bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The 3-Step Model of informed consent for living kidney donation: a proposal on behalf of the DESCaRTES Working Group of the European Renal Association
Authors: Grossi Alessandra Agnese , Sever Mehmet Sukru , Hellemans Rachel , Mariat Christophe , Crespo Marta , Watschinger Bruno , Peruzzi Licia , Demir Erol , Velioglu Arzu , Gandolfini Ilaria , Oniscu Gabriel C , Hilbrands Luuk , Mjoen Geir
Published: January 2023

Living donation challenges the ethical principle of non-maleficence in that it exposes healthy persons to risks for the benefit of someone else. This makes safety, informed consent (IC) and education a priority. Living kidney donation has multiple benefits for the potential donor, but there are also several known short- and long-term risks. Although complete standardization of IC is likely to be unattainable, studies have emphasized the need for a standardized IC process to enable equitable educational and decision-making prospects for the prevention of inequities across transplant centers. Based on the Three-Talk Model of shared decision-making by Elwyn et al., we propose a model, named 3-Step (S) Model, where each step coincides with the three ideal timings of the process leading the living donor to the decision to pursue living donation: prior to the need for kidney replacement therapy (team talk); at the local nephrology unit or transplant center, with transplant clinicians and surgeons prior to evaluations start (option talk); and throughout evaluation, after having learned about the different aspects of donation, especially if there are second thoughts or doubts (decision talk). Based on the 3-S Model, to deliver conceptual and practical guidance to nephrologists and transplant clinicians, we provide recommendations for standardization of the timing, content, modalities for communicating risks and assessment of understanding prior to donation. The 3-S Model successfully allows an integration between standardization and individualization of IC, enabling a person-centered approach to potential donors. Studies will assess the effectiveness of the 3-S Model in kidney transplant clinical practice.
Novel murine glioblastoma models that reflect the immunotherapy resistance profile of a human disease
Authors: Chen Chao-Hsien , Chin Renee L , Hartley Genevieve P , Lea Spencer T , Engel Brian J , Hsieh Cheng-En , Prasad Rishika , Roszik Jason , Shingu Takashi , Lizee Gregory A , Heimberger Amy B , Millward Steven W , Hu Jian , Hong David S , Curran Michael A
Published: January 2023

Background

The lack of murine glioblastoma models that mimic the immunobiology of human disease has impeded basic and translational immunology research. We, therefore, developed murine glioblastoma stem cell lines derived from Nestin-CreERT2QkL/L; Trp53L/L; PtenL/L (QPP) mice driven by clinically relevant genetic mutations common in human glioblastoma. This study aims to determine the immune sensitivities of these QPP lines in immunocompetent hosts and their underlying mechanisms.

Methods

The differential responsiveness of QPP lines was assessed in the brain and flank in untreated, anti-PD-1, or anti-CTLA-4 treated mice. The impact of genomic landscape on the responsiveness of each tumor was measured through whole exome sequencing. The immune microenvironments of sensitive (QPP7) versus resistant (QPP8) lines were compared in the brain using flow cytometry. Drivers of flank sensitivity versus brain resistance were also measured for QPP8.

Results

QPP lines are syngeneic to C57BL/6J mice and demonstrate varied sensitivities to T cell immune checkpoint blockade ranging from curative responses to complete resistance. Infiltrating tumor immune analysis of QPP8 reveals improved T cell fitness and augmented effector-to-suppressor ratios when implanted subcutaneously (sensitive), which are absent on implantation in the brain (resistant). Upregulation of PD-L1 across the myeloid stroma acts to establish this state of immune privilege in the brain. In contrast, QPP7 responds to checkpoint immunotherapy even in the brain likely resulting from its elevated neoantigen burden.

Conclusions

These syngeneic QPP models of glioblastoma demonstrate clinically relevant profiles of immunotherapeutic sensitivity and potential utility for both mechanistic discovery and evaluation of immune therapies.
Confucianism and the Family
Authors: Moore Robert L.
Published: January 2023

Confucianism has been influential in shaping Chinese culture for over 2,000 years and has been particularly prominent in providing foundations for the family and the state. Classical texts, some dating to the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), have been consulted by Chinese for millennia as sources instructing individuals on how to fulfill familial roles and how to organize key family rituals such as weddings and funerals. In the twentieth century, Confucian ideals were periodically attacked and were also inevitably influenced by new values introduced to Asia in response to colonialism and globalization. Confucianism nevertheless continues to be a prominent part of Chinese identity and is also significant in other Asian societies, particularly Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. In recent decades, the People’s Republic of China has promoted a Confucian revival as an element in a nationalistic ideology.
Confucianism as a Religion
Authors: Chen Yong
Published: January 2023

The debate over whether Confucianism is a religion has been regarded as one of the most controversial issues in its scholarship. Its complexity highlights the perennial challenge of applying the Western concept of religion to the categorization of a Chinese tradition that is intrinsically defiant of generalizations derived from Western experiences. This article surveys the values and implications of the discourse on Confucian religiosity in both Chinese and Western contexts, examines the historical developments of the controversy in academic communities, and champions a methodological attitude that is accountable to a holistic and contextual approach to defining Confucianism in terms of religion.
Imperialism, Reform, and the End of Institutional Confucianism in the Late Qing
Authors: Chow Kai-wing
Published: January 2023

The final decades of the Qing Dynasty saw profound transformations in ideologies and socio-political structures, of which a most momentous trend was the progressive decline of institutional Confucianism. Imperialist encroachment, rivalry between different hermeneutical traditions of Confucian Classics, and ongoing crises of internal decline and external challenges culminated in the demolition of Confucianism’s thousand-year-old institutional anchors—the civil service examination and the imperial monarchy. The successive disintegration of these institutions and the decline of Confucianism was facilitated by new print media, modern technologies of communication, and foreign producers of knowledge—missionaries—which changed the hierarchy of literary authority. Confucians gradually lost their authority in the field of cultural production and their institutional link to political power as missionaries became speakers for and bearers of Western knowledge of power. The intellectual endeavors of Wei Yuan, Yan Fu, Kang Youwei, and Zhang Binglin were emblematic of the Confucians’ attempts to wrestle with a wide array of issues concerning politics, religion, race, and nation amid the imminent but inexorable demise of institutional Confucianism.
Comments on Decentralization in Cameroon
Authors: Myerson Roger B.
Published: January 2023

Decentralization can be a driving force for development, democracy, and better government in Cameroon; but the recent decentralization reform seems unlikely to achieve its promise without some further reforms. It is suggested that the system for popular election of municipal councils should be changed to an open-list proportional representation system. Where higher officials of municipal and regional governments are indirectly elected by municipal councillors, the municipal councillors should also have power to recall and replace these officials. The powers of the centrally appointed prefects and governors should be limited to monitoring and advising their municipal and regional councils.
Drivers of Earnings Inequalities in Urban Cameroon
Authors: Zamo-Akono Christian , Song-Ntamack Simon Alain
Published: January 2023

Labour income makes up a substantial share of households’ income in both developed and developing countries. This justifies the focus of this chapter on the analysis of the dynamics and extent of earnings inequality in urban areas in Cameroon. Using data from the National Institute of Statistics for 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2014, our results indicate that earnings inequality fell sharply between 2001 and 2010, and rose between 2010 and 2014, with persistent inequality at the upper tail of the distribution. We use the Recentered Influence Function regression to examine the impact of supply and demand factors on wage distribution and inequality indicators. Our results reveal that while secondary education is likely to reduce earnings inequality, higher education, job informality, and self-employment appear to be factors that increase inequality.
On the Way to Experience with the Phenomenological Venture of Management and Organization
Authors: Bancou Leo , de Vaujany François-Xavier , Pérezts Mar , Aroles Jeremy
Published: January 2023

Phenomenology and phenomenological concepts have been part of Management and Organization Studies (MOS) since the discipline emerged. This chapter seeks to provide a comprehensive literature review of academic journals and to make visible the subtle but increasing presence of phenomenology within MOS. First, the chapter explores the relations between phenomenology and other theoretical streams—institutionalism and neo-institutionalism, pragmatism, process philosophy, and critical- and post-Marxist theories—in the context of MOS. Second, it focuses on the presence of phenomenology in key debates in organisational studies (embodied knowledge and learning, business ethics, spatiality and temporality of organizing, practice-based views, etc.). Lastly, this chapter outlines the realised and future potential contributions of phenomenology in exploring ongoing trends and practises in contemporary organisations, especially the move towards remote modes of working and decentered management. In that sense, issues of time, space, embodiment, and communalisation become fruitful avenues for phenomenological approaches in MOS.
Max Scheler’s Phenomenology of Personalism and Paradox
Authors: Tomkins Leah
Published: January 2023

This chapter reflects on the contribution of Max Scheler (1874−1928), once considered one of the most brilliant phenomenological thinkers in Europe. The chapter focuses on the significance of values and feelings and the ways in which these work both for and against human togetherness. It explores three Schelerian themes: the phenomenon of ressentiment; the connection between exemplars and leaders; and the relationship between self and others. Using a paradox theory framing (i.e. an either/and relationship), I propose that Scheler’s ressentiment can reflect and create impotence in either leaders and followers, and involve feelings of either empowerment and incarceration. I explore his exemplarity as a paradox of either ‘is’ and ‘ought’, in which leaders and exemplars are either separate and interrelated. I also introduce Scheler’s highest form of togetherness, the Gesamtperson, to frame the dynamics of power where leaders are either the same and different to those whom they lead, based on an ethics which is either deeply personal and deeply together. I propose that Scheler offers valuable insights for the intersection of ‘pure’ phenomenological philosophy and the more ‘applied’ disciplines of organization and leadership studies.
Phenomenologies and Organization Studies
Authors: de Vaujany François-Xavier , Aroles Jeremy , Pérezts Mar
Published: January 2023

Phenomenologies are a major stream of philosophy. Our aim with this Handbook is to explore critically and reflexively the plurality of phenomenologies and their becoming in the context of Management and Organization Studies (MOS). We detail in the introduction the genealogy of the phenomenological moment and make a distinction between four streams of phenomenologies: phenomenology as a phenomenological moment, post-phenomenologies, ante-phenomenologies, and non-phenomenologies. Beyond many clichés about phenomenologies, we argue that phenomenologies cultivate critical perspectives, ontologies, and even, for some of them, metaphysics that make them particularly interwoven with other philosophical traditions. We draw implications for MOS as a field.
Embodied Perception and the Schemed World
Authors: Ning Sun
Published: January 2023

It is now widely accepted that a mind that is saturated with bodily experience is necessary for the dual constitution of the self and the perceptual field, and that the deployment of perception is always associated with a double reafferent flow—a tactile flow and a proprioceptive flow. In this chapter, I will discuss this issue in a pragmatically orientated way (following John Dewey), with a possible rejoinder from the phenomenological tradition (specifically Merleau-Ponty). I will make cross-references between the thought of Merleau-Ponty and of Dewey, and I believe that many insights can be drawn from such comparison. By bringing pragmatic insights into the phenomenological context, I will place Dewey’s pragmatic way of thinking about the embodied mind in a different light. However, different though they may seem, I will further argue that there is a deep sympathy between the phenomenological and the pragmatic perspectives of these two thinkers, especially when we take Dewey’s existential ontology into consideration.
It’s All Method
Authors: Jørgensen Lydia
Published: January 2023

The chapter introduces Hermann Schmitz’s neo-phenomenology to explore what phenomenology can offer to organization studies. Taking a methodological perspective, the chapter reflects phenomenology as also always about method due to the inherent ontological link, as noted by Heidegger. What we can know is intrinsically linked with how we know. The neo-phenomenological perspective contributes to acknowledging everyday phenomena, like atmospheres, which have become of increased interest in organization studies. Schmitz’s neo-phenomenology seeks to reclaim everyday experience as a valuable source of knowledge forming as an embodied attunement. Within his neo-phenomenological thinking Schmitz calls for phenomenological revision as method—building on exploration and continuous questioning. Further, by understanding phenomena as always seen in relation to something, Schmitz proposes poetic explication to account for fluid phenomena. As such the ontological condition of method is being addressed. Accordingly researching fluid (organizational) phenomena, like atmosphere, offers a way to rethink research accounts in performative ways moving beyond representation. The chapter seeks to illustrate and reflect upon how the neo-phenomenological approach can provide alternative ways to engage with relational phenomena in organization studies through the example of organizational atmospheres.
Organizing Research Excellence
Authors: Espinosa-Cristia Juan Felipe , Trujillo-Osorio Nicolás
Published: January 2023

The purpose of this chapter is to describe our analysis of the organizational identity formation process at the Biomedical Neuroscience Institute (BNI) excellence research centre. We embrace an ethnomethodological methodology that was informed by a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. Studying this case, we argue that the joint use of both approaches allows us to systematically explore a central aspect of organizational identity, namely, the relationship between the normative prescriptions of Centres of Excellence and the lived experiences of its members. Based on observations and conversations with members that participated in a set of activities developed by a new Culture and Communication (C&C) area of the centre, we describe how members’ moods, ‘disposedness’, and ‘openness’ are crucially related to the centre context. Furthermore, we found that those new spaces enacted by the C&C area configure a third party that encourages productive organizational practices for those who work in the centre. It is through the very encounter between the organization and the lived experiences of the members that identity formation processes come about, which are required both for the scientists to feel part of the centre and for the research institution to accomplish its mission.
Afterword
Authors: Tsoukas Haridimos
Published: January 2023

In this chapter, I attempt to show how phenomenology enables a richer (i.e. anti-dualist) account of organizational phenomena by enabling researchers to capture the logic of practice. By offering a more complex ontological understanding of agency (embodied, temporally structured, and embedded), phenomenologically informed organizational research enables us to see the multiple ways in which agents relate to the world. By according priority to being-in-the-world, as the primordial way of being, it offers a holistic ontological framework that focuses on relationality. By emphasizing enaction, it underlines the partly self-constitutive character of knowing through action. And by bringing out the non-successive character of temporality, it highlights the incessantly processual character of experience. I illustrate my account with examples from organizational research.
A Pleistocene Record of Making Symbols
Authors: Hovers Erella , Belfer-Cohen Anna
Published: January 2023

Symbol making involves active agency, as it is, by definition, intentional and aims to deliver messages, worldviews, and social contents to designated audiences. As archaeology can specify only elements of behavior that are expressed as material objects, it must focus on material objects and their contexts. Accordingly, this chapter does not aim to elucidate the symbolic content of objects. Whether the role of objects is perceived as a clear dichotomy between utilitarian and symbolic or as a “mixed bag,” in the practice of prehistoric archaeology it is the context of artifacts that is often enlisted to provide telltale signs about their role in the behavioral system. Employing archaeological tools (material culture, chronology, and context), the chapter addresses (1) the epistemology of understanding prehistoric symbols by reviewing criteria that are prevalent in the research to assess whether an object may have acted as a symbolic manifestation and (2) the diachronic shift from a cognitive capacity to comprehend and make symbolic objects to a broader, evolved, symbolic behavioral system. Its review of the Pleistocene symbolic record of the Levant suggests that the trajectories of change parallel patterns (though not necessarily the same chronology) observed in neighboring regions. The analysis suggests that rather than changes in the neurological infrastructure per se, the coevolution of symbolic behavior and social complexity is driven by changes in social cognition as a major adaptive tool in hominin cultural evolution.
Redescribing the Oldowan
Authors: Wynn Thomas
Published: January 2023

One of the first evolutionary puzzles addressed in the modern era of cognitive archaeology was the status of the earliest lithic technology, the Oldowan. Did the early hominin stone knappers have a protohuman mind, or did they think more like apes? The chapter first summarizes Mary Leakey’s influential 1967 descriptive typology and follows with accounts of Wynn’s 1981 Piagetian analysis, Toth’s 1985 technical analysis, and a recent tentative application of embodied cognition. The examples illustrate several components of cognitive archaeology’s approach to hominin evolution—the use of explicit general theories and well-articulated middle-range theories, and the important role played by redescriptions of legacy data sets.
Recursive Narrative and the Acheulean to Middle Palaeolithic Transition
Authors: Shipton Ceri
Published: January 2023

Acheulean bifaces were the defining technological component of a successful hominin adaptation for well over a million years. Their replacement by Middle Palaeolithic Levallois technology from around 300,000 years ago across much of the Old World was a major threshold in human behavioral evolution, associated with the emergence of the large-brained hominins Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa. This chapter reviews some of the lithic technology evidence for the Acheulean to Middle Palaeolithic transition in four regions: northwestern Europe, the southern Levant, central India, and east Africa. Knapping technology in these regions suggests the transition may have been initially underpinned by compound embedding of discrete concepts within a single sequence to generate hierarchical complexity—an example of generativity or nested recursion. Subsequently, early Middle Palaeolithic knappers employed feedback loops where a discrete output was also the input for a return to an earlier stage in the sequence, allowing for the production of multiple distinct tools within a single sequence and the hafting of some of those tools. These feedback loops in which a discrete concept is embedded within a concept of equivalent category are an example of meta-recursion or center-embedded recursion. Both generativity and meta-recursion are fundamental to narrative communication. It is hypothesized that Middle Palaeolithic landscape use strategies are archaeological manifestations of narrative communication.
Anthropoiesis Revisited
Authors: Witmore Christopher
Published: January 2023

This chapter attempts to chart key fusions between humans and nonhumans in the emergence of contemporary humanity. In contrast to theories of externalization in which tools or media were seen as outward and amplified forms of human organs—computer processors improved the human cerebral cortex, writing improved on recollective memory, hammerstones improved the hand, metal choppers improved the incisors—it offers an alternative scenario of human development in terms of symbiosis. In so doing, it argues that every major change in human evolution results from a merger between two autonomous entities (compound objects)—human and nonhuman—which are absorbed into a new (compound) object in a process that might be termed “anthropoiesis.” Working through three very different examples—the exhibition of human evolution in the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, two moments separated by a century in a North Carolina farmhouse, and a driver speeding through the Northern Peloponnese—it sketches out a nonlinear path of anthropoiesis that helps us gain some sense of how we anthropoi continue to change saltationally as myriad humanities in the plural.
Cognitive Archaeology Meets Cultural Evolutionary Psychology
Authors: Pain Ross
Published: January 2023

Cecilia Heyes recently developed a novel framework for understanding human cognitive evolution. Contrary to many traditional views, cultural evolutionary psychology argues that distinctively human cognitive traits are transmitted culturally, not biologically. In labeling these mechanisms of thought “cognitive gadgets,” Heyes draws a direct analogy with the cultural artifacts studied by archaeologists. This chapter explores how cultural evolutionary psychology can inform research in cognitive archaeology and vice versa. On the former line of thought, the chapter argues that adopting Heyes’ framework goes some way to addressing the Wynn’s methodological challenge by bringing the categories of the psychological and archaeological sciences closer together. Nonetheless, deep inferential challenges remain. This chapter looks at how we can interpret the record through the lens of cognitive gadgets, using behavioral modernity as a case study. It then examines the way cognitive archaeology can inform research in cultural evolutionary psychology. Using research on the evolution of language, it argues that evidence from cognitive archaeology strengthens Heyes’ case that language is a gadget.
Tool Production, Joint Attention, and the Emergence of Reflective Self-Awareness
Authors: Welshon Rex
Published: January 2023

Cognitive archaeologists regularly ask: Unlike other tool-using animals and earlier hominins, how did humans, and perhaps Neandertals, acquire reflective awareness of themselves and their agency? This chapter proposes one part of an answer to that question by focusing on a subset of conscious and attentional states, namely, those conscious states that are states of reflective self-awareness and joint attention. It argues that joint attention played an important causal role in the development of reflective self-awareness and that both joint attention and reflective self-awareness probably became sedimented in hominin populations by no later than 100,000 years ago.
Can the Things That Make Us Smart Outsmart Us?
Authors: Baber Chris
Published: January 2023

Taking its cue from Don Norman’s Things That Make Us Smart, this chapter discusses trends in the anticipatory functionality of technology: the ways in which digital artifacts are being given abilities to predict and adapt to users. As the functionality develops, they will be able to anticipate and adapt to human needs (or an interpretation of them). A challenge is knowing not only the device’s “intentions” but also how to intervene if one disagrees. The device is given a degree of agency that feels like a step change in its usage. As well as a question of agency, this example raises questions of transparency (i.e., how to know what the device believes). Increasing the “smartness” of the artifacts carried, worn, or interacts with creates challenges (particularly when devices either fail completely or make erroneous predictions). This could suggest there’s a need for new ways of thinking about tool use to cope with these new breeds of tools. This is assumes that there’s a need for new strategies to address the technologies, and that strategies that have developed from the history of interacting with tools do not apply. While one might assume there is something special about digital technologies and their ability to function as intentional systems, it is plausible that humankind has always responded to tools as if they had intentionality. These questions of belief, intention, and agency might appear solely a matter for digital technology, but this chapter how they also apply to nondigital forms of technology.
Trans and Nonbinary Community Vocal Workshops
Authors: Lipson Julie
Published: January 2023

This chapter describes and evaluates vocal workshops for transgender and nonbinary adults. The workshops are presented as an alternative to traditional models of music therapy, informed by non-pathologizing practices of community music therapy and queer and trans music therapy. The workshop structure is described in five sections: (i) establishing comfort, (ii) singing together, (iii) learning, (iv) experimenting and exploring, and (v) closing together with music. Group members explored breath, voice, tension, release, singing, speaking, range, and other elements while gathered in trans community, and with consideration of the broader socio-political context. Quotes from group members are included to demonstrate community needs and the post-workshop impact of the sessions.
Epistemic Privilege and Epistemic Responsibility
Authors: Liboro Renato M. , Lee Colin Andrew
Published: January 2023

From the perspective of standpoint theory, we discuss in this chapter how and why individuals who are in the margins of society, particularly queer and trans folx, are more likely to be equipped to know more and better about marginalization and oppression, as well as the need to address such marginalization and oppression, based on their own difficult experiences related to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Acknowledging their epistemic privilege and epistemic responsibility, many queer and trans music therapists have responded to the inherent call to address the needs of queer and trans folx in music therapy (e.g., fellow therapists, educators, students, and clients) by engaging in scholarship grounded in or based on queer and trans theory and related theoretical perspectives. We further discuss the value of research in terms of their work’s impact on queer and trans music therapy practice, education, and training.
Tchaikovsky in Hollywood. Do We Listen?
Authors: Franklin Peter
Published: January 2023

This chapter explores critical questions about the meaning of middlebrow in relation to both musical style and reception. Virginia Woolf’s letter ostensibly denouncing it is subjected to critical scrutiny, relevant to the consideration of a sequence from the 1942 Hollywood movie Now, Voyager, in which Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) appears to be demonstrating a middlebrow version of a highbrow response to a concert performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Remembering that Hollywood movies were “lowbrow” for Woolf but had a potentially “middlebrow” mission for Rubin and others, the analysis probes the brow status of the movie, Charlotte Vale, and Tchaikovsky, leading to a subversive revisiting of Woolf, her letter, and an account by her of an implicitly middlebrow response to highbrow music.
Writing Trivers’s 1972 Theory of Parental Investment and Sexual Selection
Authors: Trivers Robert
Published: January 2023

A brief summary of the most wide-ranging paper of mine, covering the evolution of sex differences in all species. Especially novel is the application to differential mortality by sex, which varies widely across species and higher taxa. The paper provided a framework, anchored in sexual selection and parental investment, for discovering and explaining many sex differences in human mating strategies. The paper has become one of the most widely cited publications in evolutionary biology, accruing more than 17,000 scientific citations as of the year 2022. It is also one of the most widely cited papers in the mushrooming field of evolutionary psychology.
The Interface of Sexual Selection, Conflict, and Evolutionary Psychology
Authors: Perry Jennifer C. , Chapman Tracey
Published: January 2023

Evolutionary perspectives from sexual selection and sexual conflict can give powerful insight into the ultimate reasons for the existence of seemingly paradoxical traits such as exaggerated sexual characteristics and sexual exploitation. However, our biological and psychological understanding of such traits is often hampered by a lack of integration across different taxon-focused research fields, as well as by perceived difficulties of integrating human culture into standard evolutionary paradigms. Our aim is address these limitations and to identify emergent, general themes by discussing sexual selection and sexual conflict at the interface of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. We focus mainly on the theme of sexual conflict, which occurs when males and females maximize their evolutionary fitness in different ways. We begin by reviewing core concepts and key examples from diverse species. We then explore whether these ideas can usefully be applied to the study of reproductive interactions in humans. This exercise shows that even theory drawn from the study of animal biology, which focuses only on the evolutionary consequences of sexual interactions, has surprising power to explain diverse facets of human mating behavior.
Extensions of Sexual Strategies Theory across Peoples, Cultures, and Ecologies
Authors: Schmitt David P.
Published: January 2023

Evolutionary behavioral scientists have amassed considerable evidence that human mating psychology displays adaptive design, varying in functionally predictable ways across sexes, ages, and socioecologies. Much of this evidence comes from studies of preferential choice, focusing on the specific features, types, and quantities of romantic partners women and men most desire. Women’s mate preferences center, in part, on cues to a man’s ability and willingness to provide resources. These preferences are usually stronger among women in harsh environments, and among women who themselves are feminine, attractive, traditional, and heterosexual. Men’s mate preferences center, in part, on cues to youth and fecundity. These preferences are usually stronger among men in cultures that are less safe, less healthy, and possess more pathogens, and are stronger among men who themselves are masculine, wealthy, and possess higher testosterone. Several concerns with cross-cultural comparisons of human mating psychology have presented challenges to evolutionary scientists. Ultimately, cross-cultural tests of hypothesized human mating adaptations provide the most evidentiary value when embedded in detailed theoretical rationale for why the mechanisms should generate predictable patterns at multiple levels—across individuals, across groups, across cultures, and across time.
Incest Avoidance Adaptations
Authors: Lieberman Debra , Patrick Carlton
Published: January 2023

Humans, like many social species, interact with genetic relatives throughout periods of sexual maturity increasing the chance that, barring systems motivating avoidance, close genetic relatives could select one another as sexual partners. However, although suitable in several respects, close genetic relatives represent poor sexual partners due to selection pressures posed by short-generation pathogens and lethal recessive mutations. For this reason, it is likely natural selection crafted information-processing circuitry—mental software—that enabled inferential systems to estimate the probability another individual was a close genetic relative and to trade off this information against other factors influencing fitness to adaptively identify suitable sexual partners. In this chapter we discuss incest avoidance adaptations and provide a model of how human mate choice might operate.
Parental Influence over Mate Choice
Authors: Apostolou Menelaos
Published: January 2023

Across different cultures and times, parents exercise considerable influence over their children’s mating decisions. This chapter examines why and how parents influence mate choice, and the evolutionary implications of such influence. In particular, it will be argued that, from the perspective of parents, there is an opportunity cost arising from allowing children to exercise mate choice on their own, which motivates parents to influence mate choice in order to reduce it. In the preindustrial context, parents influenced mate choice more directly, through social institutions such as arranged marriage, which is examined in detail. In postindustrial societies, such as the United States, parents exercise influence indirectly through manipulation, and this chapter examines the manipulation tactics they employ. There are reasons to believe that parental influence has been strong for the greatest part of human evolution, which is likely to have affected the evolutionary trajectory of several mechanisms or adaptations involved in mating. The present chapter discusses some of these adaptations and how they have been affected by the transition to the postindustrial environment, where parental influence over mating is much weaker.
Violent Mates
Authors: Duntley Joshua D.
Published: January 2023

The optimal fitness outcomes of mating relationships often differ for men and women, resulting in conflict. Selection favored diverse tactics in both sexes capable of moving the fitness optima in their favor, ranging from altruism to violence. Our ancestors addressed some adaptive problems of human mating with cost-inflicting, even violent tactics. The adaptive problems include mate poachers, sexual infidelity, conflict over resource allocation, mate value discrepancies, relationship termination, and mate reacquisition. Violence directed toward mates is highly context dependent. Myriad situational factors affected the fitness costs and benefits of mating violence, selecting for context-sensitive psychologies and tactics in aggressors to manipulate victims and co-evolved victim defenses to avoid or minimize their victimization.
Women’s Avoidance of Sexual Assault
Authors: James Rachel M. , McDonald Melissa M. , Weekes-Shackelford Viviana
Published: January 2023

Men’s sexual aggression against women has been a recurrent feature of human evolutionary history. Most of the research in this area has focused on why men are perpetrators of sexual assault, and why women are victims of sexual assault. However, given the reproductive costs of sexual victimization for women, it is important to also examine whether women are equipped with a psychological architecture that operates to avoid or thwart sexual assault. In this chapter, we discuss women’s psychology of rape avoidance using the framework of an evolved threat management system. The system is proposed to include an emotional calibration system that operates in response to variables that increase the risk or costs of sexual victimization. Women who are disproportionately at risk of becoming the victim of sexual assault, or for whom such threats would be particularly costly, are expected to experience a calibrated fear response. It is this fear that motivates adaptive behavioral adjustment to avoid or thwart sexual assault. This includes manifest behaviors deployed to defend against sexual aggression, including not walking alone at night and being more attuned to one’s surroundings. We review the extant research on the association between factors that increase the risk and costs of sexual victimization and the emotional and behavioral output that fosters avoidance of sexual threats.
Religious Populism in the Digital Age
Authors: Nascimento Cunha Magali do
Published: January 2023

This chapter is dedicated to understanding how expressions of religious populism occur in digital media, a phenomenon that marks the political dynamics in the contemporary world. The chapter presents key concepts about populism and religious populism and a systematization of studies on expressions of religious populism in the digital age. The chapter considers the presence of religious populism in different regions of the world, political systems, and expressions of faith. The ongoing studies make it possible to identify that the digital media environment potentiates populist expressions through the consecration of charismatic leadership, the establishment of a community of supporters, and the construction of the image of the leader as a missionary and savior.
Initiation (Abhiṣeka) in Indian Buddhism
Authors: Davidson Ronald M.
Published: January 2023

Initiation (abhiṣeka) in Indian Buddhism had a long trajectory, beginning as lustration offerings to the bodhi tree and concluding with the sexual practices of tantric Buddhism. Between these two, abhiṣeka rites were developed that first reflected one of the primary values—purification, especially purification for those associated with the maṇḍala worship practices of fifth-century Indian Buddhism. By the seventh century, the purificatory practices were modified and patterned after the coronation rituals association with Indian kingship, now employed as a gateway ritual in which the candidate would be allowed entrance into the maṇḍala and sworn to secrecy. As such, they also reflected the other primary value: vivification or infusion with vitality, as the vivification of a king who is both human and divine. Concomitant with entrance into the maṇḍala was commitment to vows of behavior and permission to recite mantras of specific Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Finally, in the eighth century, Buddhist tantrism was again modified to accept sexual practice, with the creation of “higher” initiations in the Yoga- and Yoginītantras.
Śaiva Tantra
Authors: Goodall Dominic
Published: January 2023

This chapter focuses on “tantrism” in the first millennium of the common era, the formative period, in which the school of doctrine and liturgy known as the Śaivasiddhānta emerged. One of the earliest surviving scriptures that can be regarded as a Śaiva tantra is the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā. The Niśvāsa uses the term Mantramārga, “the path of mantras,” which various authors hold to be a possible candidate for an emic equivalent of the term tantrism. Two types of tantric mantras: bījamantra and mālāmantra are distinguished. The central religious fact that characterizes all Mantramārga traditions is dīkṣā, an initiation rite that deploys such mantras to bring about the goals of religious aspirants. The chapter identifies four categories of initiate, the lowest being the preliminary initiated neophyte (samayin) bound to the rules (samaya) of the religion; the highest being the guru (ācārya), whose principal disciples were the fully initiated putrakas. The remaining category was that of the sādhaka, the power-seeker, simultaneously a central figure and yet necessarily an “outsider,” who became increasingly marginalized as the religion widened socially. The chapter also touches upon other clues for the reconstruction of socioreligious history, such as the topic of special observances (caryā); the emergence of the genre of ritual manuals; and the shifting soteriological role of devotion (bhakti).
Reasonableness Review
Authors: Liebenberg Sandra
Published: January 2023

Reasonableness has emerged as a significant review standard for economic and social rights’ claims, most prominently in the contexts of the jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court and in the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This chapter examines the historical trajectory of reasonableness as an adjudicative review standard and its relationship to other doctrinal concepts such as proportionality and minimum core obligations. It proceeds to conduct a close analysis of the practical application of various forms of reasonableness review in the jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Based on this analysis it identifies the main features as well as the advantages and disadvantages of reasonableness as an adjudicative review standard. It concludes with a proposal to reform aspects of the reasonableness model of review to facilitate a more substantive and transparent engagement by adjudicators with the normative commitments of economic and social rights.
The Rights to Water and Sanitation
Authors: Satterthwaite Margaret L.
Published: January 2023

In the past two decades, the human rights to water and sanitation have emerged and taken their place at the center of discussions about key economic, social, and cultural rights, sustainable development, global health, and climate change. While there was early hope that these rights would provide a strong basis for rejecting the commodification of essential services spurred by neoliberalism, as they were institutionalized, the rights to water and sanitation have in many places been tamed, if not neutralized. And while a confluence of forces have managed to stop or reverse privatization in many states, deep inequalities persist, and communities have often been shut out of decisions about water resources. At the same time, the rights have played an important role in the development field, guiding approaches to achieving the sustainable development goals and serving as touchstones in climate debates. Thus, while the human rights framework concerning water and sanitation has accommodated powerful economic imperatives, it still holds promise as a vehicle for governments, courts, and—perhaps most importantly—movements facing the harsh realities of extreme inequality, vulnerability to disaster, and the advancing climate crisis. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual and theoretical issues behind the rights to water and sanitation, an account of the normative development of the rights in law, and examines the promise these rights hold in the face of intense global challenges.
Displacement and Social and Economic Rights
Authors: Foster Michelle
Published: January 2023

Socioeconomic deprivation constitutes both a cause and consequence of forced displacement yet has proven a contentious issue in debates concerning the scope and ambit of protection obligations at international law. While there has been considerable normative movement in recent decades, with international refugee law evolving beyond binary distinctions between “economic migrants” and “refugees,” refugee law still lags developments in international human rights law that have elevated both the importance and content of social and economic rights. This chapter highlights the most pressing and controversial issues in ensuring social and economic rights in the context of displacement across borders. It argues for a more ambitious approach to the progressive development of international law on these issues in both scholarship and jurisprudence and highlights those areas most in need of attention.
Race and Historical Political Economy
Authors: Bateman David , Grumbach Jacob M. , Thurston Chloe
Published: January 2023

This chapter examines the study of race in historical political economy (HPE) research on the United States. Scholarship in race and HPE is wide-ranging, spanning the fields of political science, economics, history, and sociology, and featuring a diversity of theoretical and empirical methods. The chapter highlights key questions in the race and HPE literature, including democratization, the effects of slavery and segregation (both de jure and de facto), racial exclusion in the welfare state, and coercive state development. The chapter then circumscribes time periods under study: the antebellum, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, New Deal, civil rights, and post-civil rights periods. Finally, the article discusses limitations in the race and HPE literature and lessons that can be drawn from research in American political development and racial capitalism.
Land in the Chayanovian Tradition
Authors: van der Ploeg Jan Douwe
Published: January 2023

This chapter synthesizes the concept of land within Chayanovian theory. It also refers to the relevance of this concept in today’s world, by showing that the way land is used is central, probably now more than ever, to the fate, prospects and aspirations of billions of people—just as it is central to the many social struggles that take place, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly, in many places around the world.
Land and Agroecology
Authors: Vandermeer John , Perfecto Ivette
Published: January 2023

Taking a long-term point of view, agricultural-like activities have long populated the earth, from traditional ecosystem management to today’s industrial agriculture. The most recent, industrial agriculture, represents a dramatic shift relative to the interactions between people and land, most recently, the exaggeration of the ideology of private property in land with massive appropriations, known today as “land grabbing.” Farmers went from acquiring inputs from within the farm and its resource base, mostly the land itself, to buying inputs and selling outputs in capitalist markets. This evolution led to a displacement of small-scale farmers from their land, dramatically changing the management and nurturing of the land, and ultimately leading to its degradation. The agroecology movement is an alternative that offers hope for restoring the land and the well-being of small-scale farmers. Agroecology rests on four pillars: the science of ecology, traditional knowledge, nature, and political action. Today, farmers, especially in the global South, are constructing “agroecological territories,” where these four pillars interpenetrate to enhance their livelihoods and contribute to the reformulation of the political and economic ideology of land and territory.