bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Christabel Pankhurst: a Conservative suffragette?
Authors: Purvis June
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the commonly stated claim that Christabel Pankhurst was a Conservative. The claim, made by her socialist-feminist sister Sylvia in her influential book The suffragette movement, first published in 1931, has become part of the dominant narrative about the suffragette movement in Edwardian Britain. Such a claim is challenged and an alternative interpretation offered. It is suggested that we should see Christabel Pankhurst as a pioneer to what in the 1970s became known as ‘radical feminism’. For Christabel the subordinate position of women in Edwardian society was due to the power that men, including socialist men, exercised over women. She saw the struggle for the enfranchisement of women as a ‘sex war’ rather than a class struggle.
ARTlines: three walking artists in Iceland
Authors: Lean Patti
Published: May 2018

Artist Patti Lean gives an account in this chapter of a walking and camping tour of Iceland in the company of two other artists. The three artists, in sharing the experience of close contact with the sublime landscape of the island, each responded in their own way to produce art work. Lean’s art practice focussed on this compelling landscape, but all three artists also engaged with the rich Icelandic culture and the chapter includes discussion of writer Halldór Laxness, film maker Benedikt Erlingsson and artist Louisa Matthíasdóttir. The challenge for Lean is to reconcile her training in Art History and the associated narrative of the sublime, with the environmental concerns that she met during this tour, for example the failure of breeding for arctic terns as climate change has left too little food in the surrounding sea.
Two familiar paths well-travelled
Authors: Darwell John
Published: May 2018

In this chapter photographer John Darwell, reminds us that big environmental issues and Homo sapiens’s problematic response to them are also evident in the mundane experience of our day-to-day environment. Darwell, who until fairly recently had based his photographic practice on post-industrial landscapes of Sheffield and Manchester, and the area around Chernobyl, has now turned his attention to the ‘edgeland’ of his twice-daily dog walks. This immersion in the landscape throws up new subjects for his work. One aspect that stands out is the phenomenon of discarded dog-shit bags. Dog owners have taken the trouble to clean up after their pets, but then discard the bags by hanging them in trees or just throwing them away. Bringing photographic aesthetics to what is a disturbing subject has allowed him to develop a typology of this practice. While we may prefer to look away, these images do pose big questions for environmentalists. How can we solve the big issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity, if we can’t even carry through to its conclusion this modest attempt not to despoil the environment?
Aesthetics as ecology, or the question of the form of eco-art
Authors: Cazeaux Clive
Published: May 2018

In this chapter Clive Cazeaux argues that eco-art poses a problem to classification because its two terms have such a broad meaning: after conceptual art, there are no restrictions on the material form art can take, and ecology covers notions of environment, nature, interactions with nature, interconnection, and the fundamental, ontological condition of belonging. He considers recent attempts to classify the field, and suggests that, while they can be helpful, the full force of the problem of categorisation is better addressed by turning to the position given to aesthetics by phenomenology. This takes categorisation down to the level of how categories can be applied to experience when conventional, subject/object frameworks have been suspended. Although this leaves the classification of eco-art open, it nevertheless shows that the openness is a result of the complexities of our aesthetic rootedness in the world, where ‘aesthetic’ is understood in sensory, causal and metaphorical terms.
Introduction – college communities abroad: education, migration and Catholicism in early modern Europe
Authors: Chambers Liam
Published: May 2018

From the mid-sixteenth century, Catholics from Protestant jurisdictions established colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories abroad. The Irish, English and Scots colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and the Holy Roman Empire are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders, the German lands and Poland, as well as to colleges founded in Rome and other Italian cities for a wide range of national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example from within the Ottoman Empire. The first colleges were founded in the 1550s and 1560s, and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their suppression in the 1790s. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century and a few endure today. Historians have long argued that these abroad colleges...
The Society of Jesus and the early history of the Collegium Germanicum, 1552–1584
Authors: Fink Urban
Published: May 2018

The formation of a pastorally effective clergy was a central concern of early modern Catholic reformers. Thanks to the specialist training demands imposed by their foundational interest in the Catholic overseas mission, the Jesuits developed a formation programme for their members that drew heavily on both Christian humanism and Ignatius’ distinctive vision of community life, the latter designed to prepare students for active pastoral ministry and community leadership. In the 1550s, as the reforming papacy, local hierarchies and Catholic monarchs were beset by the challenges and successes of the Protestant reformation, they looked to the Jesuits not only to provide a model for training more pastorally effective clergy but also to accept responsibility for managing new institutions dedicated to their formation. One of the earliest of these was the Germanicum, established in Rome 1552 to cater for clergy from the German lands. The early years of the Germanicum were marked not only by the zeal of its Jesuit and secular founders but also by poverty, papal neglect and secular indifference. Within the college itself there were even deeper tensions between, on the one side, the traditional clerical careerism of the student body and their patrons, and, on the other, the communitarian, pastoral and intellectual priorities of its Jesuit and secular clerical patrons. As the Germanicum came, in time, to act as a model for at least some other ‘abroad colleges’ in Rome and further afield, these institutions faced similar challenges and contradictions.
English women religious, the exile male colleges and national identities in Counter-Reformation Europe
Authors: Kelly James E.
Published: May 2018

Uniquely among Catholic minority communities in Protestant Europe, the English produced a female religious network that rivalled the seminary institutions, both existing in a complex symbiosis. This gives an unrivalled opportunity of a comparative study. In 1598, the first English convent was established in Brussels and was to be followed by a further 21 establishments across Flanders and France with around 4,000 women entering them over the following 200 years. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However, in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely. These contacts included other Catholic exile institutions. In some instances, there were English colleges located nearby, such as in Paris, where three communities of English women religious shared the city with a college for secular clergy. This chapter will explore how much these male and female English institutions mixed. Were they concentrated only on their own survival or were male and female expressions of the Counter-Reformation bound by national interest? In somewhere like Lisbon – where the Bridgettine community and the College of Ss Peter and Paul were geographically separated from the majority of their fellow countrymen and women in exile – was the need for collaboration and shared networks a vital means of survival? The final part of this chapter will examine whether Catholic identity overrode national interests. It will ask whether archipelagic Catholic identities were formed in the Catholic diaspora through the relationship of the English convents with the continental Irish and Scottish colleges. By addressing such questions, this chapter will investigate whether gender and national boundaries were overridden for the sake of Catholic survival.
The Greek Economy before and during the Crisis—and Policy Options Going Forward
Authors: Meghir Costas , Pissarides Christopher A. , Vayanos Dimitri , Vettas Nikolaos
Published: May 2018

This chapter reviews the performance of the Greek economy before and during the global financial crisis. It also presents policy options for Greece going forward, drawing to a significant extent on the conclusions of subsequent chapters. The chapter first studies Greece's economic performance in the decades before the crisis. It discusses the evolution of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and productivity, debt, consumption, investment, wages and prices. The chapter then turns to the quality of the institutions pertaining to the business environment (product market regulation, justice system, access to finance, and labor market regulation), and to social protection and public good provision (pensions, welfare system, health care, and education). It also identifies interconnections between institutional quality and macroeconomic outcomes.
The Challenge of Trade Adjustment in Greece
Authors: Arkolakis Costas , Doxiadis Aristos , Manolis Galenianos
Published: May 2018

Greece's trade deficit declined by 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) between 2007 and 2012, removing one of the great economic imbalances of the pre-crisis years. However, this reduction was achieved exclusively through import compression while exports fell over that period, thereby worsening the economic crisis. This chapter studies Greece's export underperformance in comparison to Ireland, Portugal and Spain as well as Greece's own pre-crisis experience. The main findings are that (1) given past performance, Greece's exports should have increased by 25 percent, rather than drop by 5 percent between 2007 and 2012; (2) labor markets have adjusted to the new economic environment; (3) product markets did not adjust, hindering the recovery of competitiveness; (4) export underperformance is responsible for a third of the decline in GDP since 2007. The chapter concludes that the business environment and firm size distribution in Greece are also hindering the necessary adjustment.
Tax and Welfare Reform in Greece1
Authors: Flevotomou Maria , Haliassos Michael , Kotsogiannis Christos , Meghir Costas
Published: May 2018

A well-designed tax and welfare benefit system, which minimizes distortions while raising the required revenue and providing suitable social insurance, is a key component of an advanced economy. This chapter describes the current Greek tax system and proposes three simpler alternatives, which perform well in their implied incentives, are budget neutral, and achieve better social insurance and redistribution. It provides static simulations of these systems, demonstrating the resulting income distribution, and discusses the implied incentives. It also emphasizes the importance of evaluating such systems with actual microeconomic data, a process that should be a standard tool of policy making.
Does Social Exploitation within Pathogen Populations Pose an Opportunity for Novel Therapeutic Approaches?
Authors: Brown Sam P.
Published: May 2018

Bacterial virulence (damage to host) is often cooperative, with individual cells paying costs to promote collective exploitation. This chapter reviews how cooperative virulence traits offer novel therapeutic avenues involving either the genetic introduction or chemical induction of “cheats” that can socially exploit the cooperative wild-type infection. Issues of efficacy and evolutionary robustness are discussed, and evidence of an evolutionarily robust therapeutic that targets bacterial social behaviors is highlighted.
Exploitative Strategies
Authors: King Andrew J. , Kosfeld Michael , Dall Sasha R. X. , Greiner Ben , Kameda Tatsuya , Khalmetski Kiryl , Leininger Wolfgang , Wedekind Claus , Winterhalder Bruce
Published: May 2018

This chapter reviews the consequences of exploitative strategies for individual behavior, social structure, and design of institutions. It outlines how natural selection should act to construct behavioral connections that maximize benefits and minimize costs of sociality for individuals. Individuals are predicted to show specific leaving or joining decision rules that will construct groups composed of complementary strategies; alternatively, they should be plastic in response to their social environment, which can lead to conditional strategies and social niche construction. What happens on an individual level impacts, in turn, social structures: individual interactions with specific (known) individuals may result in “groupiness” and reduce uncertainty in interactions. Economic conflict theory provides a framework to predict exploitative behavior between groups. Better understanding of exploitation at these different levels may permit the payoffs of specific interactions to be adjusted, thus reducing the negative impacts on a system.
Delivering Green: The Communication of the Information
Authors: Bullock Graham
Published: May 2018

Chapter 5 begins with a vignette about a corporate executive tasked with turning round her firm’s sustainability reputation. She must develop a holistic strategy for communicating the company’s environmental goals, progress, and achievements to its diverse stakeholders. It introduces and provides examples of the different forms, interfaces, and architectures by which corporations, government agencies, non-profit organizations and individuals can use to effectively deliver environmental information to their intended audiences. Possible delivery mechanisms include labels on products, ratings in a press release, data on a website, awards on a billboard, or slogans on a boycott sign. Concepts such as prominence, intelligibility, and feasibility are introduced and used to evaluate these different communication strategies. The chapter concludes with a further discussion of the noteworthy communication practices being used by existing information-based environmental governance initiatives.
Sociological Art
Authors: Leruth Michael F.
Published: May 2018

Chapter 1 traces the early development of Forest’s artistic vocation beginning with his production as a self-taught painter while still working for the French postal service in Algeria and focuses on his work in the 1970s. It places particular emphasis on projects undertaken in the name of Sociological Art (defined as “sociological praxis in the guise of art”) using video, the press, and different modes of public intervention. Works discussed in Chapter 1 include Family Portrait (1967), Senior Citizen Video (1973), Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud (1974), Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time (1974), Biennial of the Year 2000 (1975), and The Video Family (1976). Chapter 1 also examines different categories of Forest’s diverse work in video and discusses the aesthetic and epistemological ramifications of Sociological Art as theorized by Forest and Vilém Flusser.
Introduction
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the five constraints on the ability to predict mental or behavioral outcomes based on brain data. Some psychologists and neuroscientists fail to attribute sufficient power to the context of observation. The subject's expectations comprise a second constraint on inferences. Meanwhile, a large number of investigators studying brain–behavior relations resist Niels Bohr's insight that the validity of every conclusion depends on its source of evidence. One reason why brain and psychological data yield conclusions with differing validities is that some brain measures are subject to the effects of bodily processes that exert minimal effects on many psychological observations. The last constraint to be considered is the practice of borrowing predicates whose meanings and validities originated in psychological measures gathered on human subjects and applying them to brain patterns, or to animals.
Distancing from Truth
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Too strong an emphasis on truth prevents epistemology from accommodating the cognitive contributions of science. Models and idealizations function as felicitous falsehoods that enhance the understanding of a range of phenomena. What emerges is a holism in which networks of mutually reinforcing cognitive commitments stand or fall together.
The Fabric of Understanding
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Epistemic accounts must be evaluated holistically. Rather than asking whether each component sentence expresses a fact, we should ask whether the account as a whole is in reflective equilibrium. If so, it is acceptable in the epistemic circumstances. Weakly supported considerations that would not be acceptable on their own can weave together to make an epistemically acceptable account.
Exemplification in Understanding
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Exemplification is the semantic device that connects samples and examples to their objects. They highlight features, making them manifest. Exemplars thus afford epistemic access to features of things that we might otherwise overlook. By exemplifying, symbols that are not truth-apt embody and convey understanding.
Casting in Bold Relief
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Laboratory experiments, thought experiments, and literary fictions are felicitous falsehoods. They distance themselves from the facts they bear on to screen out irrelevant, potentially confounding factors. This enables them to exemplify, and provide epistemic access to features that would otherwise be obscured.
Reflexive Food Truck Justice: A Case Study in CLiCK, Inc., a Nonprofit, Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen
Authors: Godfrey Phoebe
Published: May 2018

This chapter critically applies the concept of reflexive food justice to the creation and running of a non-profit shared-use commercial kitchen, CLiCK, Inc., in Eastern Connecticut in order to critically evaluate to what degree it does or does not meet the criteria of reflexive food justice. The purpose of such an analysis is to question the ways in which shared use kitchens can act as agents of progressive social change in relation to facilitating low-income community members to have access of a commercial kitchen so that they may incubate a food business, which may or may not involve a food tuck or food cart. In many states food trucks and food carts need to be affiliated with a brick and mortar kitchen and so CLiCK makes such an affiliation affordable to those who might not be able to otherwise start a food business. Since the chapter is written by CLICK’s co-founder and Board President this critical analysis provides intimate details as to the struggles in not just running a non-profit shared use commercial kitchen, but in doing so in ways that seek to promote progressive social change, both within the organization itself and the surrounding community.
Scripting the City: Street Food, Urban Policy, and Neoliberal Redevelopment in Vancouver, Canada
Authors: Newman Lenore Lauri , Newman Katherine Alexandra
Published: May 2018

The reintroduction of food trucks to Vancouver responds to widespread public demand, yet has also been taken up as another tool of urban governance. Licensing restrictions are used to further municipal policy priorities, thus incorporating street food into city branding and urban redevelopment strategies. Although crafted to foster liveability, food truck licensing is also expected to advance the goal of making Vancouver the Greenest City and to project an image of a healthy, sustainable, multicultural city. While street food is being made increasingly accessible, it is simultaneously becoming a tool of biopolitical regulation. As food trucks participate in shaping urban space, they risk contributing to gentrification and the displacement of the very residents this increased accessibility is meant to serve.
Did Longer Lives Buy Economic Growth? From Malthus to Lucas and Ben-Porath
Authors: Croix David de la
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a detailed theoretical and empirical discussion of how increases in longevity can impact the formation of human capital by favoring the transmission of knowledge through longer contact times between individuals in different age cohorts. By contemplating whether improvements in longevity were responsible for the economic transition, the chapter provides insights into the dynamics and measurement of longevity and presents different mechanisms through which longer lives affect development. These include the contact time available for the young for learning from the elderly and an incentive effect in terms of longer amortization periods for educational investments. Findings suggest that the reduction in mortality in prime working ages (rather than longevity in terms of expected life span) is key for the incentives to invest in formal schooling.
Adult Mortality and Modern Growth
Authors: Fiaschi Davide , Fioroni Tamara
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the role of increased adult longevity and technological progress in the transition from Malthusian equilibrium to modern growth. Empirical evidence suggests a general upward trend in life expectancy at birth and in adult survival rate of countries and a positive correlation between these two variables and income. A first strand of literature investigates the causes of mortality decline in western countries. Scholars can be divided into two main groups: the first attributes the observed mortality decline mainly to income growth via better nutrition, and the second emphasizes the role of public health and sanitary intervention. Meanwhile, a second strand of literature explores various channels through which mortality decline affects income.
Intrahousehold Decision Making and Fertility
Authors: Doepke Matthias , Kindermann Fabian
Published: May 2018

This chapter analyzes the implications of modeling fertility choices as outcomes of intrahousehold conflict and bargaining. It argues for a reformulation of fertility theories that are embedded in more realistic theories of household formation and joint decision making within the household. Empirical evidence suggests that disagreement regarding fertility choices is commonplace. In addition to a level difference in the desired fertility of women and men, there is evidence of considerable heterogeneity across households. The data on fertility preferences suggests at least the possibility that within-household disagreement on fertility is an important determinant of fertility outcomes. The chapter also shows how the vast majority of economic models of fertility have been based on a unitary model of the household, where the household is conceived as a single entity with a single utility function.
Should We Be Thinking about Robot Sex?
Authors: Danaher John
Published: May 2018

Introduces the issues and arguments of the book. Sets the stage for the arguments that follow by addressing preliminary questions: What are sex robots? Do any exist right now? Why should we care about their creation? Sex robots are coming. They are robots with humanlike touch, movement, and intelligence that are designed and/or used for sexual purposes. Their creation raises important philosophical, social, and ethical questions for users and the broader society.
Religious Perspectives on Sex with Robots
Authors: Herzfeld Noreen
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks at the question of sex robots from a religious, primarily Judeo-Christian perspective. It addresses four basic questions: What is the purpose of sex? What in our nature might predispose us to a relationship with a robot? Could we have an authentic loving relationship with a robot? And, finally, would such a choice aid or hinder our spiritual growth? It concludes that while sex robots might make interesting, even desirable sexual partners, in the end it is God and each other with whom we must be in relationship. Replacing relationship with one another with relationship to a machine is ultimately a form of idolatry, a substitution for the living with something made, and thus controlled, by our own hands.
Is It Good for Them Too? Ethical Concern for the Sexbots
Authors: Petersen Steve
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on a corner of sexbot ethics that is rarely considered elsewhere: the question of whether and when being a sexbot might be good—or bad—for the sexbot. It claims that there is a surprisingly strong argument that it is permissible to design and create genuinely intelligent, ethically valuable robots for the explicit purpose of serving humans sexually. This argument does not depend in any way on the permissibility of human sex work; as far as the reasoning here is concerned, it may be that human sex work is always wrong. The argument is specific to robots, or more generally to artificially designed people.
Automatic Sweethearts for Transhumanists
Authors: Hauskeller Michael
Published: May 2018

This chapter asks the question whether sexual and/or romantic relationships with robots could ever be as satisfying as the real thing. Three main arguments are made. First, if we assume that robots will be not be real persons and instead simply behave and act as if they are persons (“pseudo-persons”) then love and sex with them will never be as satisfying as it is with a real person. Second, if robots somehow manage to be real persons (and not just pseudo-persons), we run into problems regarding their moral status and, importantly, their freedom to choose to be our romantic partners. It is more satisfying to be loved by a real person that freely chooses to be your lover than it is to be loved by someone who is programmed to love you. Finally, it is argued that the desire for relationships with robotic persons does reveal something telling about the transhumanist desire for total autonomy and independence. The only possible way for me to become completely independent is by cutting all ties to other persons, by making my own world, uninhabited by any real persons except myself. Robotic partners may consequently be the preferred inhabitants of that transhumanist utopia.
From Sex Robots to Love Robots: Is Mutual Love with a Robot Possible?
Authors: Nyholm Sven , Frank Lily Eva
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks into the possibility of genuine loving relationships with robots (mutual love). Our primary aim is to offer a framework for approaching the question of mutual love. But we also sketch a tentative answer. Our tentative answer is that whereas mutual love between humans and sex-robots is not in principle impossible, it is hard to achieve. Nevertheless, building robots capable of mutual love may help to address concerns raised by critics of human-robot sexual relationships. Our discussion below generates a “job description” that advanced sex-robots would need to live up in order to be able to participate in relationships that can be recognized as mutual love.
Intentionality and Interpersonal Experience
Authors: Ratcliffe Matthew
Published: May 2018

This chapter addresses several interrelated ways in which other people are implicated in the development, sustenance, and disruption of the modal structure of intentionality. It first considers some of the roles that relations with others play in shaping perceptual experience, focusing on how the cohesive, anticipatory structure of perceptual experience is interpersonally regulated. After that, it turns to belief, arguing that the structure of belief, the intelligibility of the distinction between what is and is not the case, rests on a more primitive sense of certainty. It then proceeds to develop a more general account of how the sense of being in a given type of intentional state is largely attributable to its distinctive anticipation-fulfilment profile. All such profiles, it is argued, depend on an overarching pattern of anticipation and fulfilment, in the guise of habitual confidence or certainty. This pattern is inextricable from a certain way of experiencing and relating to other people in general. When the overall anticipation-fulfilment structure of experience is disrupted, the boundaries between intentional state types become less clear. This renders a person susceptible to more pronounced and localized disruptions, of the kind involved in many delusions and hallucinations.
A New Understanding of Mental Disorders
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

For many psychiatric disorders, neurobiological findings do not help to diagnose a specific disease or to predict its outcome. This book suggests to take a new look at mental disorders by using computational models to better understand human decision making. It shows how such models can be applied to basic learning mechanisms that cut across established nosological boundaries of mental disorders. Such a computational and dimensional approach focuses on the malleability of human behavior and its biological underpinnings. The book argues that this computational and dimensional approach can help to promote and focus neurobiological research, however, it does not replace an anthropological understanding of clinical questions including the definition of mental disorders and ethical considerations. This is illustrated by describing the new understanding of mental disorders with respect to clinical and neuro-computational aspects of psychosis, affective and addictive disorders.
Introduction
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

In the introduction, a philosophically informed concept of mental disorders is presented. In order to define a clinically relevant mental malady, it suggests to focus on functional impairments relevant for human survival and the individually harmful consequences resulting from these dysfunctions. While this approach generally defines what can count as a mental disorder, it does not help to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of specific disorders. Traditional disease categories, on the other hand, do not reflect current neurobiological research. With respect to neurobiological lay based disease classifications, it is suggested to assess alterations of basic mechanisms of decision making and reward related learning, which cut across established nosological boundaries. For example, dopamine-dependent reinforcement learning is altered in psychotic, affective and addictive disorders.
Reward-Dependent Learning
Authors: Heinz Andreas
Published: May 2018

In the third chapter, reward dependent instrumental learning and its computational modelling is explained. Reward prediction errors are encoded by phasic dopamine release and specific paradigms including reversal learning are described with respect to clinical findings in different mental disorders. The chapter illustrates how computational approaches avoid relying exclusively on subjective reports of patients and instead correlate specific computational steps during reward related learning with their neurobiological correlates.
The Structural Language Network
Authors: Friederici Angela D. , Chomsky Noam
Published: May 2018

An adequate description of the neural basis of language processing must consider the entire network both with respect to its structural white matter connections and the functional connectivities between the different brain regions as the information has to be sent between different language-related regions distributed across the temporal and frontal cortex. This chapter discusses the white matter fiber bundles that connect the language-relevant regions. The chapter is broken into three sections. In the first, we look at the white matter fiber tracts connecting the language-relevant regions in the frontal and temporal cortices; in the second, the ventral and dorsal pathways in the right hemisphere that connect temporal and frontal regions; and finally in the third, the two syntax-relevant and (at least) one semantic-relevant neuroanatomically-defined networks that sentence processing is based on. From this discussion, it becomes clear that online language processing requires information transfer via the long-range white matter fiber pathways that connect the language-relevant brain regions within each hemisphere and between hemispheres.
The Brain’s Critical Period for Language Acquisition
Authors: Friederici Angela D. , Chomsky Noam
Published: May 2018

Whether a critical period for language learning exists (or not) is at the heart of ongoing debates over why second language learning appears to be easy early in life but much more difficult as we age. Neurocognitive studies on second language learning suggest that a unitary neural system is involved when processing more than one language, and the earlier a second language is learned, the more similar the neural language networks for the two languages will be. There appears to be a close relation between the developmental trajectory of white matter maturation and behavioral language skills. By looking at individuals coming from very different language backgrounds, such as native signers and hearing individuals, we find data that point towards a universal neural language system that is largely independent of input modality, but can be modulated slightly by the lifelong use of a given language.
Multimodal Communications and Effective Communication
Authors: Brown Judith C. , Gardner Kara , Levitin Daniel J.
Published: May 2018

Minerva’s Multimodal Communications cornerstone course brings together theory and findings in rhetoric, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, neurobiology, and design theory and applies them both to new forms of communication--made possible by the technological revolution of the last few decades--and traditional forms of expression, such as speech, gestures, music, and art. The aim of the course is to teach our students to become persuasive communicators who will have an impact in the world. The tools they hone in the course provide them with essential skills they can apply to careers in the sciences, humanities, business, the arts and in their everyday lives. This chapter summarizes the highly interactive and iterative approaches we use in the course to cultivate the core competency of effective communication, which students must master in order to meet their potential to become leaders and innovators.
Complex Systems and Effective Interaction
Authors: Genone James , Van Buskirk Ian
Published: May 2018

“Complex systems” are systems in which the independent behavior of interacting units gives rise to surprising and difficult-to-predict emergent patterns and properties. Most courses on complex systems focus on the behavior of ants, birds, clouds and other entities and use sophisticated mathematics to analyze these systems. Minerva’s course on complex systems is decidedly different. We start with an overview of characteristics of complex systems, but then quickly begin to apply them to how people and systems interact in the “real world.” Minerva’s Complex Systems course introduces students to the idea that most social systems are complex systems, and students learn to recognize that they are embedded in many different, overlapping complex social systems. Moreover, they learn to apply their understanding of these systems to social interactions—which informs, for example, the way they deal with ethical conflicts, debate, negotiation, and leadership. Approaching social interactions from the perspective of complex systems provides students with tools for understanding, anticipating and influencing outcomes of their interactions.
Unlearning to Learn
Authors: Kosslyn Stephen M. , Goldberg Robin B. , Cannon Teri
Published: May 2018

We have learned many lessons in the course of implementing the Minerva curriculum and pedagogy. One of the most striking lessons is how important it is for both faculty and students to be open to unlearning many previous assumptions and habits. For example, we have identified what we call the “illusion of learning”—which occurs when faculty and students believe that the more notes students take during a lecture, the more they have learned. Yet, the evidence is clear: Lectures are not an effective way to learn, and pale in comparison to active learning. Although active learning often takes more time than lectures and requires much more intellectual engagement from both faculty and students, it provides lasting benefits. Similarly, we have discovered that active learning requires a different view of what is an appropriate goal for in-class experiences–not information transmission and memorization but rather the internalization of skills, concepts and ways to use knowledge. In this chapter, we summarize many of the assumptions and habits that both faculty and students need to unlearn in order to learn effectively at Minerva.
A New Team-Teaching Approach to Structured Learning
Authors: Fost Joshua , Chandler Vicki , Gardner Kara , Gale Allison
Published: May 2018

We review the processes and tools we use to help achieve a consistent and high-quality learning environment for our students and a pleasant and productive working environment for our faculty. Our Cornerstone courses have multiple instructors, who meet weekly, along with the development faculty for the course; we are extending this model to upper-division (sophomore year and above) courses as we grow. Extensive use of a real-time chat tool ("Slack") facilitates tight synchronization, knowledge-sharing, and team-building among our geographically distributed team. Full faculty meetings and a faculty advisory committee provide additional channels for higher-level strategic direction. The substance of the exchanges provided in these communication channels spans content, pedagogy, classroom management, and grading support. Before they begin teaching, a one-month orientation course helps all new faculty develop working relationships, become comfortable with the unique Minerva pedagogy and the digital tools we use for development, assessment, and instruction.
Assessing Student Learning
Authors: Levitt Rena , Bader-Natal Ari , Chandler Vicki
Published: May 2018

This chapter describes the tools and procedures we have developed to assess students’ intellectual progress at Minerva. These tools and procedures rely on six design principles: implement learning outcomes; grade consistently; provide feedback in context; aggregate meaningfully; show and share progress; and supplement with external measures. In general, faculty use rubrics to score how well the students have mastered and applied the learning outcomes during the video-recorded classes and in their assignments; these scores, often accompanied by explanatory comments, provide significant, regular feedback. We developed tools to help students and faculty explore the assessment data and to know how well students are doing in each class throughout the semester. Minerva’s unique requirement that faculty assess students on how well they apply Habits of Mind and Foundational Concepts in every class, across all four years, led us to develop novel tools to record and aggregate individual assessments across multiple courses. Finally, we used externally developed tests to provide summative data on whether our students were actually learning.
How Reform Worked in China
Authors: Qian Yingyi
Published: May 2018

As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform. As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China’s successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China’s reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government. In this book, Qian offers a third perspective, taking certain elements from each school of thought but emphasizing not why reform worked but how it did. Economics is a science, but economic reform is applied science and engineering. To a practitioner, it is more useful to find a feasible reform path than the theoretically best way. The key to understanding how reform has worked in China, Qian argues, is to consider the way reform designs respond to initial historical conditions and contemporary constraints. Qian examines the role of “transitional institutions”—not “best practice institutions” but “incentive-compatible institutions”—in Chinese reform; the dual-track approach to market liberalization; the ownership of firms, viewed both theoretically and empirically; government decentralization, offering and testing hypotheses about its link to local economic development; and the specific historical conditions of China’s regional-based central planning.
Interfering with transmission
Authors: Wack Andreas
Published: May 2018

The IFNλ family of interferons controls the spread of viruses in the upper respiratory tract and transmission between mice.
Over the Horizon
Authors: Edelstein David M.
Published: May 2018

This book examines how existing great powers in international relations respond to the rise or resurgence of other great powers. More specifically, it seeks to account for why existing powers often cooperate with rising powers despite the long-term threat that they potentially pose. To account for this behavior, the theory presented in the book focuses on the time horizons of political leaders . Leaders are unlikely to adopt competitive and costly strategies in the face of uncertainty about a rising power’s long-term intentions. Instead, they profit from cooperation in the short-term while they await more and better information about the rising state’s interests and intentions. To test this argument against alternative arguments, the book presents case studies of four modern examples of rising great powers and their strategic interactions with existing great powers: the rise of late nineteenth century Germany, the emergence of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, the resurgence of interwar Germany, and the development of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the cold war. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of the argument for international relations theory and the contemporary rise of China.
Sacrifice
Authors: Orsini Alessandro
Published: May 2018

This book's author is one of Italy's premier analysts of political extremism. His investigation of the beliefs and mindsets of Europe's political fringe has largely focused on anarchist and far-left groups, but this book turns inquiry to the rapidly expanding neofascist movement. The author joined local groups of a neofascist organization he names Sacrifice in two neighboring cities with very different political cultures. This “insider” book, which features dialogues with various militia members, shows how fascists live day to day, how they understand their world, and how they build a parallel universe in which the correctness and probity of their attitudes are clear. The book describes the long, troubled process by which these two groups slowly accepted the author as an investigator-activist and later expelled him for his ideologically uncommitted stance and refusal to subject his observations to censorship. The author's activities as a fascist were often mundane: leafleting, distributing food parcels to the indigent, and attending public rallies. This book describes from within the masculine ethos of the militias, the groups' relations with local police and politicians, and the central role of violence and anticommunist actions in building a sense of fascist community.
Raised under Stalin
Authors: Bernstein Seth
Published: May 2018

Communist Upbringing under Stalin: Young Communists and War in a Socialist Society, 1929-1945 examines Stalinist mass youth culture in the period of the Great Terror and World War II. For the Bolsheviks, youth were the “new people” who would someday build communism. Despite Stalinist assertions that the country was marching inexorably toward communism, though, there was no blueprint for raising a socialist generation. “Communist upbringing”—the program of moral socialization of the Young Communist League (Komsomol)—absorbed the violent atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s. Even as it surrounded them with violence, Stalin’s regime provided young people with opportunities, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war.
Cities for Profit
Authors: Shatkin Gavin
Published: May 2018

In the past three decades, urban real estate megaprojects—massive, master planned, for profit urban developments—have captured the imagination of politicians and policy-makers across Asia. This book argues that state actors have been major drivers of these transformative projects, and have realized them through increasingly aggressive efforts to reclaim or acquire land, and to transfer land rights to corporate developers. State actors have specifically sought to monetize land as a strategy of state empowerment, a means to generate budget revenue, distribute patronage, and drive economic growth. This newly assertive state role in land markets constitutes the real estate turn in urban politics in the subtitle of the book. This real estate turn has significant implications for social, political, and ecological change in these societies. The book explores the varied spatial impacts of this real estate turn in three cities—Jakarta, Kolkata, and Chongqing—that differ in their systems of property rights and urban governance.
A Feminized Domain
Authors: Millie Julian
Published: May 2018

Chapter Seven contrasts a feminist critique of women’s routines of listening and learning with the characteristic patterns of women’s spectatorship that women display in those routines. Bandung’s women live under constraints affecting their social expectations and mobility. The chapter argues that they enjoy preaching in forms deliberately shaped by preachers to accommodate their situations. The resulting listening experience is not a disciplinary one, but one that respects women’s life conditions.
Public Contest and the Pragmatics of Performance
Authors: Millie Julian
Published: May 2018

Chapter Eight analyses preaching as medium for change, viewing it from the perspective of an activist group that contributes to public contest by circulating ideas through the Province’s media. The group is frustrated by the pragmatic tendencies of preachers who realise their careers depend on avoidance of contest. The Chapter highlights the distinctions between oral preaching and print publication as modes for the conduct of public contest.
The Mobile Home Industrial Complex
Authors: Salamon Sonya , MacTavish Katherine
Published: May 2018

For rural families with modest resources, and a housing dream for a better life, buying a trailer in a land-lease trailer park is a logical housing decision. The “mobile home industrial complex” is a term coined to capture the interlocked markets whose entrepreneurs – mobile dealers, financiers, and trailer park operators -- operate highly lucrative enterprises. Trailer parks have an important role to play in providing private solutions for affordable housing in rural areas. The reality of how the industrial complex operates, however, keeps the homeownership housing Dream that park families chase tantalizingly out of reach for all but a few.