bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Max Weber and the Late Modernization of Catholicism
Authors: Turner Bryan S. , Forlenza Rosario
Published: May 2019

While Max Weber wrote extensively on a range of religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and most extensively Protestantism—there is no fully developed sociology of Catholicism. This chapter attempts to construct Max Weber’s missing sociology of Catholicism from the various scattered comments across his works. While Weber saw Protestantism influencing the growth of capitalism (and more broadly modernization), his view of Catholicism was largely negative: it was ritualistic, magical, bureaucratic, and traditional. What would Weber have made of Catholicism in the twentieth century and twenty-first century? This chapter first examines developments in nineteenth-century Catholicism that lay behind Weber’s critical commentary. The second half asks how changes in Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council (informally known as Vatican II, 1962–1965) have brought about a modernization of Catholicism. The chapter argues for the relevance of Weber’s views today by considering the impact of Vatican II on Catholic teaching and practice, arguing that it represents the political modernization of Catholicism. Vatican II represented a radical departure from the political conservatism of the nineteenth century. In principle, the church was no longer critical of secular democracy, pluralism, the party system, and state sovereignty. This modernization, however, began to undermine the universalism of the church and pushed Catholicism toward denominationalism. However, the church did not modernize its teaching on contraception, abortion, marriage, divorce, and family life. This tension between political modernization and what we might simply call “familial conservatism” still haunts the church today.
Max Weber’s Analysis of Capitalism
Authors: Bruhns Hinnerk
Published: May 2019

Capitalism is an absolutely central theme of Max Weber’s work as an economist and sociologist as well as of his political and social commitment. Weber’s investigations in ancient economy, the medieval city, and the political, economic, social, and religious systems of China and India are for a great part an inventory of differences versus the occidental development of modern market-oriented capitalism based on the exploitation of (formally) free labor. The transition from agrarian to industrial capitalism in contemporary Germany is observed by Weber with respect to the political and social problems of the young nation-state. The universal expansion of capitalism is analyzed with respect to its effects on humankind and conduct of life.
Contemporary Capitalism and the Distribution of Power in Society
Authors: Scott John
Published: May 2019

This article examines Weber’s partial and fragmentary discussions of power and domination. It reconstructs a basis for Weber’s argument through introducing ideas of persuasive and coercive influence and shows how Weber examined these forms of power in structures of class and status and in views of state authority and patterns of domination in economic markets. It is shown that the Weberian conceptualization can illuminate many ongoing debates in studies of corporate power and control over state power. The application of the ideas is considered through current evidence on the financialization and globalization of economic domination and the transformation and globalization of state power in contemporary capitalism.
The ART of Parentage
Authors: Cahn Naomi
Published: May 2019

The world of reproductive technology, including donor gametes and surrogacy, brings new challenges to identifying parents and respecting children’s rights. An intending parent—married or unmarried—is not necessarily the genetic contributor to the resulting child. And children have interests in knowing the identity of their genetic progenitors. This chapter focuses on whom the law recognizes as parents when a child has been created through assisted reproductive technology. While the chapter traces how intent has emerged as the critical factor in determining parentage, it also shows how intentional parenthood might sometimes be in tension with functional parenthood. The chapter provides a brief history of the technologies and their implications for parentage law and children’s rights to know their genetic origins. It also considers how the law might better adjust to changing technologies and family structures to produce outcomes that respect the child, rather than abstract concepts of equality—or even the parents’ interests.
Materialist/Marxist Interpretations and Postcolonial Biblical Criticism
Authors: McKay Niall
Published: May 2019

Marxist theory provides a set of tools to analyze the material conditions and social forces behind biblical texts and the contexts of their interpreters. Although often overlooked within biblical studies, an important scholarly movement in Marxist and materialist biblical criticism continues to challenge liberal and capitalist assumptions in historical-critical, social-scientific, and literary approaches to the Bible. This study examines the broad parameters of Marxist biblical criticism and how it might enrich readings from the margins collected under the tent of postcolonial biblical criticism. The chapter also notes the divergence between postcolonial and Marxist criticism in recent decades and looks to the work of Fernando Belo and Itumeleng Mosala to find common ground. Their analyses may challenge the tendency in postcolonial biblical criticism not to engage Marxism criticism deeply.
Liquidity Swaps between Central Banks, the IMF, and the Evolution of the International Financial Architecture
Authors: Bourgeon Pauline , Sgard Jérôme
Published: May 2019

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, then the 2008 crisis and the euro crisis have seen a major monetary innovation in the form of large-scale exchanges of liquidity swaps between core central banks. For instance, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank exchanged for a few days or weeks equivalent amounts of their respective currencies, so that the ECB could lend dollars to eurozone commercial banks, and vice versa. At maturity, the swaps were either extended over time or reimbursed. This utterly simple operation thus allows central banks to act collectively as a Fed-led, network-based international lender of last resort. A significant corollary is that the action of the IMF, which used to be the main international crisis manager, now extends only to the developing countries and the (smaller) emerging countries. Conditionality, with its strongly asymmetric dimension, is limited to this latter group, while unconditional swaps are now the key liquidity channel for supporting the rich and powerful countries.
States, Nonstate Actors, and Economics in Global Health Governance
Authors: Youde Jeremy
Published: May 2019

The economic landscape for global health politics has shifted dramatically over the past generation as private and nonstate actors become increasingly important sources of development assistance for health. The growing economic clout of nonstate actors in the global health space raises questions about the role of states in funding development programs, whether state and nonstate actors work in a complementary fashion, and if there are fundamental shifts in the nature of global governance, legitimacy, and authority under way. This chapter examines the intersection of state and nonstate actors in the economic dimensions of global health governance by examining the different types of nonstate actors getting involved in funding global health programs, the historical experience of nonstate actors in global health, the informal division of labor within global health governance, and potential pathways for facilitating positive economic engagement between state and nonstate actors in the economics of global health.
Plurality
Authors: Tieu Lyn , Romoli Jacopo
Published: May 2019

This chapter presents an overview of recent experimental work investigating the semantics and pragmatics of plurality. The studies discussed examine the ‘more than one’ meaning that is seemingly contributed by plural morphology, referred to in the literature as a plurality inference or a multiplicity inference. Theoretical treatments of the multiplicity inference involve deriving the ‘more than one’ meaning as a kind of implicature, or treating it as one of the possible meanings of an ambiguous plural. Recent findings from experiments conducted with adults and children reveal that the plural meaning is sensitive to polarity, context-dependent, suspendable under certain conditions, and computed by preschool-aged children on a par with standard implicatures. The chapter discusses how these experimental findings align with the two main theoretical approaches, and suggests directions for future research.
Vagueness
Authors: Alxatib Sam , Sauerland Uli
Published: May 2019

Though vague phenomena have been studied extensively for many decades, it is only in recent years that researchers sought the support of quantitative data. This chapter highlights and discusses the insights that experimental methods brought to the study of vagueness. One area focused on are ‘borderline contradictions’, that is, sentences like ‘She is neither tall nor not tall’ that are contradictory when analysed in classical logic, but are actually acceptable as descriptions of borderline cases. The flourishing of theories and experimental studies that borderline contradictions have led to are examined closely. Beyond this illustrative case, an overview of recent studies that concern the classification of types of vagueness, the use of numbers, rounding, number modification, and the general pragmatic status of vagueness is provided.
Adjective Meaning and Scales
Authors: Solt Stephanie
Published: May 2019

The topics of adjective meaning and scalarity offer a prime example of the benefits of experimental research in formal semantics. This chapter presents a series of case studies illustrating how experimental approaches have been productively applied at various stages in the process of developing and evaluating theories of scalar meaning: (i) to support introspectively sourced judgements on which formal theories are based; (ii) to generate theoretically relevant data beyond that which is accessible to introspection and intuition; and (iii) to map out the empirical landscape, as a step towards formulating research questions and hypotheses. The article ends with a discussion of methodological issues, with a view to developing a body of best practices for experimental research in this area.
Prosody and Meaning
Authors: Tonhauser Judith
Published: May 2019

The prosody of an utterance plays a significant role in determining the meaning of the utterance. Studying the contributions of prosody to meaning is complicated by several factors: (i) prosody has multiple components in the speech signal, some with continuous expression, (ii) utterances with the same meaning can differ in their prosodic realizations, and (iii) there is cross-linguistic prosodic variation. Concentrating on information-structural focus, this chapter illustrates how experimental investigations advance our understanding of the intricate relationship between prosody and meaning. The chapter discusses how focus is prosodically realized in different languages, how listeners perceive and interpret prosodically realized focus and how prosodically realized focus interacts with contextual information about focus. Different methods used to explore prosodically realized focus and its perception and interpretation are covered. The chapter concludes by considering research on the prosody of semantic/pragmatic phenomena related to focus, such as contrastive topic and presupposition.
Politeness
Authors: Holtgraves Thomas M.
Published: May 2019

This chapter reviews the major experimental approaches to politeness and considers the theoretical implications of these approaches for the domains of semantics and pragmatics. After a brief overview of the major theoretical orientations to politeness, a detailed review of empirical research on Brown & Levinson’s (B&L) politeness theory, as well as the issues raised by this research, is provided. Major critiques of the B&L model, and alternative situated and interactional models, are then noted. The implications of politeness for more recent research examining the role of politeness in reasoning and the communication of uncertainty is considered, followed by a review of the cognitive and neural processes involved in the processing of politeness.
Quantifier Spreading
Authors: Brooks Patricia J. , Parshina Olga
Published: May 2019

Children often exhibit difficulties restricting the scope of a universal quantifier in contexts where sets of entities are in partial one-to-one correspondence (e.g. children incorrectly answer the question Are all the cars in a garage? in a situation where there is an extra empty garage). Quantifier spreading occurs across truth-value judgement, picture-choice, sentence-picture verification, and syllogistic reasoning tasks. Errors have been attributed to immature syntax, lack of exposure to relevant input, shallow sentence processing, and pragmatic factors, including infelicitous testing conditions. Errors persist in school-age children and occur in second language learners, deaf individuals, and adults with low educational attainment. Eye-tracking studies have identified a signature pattern of visual attention associated with quantifier spreading, which suggests that errors may reflect cognitive overload in sentence processing.
Constraint-Based Pragmatic Processing
Authors: Degen Judith , Tanenhaus Michael K.
Published: May 2019

Processing language requires integrating information from multiple sources, including context, world knowledge, and the linguistic signal itself. How is this information integrated? A range of positions on the issue is possible, spanned by two extreme positions: extreme informational privilege—certain types of information are processed earlier in online processing and weighted most heavily in the resulting utterance interpretation; and extreme parallelism—all information is processed in parallel and weighted equally in the resulting interpretation. In reviewing the current empirical landscape on scalar implicature processing, the chapter argues for a constraint-based approach to pragmatic processing, which is closer in spirit to the parallelism account than the informational privilege account. The approach is also extended to other pragmatic phenomena.
Academic Publishing
Authors: Rayner Samantha J.
Published: May 2019

This chapter on academic publishing covers the origins of the field; the impact of the two major drivers of change—the printing press and the Internet—on the spread of knowledge; Open Access; the monograph; university presses; academic libraries; commercial academic publishers; trade publishers and the cross-over book; peer review; journals; HE textbook publishing. It looks at all these areas through the lens of change, stressing the need for greater connectivity between the various communities of practice involved in the academic publishing field, and underlines the historic and existing collaborative and innovative strengths it contains.
Educational Publishing
Authors: Kovač Miha , Šebart Mojca K.
Published: May 2019

In the first part of this chapter, we will briefly outline the main characteristics of educational publishing that are common in the majority of developed and developing countries. In the second part, we will demonstrate how, in different countries, some of these common characteristics have been modified in accordance with different prevalent values as well as different educational systems. We will also discuss how digitization has changed educational publishing and why ‘the logic of the classroom’ has led to the digitization of educational materials moving slower than expected by digital pundits. We will examine how these changes have affected trade publishing as well as how the skills and competencies of educational publishers differ from the skills and competencies inherent in trade publishing.
Stress, Skilled Performance, and Expertise
Authors: Matthews Gerald , Wohleber Ryan W. , Lin Jinchao
Published: May 2019

Experts must often execute cognitive and motor skills in demanding, potentially stressful environments. Broadly, stress impairs attention and working memory, increasing vulnerability to cognitive overload. Theories of attentional resources and cognitive skill acquisition suggest a Standard Capacity Model (SCM) of expertise and stress vulnerability. However, the SCM has several deficiencies including neglect of contextual factors and the complexities of stress. Theoretical challenges are compounded by methodological issues including the choice of stress measure, and individual differences in response. The interplay between stress and expertise is explored across four domains: test anxiety, sports performance, surgery, and vehicle driving. In each domain, stress is sometimes associated with overload, consistent with the SCM, such that expertise buffers stressor impacts. However, expert performance is also subject to domain-specific influences beyond cognitive capacity, including strategies for emotional regulation, choking under pressure, and aggressive behaviors. Thus, relationships between stress and expertise must be understood contextually.
Expertise in Law Enforcement
Authors: Suss Joel , Boulton Laura
Published: May 2019

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of expertise research in law enforcement and guidance for those planning on conducting research themselves. The chapter begins by describing conceptualizations of expertise in law enforcement, and offers a working definition. The chapter then identifies challenges facing researchers interested in conducting expertise research in law enforcement, and advises how to overcome those challenges. Next, concrete examples are provided of how research in this domain has been conducted. In doing so, the chapter covers a broad range of methods and highlights the subtleties that researchers new to the domain should consider when designing and conducting expertise research. Following that, key insights from the literature are described, covering the spectrum of expertise in law enforcement. Finally, directions for future research are suggested.
Descartes’s Philosophical Theology
Authors: Agostini Igor
Published: May 2019

In this chapter I argue the following thesis: 1) Descartes’s Meditations never formulate the problem of God’s existence as it is required by the precepts of order; in particular, the only problem of existence posed by Descartes after the classification of thoughts in the Third Meditation does not concern God directly, but generally aliqua res. 2) Though Descartes qualifies the two proofs of the Third Meditation as a posteriori, they cannot be considered as homologous in their structure to the traditional a posteriori proofs: they both—and the second in particular—contain components that are truly a priori. 3) The proof of the Fifth Meditation, as it starts from the true definition of God and God’s essence, does not constitute a quoadnos version of the a priori demonstration belonging to mathematics, but is, in a strict sense, a potissima demonstration that is at least as evident as those of mathematics.
Descartes’s Moral Philosophy
Authors: Renault Laurence
Published: May 2019

Just as, according to Descartes, there had been no philosophy before his that rested on certain principles, so there could not have been any morality based on reason. That is why he “compared the moral writings of the ancient pagans to very proud and magnificent palaces built only on sand and mud”. Descartes’s ultimate philosophical ambition is thus to define a morality grounded on certain principles. Corresponding to different moments during the realization of this ambitious project are two distinct stages of Cartesian morality. Descartes first announces the rules of a morality that can be followed while one is seeking the foundations of knowledge, then formulates the precepts of his moral philosophy. This chapter examines that project.
The Compendium Musicae and Descartes’s Aesthetics
Authors: de Buzon Frédéric
Published: May 2019

There is no more systematically organized set of reflections regarding a specific art form than those that appear in a brief treatise offered to Isaac Beeckman on the New Year of 1619 and published shortly after its author’s death in 1650—namely, Descartes’s Compendium Musicae. Well before their meeting in the fall of 1618, Beeckman was hoping to advance musical theory by updating the experiments and the physical hypotheses concerning the nature of sonic phenomena, and especially consonance, which he did by making a significant contribution to the theory of vibrating strings. In this way, he incited Descartes to pursue experiments and formulate hypotheses that come together systematically in the Compendium Musicae. It makes sense, then, to approach the more general question of the relationship between Descartes and artistic and aesthetic questions by beginning with the theory of music in the Compendium Musicae.
“He Has Created a Schism in Philosophy”
Authors: Ablondi Fred
Published: May 2019

Géraud de Cordemoy (1626–84) was one of the most important Cartesian inheritors of the 1660s and 1670s. He was unique among Descartes’s followers in advocating atomism, and he was one of the first—if not the first—Cartesian occasionalists. Interestingly, he understood both of these positions to follow from Cartesian metaphysics, despite the fact that Descartes never endorsed the latter and explicitly rejected the former. He also accepted, with some modifications, Descartes’s real distinction between and union of the mind and the body, and developed Descartes’s thoughts on language use in significant ways. This chapter examines Cordemoy’s Cartesian-inspired arguments for both atomism and occasionalism, and discusses his thoughts on mind–body dualism and language use.
Cartesianism and Feminism
Authors: Pellegrin Marie-Fréderique
Published: May 2019

Cartesianism constitutes a particular and crucial moment in the history of the relations between the aims of philosophy and feminist claims. This is explained by theoretical reasons (the new Cartesian science posits a human being that is fundamentally non-sexual and ungendered) and by practical reasons (the importance of the philosophical vocations for women and the feminist vocations for men that Cartesianism has permitted). Recent readings of Descartes (which see him either as a misogynist or as a philogynist) show that the theoretical connections between Cartesianism and feminism are strong: Cartesianism powerfully questions the relation of women to philosophy, both as subjects and as philosophical objects.
Cavendish vs. Descartes on Mechanism and Animal Souls
Authors: Cooney Hadley
Published: May 2019

In the Discourse on the Method, Descartes attempts to prove that animals are mere machines, lacking reason and, by extension, consciousness. This chapter explores the response to this position offered by Margaret Cavendish in her 1664 Philosophical Letters. Following a reconstruction of the analogical argument Cavendish constructs to refute the Cartesian position, there is an examination of Cavendish’s metaphysical views in contrast to Descartes’s, revealing the sharp divide between these two thinkers on questions related to the nature of matter, the intelligibility of mechanical explanations in nature, the proper conception of reason, and the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
Locke on Cartesian Bodies and Cartesian Souls
Authors: Hamou Philippe
Published: May 2019

The anti-Cartesian agenda of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding is better understood when Locke’s intellectual debt to Descartes is fully recognized. Many theoretical options of the Essay, including the most explicitly anti-Cartesian ones, would not have been possible without Descartes, and without the tacit adoption of a number of Cartesian premises, freely incorporated into Locke’s philosophical insight. This subtle intertwining of Cartesian and anti-Cartesian elements is illustrated here on two topical metaphysical issues: the distinction between space and body, and the question of whether we have access to the essence of the soul through “self-consciousness”.
A Cartésien Manqué: Pierre Bayle and Cartesianism
Authors: Ryan Todd
Published: May 2019

This chapter argues that despite his reputation as a sceptic, Bayle’s thought is deeply influenced by the metaphysical systems of Descartes and Malebranche. In particular, Bayle shows great sympathy for a number of Cartesian positions, including the ontology of material substance, mind–body dualism, occasionalism, and mechanism. In each case, however, Bayle purports to find unresolvable conflicts between the Cartesian position and other intellectual commitments, including several of the fundamental tenets of Christian theism. The result is a kind of scepticism that might best be characterized as a scepticism of antinomy.
Descartes’s Mechanical but not Mechanistic Physics
Authors: Hattab Helen
Published: May 2019

Descartes is commonly characterized as the arch-mechanist who rejected the syllogistic demonstrations sought in Scholastic Aristotelian physics, and instead aimed at purely “mechanistic explanations” of natural phenomena. Typical accounts of physical phenomena found in his scientific works, such as that of the properties of salt, are thus interpreted as no more than structural explanations that posit one of many possible arrangements of variously shaped microscopic particles to account for the observed effects. By examining Descartes’s own statements about the different ways in which his physics is “mechanical”, and by placing these in the context of the Renaissance revival of the geometrical demonstrations found in the Aristotelian Questions of Mechanics, this chapter shows that, and in what way, Descartes aimed at mathematical and mechanical, but not mechanistic, demonstrations of physical phenomena like salt.
Comparative Law and the Study of Mixed Legal Systems
Authors: Du Plessis Jacques
Published: May 2019

Legal systems generally are ‘mixed’ in the sense that they have been influenced by a variety of other systems. However, while some legal systems, for a period of time at least, reach a certain level of uniformity, the diversity or ‘mixedness’ of the origins of other systems is more pronounced. This chapter deals with the experiences of the latter systems, and especially with their relevance to the discipline of comparative law. The focus is first on the concept of a mixed legal system, as well as related concepts, such as legal pluralism and hybridity, that have gained prominence in comparative analyses. Thereafter key questions that arise from these analyses are then considered in detail. These questions include how the mixed nature of legal systems is to be dealt with in representations of legal diversity of the world, how mixed legal systems are formed, and what could be learned from their experiences.
Comparative Law and the Europeanization of Private Law
Authors: Zimmermann Reinhard
Published: May 2019

The gradual emergence of a European private law is one of the most significant contemporary legal developments. Comparative law scholarship has played an important role in this process; in turn, it has received a boost as a result of the ‘Europeanization of private law’ agenda. The present essay attempts to provide an overview of the new types of literature that have been created, of new perspectives that have been opened up, of new approaches that have been tried, and of the transnational networks that have been established. Within the traditional core areas of private law, contract law has been at the centre of attention. Apart from the many Directives, particularly in the field of consumer contract law, a prodigious number of reference texts has been produced and, for some time, a codification of European contract law appeared to be imminent. That plan has now collapsed, and the institutionalized ‘Europe’ is, at the moment, facing strong headwinds. One of the challenges faced by comparative scholarship consists in preserving the momentum that has been build up over the past three decades. The European Law Institute, founded in 2011, may emerge as an important platform to advance the Europeanization of private law through facilitating and stimulating transnational comparative study.
Comparative Law and Legal Culture
Authors: Cotterrell Roger
Published: May 2019

The idea of legal culture has had an important place in major recent debates about the nature and aims of comparative law. The idea of legal culture entails that law should be treated as embedded in a broader culture of some kind. This culture may, but need not necessarily, be seen as wider than the lawyer’s or lawmaker’s professional realm of law. Often, however, conceptions of legal culture encompass much more than this professional juristic realm. They refer to a more general consciousness or experience of law that is widely shared by those who inhabit a particular legal environment, for example, a particular region, nation, or group of nations. Culture appears fundamental—a kind of lens through which all aspects of law must be perceived, or a gateway of understanding through which every comparatist must pass so as to have any genuine access to the meaning of foreign law.
Comparative Law and Legal History
Authors: Gordley James
Published: May 2019

Legal historians have sometimes studied the law of one place and time while disregarding that of others. Comparative lawyers have sometimes compared the law of different jurisdictions while ignoring the historical reasons they are alike or unlike. The consequences have been unfortunate. Historians have often explained rules which are ubiquitous by the circumstances peculiar to one time and place. Comparative lawyers have often explained the similarities and differences among laws with a blind eye to how they arose. To understand how these problems came about, this article examines the origins of legal history and comparative law. It then describes, more concretely, why these disciplines need each other. Legal rules acquire their structure over time. Thus even if a comparative law scholar were only interested in the structure of modern rules, he would need the help of history.
Comparative Law And Private International Law
Authors: Reimann Mathias
Published: May 2019

Comparative law and private international law have had a long and intimate relationship. Traditionally, comparative law has interacted with private international law in three basic dimensions which can loosely be termed academic, legislative, and judicial. Comparative law has made private international law the object of scholarly study; it has assisted in the making of private international law rules; and it has provided a method for the application of existing conflicts norms. Recently, however, the emergence of supra-national legal orders has had a significant impact on the relationship between these disciplines, which are now jointly facing the challenges posed by the coexistence of overlapping legal regimes on multiple levels. These challenges can only be met through even greater cooperation between comparatists and private international lawyers than in the past.
The Development of Comparative Law in Japan
Authors: Nottage Luke
Published: May 2019

This chapter discusses the historical development of comparative law in Japan, beginning with the Meiji government’s review of Western legal systems in order to craft its own modern legal system. In particular, it explains how foreign and comparative laws were imported into Japan and how the country’s ‘comparative law era’ began. The chapter then considers how Japanese law impacted legal developments in other countries, such as those in Asia and how comparative law studies are carried out within Japan today, with emphasis on consumer and civil law amendments, gradual transformation in corporate law and practice, and reforms within the civil and criminal justice systems. It also examines two major areas of interest among comparative law scholars focused on Japan: civil dispute resolution and corporate governance. Finally, it analyzes opportunities as well as challenges for comparative law scholarship in Japan.
The Development of Comparative Law in Modern China
Authors: Zhang Taisu
Published: May 2019

This chapter discusses the historical development of comparative law in modern China, from the late Qing dynasty to the present day. It first traces the origins of China’s reception of foreign law in the late Qing period, citing the Opium War as a watershed moment in the development of Chinese law and the elites’ efforts to transplant Western law. It then considers how ‘comparative law’ as a formal academic discipline took shape during the Republican era. It also examines the emergence of a completely different paradigm for legal reform under the People’s Republic of China (1949–78), with Soviet law replacing Western European and American law as the primary source of foreign influence. Finally, it describes the new era of political and legal reform that came after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, focusing on Chinese politics in relation to Confucian pragmatism, nationalism, communism, and Western liberalism.
Development of Comparative Law in Latin America
Authors: Kleinheisterkamp Jan
Published: May 2019

Latin American law has largely been neglected by mainstream comparative law. The presumed ‘familiarity’ and the consequent perception of Latin American law as lacking sufficient originality, or rather exoticism, may explain why comparative works have often dedicated considerably more attention to other jurisdictions. The topics of both Latin American law as the object of comparative law, and comparative law as a subject in Latin American jurisprudence, have remained in the shade with the result that they have become battlegrounds for influence and domination. This article provides a rough sketch of the historical development of comparative law in Latin America and its significance for, and impact on, the legal systems of the Latin American countries today.
Rhetoric and Argumentation in the Letters of Paul
Authors: Thurén Lauri
Published: May 2019

Paul of Tarsus is considered one of the greatest communicators in history and perhaps the most influential thinker in early Christianity. His persuasive skills enabled him to successfully present novel religious ideas. The theology in Paul’s epistles has generated interest among biblical scholars for centuries, and his rhetoric is also drawing renewed attention. This article examines Paul’s rhetoric and argumentation, offering several examples of his persuasive techniques and strategies. It first discusses the benefits of studying Paul’s rhetoric and argumentation, followed by a brief critical survey of the history of the research. It then considers rhetoric as a historical and a heuristic tool and outlines a foundation for studying Paul and for understanding his epistles from a rhetorical perspective. Finally, the article offers some practical guidelines for future studies.
Paul and Jesus
Authors: Thompson Michael B.
Published: May 2019

This article examines the relation of Jesus to his apostle Paul. It begins with a discussion of Paul’s knowledge of Jesus and his reference to Jesus in his letters, as well as the lack of explicit tradition about Jesus in Paul. It then explains how Paul’s own sense of apostolic authority as one commissioned by the risen Christ gave him the confidence to give pastoral direction without the need to footnote that direction with reference to Jesus. It also considers the sources through which Paul had access to traditions about Jesus, the centrality of the cross and resurrection in his concern with respect to the earthly Jesus, and factors indicating that Paul would have valued, needed, and sought information about Jesus. Furthermore, it highlights the role of the book of Acts as evidence about Paul’s preaching of traditions about Jesus as the Messiah.
The Neurophysiology of Event Processing in Language and Visual Events
Authors: Cohn Neil , Paczynski Martin
Published: May 2019

Events are a fundamental part of all actions that we undertake, discuss, and view. This chapter reviews the growing cognitive neuroscience literature exploring the structure and processing of tacit event knowledge. Overall, this work implies an ongoing process of building up semantic associations relative to their preceding context, which are constrained by active prediction of upcoming content. In turn, reanalysis mechanisms are initiated when the overall structure of the event is violated and/or does not conform to predictions set up by the context. Event cognition thus emerges from a network of conceptual information links with event-specific selectional restrictions and hierarchical organization. Altogether, this literature suggests that the brain uses overlapping mechanisms of comprehension to rapidly process events in both language and visual events.
Event Structure and Verbal Decomposition
Authors: Ramchand Gillian
Published: May 2019

This chapter explores the relationship between constrained semantic representations of events, and structured syntactic representations that express them. I show that these representations track each other systematically, and that argument structure generalizations emerge in lock-step with these structures. I therefore propose a system in which those generalizations follow from the following general principles of structural interpretation: (i) embedding corresponds to the cause/leads to relation; (ii) each subevental structure is related potentially to a participant NP; (iii) event-recursion is limited to structures with at most one dynamic predication per event phase. The maximal subevental structure consists of a stative predication embedding a dynamic one, and the dynamic one in turn embedding a stative one. This structure and its proper subsets exhaust the event types built by the grammar. These principles ensure the relative prominence of the different argument positions as well as specific entailments for the different positions.
Events and States
Authors: Maienborn Claudia
Published: May 2019

Hidden event arguments, as introduced by Davidson (1967), have proven to be of significant benefit in explaining numerous combinatorial and inferential properties of natural language expressions, such that they show up virtually everywhere in present-day assumptions about linguistic structure. The chapter reviews current assumptions concerning the ontological properties of events and states and evaluates different approaches to a narrow or broad understanding of Davidsonian eventualities. A closer look into a variety of stative expressions reveals substantial differences with respect to a series of linguistic diagnostics that point towards deeper ontological differences. Acknowledging these differences leads to a differentiation of the cover notion of states into three separate ontological categories: D-states, K-states, and tropes. Once these three stative categories are disentangled and receive their proper place in the ontological universe, this not only allows the observed linguistic behavior to be accounted for, but it also sharpens our understanding of Davidsonian eventualities.
Qatar financial centre foundations
Authors: Jolk Christophe , Russell David
Published: May 2019

Like other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) jurisdictions, the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Foundation has very favourable private wealth and estate planning aspects, since it picks some of the best features in the common and civil law models and blends them into a single legal framework. One of the advantages of a QFC Foundation over a trust, for instance, is its legal personality and ability to own assets. Similar to other foundation laws within the GCC area, the QFC Foundation does not require a ‘dedicated fund appropriated to a specified purpose’ and also has a specific ‘firewall’ provision securing the asset dedications and benefits granted. Overall, the QFC Foundation is a favourable legal regime for estate planning and pretty standard compared to what other GCC foundations regimes offer. Settling for a specific jurisdiction and legal form should nevertheless be assessed on a case by case basis.
Convergent Evolution of C239S Mutation in Pythium spp. β-Tubulin Coincides with Inherent Insensitivity to Ethaboxam and Implications for Other Peronosporalean Oomycetes
Authors: Noel Zachary A. , Sang Hyunkyu , Roth Mitchell G. , Chilvers Martin I.
Published: May 2019

Ethaboxam is a benzamide antioomycete chemical (oomicide) used in corn and soybean seed treatments. Benzamides are hypothesized to bind to β-tubulin, thus disrupting microtubule assembly. Recently, there have been reports of corn- and soybean-associated oomycetes that are insensitive to ethaboxam despite never having been exposed. Here, we investigate the evolutionary history and molecular mechanism of ethaboxam insensitivity. We tested the sensitivity of 194 isolates representing 83 species across four oomycete genera in the Peronosporalean lineage that were never exposed to ethaboxam. In all, 84% of isolates were sensitive to ethaboxam (effective concentration to reduce optical density at 600 nm by 50% when compared with the nonamended control [EC50] < 5 μg ml−1), whereas 16% were insensitive (EC50 > 11 μg ml−1). Of the insensitive isolates, two different transversion mutations were present in the 239th codon in β-tubulin within three monophyletic groups of Pythium spp. The transversion mutations lead to the same amino acid change from an ancestral cysteine to serine (C239S), which coincides with ethaboxam insensitivity. In a treated soybean seed virulence assay, disease severity was not reduced on ethaboxam-treated seed for an isolate of Pythium aphanidermatum containing a S239 but was reduced for an isolate of P. irregulare containing a C239. We queried publicly available β-tubulin sequences from other oomycetes in the Peronosporalean lineage to search for C239S mutations from other species not represented in our collection. This search resulted in other taxa that were either homozygous or heterozygous for C239S, including all available species within the genus Peronospora. Evidence presented herein supports the hypothesis that the convergent evolution of C239S within Peronosporalean oomycetes occurred without selection from ethaboxam yet confers insensitivity. We propose several evolutionary hypotheses for the repeated evolution of the C239S mutation.
Physiological adaptations of leaf litter microbial communities to long-term drought
Authors: Malik Ashish A. , Swenson Tami , Weihe Claudia , Morrison Eric , Martiny Jennifer B. H. , Brodie Eoin L. , Northen Trent R. , Allison Steven D.
Published: May 2019

Drought represents a significant stress to soil microorganisms and is known to reduce microbial activity and organic matter decomposition in Mediterranean ecosystems. However, we still lack a detailed understanding of the drought stress adaptations of microbial decomposers. We hypothesised that drought causes greater microbial allocation to stress tolerance relative to growth pathways. Here we present metatranscriptomic and metabolomic data on the physiological response ofin situmicrobial communities on plant leaf litter to long-term drought and pulse wetting in Californian grass and shrub ecosystems. Wetting litter after a long dry summer caused only subtle shifts in gene expression. On grass litter, communities from the decade-long ambient and reduced precipitation treatments had distinct functional profiles. The most discernable physiological adaptations to drought were production or uptake of compatible solutes to maintain cellular osmotic balance, and synthesis of capsular and extracellular polymeric substances as a mechanism to retain water. The results show a clear functional response to drought in grass litter communities with greater allocation to survival relative to growth that could affect decomposition under drought. In contrast, communities on chemically more diverse and complex shrub litter had smaller physiological differences in response to long-term drought but higher investment in resource acquisition traits across treatments, suggesting that the functional response to drought is constrained by substrate quality. Our findings suggest, for the first time in a field setting, a trade-off between microbial drought stress tolerance, resource acquisition and growth traits in leaf litter microbial communities.
Landscape and regulation of m6A and m6Am methylome across human and mouse tissues
Authors: Liu Jun’e , Li Kai , Cai Jiabin , Zhang Mingchang , Zhang Xiaoting , Xiong Xushen , Meng Haowei , Xu Xizhan , Huang Zhibin , Fan Jia , Yi Chengqi
Published: May 2019

N6-methyladenosine (m6A), the most abundant internal mRNA modification, andN6,2’-O-dimethyladenosine (m6Am), found at the first-transcribed nucleotide, are two examples of dynamic and reversible epitranscriptomic marks. However, the profiles and distribution patterns of m6A and m6Am across different human and mouse tissues are poorly characterized. Here we report the m6A and m6Am methylome through an extensive profiling of 42 human tissues and 16 mouse tissue samples. Globally, the m6A and m6Am peaks in non-brain tissues demonstrates mild tissue-specificity but are correlated in general, whereas the m6A and m6Am methylomes of brain tissues are clearly resolved from the non-brain tissues. Nevertheless, we identified a small subset of tissue-specific m6A peaks that can readily classify the tissue types. The number of m6A and m6Am peaks are partially correlated with the expression levels of their writers and erasers. In addition, the m6A- and m6Am-containing regions are enriched for single nucleotide polymorphisms. Furthermore, cross-species analysis of m6A and m6Am methylomes revealed that species, rather than tissue types, is the primary determinant of methylation. Collectively, our study provides an in-depth resource for dissecting the landscape and regulation of the m6A and m6Am epitranscriptomic marks across mammalian tissues.
Theoretical study of charge-transport and optical properties of organic crystals: 4,5,9,10-pyrenediimides
Authors: Huang Jin-Dou , Yu Kun , Huang Xiaohua , Chen Dengyi , Wen Jing , Cheng Shibo , Ma Huipeng
Published: May 2019

This work presents a systematic study of the conducting and optical properties of a family of aromatic diimides reported recently and discusses the influences of side-chain substitution on the reorganization energies, crystal packing, electronic couplings and charge injection barrier of 4,5,9,10-pyrenediimide (PyDI). Quantum-chemical calculations combined with the Marcus–Hush electron transfer theory revealed that the introduction of a side chain into 4,5,9,10-pyrenediimide increases intermolecular steric interactions and hinders close intermolecular π–π stacking, which results in weak electronic couplings and finally causes lower intrinsic hole and electron mobility in t-C5-PyDI (μh = 0.004 cm2 V−1 s−1 and μe = 0.00003 cm2 V−1 s−1) than in the C5-PyDI crystal (μh = 0.16 cm2 V−1 s−1 and μe = 0.08 cm2 V−1 s−1). Furthermore, electronic spectra of C5-PyDI were simulated and time-dependent density functional theory calculation results showed that the predicted fluorescence maximum of t-C5-PyDI, corresponding to an S
1→S
0 transition process, is located at 485 nm, which is close to the experimental value (480 nm).