bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Serving Herself
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. This book narrates the public career and private struggles of this fascinating athlete. It sets Gibson’s life and choices against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism. Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black press and community’s expectations that she selflessly serve as a representative of her race. Despite her major wins and international recognition, Gibson endeavored to find commercial sponsorship and permanent economic stability. Committed to self-sufficiency, she pivoted from the elite amateur tennis circuit to State Department-sponsored goodwill tours, attempts to find success as a singer and Hollywood actress, the professional golf circuit, a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters and her own professional tennis tour, coaching, teaching children at tennis clinics, and a stint as New Jersey Athletics Commissioner. As she struggled to support herself in old age, she was left with disappointment, recounting her past achievements decades before female tennis players were able to garner substantial earnings.
Introduction
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Althea Gibson, one of the preeminent African American female athletes of the mid-twentieth century. Unlike most histories of sports integration, this is a story of a sportswoman. Gibson navigated uncharted territory in the face of an unjust society to create a blueprint and path for herself and to become the first Black female sports superstar. Indeed, Gibson’s existence requires the recalibration of the tendency for “Black athlete” to refer exclusively to men as she reveals the unappreciated role of women in sports integration. The chapter considers how gender and sexuality are essential to this biographical history of sports integration. Gibson faced higher expectations and harsher standards, ambivalence, and even outright animosity within African American communities as she reached racially unprecedented heights in tennis ahead of Black men. Although Gibson was never at the forefront of activism, she found ways to show her solidarity with social justice initiatives.
The Making of a Strong Black (Woman) Contender in the South
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter details how Althea Gibson received sponsorships from Dr. Hubert A. Eaton, Sr. and Dr. Robert Walter Johnson. Dr. Eaton and Dr. Johnson saw in Gibson the opportunity to join their love for tennis with their devotion to racial uplift. They hoped that the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) and the White men and women who controlled tennis would cooperate—or could be made to cooperate—and allow Gibson to enter matches and, eventually, Forest Hills. Dr. Eaton, Dr. Johnson, and Gibson had therefore united to challenge the racial restrictions that surrounded elite amateur tennis. The chapter then looks at Gibson’s experiences in navigating gender and Jim Crow in the South as she prepared for her multi-faceted future as a Black sportswoman integrationist. It also considers how her tennis career began to make her a noted female figure in the national Black press. The measure of Gibson’s rising stature among African Americans became clear when the Norfolk Journal and Guide placed her on its annual list of Black women who had achieved notable racial firsts or acted in a way that the newspaper considered as having brought pride to African Americans.
From Florida A&M to Forest Hills
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter begins by looking at Althea Gibson’s move to Tallahassee to start her education at Florida A&M. By coming to Florida’s capital city, which operated under Jim Crow laws, she had moved further South and more deeply under segregation. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College (FAMC) itself represented the ways in which segregation limited Gibson’s options. Respectability enforced by the FAMC administration mediated what students did, where they went, and how they looked when they went there. The chapter then focuses on the campaign to get Gibson into Forest Hills. It also recounts her time in the National Clay Court tournament and the Eastern Grass-Court Championships. As Gibson waited for the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) to announce her admission into Forest Hills, the White national championship, she prepared to compete in the American Tennis Association (ATA) Nationals, the Black event. In covering Gibson’s admission to Forest Hills, the press, Black and White, confronted gender in sports integration while at the same time inadvertently revealing the factors that made it difficult for Black women to gain a foothold in almost any realm considered exclusively male.
Dis/Integration
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter describes Althea Gibson’s experiences competing in tennis tournaments from 1951 to 1953, as well as her continued struggles with sexism and racism. These tournaments include the Caribbean Championship, the National Indoors at the Seventh Regiment Armory, and the Good Neighbor Tournament. The exclusivity of Miami Beach made Gibson’s entry in the Good Neighbor a landmark moment for her chroniclers in the African-American press. Being a Black woman on the White tennis circuit gave Gibson social capital but not money or independence. The chapter then turns to Gibson’s debut at Wimbledon, the oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. Other tournaments that Gibson participated in during this time include the Pennsylvania State Tennis Tournament at the famed Merion Cricket Club in Haverford and the Eastern Grass Court Championships. While Gibson’s status as the premier Black tennis player in the world earned her no latitude in academics at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College (FAMC), her fame was still rewarded with special treatment elsewhere. Gibson experienced personal disappointment as she did not succeed in amateur tennis as quickly as she had hoped.
Press(ing) Matters
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter studies Althea Gibson’s representation in the mainstream and Black media, which both agreed that her symbolism was a boon to the State Department and found officials’ statements to the contrary incredible. The overwhelming interest in Gibson by the politically minded was based in the dichotomy between her success abroad and the prevailing images and narratives about Black life in America that circulated in the domestic and global media. The burgeoning battle over school desegregation in the South had reinforced that African Americans were under attack in their own country and that Gibson was living a privileged life abroad to the benefit of the U.S. government. The chapter then looks at Gibson’s views about race, identity, and representation. Gibson was a reluctant political figure and acted accordingly. Even if she were not playing for African Americans, Gibson hoped observers would learn from her example. Her success in tennis represented that a willingness to face and learn from challenges was the only way to get better.
Finding Fault with a Winner
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter begins by discussing how Althea Gibson faced the stereotype of the lesbian athlete as marriage and parenthood became greater racial duties for Black people to show their preparedness for integration. It also recounts her journey in winning the Wimbledon singles title. The unflattering and blatantly sexist talk that circulated about Gibson in the British press, however, served to underscore that she was not many people’s idea of a women’s tennis champion. The chapter then looks at the post-Wimbledon coverage of Gibson in the Black media. According to some, in her continued persistence at tennis despite having lost so many times, Gibson symbolized African Americans’ battles for civil rights. Finally, the chapter considers Gibson’s participation in the Wightman Cup matches, where she was the center of attention.
Game Over
Authors: Brown Ashley
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines how becoming the first Black champion at Wimbledon and Forest Hills and being one of the most famous Black women in the world brought numerous opportunities for Althea Gibson. Yet all too often the opportunities also revealed people’s judgment of her as a woman who lived with little regard for ideas about what was normal for a person of her race and gender and in the rarefied country-club sport that she played. The chapter then looks at Gibson’s opposition about turning professional, before considering her singing career. Called Althea Gibson Sings, Gibson’s album consisted of a dozen standards with lyrics characterized by longing, loss, and fears, and unrequited love. Finally, the chapter recounts how Gibson defended her titles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills. She viewed her successful defense at Wimbledon as a way of making a case about her place in sports generally and in the annals of tennis history specifically.
Government Poverty and Incentive Pensions in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Hsia Ke-Chin
Published: December 2022

The chapter traces the state welfare for soldiers and their families back to the late 18th century and especially the post-Napoleonic years, when social disciplinary intention and an occupation-specific legal-administrative conception of disability marked the provision. It then discusses the changes and continuities brought by universal military service, introduced in 1868, as part of the wider liberal reforms in the 1860s and 1870s. The military and political reformers may not fully realize how fundamental the change they helped usher in. The 1875 Military Welfare Law aimed primarily to be an incentive for military careers and personnel retention, not for the eventual needs of a conscription citizen army.
A Social Offensive on the Home Front
Authors: Hsia Ke-Chin
Published: December 2022

This chapter focuses on the social offensive on the home front that began in 1917, and specifically the political dynamics and the institutional building in the new Social Ministry’s ambitious reform of disabled soldier welfare. Welfare state building in this regard was at once a reassertion of the central civil administration’s authority vis-à-vis the military, an attempt to build the new ministry’s capacities, and a mission to salvage the state’s credibility. A discussion of ministerial officials’ manoeuvers and their interaction with provincial welfare actors surrounding the 5 March 1918 reform plan, which promised a state welfare system capable of providing comprehensive services for individual war victims, is followed by an analysis of parliamentary parties’ competing proposals for a projected new war victim legislation. The much needed comprehensive legislation was the site where competing visions for postwar society were formulated once parliamentary politics was revived in 1917.
A Republic with “the Correct National and Social Sensibilities”
Authors: Hsia Ke-Chin
Published: December 2022

The emergence of a new comprehensive war victim welfare system, represented most prominently by the Invalid Compensation Law (Invalidenentschädigungsgesetz) of 25 April 1919, is examined in detail in this chapter. The smooth transition of the state welfare apparatus during the revolution, and the rapid legislative process of the law (with organized war victims’ participation) made it clear that war victim welfare was a key site where the parliamentary democratic Republic sought to build its legitimacy. Using the elements already under discussion by the parliamentary parties in 1917, and specifically based on the basic principles proposed by the Social Democrats, the new law embodied an egalitarian, citizenship-based welfare entitlement for potentially 5 to 8 percent of the Austrian Republic’s total population. The wave of Communist revolutions in Central Europe in 1918 and 1919 prompted a mainstream political consensus for this comprehensive, participatory, and egalitarian war victim welfare system.
“The Public’s Interest in Invalids Has Waned”
Authors: Hsia Ke-Chin
Published: December 2022

The chapter first reconstructs the tension within the war victim movement in 1919 and 1920. It then discusses the declining political weight of war victim welfare that was built on the Invalid Compensation Law and its companion piece, the Invalid Employment Law (Invalidenbeschäftigungsgesetz) of 1 October 1920, when the deepening financial and fiscal crisis forced a retrenchment starting in 1922. The 1924 reforms, engineered by the Christian Socials, transformed postwar war victim welfare into a more bureaucratically-controlled apparatus, rather than the original codetermination process. Organized war victims’ waning institutional influence was in tandem with the consolidation of the milieu parties’ stranglehold of public life in interwar Austria.
Examining the Narrative Devolution of the Physician in Camus’s The Plague
Authors: Weiser Edward B.
Published: December 2022

What happens to the role of the physician when the day-to-day successes with acutely ill persons become less the rule? An incurable and highly communicable disease becomes widespread and assumes an intractable and tragic course independent of therapeutic interventions. What of the physician then? The Plague focuses on Dr. Bernard Rieux as he struggles to offer medical care in the city of Oran. Dr. Rieux’s evolution (in reality, devolution) from therapeutic interventionist to statistical documentarian and dispenser of information is carefully and believably explored. The uncomfortable choices of the modern physician dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic is similar to that of Dr. Rieux, including the absence of a cure, the limited degree of effective comfort measures, and the overwhelming numbers of sick and dying. Through comparisons with the experiences and the reactions of Dr. Rieux, we can understand the contemporary health care professional’s response to challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I Can’t Breathe”
Authors: Gray Margaret E.
Published: December 2022

Among the final words of George Floyd during his brutal murder by a Minneapolis policeman, “I can’t breathe” captures both the experience of physical suffocation and, more abstractly, the sociopolitical stranglehold of brutal oppression. These literal and figurative uses of “breathing” implicitly overlap in Camus’s allegory of the Nazi occupation during World War II, The Plague, and during the Covid-19 pandemic when protesters masked against the lung-destroying virus defied curfews to demonstrate against racism, police violence, and brutality across the globe. Returning to Camus’s depiction of a world he called “unbreathable” from within our contemporary context of pandemic and oppression offers new resonance to the narrator’s experience, as well as to our own. This chapter takes breathing and suffocation as master tropes of life and death, freedom, and oppression, marking our own ordeal with Covid-19 and sociopolitical tyranny even as they define the suffering of Oran’s sequestered citizens.
Underdeveloped Bodies
Authors: Clarke Frances M. , Plant Rebecca Jo
Published: December 2022

Although Civil War armies included large numbers of underage enlistees, numerous medical and military authorities warned of the dangers of youth enlistment. US Surgeon General William Hammond favored raising the age of enlistment to at least twenty, since boys in their teens were still growing and thus liable to break down. In advancing this argument, he and other military physicians drew on studies by their British and French peers, who believed that standardizing and enforcing age restrictions would increase military strength and efficiency. During the Civil War, boys’ martial enthusiasm and the need for military manpower drowned out calls for a higher enlistment age. Yet beliefs about the connection between youth and debility nonetheless permeated the broader culture, surfacing in US Congressional hearings on the draft, parental petitions seeking boys’ discharge, courts martial cases involving underage defendants, and the private musings of young soldiers themselves.
Pride of the Nation
Authors: Clarke Frances M. , Plant Rebecca Jo
Published: December 2022

Idealistic representations of white children in uniform pervaded the literary and visual culture of the United States during the Civil War. To stoke patriotic sentiment, Unionists tapped into political and cultural motifs dating back to the French Revolution, when myths of heroic child soldiers and drummer boys had helped to legitimize the new republic. This was not the case in the Confederacy. Seeking to build a world that prized hierarchy, tradition, and bloodline over youthful ardor, Confederates lauded individual boys who performed heroic deeds, but they did not envision boy soldiers and drummer boys as symbols of the nation. Yet the iconic Boy in Blue was by no means a revolutionary figure when it came to race. Although the enlistment of some two hundred thousand African American men and boys proved crucial to the Union victory, images of martyred white children obscured this reality, reimagining the preservation of the Union in terms of white innocence and suffering.
Forced into Service
Authors: Clarke Frances M. , Plant Rebecca Jo
Published: December 2022

Most young people who participated in the Civil War were poor or working class, and many were subject to varying degrees of coercion. In the Confederacy, officers compelled young male slaves to accompany them to war as body “servants,” and enslaved and free Black youth were impressed to perform military labor. In refugee camps, Union officials withheld army rations from children above age fourteen, forcing them either to work for the military or to enlist. And after the United States resorted to conscription in 1863, rising bounties and dwindling manpower reserves fuelled a market in male youth controlled by substitute brokers that at times resulted in outright trafficking. For some young enlistees, the war was liberating, emancipating them from parental control and positioning them to achieve social and economic mobility after the war. But for others, military service more closely resembled coerced labor or even temporary slavery.
The Minor Occultation
Authors: Ghobadzadeh Naser
Published: December 2022

With the demise of the eleventh Imām in 264/874, who apparently had no son to succeed him, the rivals of Imāmī Shīʿism gained the upper hand. However, pragmatic policies of the Shīʿī leadership circle enabled the Shīʿī community to maintain its own independent identity. This chapter examines the political atmosphere of the Islamic world in the period of the Minor Occultation, arguing that the continuation of a political approach based on the model of theocratic secularism was a key factor in Shīʿism’s survival. The Shīʿa maintained their claim to rulership but also cooperated with the caliphate apparatus. This chapter also seeks to show that for the Shīʿa, the twelfth Imām did not have a messianic character from the beginning. Rather, the theocratic secularism of the period of the Minor Occultation was not appreciably different from that practiced during the lifetimes of earlier infallible Imāms, in the sense that the Shīʿa hoped and anticipated that the twelfth Imām would soon return and establish their ideal government.
Wilāyat-i Faqīh
Authors: Ghobadzadeh Naser
Published: December 2022

The clerical Islamists were the most effective political force in mobilizing the masses to participate in demonstrations and strikes against the shah’s government. In enlisting the population, they benefited widely from religious slogans and elements. But this chapter shows that the religion that existed in the Iranian political arena during the revolutionary struggle was significantly different from the religion that dominated the Iranian political space after the Revolution. That is why, in addition to the Islamists, other political groups also used religious elements in their revolutionary activities. In this period, there was no confining, exclusive, and jurist-centered understanding of religion and, more important, the idea of wilāyat-i faqīh had no place in the religious discourse of the revolutionary struggle. This chapter also demonstrates that at the time of the referendum to determine Iran’s future political system and during the preparation of the draft constitution, there was no trace of the idea of wilāyat-i faqīh.
The Genie Is Out of the Bottle
Authors: Ghobadzadeh Naser
Published: December 2022

This chapter focuses on the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution, which introduced the discourse of governmental Shīʿism into post-revolutionary Iranian politics. It is demonstrated in this chapter that a number of clerical Islamists, following a specific agenda and benefiting from effective coordination, as well as relying on their absolute majority in the Assembly of Experts, were able to draft the most fundamental document of the new government system based on the idea of wilāyat-i faqīh. However, Khomeini’s doctrine was surprisingly absent from the deliberations of the Assembly of Experts for the Constitution. This chapter will discuss how, without engaging in theological debates about the relationship between religion and government, and by using the general and vague concepts of Shīʿī orthodoxy, the members of the Assembly of Experts codified the principle of wilāyat-i faqīh. After the incorporation of the principle of wilāyat-i faqīh into the constitution, the government of the Islamic Republic placed the theological transformation and replacement of Shīʿī orthodoxy by governmental Shīʿism on its agenda.
I Sent You Something Priceless
Authors: Brown Jeremy
Published: December 2022

Until the eighteenth century, disease was often thought to be caused by the spells and incantations of others. To overcome them, a counter-magic was developed. This chapter examines the Jewish amulets that were deployed and the visits of the sick to miracle workers. Surprisingly, Jews sometimes visited Christian shrines and evoked their saints in an effort to speed recovery. The use of amulets is put into context with an evaluation of their use in early modern Christian Europe, where pulverized frogs were a standard of care. The chapter concludes with an examination of amulets by contemporary Jews during COVID-19; today, when children are patients in an Israeli intensive care unit, as many as half of their parents use an amulet of some sort.
Credit-Driven and Consumption-Led Growth Models in the United States and United Kingdom
Authors: Reisenbichler Alexander , Wiedemann Andreas
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines the foundations and politics of credit-driven, consumption-led growth models in the United States and United Kingdom. We first identify two distinct channels through which these models generate domestic demand: a housing channel, in which house prices influence private consumption through credit and wealth effects; and an income-maintenance channel, in which credit markets functionally substitute for wage growth and government transfers, enabling households to borrow money to smooth income losses and address rising expenditures. We then show that these models are reinforced by a political coalition of producer groups in the financial and real estate industries, mainstream political parties, and asset-owning voters. Our analysis focuses on how US and UK policymakers have shaped these channels through fiscal, regulatory, and credit policies from the late 1970s until after the financial crisis of 2008–09. The chapter concludes with discussing vulnerabilities of these growth models, including financial instabilities and distributional inequalities.
A Brief History of Eugenic Control
Authors: O’Brien Gerald
Published: December 2022

This chapter provides a concise history of eugenics and eugenic polices within the United States, as well as the later German policies under the Nazis. Much has been written about the eugenic alarm period (1900–1925), and this chapter attempts to provide a brief overview of the more important aspects of the period. Importantly, while many tend to exploit eugenics for certain political or ideological ends, interest in eugenics during the alarm period cut across the sociopolitical landscape. The specific eugenic policies (sterilization, immigration control, institutionalization, etc.) enacted in the United States are discussed, along with the movement’s focus on persons with feeble-mindedness. Finally, the relationship between policies in the United States and Nazi Germany will be explored, along with the impact of Nazi eugenic policies.
Social Work and Contemporary Bioethical Debates
Authors: O’Brien Gerald
Published: December 2022

This chapter begins with a look at the resurgence of eugenic interest during the 1970s and 1980s, especially in relation to innovations in prenatal testing. While most social work professionals will not be employed as genetic counselors, all need to have a basic understanding of prenatal testing procedures and the difficult decisions that prospective parents may have to make, and this is also discussed. These decisions, moreover, are made within the context of our biopsychosocial view of disability and the perceived future prospects and impact on the family of persons with disabilities. These issues give rise to a number of race- and class-based implications, which are also discussed. Innovations in biogenetics, such as CRISPR and the potential of genetic enhancement procedures, are briefly introduced, as well as the deployment of eugenic policies internationally.
Implications for the Social Work Profession
Authors: O’Brien Gerald
Published: December 2022

This chapter serves as a concluding section that discusses the implications for the social work profession of the issues raised in the previous chapters. These implications relate to the potential utility of both the medical and social model of disability for the profession, social work education recommendations, and the need for the social work profession to support both the training and hiring of persons with disabilities, as well as improved preparation for members of the profession to serve those with disabilities. The history of disablement tells us that those with disabilities are always vulnerable to disparagement and maltreatment, and the social work community needs to step forward as true non-paternalistic advocates, allies, and partners in asserting their value.
Missing in Faction
Authors: Robinson Michael A.
Published: December 2022

This summation captures the key findings of the book’s empirical chapters, discusses exacerbating forces on continued military politicization, and offers a variety of policy recommendations for civilian and military leaders to address the challenge of politicization into the future. Due to the interconnected nature of politicization behaviors, increasingly extreme party position-taking, and reduced areas of political consensus, the military will find it increasingly hard to stay out of partisan political waters. However, military leaders will benefit from internal education on the non-partisan norm and combating political extremism and external efforts to make the organization’s values of fairness, discipline, and objectivity well known to the public. Responsible media engagement, concerted organizational reforms, and a society-wide effort to reconstruct and enforce the military’s non-partisan norms provide additional ways to repair the civil-military relationship.
The Romantic Era
Authors: Shrock Dennis
Published: December 2022

The Romantic era began in the 1820s when ideals of elegance changed to those of grandiosity, conventional structures gave way to freer forms, and expressive individuality determined textual selection and treatment. Throughout the entire Classical era, adjectives such as sweet, refined, and graceful were used to characterize musical composition and performance, even when choral ensembles and orchestras were very large. Many primary source quotations verify this view, including a comment by the French author Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842) in his 1817 book (published under the pseudonym César Bombet) about the lives of Mozart and Haydn. Beyle makes reference to an early nineteenth-century Handel festival concert in Westminster Abbey, stating, “Although 377 stringed instruments accompanied a single voice, such was the lightness of the effect, they did not overpower or incommode it.” Large numbers of performers did not necessarily presume loud volumes of sound. However, the majority of composers at the beginning of the Romantic era desired to create imposing and grandiose effects—such as is evident in Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis and Symphony No.9. Composers also desired to create overtly dramatic effects, and, as a result, the dynamic ranges of volume became extreme and the use of numerous expressive markings became commonplace. Indications for very loud volumes were contrasted with those for very soft volumes, and various symbols for articulation and emphasis were employed to vary the scope or compass of dramatic portrayal. In addition, more and more Italian terms were used to indicate precise tempo and expressive intent.
The Idea of the Human Body
Authors: LeBuffe Michael
Published: December 2022

This chapter offers detailed accounts of Part 2 of Spinoza’s Ethics. It includes four sections, reflecting four major parts of Spinoza’s argument. The first section concerns central themes in the opening elements of Ethics 2, including Spinoza’s characterization of the attributes of thought and extension, the conceptual barrier between them, and the causal barrier between them. The second section discusses Spinoza’s argument from these doctrines to specific accounts of the human being: the human body is a finite mode of extension, the human mind is the idea of that mode, and they are, in some sense, one and the same thing. The third section characterizes the theory of imagination, or inadequate knowledge, that Spinoza builds on the basis of his theory of the human being. The fourth section concerns Spinoza’s account of adequate ideas, or genuine knowledge, which includes ideas of reason and ideas of intuition.
The Power of the Intellect
Authors: LeBuffe Michael
Published: December 2022

This chapter offers detailed accounts of Part 5 of Spinoza’s Ethics. It includes four sections, reflecting four major parts of Spinoza’s argument. The first section concerns Spinoza’s criticism, in the Preface to Ethics 5, of Descartes’s doctrine of the pineal gland. The second section describes the mitigation of harmful passion by means of understanding and the cultivation of opposed, helpful affects, especially nobility and tenacity. The third section offers an account of Spinoza’s difficult claims about the value of self-knowledge and the love toward God as means of mitigating the bondage to passion. The fourth section addresses the propositions that end the Ethics, in which Spinoza emphasizes eternity, blessedness, and salvation.
Introduction
Authors: Calvo-Quirós William A.
Published: December 2022

The introduction sets up the book’s main theoretical argument: that the US-Mexico border is not only a political frontier but an epistemic battleground over the terrain of the spiritual and the imaginary. In particular, it analyzes how discourses on faith constitute a central component of US-Mexico relations despite both nations’ assertions that they are secular states. It explores how vernacular saints that have emerged over the last one hundred years serve as historical archives, condensing periods of political and economic transformation and crisis. This section puts the book in dialogue with the legacies and effects of imperial and capitalist exploitation related to race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship, specifically at the intersections of faith, spirituality, and power. It argues that in these communities, faith and spirituality are tools for survival, resistance and negotiation that allow migrants to envision and create a different world.
The Maya and Climate Change
Authors: Seligson Kenneth E.
Published: December 2022

The Classic Maya civilization thrived between 200−950 ce in the tropical forests of eastern Mesoamerica before undergoing a period of breakdown and transformation known colloquially as the Classic Maya Collapse. This book draws on archaeological, environmental, and historical datasets to provide a comprehensive overview of Classic Maya human-environment relationships, including how communities addressed challenges wrought by climate change. Researchers today understand that the breakdown of Classic Maya society was the result of many long-term processes. Yet the story that continues to grip the public imagination is that Maya civilization mysteriously “collapsed.” This book shifts the focus from the Classic Maya “collapse” to the multitude examples of adaptive flexibility that allowed precolonial Maya communities to persevere in a challenging natural environment for over seven centuries. This idea is so enthralling partly because it makes people think about the impermanence of present-day society. A misunderstanding of Maya conservation practices persists in nonacademic circles to the disservice not only of the Pre-Colonial Maya but also to their descendants living in eastern Mesoamerica today. Although the Classic Maya civilization did not leave behind much in the way of secret environmental knowledge for us to rediscover (that is unfortunately rarely how archaeology works), a critical lesson that can be learned from studying the Classic Maya is the importance of socio-ecological adaptability—the ability and willingness to change cultural practices to address long-term challenges.
Understanding the Body’s Alarm System
Authors: Livecchi Tracy , Morton Liza
Published: December 2022

Developing the reader’s understanding of anxiety and panic is the focus of Chapter 3. Readers are provided with an in-depth description of how the body responds to perceived threat, which can result in its “alarm system” being activated, leading to feelings of anxiety. This response is normalized as a survival mechanism which originates from the autonomic nervous system to facilitate protective “fight, flight, or freeze” behaviors. At times this response can be triggered unnecessarily in a “false alarm” or panic. Congenital heart condition–related stressors, including repeated exposure to invasive medical procedures, medical uncertainty, and childhood trauma, are discussed as potentially contributing to increased vulnerability to feelings of anxiety and panic. The chapter explores different ways in which anxiety can present, including panic attacks, heart-focused health anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Maintaining Important Relationships
Authors: Livecchi Tracy , Morton Liza
Published: December 2022

Chapter 8 emphasizes how supportive social relationships are crucial to mental health and overall well-being, and how the reader’s self-esteem and confidence can impact the quality of those relationships. This chapter offers strategies, such as how to challenge self-critical thoughts, letter writing, love and kindness meditation, and self-compassion. This chapter also provides advice on managing the impact of living with a congenital heart condition on the parent–adult child relationship, dating, intimacy, friendships, and parenting. Healthy communication strategies, tips on becoming more assertive, and the importance of limit setting, boundaries, and developing a supportive social network are covered. Increasing independence and recovering from the loss of a primary caregiver are also discussed.
Taking the Wheel
Authors: Livecchi Tracy , Morton Liza
Published: December 2022

Chapter 10 focuses on empowering individuals to take control of their health, managing any physical limitations, and asking for help when needed. The concept of a congenital heart condition as a hidden disability, disability pride, and rights are explored. Educational and employment discrimination are considered with reference to relevant human rights legislation. Psychotherapy and different treatment modalities are explored, along with discussion about the challenges to accessing this support and tips for finding a good therapist. Genetic counseling, growing older, and advanced care planning are reviewed. Goal setting to help individuals find purpose and meaning is discussed, along with the suggestion and ideas to incorporate activities into one’s life that bring joy.
Supporting People with a Congenital Heart Condition
Authors: Livecchi Tracy , Morton Liza
Published: December 2022

Chapter 12 provides three separate guides—one for family and friends, one for healthcare professionals, and one for mental healthcare professionals—to support individuals with congenital heart conditions (CHCs). For family and friends, strategies for getting through a medical crisis are discussed, do’s and don’ts when trying to support someone with a CHC are reviewed, and the importance of self-care is stressed. For healthcare professionals, an approach termed “Psychologically Informed Medicine” is detailed to minimize the psychological effects of CHC for their patients. This approach comprises compassionate-reflective and trauma-informed practice while promoting the soothing presence of loved ones and social inclusion. For mental health providers, a review of the psychological effects of CHC and recommendations for treatment approach are discussed.
Introduction
Authors: Kim Claudia Junghyun
Published: December 2022

The introduction opens with a Korean border town where residents have gone from silent bystanders to angry anti-base protesters. This episode sets the stage for the main theme of the book: local mobilization and demobilization in the contentious politics surrounding U.S. military bases overseas. The chapter showcases the book’s arguments, provides a brief history of U.S. military bases in Korea and Japan, and introduces key actors in base politics. In doing so, the chapter makes the case for delving beneath the surface of interstate alliance politics and finding consistent patterns in varied local experiences in U.S. military base towns abroad.
Explaining Protest (De)mobilization
Authors: Kim Claudia Junghyun
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines shifting local contexts that base opponents exploit to build an opposition campaign, which sometimes balloons into a sizable anti-base movement and sometimes fizzles out. Theoretically, the chapter situates the three main contextual factors—status quo disruption, movement framing, and local elite allies—in the social movement literature, as well as in the context of Korean and Japanese politics and society. It goes on to introduce twenty U.S. military bases across Korea and Japan and their host communities as sites of investigation. Going subnational, and following local actors and tracing their interactions, uncovers the intricacies of contentious base politics. The chapter ends with a preview of the following three chapters, which present case studies that complicate many of the common assumptions not only about anti-base movements but also about protest mobilization in general.
Framing Bases
Authors: Kim Claudia Junghyun
Published: December 2022

This chapter shows that activist discourses surrounding U.S. military bases are driven by rhetorical pragmatism, as opposed to ideologial or nationalistic dogmatism. Although activists may be motivated by nationalistic or pacifist convictions, they often subordinate their radical aspirations to the rather mundane concerns of base town residents. In this sense, anti-base activists as frame entrepreneurs deviate from the rhetorical tendency of other aggrieved local actors to globalize their local grievances. This rhetorical pragmatism—or deliberate parochialism—serves as a rhetorical safe haven for activists, since their seemingly radical agenda of challenging the U.S. military, and thereby challenging a critical pillar of national security, becomes something more neutral, cool-headed, and palatable when couched in the language of the everyday. Notable cases include the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Korea and Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Japan.
Conclusion
Authors: Kim Claudia Junghyun
Published: December 2022

This chapter discusses dilemmas facing activists: as they subordinate their maximalist aspirations to the more quotidian goals of non-activist populations, they sometimes make decisions that end up undermining their goals in the long run. The chapter also provides a prediction for the future of base-community relations in Korea and Japan. Ultimately, the landscape of contentious base politics portrayed in this book contextualizes and adds nuance to two familiar narratives surrounding the U.S. military presence overseas: the narrative of seamless alliance management, which writes off local discontent, and the narrative of the beleaguered American outposts, which fails to capture the much more varied experiences of base towns.
Introduction
Authors: Dimitrov Martin K.
Published: December 2022

This chapter makes three interrelated arguments that jointly generate a new theory about the temporal variation in the strategies that authoritarian regimes deploy to confront the dictator’s dilemma. First, the dilemma can be solved by designing institutions that collect information and transmit it to decision makers. Second, these institutional solutions vary—some are retrospective and focus mostly on repression, whereas others are anticipatory and primarily involve concessions. Typically, retrospective institutions emerge first, while the more sophisticated mechanisms that enable anticipatory rule are created later. Third, the solutions have a major limitation, namely, solving the dilemma by fostering institutions of anticipatory governance does not mean that either a dictator or his autocratic regime can persevere indefinitely. Information extends the lifespan of dictatorships only under certain conditions, as discussed in this chapter. When those optimal conditions are absent, even well-informed dictators may be deposed and regimes with sophisticated intelligence-gathering institutions may disappear.
Scope Conditions
Authors: Dimitrov Martin K.
Published: December 2022

Through a series of case studies based on primary sources, this chapter reviews the information-gathering infrastructure of the full range of autocracies: communist single-party (the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic 1949–1989, and Cuba 1959–present); Leninist noncommunist single-party (Taiwan 1949–1987); non-Leninist single-party (Iraq 1968–2003); multiparty (Russia, 2000–present); and nonparty (Chile 1973–1989 and Argentina 1976–1983). These case studies help outline the scope conditions for the argument. Only single-party communist regimes with a centrally planned economy are likely to develop complex information states where the party, State Security, and the internal media supply leaders with involuntarily collected and voluntarily provided information that can be used to guide decisions about repression and concessions. Less sophisticated complements of institutions emerge in other types of autocracies. Overall, these case studies highlight the essential role that the communist party plays in generating intelligence and in coordinating effective information-gathering activities.
Fighting Better
Authors: Kriesberg Louis
Published: December 2022

This original and wide-ranging book examines how conflicts may have been more or less constructively conducted and affected the changing class, status, and power inequality in America since 1945. Initially, it assesses how some conflicts destructively contributed to increasing class inequality, with its many unfortunate consequences. It also assesses other conflicts that contributed or might have contributed constructively to fostering less class inequality. The book then examines conflicts that contributed to some increases in status equality, notably of African Americans and women. Finally, it goes on to analyze many specific conflicts that yielded varied and uneven changes in power inequality for different kinds of people. This book indicates how the destructively conducted conflicts contributed to the many contemporary antagonistic divisions currently threatening US democracy. Throughout, possible constructive ways of fighting are noted or suggested, providing hopeful future options. This book analyzes numerous conflicts at the national and local levels, both hidden and violent, including constructive conflict transformations. These social science analyses enable judgments to be made of better ways of contending that might have avoided the adverse consequences of many destructive conflicts in the past. The core ideas of the constructive conflict approach are tested as they were varyingly applied to struggles relating to class, status, and power inequalities in America. Moreover, and importantly, the book suggests how persons applying the core ideas of the constructive conflict approach can help transform the current political and societal distress in the United States and avoid and overcome its many destructive outcomes.
Reflecting Backward and Looking Forward
Authors: Kriesberg Louis
Published: December 2022

The first chapter points out the collective goals widely shared by and for the people of the United States, including liberty and justice for all. Additionally, seven core ideas of the constructive conflict approach are identified: (1) Many conflicts are largely waged constructively within legitimate, institutionalized political and legal institutions. (2) Importantly, constructive conflicts are generally conducted using blends of persuasion, positive sanctions, and some coercion, minimizing violence. (3) Opposing parties in constructive social conflicts recognize that each consists of shifting components. (4) Adversaries in a conflict define their conflict, which can be constructively reframed and thus transformed. (5) A constructive approach generally entails opponents noticing and considering each other’s concerns, which can yield some mutual benefits. (6) Constructive fighters attend to the great interconnections of conflicts. (7) Adversaries in constructive conflicts recognize that conflicts are not static and can be transformed. Finally, this chapter sets out the design of the sequence of the book’s remaining chapters.
Rising Class Inequality, 1970–1992
Authors: Kriesberg Louis
Published: December 2022

The third chapter presents the evidence of the growing class inequality in the United States arising in the 1970s and discusses many of the unfortunate consequences of great income and wealth disparities. It also examines competing explanations for the very high and increasing inequality. Many explanations stress large, immutable forces, but other explanations attribute the rising inequality to policy choices resulting from contentions or other considerations not intentionally meant to raise inequality. It examines several manifest conflicts, which are related to the rising degree of class inequality. The conflicts are usually framed in terms of issues such as wages, immigration, tax policy, and safety-net provisions. These issues tend to be bundled together in ideological packages that are adopted and advanced by various groups. The ideological struggles are examined, as they are waged outside as well as inside established political parties, as they are largely conducted within the context of US political institutions.