificial intelligence.. The chapter concludes by advocating for a sociocultural and interdisciplinary approach to research—an approach that brings together psychologists who study individuals, as well as researchers who study groups and organizations using a sociocultural approach, including sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, and business organization scholars.
Conclusion
Authors: Schwenck Anna
Published: December 2023

The conclusion situates the book’s analyses of flexible authoritarianism within the new politico-economic constellations of Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine. Many observers have assumed that the Russian government would primarily direct its authoritarian aggression toward members of the opposition, avoiding military escalations and wars that put the domestic economy at risk. The notion of flexible authoritarianism treats authoritarian-neotraditional restructuring and neoliberal-economic modernization as two sides of the same coin, and thereby provides a lens through which the twenty years leading up to the war can be reinterpreted. It further discusses how a differentiation between support for the government and support for the regime, with the latter undergirding loyalty among the country’s up-and-coming youth, might illuminate why other Russian citizens struggle to relate their daily criticisms of social ills to the reality of an ongoing war.
Corpus Building
Authors: Stoltz Dustin S. , Taylor Marshall A.
Published: December 2023

Cartography involves establishing the boundaries around the do- main or terrain to be mapped. What is determined to be inside and out- side of the mapping space determines not only what is to be represented but also what it means. Before any analysis can take place, we must bound text. That is, we must determine which texts we will include and which we will exclude, and importantly, how it is a given text is available for us to select at all. In this chapter, we consider the unique difficulties that text analysts face when building a corpus.
Math Basics
Authors: Stoltz Dustin S. , Taylor Marshall A.
Published: December 2023

Computational text analysis involves math. No surprises there! Luckily, a little math goes a long way. Below is an overview of some mathematical concepts and measures we’ll use. Anyone with at least high school math and this chapter should be able to complete the analyses in this book. This chapter is an introduction, refresher, and cheatsheet we’ll continually reference.
Acquiring Text
Authors: Stoltz Dustin S. , Taylor Marshall A.
Published: December 2023

Just as any place can be mapped, we can use any piece of text: interviews, fieldnotes, archival documents, webpages, books, magazines, speeches, journal articles, social media posts, meeting minutes, a collection of notes passed in class - any text will do. But, mapping a text begins, of course, with the acquisition of text. This chapter considers locating texts, collecting them, and making them useable in R. We’ll end the chapter by considering the ethical implications of collecting these data.
Core Inductive
Authors: Stoltz Dustin S. , Taylor Marshall A.
Published: December 2023

Inductive approaches find patterns in text, just like deductive approaches. However, we now allow the patterns to show themselves. This chapter reviews some core inductive approaches in computational text analysis. We start with finding document similarities. We then move to clustering documents and then discuss a popular family of inductive approaches called topic modeling.
Posttraumatic Stress in Physical Illness
Authors: Chung Man Cheung
Published: December 2023

Posttraumatic stress in physical illness examines posttraumatic stress reactions and psychiatric comorbidity in people suffering from physical illnesses such as myocardial infarction, cancer, HIV, vascular and neurological disease, respiratory disease and autoimmune disease. The book begins with a chapter on the debates surrounding the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), which raises awareness that studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in physical illnesses are based on a controversial diagnostic system. Research findings on the prevalence, risk factors and psychological interventions for PTSD in relation to the above-mentioned diseases are discussed. This relationship between PTSD and diseases needs to be conceptualised in terms of the impact of PTSD as a result of past trauma on the severity of the disease and PTSD as a result of the disease itself. While most of the evidence focuses on the psychopathological or trauma aspect of the illnesses, a large proportion of studies focus on posttraumatic growth. Similarly, while many studies focus on the patients or survivors themselves, a large proportion of them also examine the psychological reactions of their loved ones. This book highlights the knowledge gaps in existing research and how the risk factors examined in this book can be integrated into a theoretical model for future study.
Emerging Zoonotic and Wildlife Pathogens
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

This accessible book describes emerging infectious diseases that affect humans, including rabies, Ebola virus, Lyme disease, bubonic plague, and of course, COVID-19. These case studies span the entire range of zoonotic disease emergence pathways, from sheep testicles in the western USA to butchered bush rats in Vietnam! The book also covers emerging infectious diseases in wildlife, such as Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease, white nose syndrome, mange, and musk ox lungworm. Readers will become familiar with the basic tools and concepts of outbreak epidemiology (e.g. epidemic curves, disease surveillance), disease ecology and the global drivers of pathogen emergence (e.g. globalization, climate change, land-use change), and disease control and conservation interventions (e.g. vaccination, culling). Despite a recent explosion of courses on the topic and a recent viral pandemic, this is the first textbook to focus on pathogen spillover ecologyat the human–wildlife interface. Emerging Zoonotic and Wildlife Pathogens serves as an introduction to this multidisciplinary field for upper-level undergraduate students, graduate students, and working professionals interested in disease ecology, veterinary epidemiology, public health, and conservation.
Spillover and emerging infectious diseases
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

Emerging infectious diseases occur when pathogens spread to new hosts or new geographic areas, or when an existing infectious disease suddenly becomes more prevalent or severe. This chapter introduces the processes involved with disease emergence, starting with spillover events, where pathogens jump into unusual hosts. This includes zoonotic pathogens that are transmitted from animals to humans. After spillover to a new host species, a pathogen may dead-end without further transmission. Alternatively, the pathogen might be transmitted further, causing outbreaks that eventually fade out or that erupt into full-blown pandemics. Combining approaches from epidemiology and disease ecology can provide insights into how, why, and when pathogen spillover events occur.
Descriptive epidemiology of disease outbreaks
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

At the beginning of an outbreak, the shape of the epidemic curve can be used to identify potential infection sources (e.g. a common contaminated food source, person-to-person transmission). During this early period, accurate identification of the disease agent is critical, and may be accomplished by clinical diagnoses, PCR or antibody tests. Whatever method is used, interpreting test results and epidemic curves needs to be done with nuance, so that issues associated with missing data or test validity do not obfuscate outbreak patterns. This chapter walks the reader through outbreaks, from the primary case to test surveillance to interpreting initial epidemic curves.
Surveillance
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

To describe disease outbreaks and intervene to prevent transmission, practitioners and decision-makers rely on disease surveillance: the systematic collection and analysis of health data. Surveillance methods can be passive or active, and this chapter describes the strengths and weaknesses of the two methods. Additionally, the chapter overviews the many complications that can arise while collecting and analysing surveillance data, such as how best (or worst) to focus data collection and aggregate data to relevant scales for analyses. The most holistic understanding of emerging infectious diseases may be found by simultaneously collecting data at multiple scales, multiple sites, multiple hosts and vectors, and multiple pathogens.
The environment as a pathogen reservoir
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

Environmental reservoirs are non-living habitats where pathogens spend a portion of their life cycle outside of hosts and vectors and from which they can be transmitted to new hosts. Diseases caused by pathogens with environmental reservoirs are a major source of morbidity and mortality in humans (e.g. major diarrhoeal diseases) and wildlife (e.g. white nose syndrome in bats). A single pathogen may use multiple environmental reservoirs, such as anthrax persisting and being transmitted through soil, bones, plants, and water. And many pathogens may be maintained in both environmental and living reservoirs. When pathogens have persistent environmental reservoirs, it complicates disease control efforts.
Emerging infectious diseases and globalization—travel, trade, and invasive species
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of different countries and regions that exchange goods, services, information, people, and… infectious diseases. When infected people move around the planet, they can spread pathogens to naive populations. People also move pathogens, vectors, and animal hosts around the world, sometimes accidentally (e.g. vector stowaways on ships) and sometimes purposefully (e.g. the pet trade). When a pathogen, vector, or host establishes in region outside its native range and causes harm to native species, it is considered an invasive alien species. There are also invasive species that do not play roles in the life cycles of native pathogens, but which influence disease dynamics through their indirect effects on the disease system.
COVID-19, One Health, and pandemic prevention
Authors: Salkeld Dan , Hopkins Skylar , Hayman David
Published: December 2023

This final chapter of a textbook about emerging infectious diseases reviews lessons learned about pandemics through the lens of COVID-19. The chapter covers the early SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Wuhan City and initial surveillance and control measures, which ultimately did not stop transmission to other cities, and soon after, the entire world. This chapter describes the differences between complex problems and wicked problems and introduces One Health as an interdisciplinary framework for finding and implementing solutions in a world full of complex and wicked infectious disease problems. With this framework in mind, the chapter outlines several priorities for preventing future pandemics.
Introduction
Authors: Apetrei Sarah
Published: December 2023

The Introduction sets out the two questions which the book addresses, and which have engaged historians of the English Revolution: first, how do we understand the origins of radical religious ideas? Second, what accounts for the prominence of women as visionaries and preachers in the period? I examine some of the reports of women’s ministry during the Revolution, with disparate and some new evidence assembled for the first time. I also consider the distinctive nature of the milieu centred on the army preachers, and the extent of its influence. The Introduction then situates the book in relation to both the historiography of radical religion and the historical discussion of women’s writing and activism, and sets out the arguments central to the book about the relationship between theological and gender radicalism.
Salvation
Authors: Apetrei Sarah
Published: December 2023

This chapter focuses on the doctrine of universal salvation in women’s prophetic writings of the 1640s, and argues that gender perspective played a role in the disproportionate appeal of ‘general redemption’, or the final restoration of all things and all souls, among women. Female theologians were pioneers of this doctrine in an inhospitable intellectual climate, to an extent which has been overlooked by historians and theologians alike. The first part of the chapter offers a fresh account of Lady Eleanor Davies as the pioneer of ‘general redemption’ in the 1640s, publicly promoting the doctrine perhaps three years before any male theologian. The second part examines fresh evidence of the doctrine’s prominence among Baptist women, both during and after the period of the Revolution, and shows that maternal sensibilities were connected to the appeal to women.
Mathematical Examiners at Trinity House
Authors: Higgitt Rebekah
Published: December 2023

The early years of the Royal Mathematical School (founded 1673), and its relationship with Trinity House, have been explored in relation to the teaching and examining of mathematics for navigation. However, there has been confusion over who carried out the examinations and little or no consideration of their role. This chapter shows how and when external mathematical examiners came to be employed by Trinity House and tracks the lives and careers of the men who applied for and took on the position in the long eighteenth century. As typical of mathematical practitioners, they built their careers from a range of activities: most were private teachers, several were authors, some had been mariners, while others were computers or astronomical observers. They include individuals who will be well known to historians of science and mathematics, and others who are obscure. Of varying social status, it is difficult to chart a clear pattern of change over time but some are suggested, as are reasons for their decisions to take on the role, revealing networks of patronage, kinship and association among mathematical practitioners in early modern London.
The Evolution of Actuarial Science to 1848
Authors: Bellhouse David R.
Published: December 2023

There were three phases in the evolution of actuarial science in England, culminating in the formation of the Institute of Actuaries in 1848. During the first phase, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, some companies offered life insurance and life annuities. At this time mathematicians were involved in life contingent contracts related to property. It was property valuation that originally inspired the early mathematical development of actuarial science in Britain and Ireland. A general shift to proper actuarial pricing in the insurance and annuity industry did not begin to happen until a crisis occurred in 1771. This was the second phase. Between 1771 and the end of the century, Richard Price and his nephew, William Morgan, laid the mathematical foundations for the sound operation of a life insurance company. The third phase began near the end of the eighteenth century when, with a burgeoning middle class, the demand for life insurance and life annuities soared. The number of life insurance companies grew enormously without being subjected to reasonable regulation and a large fraction of them failed. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a group of mathematicians working as actuaries saw the need for those working in the industry to have proper training and to have the opportunity to exchange ideas and information on a regular basis. In response, the Institute of Actuaries was founded in 1848.
Mathematical Businesses
Authors: Beeley Philip
Published: December 2023

This chapter considers the various meeting points of what at first sight appear to be the quite disparate worlds of academic and practical mathematicians in early modern England. It seeks to show that beneath explicit and largely justified appeals to their intellectual and social distinctness there was a strong sense of co-dependency and often friendship between scholars such as John Wallis, Isaac Newton, and James Gregory on the one side and practitioners and instrument makers such as Michael Dary, Henry Sutton, and John Collins on the other side: a story of detachment and connection. In many respects there was a common sense of purpose as revealed through their exchanges of letters and records of meetings, and as exemplified through the procurement and loan of scarce mathematical books. This sense of purpose was driven in part by a shared awareness that mathematical culture in the British Isles lagged behind that in France, Italy, or the Low Countries. Collins emerges thereby as the central figure. Justifiably seen by contemporaries as ‘England’s Mersenne’, he engaged like no other in the dissemination of mathematical news, attended to the employment interests of contemporary practitioners, and ensured that not a few major publications of academic friends such as Wallis, John Pell, and Isaac Barrow saw the light of day.
Climbing the Social Ladder
Authors: Schneider Ivo
Published: December 2023

Johannes Faulhaber (1580–1635) is one of the most prominent German Rechenmeister. Youngest son of a weaver in Ulm, after an apprenticeship he opened his own German writing and reckoning school in 1600 in Ulm. Ambitious to improve his social standing beyond that of an ordinary Rechenmeister, he followed two strategies: to be acknowledged as a prophet sent in order to communicate God’s will to the world, and, more down to earth, to become known to those in power and eventually to become their counsellor. Even if he never gave up his claim to be a prophet, the negative reaction of Protestant church officials to his ostensibly successful prediction of a comet in 1618 convinced him eventually to give up this way of improving his status. Faulhaber followed the second strategy by constantly expanding his expertise in order to sell his skill and knowledge in an appropriate form on the market for scientific goods. By way of advertising what he had to offer, he took advantage of a predominant contemporary attitude in Germany according to which different-sounding expressions for the same thing could be used to suggest higher value. This is shown, for example, with his first publication of a collection of 160 cubic problems, which led to a conflict with Peter Roth. And on the back of the first years of the Thirty Years’ War he eventually became an expert on fortification, which secured him a corresponding high social position in Ulm.
The Railpolitik
Authors: Wang Yuan
Published: December 2023

With Beijing’s announcement of the ‘going global’ policy in the early 2000s and the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Chinese policy banks and state-owned companies have cooperated with African countries to finance and complete many infrastructure projects. These projects, despite their ‘Chineseness’, demonstrate starkly different development trajectories in different countries. Why do some Chinese-financed and -constructed projects develop better than others? And what explains differential African state effectiveness in public goods delivery? This book traces the process of three Chinese-sponsored railway projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Angola. These serve as lenses to inspect the broader phenomenon of the fast-progressing Sino-African relation and African domestic politics. The book shows that African political championship is the central factor that determines Chinese-sponsored railway outcomes. Contrary to the conventional knowledge that centralized political institutions such as those in the developmental states are more conducive to rulers’ commitment to developmental projects, it finds that political championship can be generated from leaders’ perceived threats of competitive elections in democratic states like Kenya. These Chinese-financed and -constructed projects coincided with African rulers’ strategies for political survival. These projects are therefore instrumentalized politically to demonstrate rulers’ performance legitimacy and fuel their patronage machine. The empirical evidence is collected from extensive field research in Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, and China from 2014 to 2019. Empirical analysis is based on 250 in-depth interviews with African and Chinese government officials, corporate managers, civil society leaders, journalists, citizens, and scholars combined with episodes of participatory observation with Chinese railway contractors in Africa.
The railpolitik
Authors: Wang Yuan
Published: December 2023

Since the state was ‘brought back in’, it has been central in the study of politics. In this process of explaining what states can and cannot do, how well the state does it, and why, researchers have overly concentrated on structural and institutional explanations, and less emphasis has been placed on individual agency of the political leaders. This chapter details the historical-political implications of railway infrastructure in Africa, and lays out this often overlooked factor in state effectiveness of infrastructure delivery from historical to contemporary Africa; that is, the championship of political leaders. It also discusses why Sino-African structural asymmetry and institutional explanations of African bureaucratic capacity fall short in explaining the personalistic and volatile nature of infrastructure delivery and state effectiveness in Africa.
Human Work and Catholic Social Teaching
Authors: Bell Mark
Published: December 2023

This chapter explains the central principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and it explores how they apply to human work. CST is based upon four key principles: the dignity of the human person, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. The belief in human dignity is the bedrock of CST. It inspires CST’s commitment to the ‘dignity of work’, which captures the need for humans to have sufficient opportunities to work and to be able to do so under decent conditions. The ethical significance of work arises from its performance by human persons, as opposed to machines. CST holds that all persons are equal in dignity. A contentious aspect of Church teaching is belief in the complementarity of women and men, which has had implications for understanding their relative roles in performing work. Dignity is understood to have a profound social dimension; relationships with others are central to the flourishing of the human person. The interdependence of humans underpins the other principles. The principles of solidarity and subsidiarity inform the role of the State. It should support organizations in their pursuit of the common good, such as fostering dialogue between trade unions and employers. If, however, the common good cannot be sufficiently achieved by voluntary social action, then it is appropriate for the State to intervene, such as through labour legislation.
‘Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations’
Authors: Cioni Francesca
Published: December 2023

Voices are symbolically present throughout The Temple, where they emphasize humanity and embodied experience, and offer a material connection to the divine. Contemporary treatments of prayer contested the value of ‘vocal’ and ‘mental’ prayer, and physiological texts saw the voice as participating in the work of the spirit, forming a material connection between humanity and God. In Herbert’s verse, he strives for both heavenly articulacy and spiritual experience that transcends the limitations of poetic form. Voices emphasize the vulnerability and strangeness of human experiences of prayer, and point up the problematic materiality of the poetic text. The Temple follows the Book of Common Prayer in its material direction of the praying voice with punctuation and typography; the difficulty of resolving the poetic voice’s troublesome materiality gives figurative and material expression to the self-consciousness difficulty of Herbert’s devotional poetic programme.
Introduction
Authors: Huju Kira
Published: December 2023

The Introduction discusses what happens to our study of global order if it is located in marginal spaces, done in a sociological register, pursued with an intersectional sensibility, and narrated beyond the political confines of liberal internationalism. It introduces the notion of ‘actually existing cosmopolitanism’ and outlines how it matters for our understanding of India’s status in international society and our interpretation of the social hierarchies of global order. The Indian Foreign Service is discussed as a scene of social struggle and as an example of how the postcolonial world learned to live under Western-dominated order. The Introduction moves from cosmopolitanism as a political ethic into a reading of cosmopolitanism as an elite aesthetic. Finally, it places the book in conversation with adjacent literatures and provides summaries of the individual chapters.
World-making
Authors: Huju Kira
Published: December 2023

Chapter 3 asks what kind of world Indian diplomats have envisioned and how they have sought to navigate their place within it. It analyses their deep ambivalence towards the conventions, debates, and hypocrisies of Western-dominated global order, in which the elite factions of the Service partake with a performative fluency but also some resentment at their own desire for mimicry. Indeed, the chapter demonstrates how the cosmopolitan imperative has interfered with India’s efforts at proposing a radically different order, founded on Third World solidarity, anti-imperialism, and a rejection of the very idea of an enlightened elite club governing international society. The chapter also considers the place of caste and race in international society, asking how these fraught categories of identity relate to the dual Indian project of belonging among the exclusive cosmopolitan club and envisioning a more equal world.
Representation
Authors: Huju Kira
Published: December 2023

Chapter 4 uses Indian debates around diplomatic recruitment, promotion, and the so-called ‘democratization’ of the Foreign Service to establish how cosmopolitanism operates domestically as an elite aesthetic. Tying cosmopolitanism to domestic hierarchies, the chapter shows how, instead of transcending private loyalties, as political theory tells us cosmopolitanism does, cosmopolitanism in the Indian diplomatic imagination is stored in an elite habitus and its attendant forms of cultural and social capital. Against the professed ideals of democratization, the chapter shows how the more ‘authentically Indian’ or ‘representative’ diplomats miss out on promotions and prestigious postings, rarely find a place in the existing webs of social capital that reproduce old hierarchies, and fail to fundamentally alter the ideal of a cosmopolitan diplomat, against which officers continue to be measured.
Interregnum
Authors: Huju Kira
Published: December 2023

Chapter 6 considers how the twin transformation of India’s growing global stature in an increasingly ‘post-Western’ world and its changing domestic power constellations are producing what Bourdieu called misfires: occasions on which a dominant habitus has outlived the conditions in which it was originally assembled. The backlash against cosmopolitan elites in Indian political discourse and inside the Service itself must be thought of in this twin context: against a backdrop of global changes on the one hand and shifting political alliances inside India on the other. To this end, the chapter first considers changes brought about by the dawn of an ever-increasingly ‘post-Western’ world in the early twenty-first century, asking whether they could signal the possibility of a more inclusive, democratized understanding of cosmopolitanism, liberated from its earlier colonial confines. It then discusses the influence of Hindu nationalism on the Foreign Service since 2014.
Conclusion
Authors: Vozar Thomas Matthew
Published: December 2023

The conclusion briefly reviews the book’s contributions to Milton criticism, classical reception studies, and the history of ideas. It highlights the bibliographical appendix, which supplies a study of copies of Longinus traced to seventeenth-century private libraries and documents the wide dissemination of several editions among various English book owners before the appearance of Boileau’s 1674 translation, and the textual appendix, which provides an edition of the Lansdowne Longinus, a previously unknown seventeenth-century English translation of the Peri hupsous discovered in a manuscript at the British Library. Finally, it gestures to the importance of Milton’s sublimity for his place in the canon of English literature.
Comparing the Revolution
Authors: Balbi Gabriele
Published: December 2023

This chapter deals with the parallels with past revolutions as well as the idea that the digital revolution is the revolution around which all the present changes revolve. The change wrought by the digital revolution has been compared to that of fire or the book as well as the French or Russian Revolutions, but there is a particularly constant reference to the Industrial Revolution. These parallels are crucial to place the digital revolution “on the shoulders of giants” in order to certify its relevance because of this pedigree. However, the digital revolution is also the revolution of our times and all the other social changes are inevitably influenced by it: think about political uprisings like the Arab Springs (sometimes renamed Twitter or Facebook Revolutions), the green revolution, and the fight for climate change where digital transformation seems destined to play a key role, and finally the COVID-19 pandemic, when the digital revolution literally saved some people’s lives.
Believing in the Revolution
Authors: Balbi Gabriele
Published: December 2023

The fourth and final chapter aims to understand why people believe in the digital revolution almost as if it were a contemporary religion. In fact, it is a quasi-religion because it is often described using sacred and religious metaphors: the protagonists of the digital revolution are gurus, messiahs, and tireless evangelists; the places where the revolution is happening are the meccas towards which we should turn; digital objects are sacred relics and transport us to transcendent realities. And then there are even heretics and infidels who have taken the liberty of opposing the positive effects of digitization, but who very rarely question the revolutionary nature of the process. The quasi-religious character of the digital revolution helps making it even more ideological and uncontestable.
Conclusion
Authors: Balbi Gabriele
Published: December 2023

The conclusion aims to answer two simple questions: who profits from the great tale of the digital revolution? And why does it keep going (or seem to continue with little debate)? In answering the first question, it becomes apparent how the digital revolution has acquired such wide recognition: because it is driven by various converging interests and stakeholders. Politicians, digital companies, academics, journalists, and basically all human beings have embraced the rhetoric of the revolution because it is easy to profess and it can justify all their choices, expenses, and decisions. The second question aims to understand the future of the digital revolution (and related expressions). Not an easy question to answer, but this ideology has been around for decades, does not look as if it will end quickly, and more importantly it doesn’t seem as if there is another ideology on the horizon that can adapt so easily to various cultures and fields of activity and is as engaging as that of the digital revolution.
Introduction
Authors: Landau Ingrid
Published: December 2023

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book and its main arguments. It discusses the rise of human rights due diligence (HRDD) in transnational governance and why this development matters for those concerned with the protection and promotion of workers’ rights in a global economy. It explains how the study builds on existing critiques of HRDD by way of situating the concept within transnational labour governance and evaluating the concept as a tool of transnational labour law. This chapter outlines the socio-legal approach taken, which draws on theories and insights from sociology, international law and politics, and regulation and compliance. It also elaborates on the method used in the study, involving multi-sited fieldwork and analysis of primary and secondary sources. The chapter concludes with an overview of subsequent chapters.
Situating HRDD in Transnational Labour Governance
Authors: Landau Ingrid
Published: December 2023

This chapter presents an overview of the evolution of transnational labour governance in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, emphasising the crowded and contested nature of the regulatory landscape. It then traces the emergence of the concept of human rights due diligence (HRDD), from the failed UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises through to the adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011. It shows that broad-based support for the UNGPs in 2011 did not indicate the resolution of key issues of contention in transnational labour governance. The UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, secured support for the concept by using two devices long familiar to international legal scholars: reframing and strategic ambiguity. Business support for HRDD was generated by reframing human rights in a way that was familiar to, and resonated with, business and by avoiding the imposition of substantive constraints on managerial prerogative. At the same time, however, Ruggie was able to generate support for the concept in the international labour and human rights movements by the use of vague language. Because of this ambiguity, in the eyes of many labour and human rights activists, the concept carried the potential for the further opening up of corporate practices to contestation and political leverage. It also offered a promising channel through which greater accountability of companies for labour rights abuses could be secured in law.
Unpacking HRDD
Authors: Landau Ingrid
Published: December 2023

This chapter lays the basis for subsequent chapters by providing a conceptual analysis of human rights due diligence (HRDD). To understand subsequent contests over the role and status of HRDD in transnational labour governance, it is necessary to unpack the concept at three levels. At the micro level, the concept can be understood as a form of business risk management. At the meso level, HRDD is a novel form of transnational business regulation. At the macro level, HRDD can be understood as an emerging and contested transnational norm. It is suggested that while each of these conceptualisations of HRDD is distinct, the three different levels interact in complex and problematic ways.
Paths Diverge
Authors: Landau Ingrid
Published: December 2023

Informed by insights into the recursive nature of transnational norm elaboration, this chapter examines the legalisation of human rights due diligence (HRDD) at the national and regional levels. It discusses recent HRDD-related statutory initiatives in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states and categorises these laws into two distinct approaches: statutory deference and statutory elaboration. The first approach is found largely in Anglo-Saxon liberal economies, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, and essentially consolidates, rather than challenges, managerial interpretations of HRDD and extant private labour governance. The second approach is found in continental Europe, is broader in scope (ie with respect to the rights covered), and imposes more substantive obligations on companies.
Conclusion
Authors: Landau Ingrid
Published: December 2023

This chapter summarises the key arguments in the book and reflects on future trajectories for human rights due diligence (HRDD). It emphasises that HRDD remains a relatively new concept and that the processes by which the concept is being elaborated upon and legalised at multiple levels continue. There are many aspects of HRDD that merit ongoing scholarly attention and scrutiny. These include quantitative and qualitative analysis of HRDD’s implementation by business and its use by workers, trade unions, and others as a point of leverage through which to contest prevailing business practices and structures. The role and regulation of intermediaries in transnational labour governance is also considered.
Trump as a Change Agent in International Law
Authors: Pollack Mark A
Published: December 2023

Former US President Donald Trump represents the most significant ‘change agent’ in international law in recent decades, withdrawing from and attacking a variety of international agreements. This chapter analyses Trump as a change agent, exploring the nature of his policies and their legacies in the Biden administration. With respect to the former, the chapter argues that Trump represents a ‘hostile’ change agent, seeking to change not the rules of law, but rather the rule of law, replacing multilateral institutions with power-based bargaining. With respect to legacies, it argues that Trump’s attacks effected important changes that became path-dependent, reversible only at a cost to his successor. It explores these arguments through a comparative case study of Trump’s policies in four areas of international trade law: (a) renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); (b) withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership; (c) non-compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules; and (d) paralysis of the WTO Appellate Body.
Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions as Change Agents in International Law
Authors: Reiners Nina
Published: December 2023

This chapter introduces transnational lawmaking coalitions as a path for change in international human rights law. Such coalitions are understood as informal collaborations under a like-minded goal of action, occurring between one or more non-state actors and one or more members of an expert committee, for the purpose of elaborating an interpretation of one (or more) human rights norms. The chapter illustrates the formation and operation of the transnational lawmaking coalition path in two cases of norm development: first, the interpretation of the right to decent working conditions by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and secondly, the extension of the right to life towards abortion by the UN Human Rights Committee. It then demonstrates that NGOs and other human rights advocates likely select the path of change where they already have connections when working towards change in international human rights law.
A Quiet Revolution in the Making? The Changing State Authority in Treaty Interpretation
Authors: Zarbiyev Fuad
Published: December 2023

The joint interpretation of a treaty by its parties has generally been seen as having a conclusive effect. This state of affairs was recently shaken by the International Law Commission in its work on subsequent agreements and subsequent practice. The chapter seeks to account for the traditional authority of joint interpretive agreements and identify what made the approach promoted by the Commission possible. Theorizing authority as a function of attractiveness, it argues that the state authority in treaty interpretation has long enjoyed the advantage of obviousness and persuasiveness in the international legal order, given the state-centric nature of international law, the dominance of intentionalism in treaty interpretation, and the lack of plausible alternatives. The Commission was able to capitalize on various factors challenging that ‘obviousness’ in order to open the black box of the state authority in treaty interpretation.
Brewing up a New Old Germany
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

This chapter charts the remarkable boom of production and consumption in the 1950s and 1960s, detailing how both provincial and national trade organizations embraced community advertising (Gemeinschaftswerbung) programs to help their products thrive in the post-war economy. By the end of the 1960s, beer had become the single most popular beverage in the Federal Republic, with one in four West Germans drinking beer on a daily basis. Brewers were quick to claim that their success evinced a broad national cultural consensus, but closer scrutiny reveals that production and consumption continued to be deeply informed by longer provincial cultures, divisions of socio-economic class, and a demarcation of gendered public and private spheres. This chapter shows how the apolitical façade of quotidian pleasures characteristic of advertising for beer was deeply entwined not only with the “conservative restoration” and stabilization of a conventional gender binary, but also with persistent regional differences and the conspicuous absence of public assessment of Germans’ recent pasts.
Gone Flat?
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

This chapter details crucial shifts in three spheres—capital, regulation, and geopolitics—that transformed how Bavarian brewers and their associates operated on local, national, and global scales. In the case of capital, the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s hollowed out the place-based claims to authenticity by which Munich brewery Löwenbräu had helped shape global conceptions of the German nation. The Bavarian stereotype would persist, but after the 1970s, producers, marketers, and promoters in Bavaria scaled back their promotion of cultural approximation. In the regulatory sphere, the 1970s and 1980s also witnessed the emergence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as the cutting edge of neoliberal European market integration. While West Germans continued to insist on the cultural importance of the Reinheitsgebot, the ECJ defanged it as a market barrier by the end of the 1980s. For West Germans weary of surrogate imports, the Reinheitsgebot became a purely cultural standard—one that symbolized national culture in a supranational economy. Lastly, while the reunification of Germany initially brought Western brewers opportunities for expansion, soon brewers on both sides of the former divide insisted on the importance of a decentralized national industry that adhered to the Reinheitsgebot. Major structural transitions from the 1970s to the 1990s thus took down the scaffolding of explosive economic growth and political division that had fuelled earlier developments, but they did not fundamentally undo the Bavarian influence of decades past.
The Life and Work of James Bradley
Authors: Fisher John
Published: December 2023

James Bradley, once the most celebrated astronomer in Europe, is now an obscure figure, surprising given that he was the first to establish empirically that the Earth was a planet in motion around the Sun. Introduced to the science of positional astronomy by his uncle James Pound, he excelled in his abilities to make precise observations. Mentored by Edmond Halley, he observed Jupiter and its satellites, identifying the gravitational resonances of the three innermost Galilean satellites, before being proposed to the fellowship of the Royal Society by Halley with the approval of Newton. Elected to the Savilian Chair in Astronomy at Oxford he joined Samuel Molyneux and George Graham in the attempt to observe annual parallax at Kew, based on the attempt of Robert Hooke. This experiment revealed a counter-intuitive motion of the object star that defied all attempts at the resolution of the problem. He designed a research programme at Wanstead, when he studied the motions of seventy stars identifying a new discovered motion, later called the aberration of light. Recognizing another motion within the residuals of his observations, he identified it as a nutation of the Earth’s axis. He taught experimental philosophy at Oxford for thirty-one years. His final work as Astronomer Royal was a stellar survey of unprecedented dependability taking note of every possible cause of error, later reduced by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel in his Fundamenta Astronomiæ, producing a stellar catalogue of 3,222 stars.
May It Please Your Honours
Authors: Fisher John
Published: December 2023

Without the life of James Pound, it is inconceivable that the third son of an obscure steward of an estate in the Cotswolds could have become a leading astronomer. Pound, employed by the East India Company, escaped a massacre of the station on the island of Pulo Condore fleeing with others to the Dutch station at Malacca on a hazardous voyage in a sloop. Back in England, Pound became the Rector of Wanstead and, after making observations, in the Indies for Flamsteed was valued as a skilled astronomer, being the first in England to use a transit instrument. Working both for Halley and Newton, he introduced his nephew Bradley to many leading figures in English science, and to some important political and social elites who became his patrons and supporters during his scientific career. Pound’s second marriage and his sudden death intestate left Bradley financially dependent on his new aunt.