bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reversing the Chicago River
Authors: Kearney Joseph D. , Merrill Thomas W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter looks at the Chicago River and its effect on the lakefront. The chapter investigates how efforts to combat pollution in the river had the effect of cleaning up the water along the lakefront. It demonstrates how the lakefront ceased to be seen as a conduit for commerce — or as a repository for garbage and waste — and came to be regarded as an environmental and recreational amenity. The chapter then shifts to discuss the Chicago River's expansion. It details the obvious implications of the plan to reverse the river, sending sewage through the new canal into the Des Plaines River (whence to the Illinois River), for Illinois communities downstream from Chicago, such as Joliet and Peoria. The chapter also talks about the creation of the sanitary district at the close of the nineteenth century. It illustrates how the opening of the canal and the river's reversal produced an equally dramatic improvement in the quality of the water in the lake bordering Chicago. Ultimately, the chapter evaluates the challenges on the “Chicago diversion” of the waters of Lake Michigan and an endless stream of attempts to resolve the water diversion controversy.
North Lake Shore Drive
Authors: Kearney Joseph D. , Merrill Thomas W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the growing conception of the lakefront as an environmental amenity and the completion of Lake Shore Drive and associated parks. The chapter traces the construction north from the original Lincoln Park to Hollywood Avenue. It argues that the emerging clarification of ownership following the title to the bed of Lake Michigan set off a series of seismic disturbances along the lakeshore and laid the groundwork, legally speaking, for the construction of north Lake Shore Drive. The chapter examines the riparian rights of the private landowners farther north along Lake Michigan's shore. It illustrates how the Lincoln Park Commission (LPC) devised two methods for acquiring the riparian rights of landowners in order to extend Lincoln Park to the north. The chapter also introduces Edward O. Brown, a creative lawyer working for the LPC in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who conceived and advanced the ideas about the boundary-line mechanism and the judicial elimination of any right to wharf out in Lake Michigan. The chapter examines how Brown's skillful manipulation of the courts to eliminate the right to wharf out turned out to be a good thing.
The Lakefront Today
Authors: Kearney Joseph D. , Merrill Thomas W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter reviews how the political settlements and legal understandings canvassed in the account continue to affect the Chicago lakefront today. It offers brief snapshots of five more recent developments on the lakefront that reflect the influence of the past — and that may be indicative of the future. The chapter begins by recounting the boundary-line agreement of 1912 which planted the seeds of the Illinois Central's demise on the lakefront. Today, the railroad has largely disappeared from the lakefront, in both name and fact. The chapter then shifts to discuss the Ward cases, which continue to affect the shape of the lakefront. It chronicles the success of Millennium Park and the Illinois Supreme Court's demotion of the public dedication doctrine to a statutory right limited to Grant Park. The chapter also recounts the Deep Tunnel project and the challenges in the South Works site. Ultimately, it discusses the appearance of the public trust doctrine on the lakefront, being invoked by preservationist groups to challenge both a new museum and the construction of President Barack Obama's presidential library (called the Obama Presidential Center).
The Theory of Selective Accommodation
Authors: Crawford Timothy W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter presents a theory of selective accommodation, which comprises two elements. The first, the core theory, contains the general conceptual model of selective accommodation and its basic influence formula — the use of positive incentives (e.g., promises, rewards, and concessions) to create divergent pressures on members or potential members of an opposing alliance. It describes how selective accommodation works (when it works) and suggests conditions under which states are likely to attempt it (initiation conditions). Meanwhile, the second consists of propositions about contingent conditions, and associated mechanisms, conducive to the success or failure of attempts. Like the initiation conditions, these are probabilistic. Combined, these elements offer an overarching framework to explain selective accommodation attempts and outcomes, one that is geared to the priorities of policy-applicable theory. It thus furnishes two kinds of “usable” theoretical insight: (1) a general conceptual model of the strategy of selective accommodation, and (2) generic knowledge about the conditions that favor its success. The chapter then sets up the methods — of structured focus comparison and qualitative analysis — that organize the historical case studies in the following chapters.
The Entente Fails to Keep Turkey Neutral, 1914
Authors: Crawford Timothy W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyzes the entente's failed attempts (after the July Crisis of 1914) to prevent the Ottoman Empire from intervening on the side of the Central powers. This case highlights key elements and relationships in the theoretical framework. The entente's goal was to keep a hedging Turkey neutral — it thus sought a low degree of alignment change, an easier thing to achieve. But the entente powers' high alliance constraints proved detrimental. For while the Allies (roughly equal in power and dependence) did agree about the basic goal and method of selective accommodation, they did not agree about Turkey's strategic weight. That lack of consensus impaired their ability to mobilize sufficient reward power. They did not combine the concessions to Turkey and each other that were both possible and, as it turned out, necessary to cement its neutrality. The case thus reveals the impediments to success that arise when highly constrained allies differ about the target's war-tipping potential.
Britain and the United States Neutralize Spain, 1940–41
Authors: Crawford Timothy W.
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores Britain and the United States' success in keeping Spain from joining the Axis in 1940 to 1941. Spain nearly entered World War II on the Axis side in late 1940. Yet, at the most crucial decision point — in December of 1940 — Spain's dictator Francisco Franco rebuffed the Axis alliance offers. Franco's decision was due in large part to an Anglo-American effort — initiated and led by Britain — to use inducements to keep Spain sidelined. When Hitler and Franco were converging on an alliance, Spain desperately needed not just military support to fight, but also economic aid — to recover from the civil war, survive severe shortages of food, and secure other basic economic necessities. The concerted Anglo-American policy convinced Franco that Spain's economic needs could best be met through British and U.S. largesse, which could only be obtained if Spain remained nonbelligerent. The British and Americans agreed on the goal (to keep Spain nonbelligerent), on the way to achieve it (inducements), and most of all, about Spain's high strategic weight. This produced a powerful wedge strategy, because the duo was in a good position to influence Spain through coordinated inducements.
Murrawarri
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses the secessionist efforts of the Murrawarri Republic, a leading example of the indigenous legal secessionist kind. Like the Catalans, the Murrawarri are using the institutional/electoral features of the state to seek their goal, but they are stressing a different normative appeal that rejects the application of terra nullius when their lands were originally claimed by Great Britain. To understand how the somewhat archaic concept of terra nullius became a core argument of contemporary Australian secessionist movements, the chapter reviews legal developments in the past few decades between aboriginals and the state. The chapter then investigates how the members of the indigenous challenge the original acquisition of their land on legal grounds and how their efforts become quite legalistic, perhaps more so than with other types of secessionism. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the Murrawarri Republic is an important addition to the study as it demonstrates a particular configuration of factors. It highlights the same tactic of compellence of the indigenous legal movements and the democratized movement, which is to use the institutions of the state.
West Papua
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the long running independence effort in West Papua, an example of the weak combative type of secession movement. It demonstrates what can happen to secessionism in weakly institutionalized settings. The chapter discusses the two dominant normative appeals: the primary one stresses human rights and the second common appeal focuses on decolonization. It also analyses how key features related to electoral politics and freedom of speech prevent the secessionist movement from attaining the level of political voice that one normally finds in a democratized setting. West Papua is integrated with the larger state and yet cannot engage in electoral capture. Unlike Bougainville, it faces a powerful military opponent whom it cannot dislodge from the territory nor fight to a standstill. By this context, the chapter documents the tactics of the secessionists in West Papua that evolved in relation to their inability to challenge the state militarily.
The Causes and Consequences of Bad Strategy and Poor Tactics
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter identifies the causes and consequences of bad strategy and poor tactics. It distinguishes three sources of error: incomplete information, wishful thinking, and mixed objectives. The chapter also explains the metaphor of the “game” when referring to the subject matter as the sovereignty game, noting that the sovereignty game is shaped by an evolving set of formal and informal rules and practices. The chapter presents two reasons why wishful thinking is present in secessionist movements: the first follows from the problem of incomplete information and the second is the simple penchant for hope. The chapter also analyses how internal division (factionalism) complicates the strategic and tactical playing field and its effects within self-determination groups. The product of the different causes of bad strategy is a game where play is varied and where actors often make poor choices. The game is coherent enough to shape play but sufficiently vague to produce misaligned tactics. With such awareness, the chapter outlines these causes and their consequences and, in doing so, begin to set the stage for a more prescriptive discussion.
Counterinsurgency
Authors: Hazelton Jacqueline L.
Published: September 2021

This chapter provides an overview of counterinsurgency, which means defeating armed, organized, persistent political challengers to the government. What explains success in counterinsurgency? This book argues that government success against an insurgency is a nonviolent and violent competition among elites that leads to political stability after a single armed actor — the counterinsurgent government — gains dominance over the others within its territory. The use of compellence (the use or threat of force to change an actor's behavior) and brute force (the power to take and to hold) together break the challenger's ability and will to fight. The book examines counterinsurgency as a form of liberal great power military intervention with relevance to contemporary Western policy debates and offers better understanding of how the use of force may — or may not — help threatened governments attain their political objectives. The chapter then introduces the compellence theory, which differs from good governance counterinsurgency.
Counterinsurgency
Authors: Hazelton Jacqueline L.
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyzes existing literature on counterinsurgency and other approaches to internal conflict to build a foundation for the compellence theory of counterinsurgent success. Today's Western policy prescription for insurgency is based on the good governance approach. In this view, good governance is necessary to defeat insurgency because it is bad governance that causes insurgency. Greater representative governance and more public goods will build broad popular support for the government, attract civilian cooperation against the insurgency, and marginalize the insurgents. The chapter argues that counterinsurgency campaigns backed by great powers succeed when the counterinsurgent government forms a coalition with rival civilian and military elites who cooperate in exchange for personal or group gain, and when the government uses the resources provided by the new coalition to cut the flow of support to insurgents, most often by targeting civilians with brute force to control their behavior, as well as targeting the insurgency directly. The compellence theory considers counterinsurgency as primarily a domestic political process of violent state-building.
Introduction
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the wedding rituals and dynasties in Russia. It describes and analyzes the themes explored by Russian polymath and “father of Russian science” Mikhail Lomonosov — ritual, dynasty, religion, royal women, and power (and several more) — as they were expressed in royal weddings from the end of the fifteenth century through the first half of the eighteenth century. The chapter then argues that court politics in Muscovy was marriage politics, and the marriage of the ruler was the critical moment in every generation of the dynasty. Each time the ruler married, the political elite around him reshuffled, with new royal in-laws joining the ranks of the innermost circle of courtiers in the Kremlin. It also notes that royal weddings, like other court rituals, were manipulated by wedding choreographers and sometimes by rulers themselves to project a dynastic message. Finally, and most fundamentally, the chapter rests on a close reading of texts, most notably the rich corpus of Muscovite royal wedding documents. The creation of these texts were genuine events in the political and cultural life of the court, reflecting changes in ruling dynasties, religious attitudes, and political agendas.
“A Canonical Marriage for the Uninterrupted Succession to Your Royal Dynasty”
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores in detail the changes made to the sixteenth-century model by the choreographers of the wedding of the first Romanov tsar, and how these changes were aimed at solidifying Romanov rule after the chaos and violence of the Time of Troubles (1598–1613). The chapter also notes that the Romanov had an extensive kinship network based on marriage links to other boyar families that went back a half century. It discusses their network of in-laws who largely survived the upheavals of the Troubles and were now in a position to help the Romanovs, and themselves, politically. The chapter then shifts to describe the qualities of a potential Romanov candidate, and the real possibility of a Romanov on the throne, which would mean a restoration of the fortunes of boyar families — strong incentive for them to advocate and defend Romanov interests. Ultimately, the chapter reviews the Romanov's election in 1613 and their adept exploitation of ritual. It also analyses what it meant for them to have one of the greatest choreographers of the time on their side.
“And Unlike Previous Royal Weddings, There Was Not the Usual Royal Ritual”
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter picks up the narrative with the second marriage of the second Romanov tsar, Aleksei Mikhailovich, in 1671, and considers how changing political structures at court, a rising wall of Orthodox confessionalism, and the pious personality of the “most serene” tsar combined to produce further changes to the wedding ritual. The chapter also explores how changes in the way tsars wed reflected in aspects of their own biographies — their religiosity, their physical health, their mental health, and their ages. It elaborates the role that weddings played in this dynamic time when the ritual ground on which all politics rested was shifting tumultuously beneath them. Ultimately, the chapter ends by exploring the vastly reduced weddings of Aleksei's sons in the 1680s, concluding with Peter I's first wedding in 1689.
“To See Your Royal Children on the Thrones”
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the way rites of passage and gifts interacted to create social cohesion in the Muscovite court. It presents the gifts' variety of functions at weddings: they helped integrate the bride (and her family) into the social hierarchy of the Kremlin, they reified lines of attachment and loyalty between the court elite and the dynasty, and they solicited the public and prayerful support of religious leaders of the Russian Church in distant locales across the tsardom. These gifts went to the high-ranking and the low, to courtiers in Moscow and to those in locations far from the capital, and to churchmen across Muscovy. Gifts were, consequently, an essential element of the larger goals of all royal weddings: to project an image of power, legitimacy, continuity, solidarity, and beneficence. Ultimately, the chapter focuses particularly on gifts given to church hierarchs, who in turn offered prayers for the newly wedded couple. Themes of dynasty and continuity weaved through the words of these prayers and highlight the essentially political nature of royal weddings.
“Delight in Exposing the Old Methods of the Country”
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter shows how Russia's first emperor drew on a range of antecedents — Muscovite weddings, parodic weddings of jesters and fools, and foreign models — to retool royal wedding rites for his own purposes. The chapter, however, treats the weddings of the Petrine era as a unit. It explores how royal weddings were linked to the parodic weddings both to create a new ritual rubric for royal weddings and to help Peter I not only advance his reforms but establish a model of monarchy rooted in his own charismatic authority, rather than traditional dynastic rule. It also situates the weddings of the era in the context of their immediate precursors — the weddings of Peter's elder brothers and the second wedding of his father, which were themselves a departure from the traditional nuptial rites of passage that had been performed in the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries. Ultimately, the chapter brings many of the themes that the previous chapters have explored — ritual, dynasty, religion, and women at weddings and in the larger political culture — into the Petrine era, revealing that, for all the changes in form, the function of the tsar's (and later, emperor's) happy occasion remained much the same: politics and power.
Conclusion
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter elaborates the broad conclusions found in the study of ritual and dynasty in Russian royal weddings. It argues that wedding rituals were about dynasties and succession, and only incidentally about foreign policy or diplomacy. The chapter also unveils that wedding rites revealed both the misogyny of the court and the agency of royal women in a political system that rested so vitally on marriage and kinship. Also, royal weddings very directly revealed the interplay between Christian and non-Christian culture. The chapter then describes Peter I's reforms as part of a much longer and larger process of adaptation, borrowing, and improvisation. Ultimately, the chapter asserts royal weddings as an essential ritual that must be studied alongside other court spectacles like coronations, birthdays, name days, funerals, processions, and diplomatic audiences. It addresses weddings through the lens of dynasty and succession, which has necessarily led us to many other vital questions along the way and produced a number of venturesome reconsiderations of matters long thought settled in the historiography.
How Time Complicates Migratory Experiences
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines long-term immigrants in a later stage of life and their complex relations with home and host societies. It predicts that the 4.3 million immigrants estimated by the US Census Bureau in the United States aged sixty-five and over will double and grow from 16 to 36 percent of the senior population by 2050. It also discusses the logics, rationales, and strategies through which long-term senior immigrants assess and address life issues and life transitions. The chapter explores the experience of long-term migration and temporal variation of homeland contexts, which shapes the ways aging migrant populations consider, construct, and fulfill their needs and desires. It offers the concept of temporalities of migration to trace the trajectories through which aging immigrants draw on the social and cultural norms they learn transnationally and transtemporally to re-establish relationships with families, friends, home locales, and host societies.
Remaking Conjugality
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyzes the temporalities of international migration as they shape conjugality between older migrants and their spouses. It discusses the interplay among international migration, acculturation into US society, and experiences of aging that motivates immigrants to reconstruct their intimate relationships. It also explains how most migrant couples transform their intimate connections as they encounter new contexts and new cultures, as well as how migration to the United States sets the stage for these changes by affecting socioeconomic standing and connections to kin in the homeland. The chapter cites that the immigrants' perceptions of Americanization shape gender hierarchies and clarifies how entering the later life leads older immigrants to rethink gender norms. It refers to egalitarianism as the dominant cultural feature of spousal relations in the United States, emphasizing the importance of maintaining harmonious relationships with their immigrant spouses through mutual communication, coordination, and respect.
Rethinking Time, Migration, and Aging
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter reviews the concept of temporalities of migration and considers the ways in which aging immigrants anchor themselves in a transnational social field. It looks at the mutual processes that shape temporalities and migratory experiences and their connections with the organization of intimate relations at the individual, familial, communal, and state levels. It also examines the interaction of time and migration in the experiences of older Taiwanese migrants living in both the United States and Taiwan. The chapter analyzes the impact of time or temporalities on the identities of immigrants, establishing that relocating to a new society complicates the subjectivities of newcomers and provides new options for identity in familial, communal, and social settings. It underscores the need for reassessment of institutional responses to the needs and desires of aging migrant populations.
Dirty Talk
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores how Mandarin, Dongbeihua, and English are constituted and enacted in everyday forms of discourse in Shenyang, but also how they interact in linguistically complex ways. Despite their presumably separate status as unique linguistic codes, they frequently manifest themselves in the voice of a single speaker, although at differing times and in differing contexts. The chapter shows how their coherence as separate codes is not given beforehand but a product of metapragmatic discourse that regiments and organizes speech ideologically into different orders of indexicality. Various types of speech are tied to distinctions and categories in the sociocultural field, enregistering equivalences between hierarchically ranked linguistic categories and stratified social categories. It is therefore the comparability between linguistic codes and the ways they point to contrasting stances and social roles that is of interest here.
The Moral Economy of Walls
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses how the Chinese landscape is defined by its walls and, consequently, by an architecture of enclosure. Clearly demarcated walled spaces, each one nested inside another, provide order as they structure and arrange the landscape into conceptual units of social space. The chapter then looks at how space, time, and language interact within the discursive formation of Chinese modernity. Language inhabits a spatiotemporal geography in Shenyang, with words and accents indexing each person's location within this environment both physically (where they are from) and temporally (how they are oriented in terms of being “ahead” or “behind” others). Modern languages belong in modern spaces, while antiquated ones belong in antiquated spaces. Thus, Dongbeihua is properly thought to be a language spoken in the countryside, or by the poor and elderly residents of Shenyang's older neighborhoods. For those who can speak standard Mandarin, Dongbeihua belongs in private domestic spaces, signifying close social relations among family. English, in contrast, is a language expressed, both verbally and graphically, in popular shopping districts and corporate enterprises.
On “Chinglish”
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This chapter studies the category of language popularly known as “Chinglish” and what this stigmatizing label means for the speakers to whom it is attached. For individuals to discover that their speech or writing was in actuality Chinglish was perhaps the most discomfiting news a Chinese English speaker could hear, implying as it did that the language in use was not only semantically or syntactically wrong but, more importantly, that the speaker's status as an authorized user of the English language was illegitimate and false. Chinglish is formed through the process of enregisterment, where discursive practices encode and systematize the evaluative judgments of entire speech communities, and then sediment over time into particular semiotic registers imbued with social value and identified with distinct social types. The metapragmatic statements that shape the perceptions of Chinglish may be explicit but are more generally embedded within other speech genres such as jokes. Ultimately, membership in the stigmatized speech community of Chinglish users is not claimed by intentional use of the variety but instead assigned by others, reflecting and maintaining existing inequalities in linguistic capital.
Defeating Goliath
Authors: Freeman Jim
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins with the introduction of a small group of racism profiteers who has been aggressively implementing an agenda that, while enormously beneficial for them, has been devastating to communities of color. The chapter recalls how the ultra-wealthy engaged in rampant profiteering off the privatization of national security functions, mirroring the dynamics around the privatization of education, criminal justice, and immigration enforcement. The chapter also recognizes that the most pressing social problems and racial justice are not only the fight of people of color, but rather the fight of all. The chapter then illustrates how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Koch network, and other billionaires and multimillionaires are leading efforts to make substantial changes to, and perhaps completely rewrite, the US Constitution. Ultimately, the chapter addresses how the implementation of a Student Bill of Rights and a comprehensive youth development agenda is eminently feasible if the United States finally makes the education of all children a national priority.
Conclusion
Authors: Freeman Jim
Published: September 2021

This chapter cites the statement of rebellion drafted by a group of revolutionaries in the late eighteenth century. It highlights the need to address the Declaration of Interdependence following the severe challenges that the United States face today. The chapter asserts that we are far more interdependent than we are independent, and our lives are all deeply interconnected within a web of both obvious and not-so-obvious threads. It evaluates how education inequities, mass criminalization, anti-immigrant policies, and other racial justice issues do not just harm those who attend the underresourced schools, suffer the effects of overpolicing, and face the prospect of being deported. The chapter recognizes that addressing those issues does not just help the people of color who have the burden of systemic racism lifted off them, but also everyone is in a position to benefit when communities of color are able to live higher-quality lives and the rot of injustice is purged from the public systems.
The Plan
Authors: Madland David
Published: September 2021

This chapter explains in detail what the new system would look like. It shows how public policy can actively support unions and encourage broad-based collective bargaining, and it explains how the newer elements of the modernized system would be layered on top of the existing system. The chapter discusses how the United States could adapt the “Ghent system” that several countries use to provide needed benefits to workers and a platform for unions to recruit members. It also describes how to move toward broad-based bargaining by promoting high union density as well as by creating supportive structures — including extending union contracts to similarly placed workers through more expansive use of prevailing wage laws and the creation of workers' boards in sectors with little or no union density. Examples from cities and states with these types of policies are highlighted. Finally, how unions would operate in the new system and build power in the workplace as well as in the larger economy is explored.
The Contours of a Modern Labor System
Authors: Madland David
Published: September 2021

This chapter explains why policies that encourage union membership and promote broad-based bargaining would enable labor to deliver much more for workers and the economy than they can under the current system. The chapter discusses why labor has been in decline in the United States and elsewhere but has been able to maintain strength in a few other countries with favorable policies. Policies that actively encourage union membership are needed to counteract the collective action problem unions present. The chapter also discusses why collective bargaining currently does not work very well in the United States but could be much improved by shifting toward broader-based bargaining. Compared to worksite bargaining, broad-based bargaining raises wages for more workers, reduces economic inequality as well as gender and racial pay gaps to a greater degree, and is better suited to the way firms are structured in the modern economy.
Creating the New System
Authors: Madland David
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores whether a new labor system could ever become law and overcome the massive political hurdles standing in the way. The path to victory is quite narrow. There needs to be sufficient grassroots activism to push labor issues to the top of the agenda, a strong majority of politicians willing to vote for pro-union policy, champions to drive the policy forward, and a favorable intellectual climate. As difficult as these are to achieve, they are possible if favorable trends continue and rise in intensity. The public must increasingly and more forcefully demand change, and the political and intellectual climate must continue shifting in favor of labor modernization. The chapter concludes by echoing the theme of the book — that a new labor system with broad-based bargaining and encouragement for union membership would help address the fundamental economic and political challenges that the United States faces. The more people recognize this, the better the chances for creating a new labor system.
Are “Stranger Donors” Irrational?
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter seeks to understand the motivations of people who offered to donate a kidney to a stranger. It explores the degree of emotional relationship that was essential to justify the claim that donation provided a psychological benefit to the donor. The chapter also mentions a law in the United Kingdom called the Unrelated Live Transplant Registry Authority which required organ donors to provide proof that they had a relationship with the recipient. In the United States, however, there is no federal legislation or public policy regulating stranger donors. The chapter then turns to discuss a study led by nephrologist Aaron Spital showing how attitudes within the transplant community gradually shifted from almost universal rejection of stranger donors to their gradual acceptance. It assesses the struggles that nephrologists went through in trying to determine whether such altruists were noble or irrational. Ultimately, the chapter offers a unique glimpse into the motivations of an altruistic donor and into the forms of skepticism that doctors and psychologists bring to evaluations of such donors.
What Are the Risks?
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the risks, both surgical and medical, to donating a kidney. It reviews the financial ramifications of donating a kidney and the nonmedical risks of living with only one kidney — organ damage from contact sports. The chapter then narrates the author's experience of the Mayo Clinic's rigorous evaluation process, from a short briefing with a Mayo transplant surgeon down to one of the most important tests, an abdominal CT scan. The chapter also addresses the highlight of the auhor's long appointment — the donor education class, which involved a meeting with other potential kidney donors, recipients, and caregivers who were also at Mayo for evaluation. Finally, the chapter discusses the author's appointments with Lisa, a nurse transplant coordinator; Margo, a designated donor advocate; and a social worker who was assigned to assess her mental fitness as an organ donor.
Paired Exchanges, Chain Donations, and Organ Markets
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter introduces the use of an innovation called “paired exchange,” a way to encourage donations even when there is no match. The chapter shows a graphic presentation to simply describe the idea of paired donation exchange. It explains the risks of paired exchange for the donors' and recipients' perspective, arguing that the risks were the same from the donors' perspective, while the outcomes from the recipients' perspective would be much better as a result of receiving a histocompatible organ than they would be if they received their own designated recipient's organ. The chapter also offers some legal questions after lawyers wondered whether a paired kidney exchange was a sort of barter and thus the beginning of a gray market in organs. Ultimately, the chapter looks at another suggestion of creating a serial chain of donor–recipient pairs, with the world's first kidney–liver swap took place in 2017.
Going Public, Moving Forward
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter looks at how the author and Deb Porter Gill decided to go public on social media about their match. The chapter narrates the people's reactions upon hearing their story, most either thought the author was a living saint or a misguided fool. It also inspired some of their acquaintances to share their own family stories about kidney disease, organ donation, and other medical miracles. Some talked about the health problems that regrettably meant they could never donate. The chapter also mentions the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle's update to Deb's story, which launched quite a bit of quiet speculation in the Kansas City Jewish community about who had been identified as Deb's match.
Ethics, Organ Markets, and Dry Ice
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter argues that thr author's dry ice saga graphically illustrates one of the central problems in organ donation today. It examines why most medical centers make it harder than is needed for people to donate organs. Advocates for markets in organs talk about the power of incentives, however, what we see today, is the power of disincentives. The chapter offers a better model to treat organ donors: to treat them like financial donors. Philanthropy professionals in medical centers around the country are expert at taking care of donors, making it easy for them to give, cultivating them, and showing gratitude. The chapter explores how organ donation programs could improve their customer service, and possibly retain more potential donors, if they developed the ethos of their philanthropy departments instead of the ethos of their surgery departments. The chapter also explains the logic of supply and demand in relation to the barriers of cost and inconvenience for people who are willing to donate. Ultimately, it presents the arguments of the opponents and the defenders of markets about the idea of legalized organ markets.
Staying Healthy
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the author's set of self-imposed restrictions to be healthy in preparation for the surgery date. The chapter tells how the author managed to attend the synagogue's Rosh Hashanah services, where hundreds of people gathered for worship. It also discusses the CaringBridge site that the author set up to keep her family and friends updated throughout her surgery and recovery. It then highlights her support system: her girlfriends, her weekly walking buddy, and her fellow graduates of the Harvard Business School. Many more friends and family sent emails, messages on CaringBridge, and texts. Finally, the chapter narrates her preparation to leave for Rochester.
First Attempt
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins with detailing the author's travel to Rochester for the upcoming surgery and the final pre-op tests. The chapter recounts the experience the author went through from the rigorous process and evaluation of managing the evaluation and testing schedule, working to get the blood pressure down, handling the packing and shipping for the lab kits, and staying healthy. It then presents all the risks of the surgery including the possibilities of bleeding and infection, and the unlikely event of needing to convert to an open procedure with a much more significant incision and longer recovery time. It also highlights the author's final appointment scheduled with a social worker assigned to her donor advocate. Ultimately, the chapter focuses on how the author managed her time in Rochester after the recipient's doctors found a lung infection and postponed the surgery. With the sudden turn of events, the chapter narrates the author's plan to just attend Yom Kippur Kol Nidre services, drive to the Twin Cities, and spend Yom Kippur day with her son and daughter-in-law.
Lessons Learned
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter talks about the key lessons following the author's story. It argues that kidney donors are not patients in the traditional sense of that word, and should perhaps think of them as philanthropists who donate a body part instead of donating money. The chapter investigates the attitudes, procedures and practices, and ethos of transplant centers with regard to living donors. It examines the sorts of barriers that the author described, and studies how the process or the cost may put off good candidates to donate. The chapter then turns to discuss the significance of increasing the number of kidney transplants in society. It illustrates how research into the motivations of donors led to the development and widespread adoption of a set of guidelines for evaluating stranger donors. Ultimately, the chapter discusses transplant centers and advocacy organizations' use of conventional and social media, and personal networks to encourage, train, and help patients to “recruit” unrelated donors.
From Bohemia to Balintawak
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter provides a seemingly unusual, but potentially illuminating, vantage point from which to approach the cosmopolitan dimensions of the Philippine Revolution of the late nineteenth century — the Bohemian town of Litoměřice. It recounts the visit of Dr. José Rizal, the great Filipino novelist and celebrated progenitor of Philippine nationalism, to Leitmeritz and his relationship with Ferdinand Blumentritt, a local gymnasium teacher and avid student and scholar of Philippine history and society. The chapter provides a coherent narrative account, one whose emplotment follows the nationalist logic so prevalent in the study of Southeast Asian history. On the one hand, the revolution is said to have been led from above by urban — and highly urbane — educated young men familiar from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Filipino nationalists who emerged from Spanish colonial schools in the Philippines. On the other hand, the Philippine Revolution is also said to have been driven from below by a broader pool of the Filipino masses, by peasants and fishermen across the provinces of the archipelago, and by artisanal laborers in Manila and other port cities. The chapter argues that the struggles leading up to the Philippine Revolution can be understood in terms of what scholars have termed the “Culture Wars” of the late nineteenth century, a transcontinental if not global conflict pitting “anticlerical” scientists, Freemasons, liberals, and republicans against the Catholic Church in its ultramontane incarnation.
Is a Fall Really a Fall?
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses how the falls of nations and empires really are falls. In the case of Rome, all evidence suggests there was a dramatic reduction in economic activity and standards of living. Indeed, trade collapsed after the fall of the Roman Empire. However, not all declines and falls last as long as did the European Middle Ages. Some dynastic changes just lead to a few centuries of warfare before another hegemonic empire reestablishes itself: the Chinese Warring States period after the fall of the Zhou dynasty lasted about 250 years. The most likely form of societal decline that we would see would be slow and steady deterioration. This is what occurred both in Rome and in Byzantium. The future dystopia could easily be a world of poverty, marginality, and crime; a world where incompetence is everywhere; a world where ethnic hostility and communal violence are facts of life; a world where ecological challenges are not dealt with because no one has the administrative capacity to deal with them; a world of high mortality because the medical system no longer works; and a world where the standard of living is half what it is now.
Rethinking Moral Crisis
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter addresses the moral crisis. One of the oldest tropes in the “end of the world” genre is “We are going to die because of a moral crisis.” The ancestor of this argument is Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Moral arguments can be made by anyone in any part of the political spectrum; they are the most common, however, among the religious right. The chapter then considers Jim Nelson Black's book When Nations Die: Ten Warning Signs of a Culture in Crisis. Black's treatment is unusually complete and covers nearly every argument made by moral crisis authors. Ultimately, societal survival is based on large groups of people working together to solve common problems. Identifying one group as having superior values and another group as being barbarian reduces the size of the potential web of cooperation. Indeed, it is not helpful to set rich people against the “idle” poor, white people against “criminal” blacks, or Christians against “culture-destroying” vulgarians.
Legitimation
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter studies why large social systems generate inequality. Half of it is bona fide returns to merit, while half of it is leverage of personal position into advantages for friends, families, and oneself. The organizations run by the elite take things from people and control their lives. People have lots of reason to resent people who exclude them from opportunities, take things from them, and regulate them. The trouble is that some of these exercises of authority are necessary for a society to function: governments cannot build schools or hospitals or provide defense against invaders unless they collect taxes; students will not learn anything in school if they do not obey the teachers; economic life will be in complete chaos if no one does what they are supposed to do on the job. Talcott Parsons argued that legitimation is what allows all these good things to happen. Without legitimation, society cannot exist. Legitimation is accepting the authority of someone over you as being legitimate. However, legitimation is fragile. We live in a world where powerful individuals and large organizations do not always do the right thing.
The Motivation to Not Cooperate
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter demonstrates how civilization was built on the basis of raiding. Societies became large and wealthy when some places got military advantages over the others. They could raid their neighbors, stealing whatever was portable and worth having. Slowly but steadily, the militarily dominant societies evolved into empires. A key intermediary step was the development of tribute, which evolved into taxation. Raiding and military conquest also led to the dominance of men over women, transforming women into prizes of warfare. Indeed, the rise of empires and the rise of civilization were both predicated on rape. Rape then evolved into slavery. Ultimately, raiding led to patriarchy, to the rise of taxation and the state, to dramatic increases in material wealth, and to dramatic increases in artistic and scientific capacity.
Primitive Accumulation Today
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter discusses how raiding was the foundation of Western economic growth. It is also an active component of economic development in the Global South today. Capitalism may operate through the voluntaristic choices of the free market, but it reinforces itself with coercion. The technical term for modern-day raiding is “primitive accumulation,” a word used by Karl Marx to describe the origin of capitalism. The chapter then considers how the United States is an example of capitalism based on forcible land acquisition. In the Global South, land is often just taken away by plain, ordinary coercion. Colombia has a particularly violent history of land seizure. The chapter looks at the scale and violence of contemporary expropriation in Colombia.