bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Parental power
Authors: Fives Allyn
Published: January 2018

How should we conceptualise parental power and how can it be evaluated? In this chapter, I will examine what is, I argue, an irreducible plurality of forms of power itself. We can and should distinguish power to (power as capacity) from power over (power as affecting others and producing effects for others), and both of these from power with (power exercised together so as to achieve a shared objective). Within the ‘power over’ category, I also distinguish coercion, interference with liberty, control, authority, and paternalism. I argue that ‘power to’ and ‘power with’ are not in themselves morally objectionable; it is only when power is exercised over others that we may find reasons to object. When it comes to normative evaluation, in the main, we should judge what parents do with their power, that is, the type of power they exercise and what impacts it has, not whether parents have more capacity than their children. Nonetheless, taking on board the critical insight of Foucauldian sociology, I accept that, in one of its guises, power in and of itself requires justification, independently of its being put into action. A relationship of authority, where one party commands and the other obeys, is an asymmetrical power relation, and such asymmetry, for instance between parents and children, requires normative justification.
Legitimacy in the political domain and in the family
Authors: Fives Allyn
Published: January 2018

It could be argued that the concepts and methods used when evaluating the power relations of the political domain are simply not appropriate to the normative evaluation of the relations between parents and children. I want to address and respond to two aspects of this criticism. First, it could be argued that the question of legitimacy is posed in respect of what liberals call the political domain, and not the relations of parents and children. Second, in the political domain, it is argued, we must appeal to the most objective moral standards, and this is because of the moral seriousness of what is at stake. In this chapter, I respond to each of these criticisms in turn. First, I show that parent-child relations are not antithetical to the political domain, as the latter has been defined by liberals. It also follows, second, if the highest standards of moral objectivity are required for the evaluation of power in the political domain, they are required in regard to the family as well. However, I also want to say more about the requirement of moral objectivity where competing moral claims are in conflict. I argue that we should resolve dilemmas through a form of practical reasoning and practical judgement owing much to liberal thinkers such as John Rawls and Thomas Nagel. In this chapter, I explore whether such a ‘liberal’ approach to practical judgement is appropriate when we consider moral dilemmas in situations liberals themselves do not consider to be political.
English style: foreign culture, race and the Anglicisation of popular dance
Authors: Abra Allison
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the creation and commodification of national identity within popular dance. The discussion focuses on the efforts of the dance profession to standardise the steps of the English style, and demonstrates that there was far more invested in that process than simply establishing a formal set of steps and figures. Within the context of broader fears about Americanisation, dance professionals sought to transform foreign dances like the foxtrot and tango in a way that made them more suitable to the national character or temperament. This vision of the nation was explicitly articulated in opposition to racialised American and stereotypically Latin others, and emphasised English virtues like reserve and refinement. With its specific syllabus of standard steps and figures, the English style also became a marketable commodity which was sold at home as well as abroad. Yet the chapter shows that the profession’s efforts to craft a national dancing style were greeted with a mixed response from the British dancing public. Instead, they retained a strong interest in foreign dances like the rumba and truckin’, especially as they began to view the English style technique as stagnant and excessively regimented by the 1930s.
‘A mass which you could form into whatever you wanted’: refugees and state building in Lithuania and Courland, 1914–21
Authors: Richter Klaus
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on refugees in the region that later became the Baltic States and that in the Russian Empire formed the Baltic provinces and parts of Russia’s northwest. It addresses how the refugee crisis was perceived by diverse groups including Russian officials, Baltic Germans, Jews, local peasants, and the emerging national elites, and considers the impact of ethnic belonging on the treatment of refugees and the changes in ethnic policies over the course of the war and the first years of independent statehood. It examines how refugees were resettled against the background of state-building and continuing warfare. Lastly it points out that repatriation was not merely a reaction to expulsions, but a policy with its own strategic purpose, with aims that went far beyond a return to the status quo ante 1914.
Refugees from Polish territories in Russia during the First World War
Authors: Korzeniowski Mariusz
Published: January 2018

This chapter concentrates on the issues raised by the forced resettlement of civilians (mainly Poles) in the Kingdom of Poland by the Tsarist authorities, beginning in 1914-15. Attention is paid to migration of the Polish population from Russian-occupied Galicia into the Russian interior. The chapter focuses on the institutional arrangements made on their behalf including the legal basis of their activity, financial, educational, cultural, economic and religious assistance to refugees, and the implications for creating and maintaining their national consciousness. Particularly noteworthy is the inclusion and participation of at least some refugees in the cultural, educational, journalistic and economic activity of Poles who had settled permanently in the Russian interior and formed ‘Polish colonies’. An important issue concerns the return of refugees to their homeland and the problems this posed at a time of internal and international political upheaval, especially after the Bolshevik seizure of power.
Ukrainian assistance to refugees during the First World War1
Authors: Zhvanko Liubov , Nestulya Oleksiy
Published: January 2018

The Ukrainian lands became an epicentre of the movement of refugees who were assisted by a range of organisations. This chapter considers the role of governmental bodies in the Russian Empire and the new entities that appeared on Ukrainian territory following the February 1917 Revolution: the Ukrainian Central Rada, and the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR). It discusses the developing framework and implementation of public policy in relation to refugees, the activity of local government and non-governmental organisations which supported refugees. The chapter considers refugees’ life in Ukraine in 1914-18. During the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk in February 1918, Ukrainian delegates took the initiative in organizing the re-evacuation of refugees; the agreement between Ukraine and Austro- Hungarian, German, Polish and Russian representatives concerning repatriation was an early example of inter-governmental regulation of a new humanitarian problem.
‘Cities of barracks’: refugees in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire during the First World War
Authors: Hermann Martina
Published: January 2018

This chapter introduces refugee politics in Austria-Hungary, in particular Cisleithania, and then explores the approach of the Habsburg administration towards refugees. Austrian officials established a network of large camps in seven administrative regions of Cisleithania. The daily life of the refugees was characterised by poor housing, inadequate nutrition and low standards of sanitation as well by as other constraints that created conditions that hardly differed from those of enemy aliens or prisoners of war, who were at least guaranteed minimal standards of treatment under international law. The barrack camp in Gmünd in Lower Austria is accorded close scrutiny. It occupied a central position in the network of camps, since it was not only the largest camp on Austrian soil, housing predominantly Ruthenian refugees, but also served as showcase camp for propaganda purposes between its creation in 1914 and closure in 1918.
Between refugees and the state: Hungarian Jewry and the wartime Jewish refugee crisis in Austria-Hungary1
Authors: Klein-Pejšová Rebekah
Published: January 2018

This chapter draws on previously unstudied archival sources to examine strategies of negotiating Hungarian refugee policy during the First World War by local Hungarian Jewish communities, and the arriving and sojourning Galician Jewish refugees. It brings out the voices of the refugees as they petitioned the Hungarian government for residency, and examines their representation in the Hungarian Jewish press. It locates wartime relations between the Hungarian administration, Jewish refugees, and the local Hungarian Jewish population within the framework of the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In doing so, it reveals internal fault lines within Hungarian Jewry, and highlights the development of competing group and state loyalties. Hungary's devastating losses in the aftermath of World War One transformed its relationship to Hungarian Jews – and former Hungarian Jews – within and beyond its borders, and shaped Hungary's twentieth century political ambitions.
Citizenship on the move: refugee communities and the state in France, 1914–18
Authors: Dowdall Alex
Published: January 2018

This chapter provides complementary perspectives on the experiences of French refugees. The first is the perspective of the state and host communities in the French interior. The chapter examines the organisation of official and charitable aid and also examines the role of refugees in supporting the cultural mobilisation of the French nation for war. Originally they were welcomed as the tangible manifestations of ‘German barbarism’, but later on many faced hostility and were seen as a burden. The chapter also argues that in spite of the difficulties and disruptions posed by displacement, refugees successfully maintained communal bonds of solidarity based on the home communities they had left. French refugees were more than the passive recipients of state and charitable aid but actively engaged in managing their circumstances. Finally the chapter considers the return and resettlement of refugees after the war, the moral obligation many felt to return home and rebuild, and role played by memories and commemorations of displacement in post-war French society.
Golgotha: the retreat of the Serbian army and civilians in 1915–16
Authors: Šarenac Danilo
Published: January 2018

‘Golgotha’ (often referred to as the ‘Albanian Golgotha’) refers to the order given to the Serbian army by the high command in November 2015 to cross the border and retreat towards the Adriatic. Two major incursions by Habsburg forces in 1914 had already prompted the flight of civilians, but these upheavals paled into insignificance compared to ‘Golgotha’. By February 1916 most troops and civilians had been evacuated, although the retreat only came to an end at the beginning of April when the final group of soldiers embarked on Entente ships. In 1916, the Serbian army regrouped and reassembled on the Salonika front. Meanwhile refugees had been dispersed all over Europe and northern Africa. This chapter discusses the course of the retreat and its political, social and cultural significance.
Becoming and unbecoming refugees: the long ordeal of Balkan Muslims, 1912–34
Authors: Üngör Uğur Ümit
Published: January 2018

In the process of Ottoman imperial collapse, roughly in the decade 1912-1923, millions of soldiers were killed in regular warfare. But hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians were also victimised as a result of expulsions, pogroms, and other forms of persecution and mass violence. The Balkan wars of 1912-13 erased the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans and marked a devastating blow to Ottoman political culture. The wars produced an unparalleled refugee stream from the European provinces of the empire to Istanbul, and shaped politics and policy for years to come. The scale of displacement was such that any and all relief measures, both private and public, fell short in accommodating and providing for the refugees. Barely having recuperated from this crisis, the First World War brought more violence to Ottoman society, this time closer to its heartland. The years 1915-16 saw the destruction of the Anatolian Armenians, organized by the Young Turk political elite and carried out by a host of military, paramilitary, and civilian forces. The genocide uprooted a civilian population of over two million Armenians and made them into refugees for decades to come.
Locke in pentameters: Victorian poetry after (or before) posthumousness
Authors: Barton Anna
Published: January 2018

Anna Barton in ‘Locke in Pentameters: Victorian Poetry After (or Before) Posthmousness’ reassesses the critical commonplace that Victorian poetry can be considered a belated form that is defined by its post-romantic concerns. Whilst valuing the work of Isobel Armstrong in her seminal Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, Politics (1994), where Armstrong asserted a post-Kantian context for a reading of Victorian poetics, Barton revisits the idea that Victorian poetry’s cultivation of aesthetic factors should be confined to this post-Kantian context. The essay argues that the philosophical engagements of poetry from the period do not reflect an easy transition from British empiricism to German idealism. Rather the British empiricist tradition plays an important role in shaping nineteenth century poetry and this is clear from an examination of how John Locke’s account of metaphysics retains a defining presence within the nineteenth century. To that end Victorian poetry is not a belated or posthumous form, but rather one which is indebted to an older British philosophical tradition. Such an approach indicates how reading poetry through philosophical contexts generates a new way of rethinking the construction of poetics during the period
Populism and ideology: nineteenth-century fiction and the cinema
Authors: Hand Richard J.
Published: January 2018

Richard J Hand in ‘Populism and Ideology: Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Cinema’ explores the adaptation of nineteenth-century fiction into film. The focus of the chapter is on the cinematic adaptation of four extremely different yet continuingly popular texts at opposite ends of the nineteenth century: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1816), Henry James’s Turn of the Screw (1898) and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). After outlining the legacy of the selected examples of fiction on film, Hand explores the critical issues and the ideological ramifications that surface through these adaptive processes. The dramatization of each text brings out diverse issues relating to popularization and ideology. This is particularly pertinent with the processes of both inter-cultural adoption and inter-generic transposition, such as the relocating of Austen within a contemporary Indian context, the redeployment of Conrad’s narrative within the Vietnam War and the appropriation of Shelley and James into the populist contexts of the horror genre.
True histories of the Elephant Man: storytelling and theatricality in adaptations of the life of Joseph Merrick
Authors: Poore Benjamin
Published: January 2018

In this chapter Benjamin Poore takes the example of ‘The Elephant Man’ as a test case for how Victorian narratives have been developed in a neo-Victorian theatrical context. After outlining the way that a neo-Victorian stage culture has been developed Poore argues that Bernard Pomerance’s play The Elephant Man (1977) and David Lynch’s 1980 film The Elephant Man can be regarded as twin foundational texts in the modern-day repurposing of the story of Joseph Merrick. The film, originally adapted in part from the surgeon Frederick Treves’s The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) was subsequently adapted back into a film novelization by Christine Sparks. Since the early 1980s, Merrick’s story in its various iterations has become a popular way to view nineteenth-century mores and to speculate on how far ‘we’ have come. However, Poore argues that there is a series of tensions between the lip-service paid to the condemnation of Victorian freak shows and the increasingly diverse uses, from comedy sketches to comic books, to which Merrick’s image and story are put. This chapter then considers the wider implications of the case of Merrick for nineteenth-century studies and the neo-Victorian.
Forced witnessing of pain and horror in the context of colonial and religious massacres: the case of the Irish Rebellion, 1641–53
Authors: Kwiatkowski Nicolás
Published: January 2018

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Seventeenth Century Britain were determinant for the development of the English Revolution of 1640-1660, and they have received thorough attention by recent historiography. The conflict was particularly violent during the Irish Rebellion, between 1641 and 1653, something that could be explained by the combination of religious, colonial, political and economic factors. The consequence of these radical oppositions was the perpetration of massacres and deportations, of Protestants first and later of Catholics, which were exceptional in comparison to contemporary clashes in England and Scotland. Soon, depositions, books, engravings and pamphlets represented those violent events. Kwiatkowski’s contribution examines the afore-mentioned sources, following their focus on the torments inflicted upon the victims and on the fact that those horrors were performed ‘in sight’ of their families. It will also consider various visual and textual references to other violent religious and colonial conflicts, such as the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War and the Spanish conquest of America. This comparative approach could allow for a better understanding of early modern forms of representing violence, pain, suffering and the witnessing of atrocity in the context of historical massacres.
Palermo’s past public executions and their lingering memory1
Authors: Bella Maria Pia Di
Published: January 2018

European penal law’s practice has often been characterized by close relations with Christian notions of repentance and redemption. One impressive example of such a relation is the case of the Sicilian noble ranked Bianchi. From 1541 to 1820, 2,127 persons condemned to death in Palermo (Sicily) by the secular courts were handed to the Company of the Santissimo Crocifisso, so-called Bianchi, whose task was to comfort them, morally and spiritually, during the three days and three nights before their execution and also during the long processions that took them from the prison to the scaffold. The purpose assigned to this religious comfort and the ensuing procession was to instruct the culprit how to die a good Christian death. Such a death implied, in the view of the Bianchi, the repentance of the condemned and his willingness to accept torture and executions as the condition for their redemption. At the same time other social groups created confraternities in order to take care of the soul of the condemned persons by praying for their salvation during their execution, while the spectators gave way to a still enduring religious cult at the Church of the Souls of the Beheaded Bodies.
The appointment of Herbert Gladstone as Liberal Chief Whip in 1899
Authors: Brown Kenneth D.
Published: January 2018

Herbert Gladstone was much denigrated by his contemporaries, such as David Lloyd George, as a lightweight figure, a dwarf in politics very much in the shadow of his famous father. However, this chapter reveals that others have recognised Gladstone’s qualities and that he was the right person to be Liberal Chief Whip in 1899 at a time when the Liberal Party was, as he was, in something of a political wilderness. Faced with a divided Liberal Party, with declining income, as well as his own family responsibilities, Gladstone emerges as the right person to revive Liberal fortunes - especially as he was one of the few prominent Liberal politicians of the 1890s to recognise the importance of independent Labour representation in Parliament. Ultimately, of course, he was an important figure in brokering a secret parliamentary pact with Ramsay MacDonald, of the Labour Representation League in 1903, which paved the way for Labour winning 29, soon to be 30, parliamentary seats and the revival of the Liberals to 400 seats in 1906. This might have led the Liberal Party to accept a cuckoo in the nest but the action seemed right at the time.
Transforming the unemployed: trade union benefits and the advent of state policy
Authors: Whiteside Noel
Published: January 2018

The introduction of state insurance for the unemployed, under the 1911 National Insurance Act, forced the trade unions to make adjustments to their visions of how they treated the unemployed. Before the 1911 Act there was immense diversity and variation in how the trade unions supported their members and controlled the labour market through providing benefits for the unemployed. However, the 1911 Act, imposed a rigidity on unemployment, defining it by imposing a limit of benefits for 15 weeks per year, with those falling out of benefit being unfortunate rather than long-term unemployed. Since many unions ran the new state scheme it was their previous flexibility in providing benefits to a more liberally defined unemployed, and allowing local branch variation, was replaced by the state’s insistence on uniformity and centralisation.
The disaffiliation crisis of 1932: the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the opinion of ILP members
Authors: Laybourn Keith
Published: January 2018

The essay deals with one of the major turning points in inter-war British Labour politics, the disaffiliation of the Independent Labour Party from the Labour Party in 1932. Examining the tensions between the Labour Party and the ILP in the early inter-war years Keith Laybourn suggests that this was a product of tensions that had been building up since the beginning of the inter-war years was not simply a product of any last minute campaign by some prominent placed and leading members of the ILP driven by the concern to speed up the socialist revolution. They might have felt that a workers’ revolution was required to replace the Labour Party approach of administering capitalism and seeking its reform but this was not a view held by most in the Labour Party, or possibly the majority of ILP membership in 1932, which were ready to accept conventional and disciplined politics. In the end, however, petulance, rather than sensible decision making, drove the ILP out of the Labour Party in a brief moment when, as became obvious, a minority of disaffiliationists gained control of the ILP.
Must Labour lose? Lessons from post-war history
Authors: Jefferys Kevin
Published: January 2018

Kevin Jefferys addresses the long-standing question of whether ‘Must Labour Lose?’ This has been an intriguing political question ever since it was first posed in 1960 by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose. Examining the post-war record of the Labour Party, alongside that of the Conservative Party, Kevin Jefferys questions the inevitability of Labour’s decline through a detailed examination of the political results since 1945. Instead of Labour’s inevitable decline he suggests that there is a pattern of the Labour Party success and defeats that are conditioned by the economic circumstances, the performance of the Conservative party, and the leadership of the Labour Party. In the end, he argues that Labour may not always lose but that, given the gap between the opinion about the leadership in the party and the electorate in the country, it may be some time before Labour regains power.
We Are, Therefore I Am—I Am, Therefore We Are: The Third in Sartre’s Social Ontology
Authors: Warren Nicolas de
Published: January 2018

This paper examines the meaning and significance of Sartre’s concept of “the third” within the social ontology of the Critique of Dialectical Reason. Through an examination of three different types of group formation (serial collectives, statutory groups, and sport teams), this paper provides an analysis of central Sartrean insights into how individual action and collective agency are co-constituted. This paper also draws attention to the role ascribed to material objects as well as ideological views and beliefs in the formation of social agency.
Selfhood, Schizophrenia, and the Interpersonal Regulation of Experience
Authors: Ratcliffe Matthew
Published: January 2018

This paper addresses the view that schizophrenia involves disturbance of the minimal self, and that this distinguishes it from other psychiatric conditions. I challenge the distinction between a minimal and an interpersonally constituted sense of self, through a consideration of the relationship between psychosis and interpersonally induced trauma. First of all, I suggest that even minimal self-experience must include a pre-reflective sense of what kind of intentional state one is in. Then I address the extent to which human experience and thought are interpersonally regulated. I propose that traumatic events, in childhood and/or in adulthood, can erode a primitive form of “trust” in other people that the integrity of intentionality depends upon, thus disrupting the phenomenological boundaries between intentional state types. I conclude that a distinction between minimal and interpersonal self is untenable, and that schizophrenia should be thought of in relational terms rather than simply as a disorder of the individual.
Feeling Ashamed of Myself Because of You
Authors: Sánchez Alba Montes , Salice Alessandro
Published: January 2018

Within the literature, shame is generally described as a self-conscious emotion, meaning that shame is about the self that feels that emotion. But how can this account accommodate cases in which I feel ashamed of someone else? This paper pursues two goals. The first is to vindicate the phenomenological credentials of what might be called ‘hetero-induced shame’ and to resist possible attempts to reduce its specificity. The second goal is to show how the standard account of shame as self-directed can be made hospitable to cases of hetero-induced shame. We argue that a promising way to do this is by supplementing the standard account by a theory of group identification.
Collective Body Memories
Authors: Fuchs Thomas
Published: January 2018

The concept of body memory comprises all forms of implicit memory that are mediated by the body and actualized without explicit intention in our everyday conduct—for example, habitual patterns of movement and perception, instrumental skills or behavioral and cultural habits. The life-long plasticity of body memory enables us to adapt to the natural and social environment, in particular to become entrenched and feel at home in the social and cultural environment. The chapter introduces in particular the concept of collective body memories that develop in social groups through recurrent shared experiences and lead to spatial and temporal patterns of joint group behavior. Examples of such memories are the formation of a well-attuned football team and its fluent interplay, the habitual ways of interacting that characterize a family, or the enactment of social ceremonies and rituals. In such situations the intercorporeal memories of the individuals unite to form overarching procedural fields. Moreover, the interactive processes develop an autonomous or emergent dynamic involving the individuals in behavior they would not show outside of the formation. Once the group joins again in a similar configuration and situation, the resulting collective body memory is re-actualized. These phenomena are analyzed mainly from a phenomenological, but also from a dynamical systems perspective.
Embodiment and Enactment in Cultural Psychiatry
Authors: Kirmayer Laurence J. , Ramstead Maxwell J. D.
Published: January 2018

Cultural psychiatry is concerned with understanding the implications of human cultural diversity for psychopathology, illness experience, and intervention. The emerging paradigms of embodiment and enactment in cognitive science provide ways to approach this diversity in terms of variations in bodily and intersubjective experience, narrative practices, and discursive formations. This chapter will outline an approach to cultural neurophenomenology and psychopathology through metaphor theory, which examines the interplay of culturally shaped developmental processes of embodied experience and narrative practices structured by ideologies of personhood and social positioning. The new paradigm has broad implications for psychiatric theory, research, and practice, which will be illustrated with examples from the cross-cultural study of delusions.
Introduction: Global Governance through Goal Setting
Authors: Kanie Norichika , Bernstein Steven , Biermann Frank , Haas Peter M.
Published: January 2018

This chapter lays out a research agenda to assess conditions, challenges, and prospects for the Sustainable Development Goals to pursue this aim. First, the chapter discusses goal setting as a global governance strategy. Second, to contextualize the Sustainable Development Goals, it discusses the unique nature of the modern challenges that the Sustainable Development Goals must confront and review the historical and political trajectory of sustainable development governance, including the evolution from a primarily rule-based to a more goal-based system and the experience of the earlier Millennium Development Goals. Third, the chapter reviews the negotiating history of the Sustainable Development Goals. Then, the chapter elaborate on how the chapters are organized to address the three questions that guide the book.
Conceptualization: Goal Setting as a Strategy for Earth System Governance
Authors: Young Oran R.
Published: January 2018

Mainstream thinking about governance focuses on rule-making and directs attention to the challenges of developing rules, promulgating implementing regulations, and dealing with matters of compliance and enforcement. But this is not the only method for meeting needs for governance in complex systems. An alternative strategy centers on goal-setting and features the establishment of clearcut priorities, the allocation of resources to address these priorities, the development of effective teams with a mandate to pursue goals, and the introduction of metrics to measure progress toward goal fulfillment. While goal-setting is more familiar to those working at subnational and even local levels, cases like the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals indicate that this strategy is usable in largescale settings as well. In some cases (e.g. the regime created under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), rule-making and goal-setting are joined together in a single governance system. But goal-setting is a distinct governance strategy with a logic of its own. It makes sense in a variety of settings to compare and contrast the relative merits of goal-setting and other governance strategies in devising arrangements likely to prove effective in solving specific problems.
Ideas, Beliefs, and Policy Linkages: Lessons from Food, Water, and Energy Policies
Authors: Haas Peter M. , Stevens Casey
Published: January 2018

This chapter analyzes how topics are identified for the SDGs, the prospects for effective linkages between the individual topics, and longer term learning about managing complex issues. It compares the logics of substantive and tactical issues linkage. Empirically it looks at the presence or absence or epistemic communities as factors contributing to the identification of SDGs, and in particular which individual SDGs are compatible to build a more integrated approach to governing sustainability.
Lessons from the Health-Related Millennium Development Goals
Authors: Andresen Steinar , Iguchi Masahiko
Published: January 2018

This chapter first evaluates the MDGs achievements. The MDGs are evaluated positively for their achievements in poverty reduction, gender disparity in school education, gender equality and some of the health related goals. They have not succeeded in, among others, maternal mortality, sanitation and environmental sustainability. The critical weakness lies in the lack of implementation mechanisms. Lessons from the MDGs tell us that in order for the SDGs to be more effective they need to take into account a multilayered approach also tailored at regional and national levels providing a menu of options for actors to select from. Regarding the health related goals focus is on child mortality and the role of GAVI and Norway in this context and both these actors have contributed to a fairly high score on this goal and individual leadership has been particularly important. The lessons also underline the significance of mobilizing money. A final lesson relates to the virtue of combining UN and non-UN efforts. While the UN is necessary to secure legitimacy, smaller and more flexible bodies are often necessary to reach ambitious goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals and Multilateral Agreements
Authors: Underdal Arild , Kim Rakhyun E.
Published: January 2018

This chapter explores goal setting, as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals, as a governance strategy for reforming or rearranging existing international agreements and organizations so as to enhance their overall performance in promoting sustainable development. It discusses the political and entrepreneurial challenges peculiar to bringing existing international institutions into line, and identifies the conditions under which goal setting could be an effective tool for orchestration. The chapter concludes that, because of their ecumenical diversity and soft priorities, the Sustainable Development Goals are not likely to serve as effective instruments for fostering convergence. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides neither an overarching norm that can serve as a platform for more specific goals nor an integrating vision of what long-term sustainable development in the Anthropocene means. In the absence of such an overarching principle and vision, the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on global governance will likely materialize primarily as spurring some further clustering of existing regimes and organizations within crowded policy domains. The Sustainable Development Goals cannot be expected to generate major architectural reforms that will significantly reduce the fragmentation of the global governance system at large.
Toward a Multi-level Action Framework for Sustainable Development Goals
Authors: Gupta Joyeeta , Nilsson Måns
Published: January 2018

This chapter proposes a Multi-level Action Framework for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. It suggests that there should be three Action Principles, namely to govern sustainable development goals across levels and actors; to target drivers of change at the appropriate level; and to ensure horizontal and vertical coherence in action. It also argues that there should be three Action Mechanisms that should be put in place, namely developing human capacities, building institutional frameworks, and designing appropriate interventions. It demonstrates these principles and mechanisms through an application to the water governance field.
Conclusion: Key Challenges for Global Governance through Goals
Authors: Biermann Frank , Kanie Norichika
Published: January 2018

This chapter summarizes some key findings of the book, discuss the challenges for, and opportunities of, the Sustainable Development Goals by identifying several conditions that might determine their successful implementation, and also suggest some possible avenues for further research. The approach of “global governance through goals”—and the Sustainable Development Goals as a prime example—is marked by a number of key characteristics, including its detachment from the international legal system, weak institutional arrangement, global inclusion and comprehensive goal-setting process, and granting much leeway to national choices and preferences. Those characteristics are reflected in the challenges for implementation, including those of developing indicators and institutional arrangements, tailoring implementation at national or stakeholder levels, and securing policy integration. Further research is needed in addressing these challenges, which requires inter- and transdisciplinary research development.
The Swipe
Authors: Palm Michael
Published: January 2018

This chapter traces the meaning of “the swipe.” The verb “to swipe” has many colloquial meaning. In recent years, it has come to mean running a charge card through a digital reader or using an index finger to manipulate the touch screen of a smartphone. As smartphones become payment instruments, these two meanings have been united. The chapter explores the so-called “swipe fee wars,” being fought between banks, retailers, and phone companies to determine who will bear the cost of payment. As the business models move away from fees and towards extracting the value “big data,” a related battle is being waged over access to transactional data.
Silver
Authors: Brunton Finn
Published: January 2018

This article is a field report on PorcFest, a libertarian festival. The festival is part of the Free State Project, which seeks to build a libertarian voting bloc in New Hampshire. Porcfest is also a temporary proof-of-concept for a utopian libertarian society. At PorcFest, the preferred money forms are those that contain precious metals (such as bits of silver or pre-1964 US dimes) and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which offer a kind of digital metallism. As a temporary site of economic alterity, PorcFest offers a reworked vision of shared value and trust in and between individuals.
Antiquity
Authors: Lemons Don S.
Published: January 2018

Greek antiquity, in the text, stretches from the contributions of Thales, in 600 BCE, to that of Eratosthenes in 225 BCE. In large part the Greek-speaking contributors were materialists who sought the principles or “roots” of all natural phenomena, for example, in the “elements” of earth, air, fire, and water. Aristotle (350 BCE), in particular, composed the contributions of his predecessors into a coherent whole or cosmos that answered the questions of his day. Aristarchus (280 BCE), Archimedes (250 BCE), and Eratosthenes (225 BCE) applied simple geometrical relations and ratios of magnitudes to, respectively, the distances of the sun and moon, the concept of static equilibrium, and the diameter of the Earth.
Global Cities
Authors: Gottlieb Robert , Ng Simon
Published: January 2018

How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space.

Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities—in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues.

These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China's new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements.
Entity and Event: Electronic Literature in Context
Authors: Moulthrop Stuart
Published: January 2018

This chapter reviews several definitions of electronic literature (“born digital,” digitally mediated, post-literary, radically computational), settling on a criterion in which the text features more as “event” than “entity,” operating in opposition to assumptions of integrity (“the textual whole”). Various instances and examples are discussed, from Christopher Strachey’s love-letter generator (perhaps the earliest example of digital composition) to Michael Joyce’s “novel of Internet,” Was. The chapter also frames this book’s investment in early digital productions and explains “traversals” and their motivation.
Is the Universe a Hologram?
Authors: Plasencia Adolfo
Published: January 2018

Questions about the physical world, the mind, and technology in conversations that reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas.

Science today is more a process of collaboration than moments of individual “eurekas.” This book recreates that kind of synergy by offering a series of interconnected dialogues with leading scientists who are asked to reflect on key questions and concepts about the physical world, technology, and the mind. These thinkers offer both specific observations and broader comments about the intellectual traditions that inform these questions; doing so, they reveal a rich seam of interacting ideas.

The persistent paradox of our era is that in a world of unprecedented access to information, many of the most important questions remain unsolved. These conversations (conducted by a veteran science writer, Adolfo Plasencia) reflect this, with scientists addressing such issues as intelligence, consciousness, global warming, energy, technology, matter, the possibility of another earth, changing the past, and even the philosophical curveball, “is the universe a hologram?”

The dialogues discuss such fascinating aspects of the physical world as the function of the quantum bit, the primordial cosmology of the universe, and the wisdom of hewn stones. They offer optimistic but reasoned views of technology, considering convergence culture, algorithms, “Beauty ≠ Truth,” the hacker ethic, AI, and other topics. And they offer perspectives from a range of disciplines on intelligence, discussing subjects that include the neurophysiology of the brain, affective computing, collaborative innovation, and the wisdom of crowds.

Conversations with

Hal Abelson, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, John Perry Barlow, Javier Benedicto, José Bernabéu, Michail Bletsas, Jose M. Carmena, David Casacuberta, Yung Ho Chang, Ignacio Cirac, Gianluigi Colalucci, Avelino Corma, Bernardo Cuenca Grau, Javier Echeverria, José Hernández-Orallo, Hiroshi Ishii, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Henry Jenkins, Anne Margulies, Mario J. Molina, Tim O'Reilly, John Ochsendorf, Paul Osterman, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Rosalind W. Picard, Howard Rheingold, Alejandro W. Rodriguez, Israel Ruiz, Sara Seager, Richard Stallman, Antonio Torralba, Bebo White, José María Yturralde
Unifying Particle Physics with the Cosmology of the Primordial Universe
Authors: Bernabéu José , Plasencia Adolfo
Published: January 2018

The dialogue with physicist José Bernabéu firstly looks into why discovery of the Higgs boson has a spiritual dimension and is a great starting point for new discovery. It then moves on to discuss why CERN, the largest laboratory in the world, is the supreme symbol of an advanced Society and a “civilization catalyst”. American, Asian and European physicists working together as equals in a place that is an essential expression of “understanding”; the noblest and most sublime human expression. An explanation then follows about how observation of incredibly small things using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is leading to a new type of physics for explaining unsolved problems, such as the mass of neutrons, matter and dark energy, without losing view of the ‘bigger picture ’in order to widen knowledge of the cosmos. For example with Hubble, where the further away we look, the further back in time we see. Finally, a recent contribution by Bernabéu is discussed which deals with ‘Time-reversal violation with quantum-entangled B mesons’, a consideration of the behavior of elementary particles, as part of the quest to try and understand the intriguing symmetry between the behavior of matter and antimatter.
Looking Forward in Architecture by Looking Back
Authors: Chang Yung Ho , Plasencia Adolfo
Published: January 2018

In this dialogue, the architect, professor of architecture and former head of department of architecture at MIT, Yung Ho Chang, outlines why he agrees with Mies Van der Rohe that materiality is the basis of architecture. He also reflects on why a new material is not necessarily a better one, and why an old one is not necessarily interesting simply because it is old. He explains the reasons why digital space is not a substitute for architectural space. He then goes on to explain that the way we ask ourselves about how the past and present are connected could be a way for us to discover what architecture really is, as well as discussing the process by which architectural intervention may or may not transform a place, or even make a new one.
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
Authors: Jenkins Henry , Plasencia Adolfo
Published: January 2018

Henry Jenkins, former professor of humanities, MIT, is one of the leading science authorities in the analysis of New Media. Today, he is Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at USC. In this dialogue, Jenkins explains how technology is transforming the traditional view of humanities. He outlines his vision of convergence culture in his book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He explains why he thinks the idea of copyright is an aberration. He goes on to relate the causes for conglomerates losing control of media flows and how to deal with this situation. He describes the new logic framework under which our current participatory culture is run. He defines himself in this dialogue as a critical utopian trying to demonstrate how to harness the great power that changes taking place in new media have on people. Emphasizing the ‘new social skills’, which bring about new forms of ethics, interactions, politics, types of economic activities and legal culture, in the clash between the new digital media and the old mass media.
Remembering Our Future: The Frontier of Search Technologies
Authors: Baeza-Yates Ricardo , Ricardo Adolfo
Published: January 2018

In this dialogue, the computer scientist Ricardo Baeza-Yates explains why search technologies enable behavioral patterns which are more deterministic for some people rather than others to be predicted. And why people have in their behavior a long tail. He explains later why we feel more comfortable with determinism, which is one reason for the adoption of the semantic web taking so long. Ricardo doesn’t believe in the existence of a Kibernos (kubernetes) steering the Internet. He argues that the fact the Internet has not been dominated by any power in the physical world is not related to its size, but rather to its diversity. He then explains that artificial intelligence is related both to a complex critical mass and to computing capabilities. He also argues why not everyone is able to innovate— there is no algorithm that exists to achieve success— and why innovation is something that cannot be replicated. Finally, he explains how the Internet is broadening our social horizons and is a mirror of what we are; the way it allows us to control the devil in us, and how their mechanisms exercise control over the misuse of technology.