bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From Form to Finance
Authors: Reiser Dana Brakman , Dean Steven A.
Published: October 2017

This chapter describes how social enterprise founders and investors can use financial instruments to credibly signal their double-bottom-line commitments to each other. Its main example is a contingent convertible debt instrument that would constrain both investors and entrepreneurs from unilaterally abandoning social mission in favor of profit. The instrument’s low yield and long term would reassure entrepreneurs by screening in only investors willing to sacrifice profit for social mission for a considerable period. Conversion rights triggered on the sale of founders’ equity would allow investors to trust founders not to sell out. In an IPO or sale before the instrument’s maturity, founders would lose a significant share of any profit to debtholders unless these lenders agreed to its terms. Through this example and others, the chapter shows how social entrepreneurs and impact investors can craft sophisticated financial instruments to overcome the trust deficit that would otherwise keep them apart.
Material Life
Authors: Al-Saji Alia
Published: October 2017

By reading Beauvoir with Bergson, I reconfigure the relation of life and existence in Beauvoir’s philosophy. I claim neither clear-cut influence nor conscious appropriation, but offer a reading that makes sense of what were hidden or contradictory aspects of Beauvoir’s texts. I find in The Second Sex a tension between two philosophical directions: (i) a philosophy of existence that privileges consciousness as the taking-up and transcendence of life, and (ii) a tentative temporality that understands life in terms of tendencies subject to social-historical elaboration. Which frame is at play makes a difference for how Beauvoir is understood. I extend this method of reading to The Ethics of Ambiguity, using Bergson’s understanding of creation of possibility as a lens through which to read Beauvoir’s concept of wanting to disclose being. Here, I problematize Beauvoir’s concept of oppression in light of her equation of Arab and Muslim women with the trope of life.
We Have Always Been Materialists
Authors: Leeuwen Anne van
Published: October 2017

This essay revolves around a basic question: What is the relationship between twentieth- century French feminism and materialist politics? More precisely, what is the place of materialism in the works of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray, or in what sense are the philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray “materialist” ones? I take up this set of questions vis-à-vis the “new” materialism of Marx—a materialism that destroys the classical philosophical opposition of idealism and materialism in order to think the subject of politics. I seek to show that it is precisely this subject that we find in its nascent form vis-à-vis the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray in twentieth-century French feminism—the subject of materialist–feminist politics.
Ambiguity and Difference
Authors: Heinämaa Sara
Published: October 2017

The chapter studies the ethical dimensions of Beauvoir’s existentialism and Irigaray’s ontology of difference. It argues that Irigaray builds on one central but largely neglected result of Beauvoir’s moral philosophical argumentation: the claim that fundamentally sexual subordination constitutes an ethical problem that cannot be adequately solved merely through social reforms, political interventions, or theoretical reflections. By comparing Beauvoir’s concept of erotic generosity to Irigaray’s discussion of wonder and love, the chapter demonstrates that both philosophers conceive of male privilege as an ethical issue that must be worked out between individual women and men in their concrete encounters. The task is to reform and cultivate not just human behaviors, actions, beliefs and cognitions, but also one’s own emotions and desires.
Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Ambiguities of Desire
Authors: Weiss Gail
Published: October 2017

Focusing first on Beauvoir’s discussion in The Ethics of Ambiguity of the will to be and the will to disclose the world, I argue that the irresolvable tension between these equally human desires produces an understanding of desire more generally, and sexual desire in particular, as fundamentally ambiguous. I turn to Beauvoir’s positive accounts of female sexual desire in The Second Sex, and, her descriptions of lesbian desire in particular, to support and elaborate this reading. Next, I show how Irigaray’s descriptions of the “excesses” of female sexual desire and pleasure build upon, yet also complicate, Beauvoir’s view of the essential ambiguity of desire precisely because Irigaray emphasizes the irresolvable multiplicity and interconnectedness of pleasure and desire. I conclude by suggesting that for both philosophers, it is the ambiguity of desire that animates the pursuit of an ethical life.
The Adaptation of Ancestral Ritual to Serve the Royal Imaginary
Authors: Choi Mihwa
Published: October 2017

After the Song government signed the humiliating peace treaty with the supposed “barbarian” Liao state, a “Heavenly Text” declaring the legitimacy of the imperial family to rule mysteriously appeared on top of a palace gate. The imperial court then invested heavily in various ritual performances as a major way of solving practical issues. After offering the historically rare fengshan imperial ritual giving thanks for dynastic prosperity, ironically in the wake of exposing military weakness, the imperial government invented the myth of the Sacred Ancestor, claiming that the progenitor of the Song royal clan was an incarnated Daoist god. Afterwards, the central government institutionalized the cult of the Sacred Ancestor as one of the most significant and most frequently performed rituals at the imperial court and as a nationwide civil ritual to be observed by people at large.
“How Does Heaven Come to Speak?”
Authors: Choi Mihwa
Published: October 2017

After the death of emperor Zhenzong, scholar-officials challenged the legitimacy of the Heavenly Text and the cult of the Sacred Ancestor. They argued that because there was no way that Heaven could speak through the proposed revealed text, the Heavenly Text was fabricated. A consensus was reached between Emperor Renzong and officials that Confucian canonical rituals would be the sole orthopraxis of imperial rituals, and the cult of the Sacred Ancestor would be reduced to a private ritual of the royal family. Later, those who advocated increasing the power of the bureaucracy at the expense of the monarch took the lead in deploying the ancient ritual laws as a means to compel compliance by the emperor and also to attack officials of the opposing faction. As “three-year mourning” became a legal obligation for all civil officers, many politically charged allegations were made, which in turn further stimulated the study of the canonical rituals.
Ordering Society through Confucian Rituals
Authors: Choi Mihwa
Published: October 2017

Sima Guang, leader of the faction advocating enhancement of bureaucratic power, authored a Confucian family ritual manual. He believed in the moral reformation of society through the dissemination of Confucian ritual norms and maintained that rituals were the locus in which the hierarchical social order could be manifested according to official rank. He especially objected to lavish burials performed by wealthy people in the belief that such burials implied a social imaginary of the wealthy where status could be improved by material investments in ritual performance. Sima Guang’s conception of ritual testifies to his vision of society or social imaginary in which official ranks are the fundamental basis of social hierarchy.
Social Imaginaries and Politics in the Narratives on the World-beyond and the Supernatural
Authors: Choi Mihwa
Published: October 2017

During the period when official and public discourse was frequently used for political purges, stories about the affairs of the world-beyond were used as a convenient vehicle for delivering political messages. After the death of Wang Anshi, a supporter of stronger monarchical power, a series of eyewitness accounts of his ill fate in purgatory were widely spread. In contrast, Han Qi, a critic of Wang, was reported to have become a god in glory who was in charge of the other-world tribunal court. The abundance of narratives on the social imaginaries of the world-beyond and the supernatural reveals that the Confucian maxim of keeping silent on that topic was widely defied. At the same time, scholar-officials in their public discourse with their authorship tended to defend Confucian traditional belief in Heaven as the ground of ethics, and to reject any counter-imaginaries.
Semantics for a Module
Authors: de Almeida Roberto G. , Lepore Ernie
Published: October 2017

Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind (1983) and subsequent work propose a principled distinction between perceptual computations and background knowledge. The chapter argues that language input analyzers produce a minimally—and highly constrained—context-sensitive propositional representation of the sentence, built up from sentence constituents. Compatible with the original Modularity story, it thus takes the output of sentence perception to be a “shallow” representation—though a semantic one. The empirical data discussed bear on alleged cases of sentence indeterminacy and how such cases might be assigned (shallow) semantic representations, interact with context in highly regulated ways, and whether and how they can be enriched. The chapter proposes a semantic level of representation that serves as output of the module and as input to other systems of interpretation, arguing for a form of modularity or encapsulation that is minimally context-sensitive provided that the information from context is itself determined by linguistic principles.
Center-Embedded Sentences
Authors: Fodor Janet Dean , Nickels Stefanie , Schott Esther
Published: October 2017

Doubly center-embedded relative clause constructions such as “The rat that the cat that the dog chased killed ate the malt” are notoriously difficult to parse. Many explanations have been offered. This chapter proposes a novel one: an alignment problem at the syntax-prosody interface, consisting of a mismatch between the heavily nested syntactic structure and the flat structure required by prosodic phrasing. Selective shrinking and lengthening of phrases within the sentence can coax the prosodic processor into creating rhythmic packages that fit well with the nested syntactic tree structure. Long outer phrases and short inner ones help with that, while short outer phrases and long inner ones hinder it. The chapter discusses two experiments—reading aloud with facilitation; reading aloud followed by grammaticality judgment—that provide evidence that produced prosody is the causal link between phrase lengths and ease of processing, though not exhibiting a “missing-VP effect” for either sentence type.
On Language and Thought
Authors: Lobina David J. , García-Albea José E.
Published: October 2017

The relationship between language and thought remains an unsettled issue. The chapter approaches it from the perspective of whether any of the representations the language faculty generates can be said to be constitutive of thought (i.e., to form part of thought representations). It reviews four such linguistic formats or representations—phonetic (PHON), syntactic (SEM), phonological, and semantic—and argues that all of them are in principle extraneous to what a theory of thought requires. Thought must be subsumed by abstract, amodal, structured, and fully explicit propositional representations to account for cognitive flexibility, and all four formats fall short of exhibiting the necessary properties.
Methodological Implications of Imagination
Authors: Tanggaard Lene , Brinkmann Svend
Published: October 2017

In this chapter, the authors focus on the methodological implications of imagination in scientific practice and move in two directions at the same time: they outline the methodological implications of using imagination as a research tool, and they address ways in which imagination can be studied in the human and social sciences. These are not unrelated because it might demand particular kinds of imagination to study imagination. The authors underline the importance of “stumbling data” as a kind of “food for thought” for the researcher. To stumble (metaphorically) is a condition for finding out new things about the social world. In the final part of the chapter, the authors suggest that researchers interested in using their own imagination as a research tool should, first, see themselves as farmers, metaphorically speaking, utilizing breaks and instances of stumbling, and, second, decide on heuristics and see mess as a gift.
Imagination in Children Entering Culture
Authors: Jovchelovitch Sandra , Priego-Hernández Jacqueline , Glăveanu Vlad Petre
Published: October 2017

Although children are born in a world of already established cultural practices and social representations, the appropriation and internalization of culture are not tasks of reproduction but of imaginative construction. The cultural development of the child offers an empirical opportunity to examine the role of the imagination in the practices by which human children enter culture. This chapter focuses on three such practices—care, play, and storytelling—to observe the imagination at work. By imagining the world both as what it is and as different from the way it is, the authors show that children’s imaginative engagement guides the microgenesis of cognition and macroprocesses of cultural development, and it establishes the freedom to create as a key process in the realization of self and society.
Imagination in and Beyond Education
Authors: Akkerman Sanne
Published: October 2017

This chapter discusses the way in which imagination is key to being and learning at school, given the fact that education is inherently oriented to that which is, for a large part, outside and beyond it. First, attention will be given to students’ life-wide imagination across parallel participations outside the educational context, showing how education is not isolated from other domains of life. Second, lifelong imagination is discussed as a process by which students narrate the past and anticipate the future; specifically at stake are the successive choices that students are required to make, often starting at a relatively young age during secondary education. Referring to existing studies on identity development and interest research, it is argued that the imaginary work of students is a plausible but also essential way to determine their own pathways, even in partly restricted educational settings.
Morale, Modernity, and British Social Imaginaries
Authors: Ussishkin Daniel
Published: October 2017

The first chapter situates the history of morale within the broader trajectories of histories of notions and practices of discipline, and it suggests that what lent the historical concept of morale its force, what made it so appealing for myriad actors across civil society, had to do with the distinctive characteristics of the army as a disciplinary institution. Rather than tracing the history of morale as a history of how it was defined, morale is better examined in terms of what those who argued for management of morale sought to achieve and the social and political visions they sought to promote. The notion of morale provided Britons with a template for thinking about the production of cohesive social bodies, and set normative expectations that underpinned British social imaginaries.
The Sources of Collective Action
Authors: Ussishkin Daniel
Published: October 2017

Chapter 3 demonstrates how during the long nineteenth century the subject of moral forces in battle assumed a central position within tactical and theoretical discourses on war. It suggests that during the final decades of the century these moral forces were largely subsumed under the new concept of morale. On a theoretical level, the chapter grapples with the question of historicity, change, and continuity in the discussion of moral forces, and then explores the ways in which this new concept now linked cohesion and discipline on the field to the fate of a modern, imperial, civil society. The formulation of this new territory did not yet signify a shift in the articulation of conduct, but provided for a new military social imaginary.
New Wars
Authors: Ussishkin Daniel
Published: October 2017

Chapter 4 examines the ways in which the totalization of warfare during the twentieth century signaled the diffusion of the concept of morale from the military context to civil society, while the transformation of the terrain of conduct it referred to expanded from matters related to individual conduct and character to collective attitude. It takes stock of “total war” as describing both a process and a set of political and cultural aspirations. Further, the chapter explores the relations between morale, mobilization, and the experience of war to debates about social change and modernization.
The Techno-Politics of Consensus
Authors: Ussishkin Daniel
Published: October 2017

Chapter 5 explores the perceived relations between industrial morale and postwar social reconstruction, and the myriad efforts by the state and by civil organizations to promote new forms of morale management at the workplace. It begins by exploring these trajectories as they formed in the aftermath of the First World War and traces the ways in which in the aftermath of the Second World War, perceived legacies of the war were now mobilized toward securing the politics of reconstruction. Morale was now recognized as the goal of proper industrial management, and it linked a disciplinary technology on the shop-floor to the manufacture of social forms of citizenship outside the factory.
Portrait of the Master as a Young Anarchist
Authors: Ritzinger Justin R.
Published: October 2017

This chapter examines Taixu’s youthful career as an anarchist, arguing that this was a more extended and important period of his life than has been commonly recognized. Framing him within the context of earlier reformist and radical thought, it traces his development from an associate of revolutionaries prior to the 1911 Wuchang Uprising to a leader of the anarchist Socialist Party in the early Republic. It closes with a consideration of the reasons for his retirement from radicalism in the wake of the failure of the Second Revolution. Although Taixu ultimately left anarchism, anarchism never entirely left him and this engagement with radical movements would prove formative.
Buddhism, Happiness, and the Science of Meditation
Authors: Edelglass William
Published: October 2017

The widespread discourse of happiness and meditation is part of a “happiness turn” in contemporary Western Buddhism, in which meditation is presented as a path to happiness. This turn is justified, in part, by empirical research on happiness, which appears to be a straightforward scientific inquiry into the causes and conditions of happiness. The two most widespread methods for measuring happiness, life satisfaction questionnaires and random experience sampling, are each committed to a particular theory of happiness: implicit in the random experience sampling method is a hedonic conception of happiness as positive affect or pleasure. In contrast, Śāntideva suggests that cultivating mindfulness and awareness entails relinquishing of self and increasing skill in addressing others’ needs. This contrast demonstrates that the scientific study of meditation and happiness is not value neutral but reframes the meaning of meditation.
“Mindfulness Makes You a Way Better Lover”
Authors: Wilson Jeff
Published: October 2017

American self-help authors, coaches, and sexologists selectively adopt and apply Buddhist meditation techniques to meet their goals and sell products. This chapter draws upon books, articles, podcasts, TED talks, and other sources to demonstrate how these new applications of mindfulness are touted to enhance the sex act, delivering greater pleasure or effectively managing dysfunction. Key concepts include analysis of the economics involved in the appropriation of Buddhist practices, the role of gender in the “secular” use of meditation (almost all books recommend mindful sex for women, but few focus on men), the mixed Asian and Western frameworks for understanding the body and the meaning of sex, and the alternate uses to which elements of Buddhism may be put in different cultural settings. A specific genre of the use of meditation serves as a means to explore secular developments that draw upon Buddhist sources in a sometimes uneasy relationship.
Mindful but Not Religious
Authors: Braun Erik
Published: October 2017

This chapter explores Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness meditation, above all in his writings about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. It argues that Kabat-Zinn’s vision conveys a profound sense of enchantment, a deep sense of life’s value. The chapter argues that this vision reworks fundamental conceptual categories, especially those of the secular, the spiritual, and the scientific. Life’s meaning is formulated as flowing naturally from mindful observation of everyday life, especially of painful experiences. This naturalizing approach, drawing on bodily experience, the authority of science, metaphysical religious roots in American culture, and Buddhist teachings, makes mindfulness occupy many registers at once: Buddhist yet ecumenically inclusive, secular yet spiritual, scientific but revealing a larger sense of purpose. This multimodal character of mindfulness, always available through simple awareness, explains its popularity, which is helping to reshape American culture.
Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (And Why It Matters)
Authors: Sharf Robert H.
Published: October 2017

Modern exponents of mindfulness meditation promote the therapeutic effects of “bare attention”—a sort of non-judgmental, non-discursive attending to the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. This approach is arguably at odds with more traditional Theravāda Buddhist doctrine and meditative practice, but the cultivation of present-centered awareness is not without precedent in Buddhist history; similar innovations arose in medieval Chinese Zen (Chan) and Tibetan Dzogchen. These movements have several things in common. In each case the reforms were, in part, attempts to render Buddhist practice and insight accessible to laypeople unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy and/or unwilling to adopt a renunciatory lifestyle. They also promised quick results. And finally, the innovations were met with suspicion and criticism from traditional Buddhist quarters. Those interested in the therapeutic effects of mindfulness and bare attention are often not aware of the existence, much less the content, of the controversies surrounding these practices in Asian Buddhist history.
What Are Commitments?
Authors: Marin Mara
Published: October 2017

Chapter 1 develops the notion of commitment by uncovering our descriptive and normative understanding of long-term personal relationships such as close friendships and spousal relations. It argues that these relationships are best understood as relationships of obligations that agents develop over time through the accumulated effect of open-ended actions and responses. In commitments agents incur obligations via their voluntary actions but, in contrast to promises, without knowing in advance the precise content of these obligations. Commitments have five features. First, they are made voluntarily. Second, they are developed through an interaction of open-ended action and response. Third, they are endorsed in the course of this interaction. Fourth, commitments are governed by norms that emerge out of the interaction that created them. Fifth, commitments have open-ended obligations.
Modeling Commitment for Structural Relations
Authors: Marin Mara
Published: October 2017

Chapter 2 extends the concept of commitment from personal to social structural relations and begins the argument that our implication in social structures puts us in relations analogous to those of personal commitments. This analogy has a descriptive and a normative element. Descriptively, this book’s notion of commitment captures the idea that social structures are the accumulated effects of our actions. Normatively, it captures the claim that we owe obligations to each other in virtue of our structural relationships to each other, that is, because our actions, accumulated over time, are responsible for reproducing the structure. It illustrates these claims with the example of a woman who attempts to change the gendered nature of parenting. This view of social structures as commitments is an antidote to the powerlessness we otherwise experience in our relation to unjust structures.
Labor Relations and the Politics of Commitment
Authors: Marin Mara
Published: October 2017

Chapter 5 argues that work makes us vulnerable to those whose labor is presupposed by ours. The hierarchical division between high- and low-skilled labor, justified by ideas of personal achievement and rights as boundaries, denies this vulnerability by making invisible both the full value of “low-skilled” work and the value of labor that, because it requires the combination of qualitatively different skills, can only be created cooperatively. The division between high- and low-skilled labor enables the accumulation of capital by obscuring this value and the interest of the vast majority of workers in having this value recognized rather than transferred to capital. The notion of commitment is critical in undermining these ideas, showing how a common interest can arise out of different positions in the structure of work, and making visible workers’ shared interest in limiting returns on capital and increasing returns on labor.
Conclusion
Authors: Marin Mara
Published: October 2017

The conclusion reminds the reader of the significance of taking a social structural point of view to the issue of individual responsibility for social injustice. It underscores the advantages of the notion of commitment for making this point of view intuitively available. It points to the fact that calls for justice are calls for social change, which requires change of material structures and of interlocking structures of meaning. It reiterates the transformative potential of open-ended action, action that embraces its lack of control, invites the responses of others, and has a time dimension. It discusses the relevance of the book’s claim that the oppressive character of social relations is intrinsically connected to their social character. It suggests that this claim can be interpreted pessimistically, as showing that social relations always contain the possibility of oppression, or optimistically, as showing that the transformation of our social world is within our power.
Discourse at the Inauguration of the National University (September 22, 1910)
Authors: Sierra Justo
Published: October 2017

This chapter translates an address by Justo Sierra, in which he suggests that many of Mexico’s problems are problems with national education: “The University, then, will have sufficient power to coordinate the guiding principles of national character.” Like Antonio Caso, he believes that “[t]‌o cultivate wills in order to harvest egoists would be the bankruptcy of pedagogy.” For Sierra, one’s education should be grounded in or be attentive to national circumstances: “No, the University is not a person destined never to turn its eyes away from the telescope or microscope even if the nation is falling apart around it.” And he suggests that the production of knowledge should be affirmative and original. Finally, despite his earlier sympathy with positivism, which dismisses speculative metaphysics as a source of knowledge, Sierra suggests that the success of national education requires reintroducing philosophy or metaphysics.
The History of Philosophy in Mexico (1943)
Authors: Ramos Samuel
Published: October 2017

The selection is the result of a series of courses Samuel Ramos gave on the history of philosophy in Mexico. More than providing a mere survey of schools and doctrines in Mexico, beginning with the Aztecs, Ramos attempts to articulate what would make philosophy Mexican, in part by demonstrating what has made the majority of philosophy in Mexico either un-philosophical (e.g., the Aztecs) or un-Mexican (e.g., Mexican Scholasticism). In short, a philosophy is not Mexican if it is imitative or uncritical, unoriginal, and/or unresponsive to Mexican circumstances. And he argues that although there are a few scattered antecedents—notably Benito Díaz de Gamarra—it is not until the twentieth century that Mexican philosophers identify the “the epistemological justification of a national philosophy,” which Ramos claims (somewhat controversially) is based largely on the philosophy of Ortega y Gasset.
Two Ideas of Philosophy (1940)
Authors: Larroyo Francisco , Gaos José
Published: October 2017

The question concerning the possibility of a Mexican or Spanish-American philosophy, an important issue for Gaos, sounds metaphilosophical, but in this debate, Larroyo dismisses the idea of metaphilosophy as an absurdity, which is either a contradiction in terms or leads to an infinite regress. For Larroyo, the task of defining philosophy is as old as philosophy itself and does not require the “new” discipline of metaphilosophy. This selection illustrates how questions about the definition and scope of philosophy were increasingly becoming a subject of public debate, thus contributing to the normalization of philosophy. Questions regarding whether philosophy is a science, as Larroyo thought, or a personal confession, as Gaos thought, or whether the essence of the psychology of the philosopher is arrogance or humility are relevant not only to the possibility of Mexican philosophy, but also to determinations of the value or relevance of philosophy in Mexican society at large.
Solitude and Communion (1948)
Authors: Villoro Luis
Published: October 2017

Luis Villoro, with Max Scheler’s phenomenology of sympathy as a point of departure, proposes that communion, not solitude, is the natural state of being. Solitary consciousness, he argues, is unsatisfied in its solitude and seeks, constantly and perpetually, Absolute Transcendence, which Villoro finds in the form of the human other, which he calls the “you.” Having established an early distinction between the “you” and the non-human “other,” between “tú” and “él” (the latter of which refers to the mute things that constitute our circumstance or circum-stare), Villoro suggests that it is the “tú” which calls on one’s solitary Ego and demands recognition; but it is also this “tú,” or “you,” which, once approached, speaks to one, engaging in a dialogue that is the ultimate basis of community. Readers will find in Villoro’s treatment echoes of both Scheler and Martin Buber, especially with the latter’s distinction between the “I” and the “thou.”
The Major Moments of Indigenism in Mexico
Authors: Villoro Luis
Published: October 2017

The aim of Luis Villoro’s seminal book on Indigenism was not to incorporate Mexico’s indigenous population into the national culture, or offer an ethnographic account of indigenous peoples, or participate in indigenismo, an earlier state-sponsored effort to valorize Mexico’s indigenous population with varying degrees of success. Instead, Villoro wants to understand the Indigenist’s consciousness, particularly how the history of Mexican consciousness of the Indian resulted in the problematic twentieth-century movement of indigenismo. Villoro divides the history of Indigenism into three major momentos (moments), of which the second and third movement each have two etapas (stages). The “Conclusion,” included here, is a summary of these moments, which demonstrate how the Spanish, criollo, and mestizo consciousness of the Indian have unfolded in a Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis—a historical process of distancing, appropriating, and evaluating the indigenous element of Mexican culture and society.
Community, Greatness, and Misery in Mexican Life (1949)
Authors: Portilla Jorge
Published: October 2017

Jorge Portilla criticizes the practicality of sociological notions of community, which conceive of it as an “organic association” in which one finds oneself at birth, and binds one “by a solidarity of which [one] is not the author,” by an “unconscious emotional ground” of those who make it up. These conceptions seem to think of society in terms of its instrumental reality, or lack thereof, and thus do not reflect social reality. He suggests that one think of community in its everydayness, or pre-ontologically. Ultimately, for Portilla, the only account of community that resonates with the Mexican experience is one in which the community, like a person, has a face, which is responsive and can be held accountable. In this sense, the Mexican is neither a collectivist nor an individualist about community, since he seeks a responsive concept of community, a dialogical community.
Collaborative Community Responses
Authors: Nason-Clark Nancy , Fisher-Townsend Barbara , Holtmann Catherine , McMullin Stephen
Published: October 2017

Religious leaders can be part of the solution to domestic violence, not just part of the problem. This concept is rather difficult for many of those working in advocacy, the criminal justice field, or even intervention services to believe. Often, it has not been true in their experience of working with religious women, men, or children caught in the web of abuse. This chapter discusses many of the features of collaborative community-based responses to abuse and the advantages and the impediments that surface in any local context as workers from a variety of agencies and paradigms work together. It offers concrete suggestions to enhance the likelihood of collaborative success at the community level.
Multiple-Offense Sentencing
Authors: von Hirsch Andreas
Published: October 2017

This chapter offers some additional thoughts on the subject of multiple-offense sentencing. It discusses John Taurek’s indeterminacy thesis and its plausibility with regards to multiple-count cases. It then considers two desert-based limiting principles applicable to multiple-offense situations: normative breaks and overall proportionality. It also examines the possibility of utilizing a heuristic model, an example of which is Martin Borgeke’s scheme for scaling multiple offenses. Finally, it highlights the limitations of desert theory and argues that it may not be able to assist us all the way in developing a sentencing doctrine for multiple offenders.
Solving the Multiple-Offense Paradox
Authors: Tonry Michael
Published: October 2017

This chapter examines the multiple-conviction paradox, in which punishments of people convicted of multiple offenses are often discounted if sentences are imposed at one time but enhanced if imposed at different times. A bulk discount characterizes sentencing for concurrent convictions. A recidivist premium attaches to successive convictions. The chapter first reviews empirical data to show that the multiple-conviction paradox is the central issue that normative accounts of punishment must adequately address. It then discusses efforts by theorists to justify the bulk discount before proposing a framework for addressing the multiple-offense paradox within just sentencing systems that integrates principled considerations with blameworthiness and crime prevention. This approach favors parsimonious and human capital–enhancing punishments.
Restoring Rhythm
Authors: Cable Thomas
Published: October 2017

Students taking the History of the English Language (HEL) may find old texts in strange writing or phonological charts less engaging than the language’s sounds. This chapter explains the pedagogical value of the “verbal music” of the English language at various periods. With particular attention to the language’s rhythms, the author argues for the value of oral performances to the “auditory imagination” that can be developed in a HEL classroom. Historical reconstructions of the language’s earlier sounds may not be perfect. But as a pedagogical device, performances of earlier Englishes convey a fact about language that charts and diagrams do not: its use by living speakers.
Philology, Theory, and Critical Thinking Through the History of the English Language
Authors: Giancarlo Matthew
Published: October 2017

This chapter summarizes recent scholarship on the history of philology and literary theory, and on calls for a “return to philology.” It explains the potential usefulness of theoretical questions for teaching the History of the English Language (HEL). It summarizes a set of relevant theoretical issues for organizing a HEL curriculum along a series of contrasts and self-critical questions: synchrony vs. diachrony; content vs. structure; levels of change; conscious vs. unconscious variation; stability vs. instability; standard vs. nonstandard; language difference and identity. The chapter then presents a series of sample inquiries and resources for foregrounding these issues in teaching practice. It concludes with a summary set of practical observations about teaching outcomes for promoting greater discourse awareness through HEL, and the potential scope for further theoretical elaboration in HEL teaching.
The History of the English Language and the Medievalist
Authors: Lerer Seth
Published: October 2017

The History of the English Language (HEL) is a largely ideological enterprise keyed to fitting literary evidence into expected categories, and yet recent work has suggested that we can no longer simply assume that phenomena such as the Great Vowel Shift were “real,” historical, systematic changes. Contemporary debates on language change and use have historical precedent; social arguments about language are part of a very long tradition; languages in contact have generated linguistic change and adaptation, and language and national identity, as well as personal self-consciousness, have long gone together. This chapter will explore the ways in which the historical and institutional associations of HEL and the “medievalist” are contingently driven, and then to suggest some ways in which the redefinition of the “medievalist” in the twenty-first century can productively include a newer, critical sensibility about the place of HEL in the teachings of social vernacular literacy.
English Is an Indo-European Language
Authors: Pulju Timothy J.
Published: October 2017

This chapter suggests ways that Indo-European can be made relevant throughout an entire course on the history of English. Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law, for example, are not just useful for demonstrating that English is member of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. Rather, in combination with other, later sound changes, they have repercussions in present-day English. For example, they tell us that day and diurnal are not cognate, but that raw and crude are, as are seethe and sodden. An understanding of Proto-Indo-European linguistic phenomena, such as sound changes, ablaut, and the PIE active-stative verb system can be used to explain the structure of Old, Middle, and Modern English as well as aspects of English as it is spoken today.
Starting from Now
Authors: Beal Joan
Published: October 2017

In this chapter, I present two case studies from my teaching of Late Modern English (roughly covering the period 1700–1900) at two UK universities, chosen on the basis of positive feedback from former students. The first demonstrates how the OED online can be used as a resource for the detailed investigation of lexical innovation in a specific period. The second illustrates the use of databases including ECCO and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to present a more nuanced view of eighteenth-century English grammars. In both cases, the emphasis is on student-led research and teamwork, and the case studies are illustrated with successful examples of students’ work.
From Old English to World Englishes
Authors: Saltzman Benjamin A.
Published: October 2017

This chapter discusses the incorporation of World Englishes into a History of the English Language (HEL) course, addressing questions about how to grapple with the geographical and geopolitical planes along which World Englishes have grown. Other questions considered here include diachronic formation, cultural contexts, relationships with other languages, and effects of globalization on forms of English that are both related to and yet quite distinct from the model of Standard English that frequently orients the HEL course. Two possible strategies for incorporating World Englishes into an HEL course are suggested. One strategy consists of focused lectures on the external history, social and cultural influences, linguistic features, and so on, of just one or two World English varieties, which can be combined with a second strategy that involves handing the research and even some of the teaching over to the students.
An Ecological Account of the Emergence and Evolution of English
Authors: Mufwene Salikoko S.
Published: October 2017

What follows is a contact-based account of the emergence of English. Though the role of language contact in the development of World Englishes is often addressed as a coda within History of the English Language (HEL) courses, this chapter presents an alternative story, highlighting contact situations in Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. The creolist perspective offered here suggests that History of English instructors should look closer at the received doctrine of HEL and consider whether an ecological model should not be used to make sense of the story of Englishes. A periodized history of colonization and of the ensuing population structures that influence language contact appears to explain a great deal about the differential evolution of English in various parts of the world, including what distinguishes colonial English dialects from their creole counterparts.
Researching World Englishes in HEL Courses
Authors: Percy Carol
Published: October 2017

This chapter describes assignments used to teach the History of the English Language (HEL) and its contemporary counterpart the English Language in the World. In both of these courses, linguistic concepts can be linked to literary analysis, which helps students learn how to analyze code-switching and/or style-shifting in the context of a literary argument. For discovering and interpreting issues about the status and use of English around the world, students have a number of options. For example, after reading specific articles about slang generally and analyzing examples chosen in class, some students choose to write a final essay on slang or jargon used within online newspapers or films that represent different World Englishes (e.g., in Nigerian “Nollywood” films). Thus, World Englishes become realer for students rather than exotic abstractions or curious variants of English or American English.
Our Subject Is Each Other
Authors: Sergi Matthew
Published: October 2017

This chapter introduces a set of exercises, assignments, lecture topics, and syllabus adjustments that have helped me attune my HEL pedagogy to undergraduates’ increasingly diverse prior experiences of English. I focus on one diversity-oriented exercise in particular, a “fieldwork” assignment that has formed the keystone of all of my HEL and HEL-based courses, with a detailed description of various iterations of the exercise. Then I provide examples of curricular adjustments—examples drawn, for brevity’s sake, primarily from my units on PDE (rap and standard English) and ME (dialects)—that encourage ESL, EFL, and NSHV students to make use of the inherent advantages and perspectives that they can bring to HEL. Undergirding all these ideas is my conviction that HEL instructors can be most effective when they yield enough authority to allow the varied range of native expertise held by their students to continually augment their perspective on, and mastery of, our radically variegated subject.
Approaching the History of English Through Material Culture
Authors: Davis-Secord Jonathan
Published: October 2017

Working with manuscript facsimiles is one way of making Old and Middle English viscerally real to students studying the History of the English Language (HEL). Manuscripts ground the language in physical objects that were created, handled, and read by actual people. Edited texts remain vital but nonetheless insufficient for this purpose because they are abstracted from their original context and overlaid with editorial aids. Digital facsimiles in particular allow students to engage with old, alien forms of the English language through the familiarity of a screen. This chapter explores the uses of digital facsimiles in the HEL classroom and assignments.
Engaging Multimedia in the HEL Classroom
Authors: Gerber Natalie
Published: October 2017

This chapter explains how incorporating podcasts and multimedia sources (audio and TV clips, social-media messages, etc.) into a History of English course can lead not only to the greatest student engagement but also to a significantly richer learning experience. This chapter will reflect upon both what these materials are and why they should be so meaningful for students, as well as how these materials are also satisfying and engaging to the scholar/teacher. Specific examples of podcasts, YouTube videos, and Internet memes are mentioned, along with relevant class discussion prompts or out-of-class assignments.
Teaching the History of English OnlineOpen Education and Student Engagement
Authors: Seargeant Philip
Published: October 2017

Within the context of a rapidly changing educational landscape, this chapter addresses issues around the teaching of the history of English to non-traditional students via online and multimedia platforms. It uses as a case study the video series “The History of English in Ten Minutes”—a ten-part animation series broadcast via YouTube and iTunesU—as a means of examining how pedagogical approaches which use new media resources can actively engage large, often non-traditional student audiences. The chapter reviews the design, production, and dissemination of these teaching materials and the implications of their reception and uptake for contemporary pedagogical approaches to the history of English.
When Spontaneous Statements Should Not Be Trusted
Authors: Otgaar Henry , Howe Mark L.
Published: October 2017

Statements provided by eyewitnesses and victims have a paramount role in legal cases. Such statements are often the only piece of evidence in criminal trials, hence it is vital to understand how reliable these statements are. This chapter provides an overview of the latest work on how statements can be infected by spontaneous false memories. It first shows that statements that arise spontaneously and without any external suggestive pressure contain a high degree of accuracy. However, the chapter then shows that spontaneous statements can also lead to memory errors, especially when during the experience of an event associations are made concerning the experience. Interestingly, this chapter presents new evidence that when this idea of associative activation is taken into account, adults are more susceptible to the formation of spontaneous and suggestion-induced false memories than children.
Building a Case
Authors: Luke Timothy J. , Hartwig Maria , Brimbal Laure , Granhag Pär Anders
Published: October 2017

This chapter explores the role of scientifically-grounded interviewing approaches in criminal investigations and prosecution. It develops a “case construction” perspective, in which the effectiveness of interviewing techniques can be evaluated based on their usefulness for accurately distinguishing between innocent and guilty suspects and for providing evidence that is useful for prosecuting a guilty defendant. The chapter reviews the psychological literature of deception detection, interviewing, and interrogation, viewed through the lens of case construction. Special focus is given to the Strategic Use of Evidence technique, an empirically supported and theoretically based interviewing technique that has shown promise for is use in constructing a case.