bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Vidas Moulie
Published: November 2017

This book examines compositional practices, historical developments, and passages that reveal the way the creators of the Babylonian Talmud (or Bavli) conceived themselves. It complements the continuous creative revision with a freezing of tradition and its containment in a way that produces discontinuity; it complements the fusing of horizons with a literary design that foregrounds one horizon from another. Part I of the book explores the Talmud's literary practice through a close analysis of selected passages, or sugyot. Part II focuses on the Talmud's creators‘ rhetoric of self-presentation and self-definition, arguing that they defined themselves in opposition to those who focused on the transmission of tradition, and that the opposition and hierarchy they created between scholars and transmitters allows us both to understand better the way they conceived of their project as well as to see this project as part of a debate about sacred texts within the Jewish community and more broadly in late ancient Mesopotamia.
Composition as Critique
Authors: Vidas Moulie
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines a thematic series of sugyot that concern the genealogical division of the Jewish people, arguing that the Babylonian Talmud trains its audience to view the production of genealogical knowledge, and the traditions in which it is transmitted, as manipulated and personally motivated. The chapter offers a critique of this genealogical knowledge, which encompasses statements, rulings, bits of information that the rabbis transmitted in the matter of Jewish genealogy, in particular, the classification of certain persons, families, or regions as genealogically “unfit” or “impure” for the purpose of marriage. Two principal sections of the Bavli's discussion of m. Qidd., each illustrating a different aspect of Talmudic composition, are analyzed. The first is a conversational sugya, which focuses on the purification of Israel. The second segment has at its center a long story about Rav Yehuda, and it concludes with a list of genealogical traditions.
America's Mission
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This book provides a comprehensive historical review of American liberal democratic internationalism. It argues that the global strength and prestige of democracy today are due in large part to America's impact on international affairs. The book documents the extraordinary history of how American foreign policy has been used to try to promote democracy worldwide, an effort that enjoyed its greatest triumphs in the occupations of Japan and Germany but suffered huge setbacks in Latin America, Vietnam, and elsewhere. With new chapters and a new introduction and epilogue, this expanded edition also traces U.S. attempts to spread democracy more recently, under presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and assesses America's role in the Arab Spring. The book argues that liberal internationalism is built on powerful global historical trends, and the liberal internationalist streak in American foreign policy has been responsible for shaping a liberal world order conducive to American security and economic interests.
Democracy in the Philippines
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the dynamic of American imperialism in the Philippines since 1898 and the role played by the United States in determining the values, practices, and institutions that constitute democracy in the islands today. It first explains why the United States decided to sponsor democracy in the Philippines after defeating Spain in the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. It then considers the political and socioeconomic dimensions of the United States' democratization of the Philippines, focusing on its introduction of the trappings of modern government such as political parties, elections, and the rise of a Filipino landed class whose wealth was based on the production of export commodities. It also discusses the negative effects of a landowning oligarchy on Philippine democracy and concludes with an assessment of the reasons why General Douglas MacArthur did not mandate land reform for the Philippines.
Wilson and Democracy in Latin America
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's attempts to foster constitutionalism in Latin America through imperialist interventions that commenced shortly after he was elected president in 1913. It begins with a discussion of three policy instruments that Wilson found at his disposal after he assumed the presidency and that he could use to promote constitutional democracy in Latin America: limited military occupation and control of customs houses, economic influence, and international agreements. The chapter then assesses Wilson's interventionist policy in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, along with the failure of Wilsonianism in the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. It also considers the limits of Wilson's democratic initiatives abroad before concluding with an analysis of four distinct U.S. policies aimed at fostering political stability in Latin America and ensuring that American security interests would not be threatened.
Wilson and a World Safe for Democracy
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's comprehensive program for world order that came to constitute the foundation of liberal democratic internationalism, also known as Wilsonianism. Wilson's policy, designed “to make the world safe for democracy,” was not a radical departure from traditional American national security policy. His proposals to restructure world politics on the basis of a liberal world order were consistent with basic propositions of past American foreign policy. The chapter first considers the theory and practice underlying Wilsonianism before discussing the dilemma of Wilson's policy in Europe. It also explores the virtues of Wilsonianism for the postwar world, such as its acknowledgment of the fundamental political importance of nationalism. Finally, it emphasizes the resurgence of Wilsonianism in American foreign policy in the aftermath of World War II.
Eisenhower and His Legacy, 1953–1977
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Dwight D. Eisenhower's legacy in the area of liberal democratic internationalism during the period 1953–1977. Until 1947, the American foreign policy choice had been between a Wilsonian advocacy of democracy and a Rooseveltian preference for nonintervention. A third option had emerged since then: intervention for dictatorships, even against indigenous political forces that might be seeking to create constitutional, democratic regimes. The chapter first provides an overview of American realism and mass politics in the twentieth century, with emphasis on the modernity of fascism, communism, and democracy, before discussing American foreign policy during the Eisenhower years. In particular, it considers the Eisenhower administration's policy decisions with respect to Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam. It also explores the geopolitical realism of American support for democratic governments abroad.
Carter ’s Human Rights Campaign
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Jimmy Carter's promotion of human rights abroad as part of his foreign policy. The Carter administration gave a relatively precise interpretation of the meaning of human rights and connected it to a clear-cut set of political instruments, thus operationalizing traditional Wilsonianism in a novel and sometimes effective fashion. Indeed, Carter established a reputation for his abiding concern for human rights in other parts of the globe. The chapter begins with an analysis of what the Carter administration's commitment to human rights meant exactly, noting that the campaign for human rights did not originally intend to promote democracy in world affairs. It then considers the lessons of the Carter years for our understanding of liberalism's strengths and weaknesses in the conduct of American foreign policy by focusing on the debacle in Nicaragua and Iran. It also assesses Carter's legacy with respect to liberal democratic internationalism.
Cooperation, Coordination, and Collective Action
Authors: Cronk Lee , Leech Beth L.
Published: November 2017

This book investigates a wide range of ideas, theories, and existing empirical research relevant to the study of the complex and diverse phenomenon of human cooperation. Issues relating to cooperation are examined from the perspective of evolutionary theory, political science, and related social sciences. The book draws upon two bodies of work: Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (1965) and George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966). Olson, an economist, and Williams, an evolutionary biologist, both argued that a focus on groups would not provide a complete understanding of collective action and other social behaviors. This introductory chapter discusses some important definitions relating to cooperation, with particular emphasis on collective action and collective action dilemmas, along with coordination and coordination problems. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow.
The Logic of Logic, and Beyond
Authors: Cronk Lee , Leech Beth L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Mancur Olson's arguments, which he articulated in The Logic of Collective Action, and compares them with those of his supporters and detractors. It also reviews the social science literature on cooperation, focusing primarily on the theoretical and empirical research on collective action that grew out of Olson's challenge. According to Olson, the members of a group have interests in common. His logic was an economic logic, based on the behavior of firms in the marketplace in their quest for profits. Olson extended this logic of the market to human social behavior. The chapter considers Olson's solutions to the problem of free riding and the possibility that no group would ever form, including coercion, small groups, selective benefits, and the by-product theory of public goods provisioning. Finally, it describes some major extensions of and challenges to Olson's path-breaking model.
Nasser's Gamble
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.
Introduction
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter argues that the most significant aspect of Egypt's hegemonic aspirations was that they were disguised by, and at times confused with, the promotion of revolutionary ideals. This was especially true with regards to pan-Arabism. The Arab yearning for unity at midcentury provided fertile ground for the promotion of Egyptian-led solidarity among the weak and divided offspring of the defunct Ottoman mother-state. The sincere espousal of transnational ideals by the Free Officers camouflaged the less appealing pursuit of Egyptian state interests, which typically involved a naked struggle for power, and cloaked the subversive attempt to speak to the people over the heads of their leaders in a mantle of legitimacy.
The Fruitless Quest for Peace
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the vicissitudes of Saudi–Egyptian relations as the two countries attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement in Yemen. Based primarily on US diplomatic cables and Egyptian memoirs, it demonstrates how negotiations between Nasser and Faysal faltered over mutual mistrust, exacerbated by the perennial spoiling effect of Yemeni politics. The chapter also shows how the Egyptians and the Saudis used the Arab summits, ostensibly convened to discuss the Palestine question, as a camouflage for the mediation of the conflict between them. The Egyptians had invoked the image of Palestine from the beginning of the intervention in Yemen in order to illuminate the glum reality of hopeless fratricide with the light of a higher cause.
Entrepreneurial Spirits
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines entrepreneurialism in the form of small-business ownership as an example of local place making. It starts with an episode from a community board meeting that shows how neighborhood residents use their community ideology to act against a Lower East Side bar owner named Sasha. It then turns to the story of the author's first visit to Sasha's unique, upscale cocktail bar before considering who has opened bars in these downtown neighborhoods since the start of their gentrification, how owners understand their role in their neighborhood, and how new bars reinforce preexisting social bonds among groups while supporting rarefied taste communities. The chapter shows that bar owners represent “place entrepreneurs” who collectively construct an image of downtown as a destination for nightlife. It concludes by showing how new downtown nightlife has transformed from being for communities of newcomers in the area to being for groups of visitors to the area.
Framing Effects
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This chapter introduces the phenomenon of framing. More specifically, it shows why the fact that human decisions are not invariant over equivalent formulations of the same decision problem ought to be of any concern for political theory. In order to do this, it distinguishes between two different kinds of framing effects (equivalency and emphasis), and gives reasons for thinking that emphasis framing effects will be common in politics. Further, it explains why our susceptibility to framing effects counts as a potential fetter to the reliability of democratic decisions. In very general terms, the fact that decisions are responsive to frames diminishes their ability to be responsive to good reasons. To the extent that the reliability of our decisions is dependent on our ability to be swayed by good reasons, then framing effects will negatively affect our ability to make correct decisions.
Behavioral Democratic Theory
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This chapter lays out the advantages of a behavioral approach to democratic theory. In particular, it contrasts this approach with three more common ways of treating the decision making of citizens in a democracy. In order to bring out the contrast, it uses the notion of epistemic competence to stand in for the various cognitive skills and abilities that are required for democracy to function properly. It shows that rejecting the rational actor model of human decision making allows us to focus on three important theoretical considerations. The chapter proceeds in three stages. First, it proposes the notion of epistemic competence as a way to simplify discussion of the empirical data relevant to the author's account. Next, it considers and reject three familiar approaches to democratic theory. Finally, it explains the benefits of a behavioral approach to normative theories of democracy.
Social Observation
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that creative theorizing in social science has to begin with observation. The way one observes at the early stage of the research differs from the way one does it later. What matters at this point is to get a real sense for the topic so that one can develop some good ideas, which may later be used to construct a theory. This means, among other things, that one has to open oneself up to what is happening, with all one's sense as well as with one's subconscious. Moreover, what matters at this stage is not only to collect data but also to collect social data. This means data about social life, about what happens between people who live in groups, communities, and societies.
Expectational Coordination Failures and Market Volatility
Authors: Guesnerie Roger
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines one line of criticism of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH): expectational coordination failures. It begins by addressing the question of what went wrong with standard economic theory in general and with its modeling principles in particular and offers three answers relating to the diversification of modeling, the rationality hypothesis, and expectational coordination. It then considers the rise of REH in modern economic theory before discussing three avenues of criticism against REH: internal challenges, external criticisms, and criticism based on real-time learning. It also explains how a critical assessment of REH in different contexts changes the standard (REH-based) economic intuition, focusing on the question of the value of new financial instruments; the informational efficiency of the market; and the “good” expectational coordination that Real Business Cycles (RBC)-like models.
Normative Degradation
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the normative degradation caused by the apparent lack of consent to boilerplate. It first considers the varieties of nonconsent to which consent is contrasted, including coercion and its related conceptions of force and duress; fraud, with its allied notions of misrepresentation and deception; and sheer ignorance. It then discusses problematic consent, focusing on situations involving “information asymmetry” and heuristic biases. It also explores strategies of assimilating World B to consent, with particular emphasis on the devolution of voluntary agreement. The chapter shows that consent is problematic even when recipients click a box that says “I agree,” because it remains unclear what they could actually be agreeing to.
Improving Evaluation of Boilerplate
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter proposes an analytical framework for improving the evaluation of boilerplate. It begins with a discussion of questions for evaluating boilerplate rights deletion schemes; for example, whether all of the rights granted and/or maintained by the state are appropriately considered default rules. It then describes three elements of analysis that can help illuminate how boilerplate waivers should be evaluated: the nature of the right in question and whether that right is alienable; the quality of consent by a recipient; and the extent of social dissemination of the rights deletion. It also examines the effect of nonconsent or market-inalienability on any purported contract, as well as the kinds of rights that are or should be subject to market-inalienability or partial market-inalienability in the presence of problematic consent. Finally, it explores political rights and interests, along with basic human rights and interests.
A Selective Genealogy of the Epistemic Argument for Democracy
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter reveals, through a selected sample of authors and works, the range of arguments developed throughout history in favor of the epistemic properties of democracy. It contrasts two types of authors, the “talkers” and the “counters,” who respectively credit democratic deliberation or some version of judgment aggregation for the epistemic performance of democratic regimes. The chapter traces the history of such arguments from the foundational myth of Protagoras, in which every human being is assumed to be endowed by the gods with a spark of political wisdom, to Condorcet and his famous Jury Theorem, to John Dewey's idea of democracy as a social quest for truth and Hayek's theory of “distributed knowledge.”
Derivative of the Analytic Kernel
Authors: Yuan Xinyi , Zhang Shou-Wu , Zhang Wei
Published: November 2017

This chapter computes the derivative of the analytic kernel. It first decomposes the kernel function into a sum of infinitely many local terms indexed by places v of Fnonsplit in E. Each local term is a period integral of some kernel function. The chapter then considers the v-part for non-archimedean v. An explicit formula is given in the unramified case, and an approximation is presented in the ramified case assuming the Schwartz function is degenerate. An explicit result of the v-part for archimedean v is also introduced. The chapter proceeds by reviewing a general formula of holomorphic projection, and estimates the growth of the kernel function in order to apply the formula. It also computes the holomorphic projection of the analytic kernel function and concludes with a discussion of the holomorphic kernel function.
Decomposition of the Geometric Kernel
Authors: Yuan Xinyi , Zhang Shou-Wu , Zhang Wei
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the decomposition of the geometric kernel. It considers the assumptions on the Schwartz function and decomposes the height series into local heights using arithmetic models. The intersections with the Hodge bundles are zero, and a decomposition to a sum of local heights by standard results in Arakelov theory is achieved. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the definition of the Néeron–Tate height and shows how to compute it by the arithmetic Hodge index theorem. When there is no horizontal self-intersection, the height pairing automatically decomposes to a summation of local pairings. The chapter proves that the contribution of the Hodge bundles in the height series is zero. It also compares two kernel functions and states the computational result. It concludes by deducing the kernel identity.
Local Heights of CM Points
Authors: Yuan Xinyi , Zhang Shou-Wu , Zhang Wei
Published: November 2017

This chapter computes the local heights and compares them with the derivatives computed before. It checks the theorem place by place and takes into account all the assumptions on the Schwartz function. According to the reduction of the Shimura curve, the situation is divided to the following four cases: archimedean case, supersingular case, superspecial case, and ordinary case. The treatments in different cases are similar in spirit, except that the fourth case is slightly different. The supersingular case is divided into two subcases: unramified case and ramified case. The chapter also describes local heights of CM points at any archimedean place v. The discussion covers the multiplicity function, the kernel function, unramified quadratic extension, ramified quadratic extension, ordinary components, supersingular components, and superspecial components.
Sex and Sexuality
Authors: Norton Anne
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the Muslim question has depicted Islam as the preeminent danger to sex and sexuality. Condemnation of Islam's treatment of women has united conservative Catholics and nostalgic Stalinists, neoliberals and social democrats. However, this rare point of unity among philosophers and politicians does not arise from a profound moment of Western cultural consensus. On the contrary, sex and sexuality in the West remain sites of enduring inequalities and fundamental disagreements. This is the terrain of the cultural wars, and underneath the seeming agreement on Islam, debates over sex and sexuality, equality and the sanctity of the family, the role of women, culture and rights, continue unabated. The chapter considers the veil and what it symbolizes, particularly in relation to sex and sexuality.
Terror
Authors: Norton Anne
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the Muslim question has been linked to the question of terror. There are two fears in the fear of terrorism: fear of the many and fear of the one. The fear of the many sees the West (or the Western) besieged by an Islam that breaks through the gates of Vienna to occupy the heart of Europe. The fear of the one is a fear of the damage that can be wrought by a single man or woman: the terrorist or the suicide bomber. The chapter considers whether terrorists are enemies not only of liberalism but of modernity. It suggests that terrorists prey on our fears, but not only on the simple fear of death, whereas suicide bombers hold the terror and the promise that the world could be blown asunder in a moment.
In the American Desert
Authors: Norton Anne
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan as desert wars, even though they are fought in cities, mountains, and marshes. Americans believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That America is home to many peoples with different cultures, languages, and faiths testifies that it is not for itself alone, but for all the world. The conviction that America offers a home to people of every place and faith spoke against discrimination after the terrorist attacks of September 11. The War on Terror saw America desert its principles for torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition. This chapter examines how Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo became places where Americans confront troubling domestic issues, such as the pathologies of pornography and celebrity, the myth of gender equality, and the burden of racial inequality.
No Ordinary Suburbs
Authors: Geismer Lily
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how structural processes, policies, and national trends intersected with the particular history, geography, and reputation of the Boston area to produce the set of juxtapositions—between history and progress, tradition and technology, open-mindedness and exclusivity, meritocracy and equality—that characterized the physical landscape and political culture of the Route 128 suburbs and the political ideology of many of their residents. It reveals that homeowners' view of themselves in rural Lincoln and cosmopolitan Newton fueled grassroots activism on a range of liberal issues. This sense of individual and collective distinctiveness simultaneously made many residents see themselves as separate from, and not responsible for, many of the consequences of suburban growth and the forms of inequality and segregation that suburban development fortified.
Open Suburbs vs. Open Space
Authors: Geismer Lily
Published: November 2017

This chapter concentrates on a series of conflicts over affordable housing that took shape during the late 1960s and early 1970s that pitted traditionally liberal causes like civil rights and environmentalism against each other. At the outset of the 1970s, several observers identified “opening up the suburbs” as “the major domestic social and political battle of the decade ahead.” However, the Route 128 suburbs had stood on the front lines of what experts had deemed “The Battle over the Suburbs.” These controversies and their outcome ultimately show that liberalism did not stop at the proverbial driveway of local residents, and instead expose the continuities in and adaptations of the political culture of the Route 128 suburbs and liberalism more broadly in the 1970s.
Legal Remedies
Authors: Biehl João , Petryna Adriana
Published: November 2017

In 1996, Brazil became the first developing country to adopt an official policy granting free access to antiretroviral drugs through its broad-reaching but ailing public health care system (SUS). In the wake of the country's highly publicized antiretroviral drug rollout, public health and care have become increasingly pharmaceuticalized and privatized, and the rights-based demand for drug access has migrated from AIDS to other diseases and patient groups. A growing number of citizens are acting within the state to guarantee their right to health, understood as access to medicines of all kinds, whether or not they are available in official drug formularies. This chapter examines the political subjects that emerge from this complex law–state–market ecology and shows how in this new chapter in the history of the right to health, the judiciary has become a crucial arbiter and purveyor of care and technology access.
Handle with Care
Authors: Hamilton John T.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers one of Kafka's last stories, Der Bau (The Burrow, 1923–24). In the story, the tiny, foraging animal knows all too well that the protection of his day-to-day life demands constant awareness. Although he has completed the construction of what appears to be an impenetrable, inviolable refuge, he realizes that he can “scarcely pass an hour in complete tranquility.” In brief, Kafka's creature is terrified, and it is this terror that motivates all his cares. From the very opening sentence of Der Bau, Kafka immediately, albeit lightly, alludes to the necessary imperfection that riddles but also constitutes every security project: “Ich habe den Bau eingerichet und er scheint wohlgelungen” (I have constructed the burrow and it appears quite successful). Needless to say, what merely appears to be secure can never be entirely foolproof; and, in fact, for the remainder of Kafka's story, the subterranean creature wrestles with gnawing doubts and troubling concerns.
The Pasture and the Garden
Authors: Hamilton John T.
Published: November 2017

This chapter returns to the Hyginus fable with which this study began in order to specify further the semantic ramifications of Latin cura, and hence securitas. The Hyginus fable insists that care should possess mankind—Cura eum possideat—which is to say that, if ever removed from care, humanity would be robbed of its humanity. Interestingly, the similar story of mankind's formation in the book of Genesis takes place in a garden, which would normally be a place requiring careful attention. The gardener is, indeed, the paradigmatic caretaker. Yet, in the Hebrew account, the first humans inhabit a garden where everything is already provided. This carefree existence may account for other reversals that the biblical story reveals in comparison with the Roman fable.
Repercussions
Authors: Hamilton John T.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who devoted his philosophic and scientific career to harmonizing discordances and unifying disparities, calculating the otherwise incalculable and reconciling the seemingly unreconciliable. The universalizing thrust of Leibniz's thinking is of a piece both with his ecumenism and with his moral and political views. The Cartesian who rejects phenomena as false simply because they can be doubted lacks the courage to face conflicts that may arise within any aspect of human experience. Instead, Leibniz refused to be daunted by uncertainty. In this regard, he should be numbered among those seventeenth-century theoreticians of probability like Pierre de Fermat, Blaise Pascal, and Jakob Bernoulli, who strove to develop models of rational judgment and action in the face of grave uncertainty.
The Sorrow of Thinking
Authors: Hamilton John T.
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins by discussing Heidegger's thoughts on security. For Heidegger notions of security should be treated with utmost caution. If human being is a manifestation of Being—Being as Time, self-disclosing and self-concealing—then any project designed to contain Being or evade its destabilizing call would be a failure in thinking. The chapter then turns to Carl Schmitt and the ambivalence of security that underlies his political theorizations. On the surface, Schmitt's much discussed notions of sovereignty, the exception, and decisionism reflect a committed belief in the primacy of state safety classically expressed in the Ciceronian formula salus populi suprema lex—“The safety of the people is the highest law.” However, Schmitt at times challenges this prioritization of security, whose privative force, in his view, tends to become manifest in the way the private sphere dangerously impinges upon state policy.
Surveillance, Conspiracy, and the Nanny State
Authors: Hamilton John T.
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that the provision of security is not only an act of care but also an expression of power. And power is always something that stands to be abused. Agencies of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes consistently and explicitly claimed to maintain security by inculcating insecurity among the masses. The perverse logic is that fear alone sustains the need for security, which consequently legitimizes the state's existence. This logic has at least two alternative results. On the one hand, the care for the individual citizen has simply been converted to the care for the state. Here, security is a dehumanizing project that shifts all concern to a realm well beyond the human. On the other hand, precisely by promulgating fear among the populace, such projects also inadvertently humanize. Stripped of personal security—deprived of the privation of concern—the subjects of these regimes are left with nothing more and nothing greater than the capacity to care.
W(h)ither Iraq?
Authors: Dawisha Adeed
Published: November 2017

This chapter tries to make sense of a simple yet pertinent query: is Iraq withering away? This of course does not necessarily mean the demise of Iraq as a legally constituted sovereign state, or its ultimate dismemberment. The question is whether there will be an Iraq that would resemble the country as it existed from 1921 to 2003, a sovereign, seemingly unified member of the international community. The author claims that the most useful and effective way to make sense of the post-2003 apparent waning of the country—the failures of state institutions, the frailty of democratic attitudes and commitments, and the fragility of a coherent national identity—is through a systematic understanding of the same three projects as they were first undertaken by the British and the Iraqi ruling elites in 1921, and then developed during the life span of the country right through to the tumultuous happenings of the post-2003 era.
Economic Restructuring and the Rise of Market Liberalism
Authors: Rutherford Bruce K.
Published: November 2017

This chapter observes that the implementation of market-oriented economic policies since 1991 has strengthened the political influence of the business community. By June 2000, the government had sold a controlling interest in roughly one-third of the enterprises that it owned, with a sale value of about 12.3 billion LE. Egypt's most powerful businessmen have used this opportunity to articulate a distinctive conception of market liberalism through the publications of a prominent think tank, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies. The chapter documents and analyzes this view of the state, law, and the economy. It also notes that this approach to market liberalism has been adopted by the ruling National Democratic Party and implemented by the reformist prime minister who assumed power in 2004 (Ahmad Nazif).
The Islamic Public Sphere and the Subject of Gender: The Politics of the Personal
Authors: McLarney Ellen Anne
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book is about the soft force of Islamic cultural production in the decades leading up to the 2011 revolution in Egypt. It is about the role women play in articulating that revolution, in their writings, activism, and discursive transformation of Egypt's social, cultural, and political institutions. It is intended as an antidote to dominant representations of women as oppressed by Islamic politics, movements, and groups. The book details women's contribution to the emergence of an Islamic public sphere—one that has trenchantly critiqued successive dictatorships in Egypt, partly through a liberal ideology of rights, democracy, freedom, equality, and family values.
The Islamic Homeland
Authors: McLarney Ellen Anne
Published: November 2017

This chapter traces the proliferation of debates over women's work—tangled dialectics among development experts, feminists, academics, politicians, Marxists, Azharis, Islamists, and journalists like Iman Muhammad Mustafa. Mustafa charts a specific chronological timeline of these debates, from 1974 to 1989, a period of intense economic and political liberalization in Egypt. In 1989, in the midst of economic crisis and Egypt's contentious negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, Mustafa published a ten-part series of articles in the mainstream economic journal al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi criticizing “the working woman.” The articles identified women as a great, untapped resource of human capital in Egypt. Using the statistics, charts, arguments, and language of development reports, Mustafa critiqued Western, secular, feminist valorization of remunerated labor through a celebration of the economic and social worth of women's work in the household economy.
A New Periodization
Authors: Fowden Garth
Published: November 2017

This chapter proposes the First Millennium as an alternative or parallel periodization, arguing that it has the basic advantage of embracing the “long” late Antiquity advocated by Peter Brown: the formation of Christianity and the birth of Islam. Instead of viewing the centuries after 250 as primarily an Age of Empires, the chapter foregrounds pre-600 the two major monotheistic traditions, rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, as they move toward a mature form still readily recognizable today. It then adds Islam, gradually emergent from soon after 600. All three of these major, seminal developments are unique to their period, without parallel in any other. Aside from these three major monotheisms, the chapter shows that Greek philosophy, Roman law, Mazdaism, and Manicheism attained intellectual and institutional maturation in the First Millennium.
Exegetical Cultures 1
Authors: Fowden Garth
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines “Aristotelianism” both as an autonomous philosophy and as a common denominator of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The First Millennium was known for its generation of a Greek philosophical synthesis plus mature versions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Much of this was done in the language of Aristotle. The chapter first considers the rise of Aristotelianism in Greece before discussing how Alexandrian Aristotelianism was conveyed to Baghdad. It also looks at the translation of Aristotle's logical works into Latin, Armenian, Syriac, and Arabic. Finally, it assesses Aristotle's impact on the intellectual maturation of Islam up to Ibn Sīnā.
Viewpoints Around 1000
Authors: Fowden Garth
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the years around 1000 as a viewing point from which to consolidate the argument that emphasizes the First Millennium's distinctiveness. It explores four themes broached earlier in the book, associating each one with a particular city. They are: Tūs, which stands for Iran; Basra, which stands for the encyclopedic erudition of the Brethren of Purity at the end of the tenth century, drawing on the whole heritage of the First Millennium to offer a way of salvation to the Muslim soul; Baghdad, which stands for the Abbasid capital's learned circles and their openness to reasoned argument and Aristotelian logic to facilitate debate between members of the many different faiths espoused by its inhabitants; and Pisa, which stands for the eleventh-century reemergence of Latin Europe, still in the shadow of Islam but bursting already with aggressive energy and a new cultural self-confidence.
Pork, Perks, and Predation
Authors: Ahlquist John S. , Levi Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines two business unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). Business unions differ from each other as well as from activist unions. Some, like the Teamsters, are legitimate unions whose leaders, while far less constrained and far better compensated than those in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), are nonetheless subject to regulation and re-election. Others, such as the ILA, are little more than a protection racket, whose leaders prey upon members and collaborate with employers and the mob. Unlike the leadership of activist unions, business union leaders believe that expanding the scope of the union's activities is costly, with few, if any, downstream benefits. If leaders provide sufficient selective incentives in services, patronage, or coercion, then the members are likely to comply.
Managing Heterogeneity
Authors: Ahlquist John S. , Levi Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the national-level organizations manage internal heterogeneity across individual members, as well as specific geographically defined subunits. By observing internal opposition to the dominant national leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF), the chapter compares specific locals within each union. Consequently, it shows the robustness of the larger organizational governance institutions to perturbation once in equilibrium and that, at the local level, workers did not sort in to unions for political or social reasons; rather, they joined where the economic opportunities first appeared. The ILWU and WWF, whose leaders ask member contributions to political projects, pursued active persuasion combined with tolerance. The IBT, on the other hand, invested less in persuasion and employed screening and repression.
Signaling Solidarity?
Authors: Ahlquist John S. , Levi Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the possibility that political activism may yield an economic benefit to the union. To the extent that this is true, it further reinforces the rank-and-file confidence in the leadership and, consequently, the governance equilibrium leading to group-level political mobilization. The chapter specifically analyzes whether and how large-scale political actions by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF) (now merged into the Maritime Union of Australia, or MUA) could serve as signaling devices to employers when it comes time to bargain over wages. The signaling explanation may be at play in the ILWU, but only after significant technological shocks to the industry and a softening of confidence in Harry Bridges' leadership. Whereas the WWF displays no evidence that its political mobilizations are an attempt to signal solidarity or resolve to employers.
Macroeconomic Features of the French Revolution
Authors: Velde François R.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the French Revolution from the vantage point of macroeconomic theories about government budget constraints. From 1688 to 1788, Britain won and France lost three of four wars. France recurrently defaulted on its debt, while Britain did not. After 1688, Britain had reformed its institutions to allow it to raise enough taxes during peacetime to finance debts incurred in times of war, while France sustained institutions designed to constrain the king's revenues. The chapter considers two macroeconomic ideas and three models of money: unpleasant arithmetic, sustainable plans, tax-backed or asset-backed models of the demand for currency, legal restrictions models of the demand for currency, and classical hyperinflation models along lines described by Phillip Cagan. Inflation during the French Revolution are interpreted in terms of a procession of regimes in which the “if” parts of the three types of monetary models are approximately fulfilled.
The Biblical Sources of Secularization
Authors: Cox Harvey
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies the biblical sources of secularization, showing how three pivotal elements in the biblical faith have each given rise to one aspect of secularization. The disenchantment of nature begins with the Creation; the desacralization of politics with the Exodus; and the deconsecration of values with the Sinai Covenant, especially with its prohibition of idols. The chapter argues that far from being something Christians should be against, secularization represents an authentic consequence of biblical faith. This is why it is no mere accident that secularization arose first within the culture of the so-called Christian West, in the history within which the biblical religions have made their most telling impact. As such, rather than oppose it, the task of Christians should be to support and nourish it.
Sex and Secularization
Authors: Cox Harvey
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how the humanization of sex is impeded. First, it is thwarted by the parading of cultural-identity images for the sexually dispossessed, to make money. These images become the tyrant gods of the secular society, undercutting its liberation from religion and transforming it into a kind of neotribal culture. Second, the authentic secularization of sex is checkmated by an anxious clinging to the sexual standards of the town, an era so recent and yet so different from today that simply to transplant its sexual ethos into today's situation is to invite hypocrisy of the worst degree. The chapter then looks at the spurious sexual models conjured up for the anxious society by the sorcerers of the mass media and the advertising guild. Like all pagan deities, these come in pairs—the god and his consort. For this chapter's purposes they are best symbolized by The Playboy and Miss America.
The Loneliness of the Black Republican
Authors: Wright Rigueur Leah
Published: November 2017

Covering more than four decades of American social and political history, this book examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan's presidential ascent in 1980. Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movement—even as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatism—not to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests. As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable position—they were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the Grand Old Party (GOP). In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way. This book provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism.