bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Of Ancestors and Ghosts
Authors: McNicholl Adeana
Published: August 2024

Pretas are best known as “hungry ghosts,” pitiful beings endowed with a miniscule mouth and bloated stomach who reap the fruits of stinginess from a former life. But they were not always portrayed this way. Of Ancestors and Ghosts traces the construction of the Buddhist realm of the pretas through narrative literature. It argues that preta stories, by working out where the departed go after they die, how best to assist them, and how they fit into a karmic cosmology, were a vital component to the construction of Buddhist cosmology as it is known today. These stories illustrate the importance of narrative for the construction of religious cosmologies. Far from simple morality tales, preta literature helped develop and argue for Buddhist understandings of actions and their fruits. These stories portray ethical cultivation as inherently embodied. These stories are not mere scare tactics to promote Buddhist ethics. They help model and elicit aesthetically informed embodied experiences that are themselves educational and ethically formative.
From Ancestor to Ghost
Authors: McNicholl Adeana
Published: August 2024

Part I argues that narratives about pretas played a vital role in the construction of the preta as a reincarnated being occupying its own realm of rebirth. The concept of the preta as “hungry ghost” took shape slowly and within a larger South Asian religious context in which various ideas about the departed and the impact of our actions on the next world circulated. Part I’s introduction introduces the concept of religious repertoires, proposing that Buddhist authors incorporated various repertoires to expand and shape ideas about the departed. Over time, they differentiated the preta from the Brahmanical ancestors and situated it within a multi-realm cosmological system. These debates about the identity of the departed, karma as a theory of causality, and the efficacy of ancestral rites were not theoretical but also had material implications for the Buddhists who used these texts to articulate their views vis-à-vis other communities.
“The most important moment in our lives”
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

Chaplains benefit patients and families with not only specific issues within each of the broad categories of belief mentioned earlier (being religious, spiritual, atheist, or agnostic), but also with common challenges that these groups share. Examples include coping with pain, making tough medical decisions, and having to re-evaluate priorities. Chaplains help hospitalized individuals of differing beliefs explore fears, engage in positive thinking, focus on “the here and now,” and reframe and reconstruct meaning and purpose. Patients frequently mourn the loss of the future they had imagined, and must now forge a new one. Chaplains help through cognitive “reframing,” shifting goals and points of view to reimagine a future, guiding patients away from past self-reproaches and toward future aspirations, and reprioritizing values and goals, reminding patients that the ultimate purpose of life may not be “success” but simply increasing appreciation of it more generally.
“I pray to the God I don’t believe in”
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

Countless patients engage in prayer, but many questions about it arise. Prayers are associated with spiritual well-being, faith, and assurance but are often misunderstood by providers. People pray in their own ways at their own times, thereby connecting to something spiritual beyond themselves, however they conceive it. But such supplications take many forms, differing in their purpose, content, timing, and form, whether they are silent or spoken, and what is uttered, to whom, and for what. Many patients are nonreligious but nonetheless pray, highlighting how descriptions of one’s religious beliefs, affiliations, and behaviors do not always fit neatly into simple or consistent boxes, and can differ from what an outside observer might assume.
How close or distant to be
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

Providers strive to have “detached concern”—to remain concerned, but also somewhat detached and objective. But doing so can be hard, and chaplains can face various challenges. Occasionally, for instance, patients reject chaplains, are suspicious of religion or are atheist, or misunderstand these professionals’ roles, function, or identity. Other patients want a chaplain of their own faith or gender, minimize or deny disease, are angry at the cosmos, or fear that a chaplain may criticize them. Initially, chaplains often find such refusals unsettling, but gradually develop more confidence and ability, frequently finding ways to nonetheless speak with and assist such patients. These providers struggle, too, with how to end visits and interactions that went well—both individual conversations and longer, ongoing relationships with patients and families—and frequently rely on implicit rather than explicit verbal and nonverbal cues. Chaplains also mourn patients’ deaths and can experience moral distress and burnout.
Seeing patients with fresh eyes
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

Patients and families occasionally clash with providers about needs for more or less aggressive treatment, pushing to receive invasive futile interventions or to leave the hospital against medical advice. In these conflicts, chaplains strive to see each individual patient in and of him- or herself, and get to know patients in ways missed by doctors. These spiritual care providers can often mediate, providing fresh eyes and perspectives. Doctors and other medical staff may dismiss patients with addiction or other stigmatized behaviors or characteristics, but chaplains can frequently uncover vital information about the patient’s story and encourage staff to overcome biases and correct faulty assumptions. Still, chaplains’ attentions and interventions cannot always reverse longstanding past misfortunes. Chaplains resemble but also differ from psychotherapists. These fields differ in scope and goals but use several similar approaches, and both can aid patients.
“Doctor, will you pray for me?”
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

This chapter examines how doctors can more fully recognize the importance of spiritual issues, especially when death looms, but in other situations, too, more fully recognizing chaplains’ value. Ultimately, chaplains are limited in number, and doctors, nurses, and others should therefore possess skills to address, even if briefly, patients’ spiritual concerns, particularly when patients raise these, even if just to make referrals to chaplains. Patients and families frequently do not even know that chaplains exist, or feel empowered to request one. Doctors should be better able to address these topics and refer patients to chaplains when needed. Efforts to train providers have started, but can be bolstered. Courses in the humanities address some of these issues, but specific targeted skills and knowledge are also vital.
Compatibility and Significance Questions (Part I)
Authors: Kane Robert
Published: August 2024

Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinism? What kind of freedoms are “worth wanting”? The book argues that there are two paths to adequately addressing these questions from both historical and contemporary perspectives—two paths that ultimately converge. The first path, undertaken in this chapter, begins by reflecting on different kinds of freedom. Topics considered include the roles of alternative possibilities (AP) and ultimate responsibility (UR) in free will debates, the importance of self-forming actions (SFAs), self-formation and the will, freedom of action and freedom of will (how they differ and why both are important), Austin-style examples, plurality conditions and plural voluntary control (PVC), will-settled vs. will-setting actions, the dual regress of free will, the importance of distinguishing three notions of freedom, and three senses of will for adequately addressing these Compatibility and Significance Questions. Also considered are the author’s youthful interest in free will and Walden, the pond, Thoreau, and the utopia.
Compatibility and Significance Questions (Part II)
Authors: Kane Robert
Published: August 2024

The second path to adequately addressing the Compatibility and Significance Questions about free will, pursued in this chapter, begins by reflecting on ordinary practices of holding persons morally and legally responsible and leads to a distinction between different dimensions of responsibility. The chapter begins with a critical analysis of P. F. Strawson’s controversial “insulation thesis” according to which our ordinary practices of holding persons responsible can be entirely insulated from metaphysical questions about whether free will and responsibility are compatible with determinism. In arguing against this thesis, the chapter discusses ascriptions of responsibility in courts of law as well as in ordinary life, appealing to legal theorist H. L. A. Hart’s influential “fair opportunity to have done otherwise” criterion. The second half of the chapter examines arguments based on so-called Frankfurt-style examples that ascriptions of responsibility are compatible with determinism and argue that all such arguments fail.
The Intelligibility Question (Part II)
Authors: Kane Robert
Published: August 2024

In further developing what is new about the libertarian view developed in this book, this chapter emphasizes that one does not have to choose between agent causation and event causation in describing freedom of will and action. One can and must affirm both; and neither is reducible to the other. The author’s present view is therefore called an agent-causal/event-causal, or AC/EC, view, distinguishing it from the other three familiar libertarian views, agent-causal, event-causal, and noncausal. (The author’s prior view was usually designated event-causal, but that was never a happy designation and the author did not use it in prior works.) The chapter argues that on this AC/EC view, an agent’s causing an action is to be understood as an agent, conceived as an information-responsive complex dynamical system, exercising teleological guidance control, over some of its own processes. The remainder of the chapter spells out the nature of such systems.
Human Rights Between Universality and Islamic Legitimacy
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

Human rights are stuck in a normative dilemma in contemporary Islamic human rights discourses. On the one hand, they have to be Islamically legitimate, that is, anchored in the Islamic legal and intellectual tradition in order not to be considered externally imposed. On the other hand, human rights must also be secular, that is, justifiable independently of Islamic faith in order to live up to their universal character. The aim of the book is to formulate a conception of human rights that is able to satisfy the normative requirements of universality and Islamic legitimacy to the same extent. In a double dialogue with the Islamic legal tradition and contemporary human rights philosophy, it conceptualizes human rights as institutions for the protection of human needs based on the theory of Islamic legal purposes (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa). It thereby aims to contribute to contemporary human rights debates in the field of political theory and provide coherent answers to open and controversial questions, such as why human beings should have rights, how the content of those rights should be determined, and whether there is a hierarchy among human rights.
Human Rights as a Question of Identity
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

This introductory chapter discusses the predominant discursive framework in which contemporary debates about Islam and human rights are conducted. It discusses the issues of identity and power and shows how the contemporary Islamic human rights discourse operates in the shadow of a colonial discourse, which fundamentally structures its goals and ambitions. It provides an overview of existing Islamic human rights approaches and delineates the fundamental dilemma that currently besets them. Finally, it previews the book’s attempt to resolve this dilemma by mapping out the chapters ahead, offering the reader a glimpse into the diverse terrain this study seeks to cover.
Historical Context
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

This chapter delves into the historical context of the contemporary Islamic discourse on human rights by revisiting a nineteenth-century debate on the compatibility of Islam and modernity. It highlights a range of positions from that period that mirror those of the contemporary discourse. These include a secularist position that argued for a complete imitation of Europe, a traditionalist position that advocated for a preservation of Islamic tradition, and a modernist position that sought to reconcile the Islamic tradition with the achievements of modernity. Through this exploration, the chapter aims to show that the contemporary Islamic discourse on human rights is deeply rooted in historical debates and reflects longstanding tensions and continuities shaped by colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Conceptions of Human Rights
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

Part IV (Chapters 11-13) is dedicated to the explication of a conception of human rights in a double dialogue with the Islamic legal tradition and contemporary human rights theory. It first discusses several conceptions of human rights and examines their ability to contribute to a tangible understanding of human rights. It then proceeds to argue that human rights can be most plausibly conceived as institutions for the protection of objective, necessary, and universal human needs. It offers a precise specification of the concept of need and answers the question of what needs human beings have by drawing on interdisciplinary research on human needs. Finally—based on the theory of the maqāṣid—it brings the notion of human rights into a coherent relation to human needs.
Conclusion
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

The conclusion recapitulates the central questions and objectives of the book. It ties together its most important arguments and emphasizes the importance of continued interdisciplinary research within the field of human rights theory.
Battleground
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

Although American presidential campaigns are among the most closely followed events in the world, academic research tends to conclude that they are much less important for shaping election-day outcomes than broader economic conditions and more gradual socio-political trends. If so, then what campaigners do and say might be entertaining, but should rarely have a decisive influence on who wins the White House. Yet because academic studies typically treat presidential elections as singular events, surprisingly little research considers the entire universe of recent presidential elections. And because each campaign is presumed to follow only one strategy, single-election studies have surprisingly little to say about what relative difference those strategies might make on election day. This book aims to fill this gap. Drawing on internal campaign records and novel data sources covering every presidential election from 1952 through 2020, it identifies the Electoral College strategies for every major presidential campaign in the modern era, assesses how well those plans were executed, and illuminates what difference state-by-state allocations of candidate visits and television spending made on election day. Through this unusual perspective the book identifies broader contextual changes that define and divide these eighteen elections into three distinct eras. It shows how battleground states have been selected and contested in each of these eras and finds that presidential campaigns in the modern era have been consistently strategic, sophisticated, and effective. The book concludes that campaign strategies can still be pivotal for shaping Electoral College outcomes, even if their influence today looks somewhat different than in 1952.
Wholesale Campaigning (1952–1972)
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This chapter presents Electoral College strategies for both major party candidates and for each election across the “Wholesale Campaigning” period from 1952 to 1972, the initial era covered in the book. The chapter reveals surprising levels of sophistication with respect to the classification of states during this period. Macro-targeting strategies for these presidential campaigns primarily drew from deep analysis of historical election results at the state and county levels to classify Electoral College priorities, supplemented with newly available polling and market research information to identify the most consequential targets. Relative to more recent periods, this early approach to developing Electoral College strategies during the first era tended to classify a surprisingly large number of states as battlegrounds.
Zero-Sum Campaigning (1976–2000)
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This chapter chronicles the second era of presidential campaigns: the period of zero-sum campaigning from 1976 to 2000. It begins with an explanation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 and how it affected presidential election campaigns before presenting major party strategies in detail. The chapter ends with conclusions drawn from archival data for this period, which show continued rise of the use of media consultants and pollsters in developing campaign strategy, with a tendency toward identifying narrower lists of battleground states than in the previous era. This is consistent with expectations borne of greater information about public opinion as well as the campaign spending limits associated with FECA.
The Past, the Present, and the Future of Presidential Campaigns
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This final chapter looks at the future of presidential campaigns through the presumptive lens that politics is not static and political actors respond rationally to changes in strategic incentive structures. It is not clear how the dynamic state of politics in the 2020s affects campaigns, substantively or normatively. The ability of presidential campaigns to slice and dice the electorate is at an all-time high, which may lead to narrower outreach, while a proliferation of both campaign resources and communicative modes may lead to broader outreach. The chapter suggests that both can be true at the same time: more voters will receive more narrowly tailored campaign messages. Whether or not this atomization of campaign issues and messaging is a good thing depends on the party system and the ability of the major parties to frame politics in a way that is substantive and compelling for the salient groups in American society.
Introduction
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

The first half of the twentieth century was the time when individuals were able to have the greatest personal impact on the course of history. The two World Wars of that era, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the end of European empires destroyed existing political and economic structures, creating the opportunity for building entirely new ones. Woodrow Wilson, V. I. Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion, and Mao Zedong took advantage of that opportunity. Each belonged, roughly speaking, to the same generation, with most born in the 1870s or 1880s. Each became iconic, widely recognized as embodying particular traits and ideas. Each made a deep personal imprint on the history of his times, deeper than leaders before or after them.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

Woodrow Wilson offered a vision for international peace that, while never fully implemented, has remained influential. As the 28th American president, he led the country into World War I. After that war, at the Paris Peace Conference, he advocated measures for restructuring international relations to make the world more peaceful. His most important proposal was for a League of Nations to which all countries would belong that would keep the peace throughout the world. The United States Senate, however, voted against American membership in the League, and the United States did not join it. Still, Wilson’s ideas about organizing the system of sovereign states in order to promote peace gained in importance and popularity after his death.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Ulianov)
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

Vladimir Ilich Lenin founded the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist state. He led a branch of the Russian Marxist movement known as the Bolsheviks that took advantage of Russia’s defeat in World War I to seize power. Renamed the Communist Party, Lenin’s forces then consolidated power by winning a bloody civil war. Lenin used coercion to impose a centrally planned economic system and a political system that concentrated all power in the hands of the Communists and made liberal use of violence. The multinational state that the Communists created was called the Soviet Union, and it lasted until 1991.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

As British prime minister, Winston Churchill inspired and led his country’s resistance to Nazi Germany in World War II, preventing Germany from winning that war. After a long and prominent career in the British parliament and membership in several British cabinets, he became prime minister in 1940 as World War II was going badly for the British. He rallied the country with his eloquence, expressing a determination not to give in to Nazi Germany but rather to fight to the end. He also set about cultivating the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, with an eye to securing American assistance and ultimately American participation in the war against Germany. In the end, Britain and its allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, did defeat Germany in Europe and Imperial Japan in the Asia-Pacific region.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

Franklin D. Roosevelt guided the United States through the Great Depression and World War II. The 32nd American president, he took office in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. His administration enacted a series of measures known as the New Deal that mitigated the Depression’s damaging economic effects. In response to Japan’s aggression in China, his government imposed economic sanctions on the Japanese. As Hitler set out to conquer Europe, Roosevelt sent economic and military assistance to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the United States entered World War II against both Japan in the Asia-Pacific region and Germany in Europe, and, with Roosevelt as commander-in-chief, ultimately prevailed in both theaters of war
David Ben-Gurion (Gruen)
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

David Ben-Gurion was the founding father of the State of Israel, which resurrected Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land after an absence of almost two millennia. He was born in Poland, as a young man became devoted to the Zionist movement that sought the restoration of a Jewish state, and moved to what was then a province of the Ottoman Empire known as Palestine. After World War I, the British gained control of Palestine, and during their period of control Ben-Gurion became the principal leader of the Zionist movement there. When the British left in 1948, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. He served as its first prime minister, undertook the major responsibility for creating its army, and presided over its successful conduct of two wars: the War of Independence of 1948 and the Sinai War of 1956.
Life in the Floodplain
Authors: Conca Ken
Published: August 2024

This chapter sketches the history of Ellicott City, a historic mill town in central Maryland that recently suffered two fatal flash flood disasters within 22 months. Founded in the earliest days of the American republic, the town was a critical early node in the industrial revolution, tapping the power of water to drive milling and manufacturing. Yet, the town has suffered repeatedly from flood episodes over its 250-year history. Particular attention is paid to two devastating flood episodes in the early 1970s, from Hurricanes Agnes and Eloise. These disasters triggered the town’s rebirth as a historic district, but also revealed tensions around land use, economic development, and placemaking that would recur in the most recent floods.
General principles
Authors: Neuhäuser Markus , Ruxton Graeme D.
Published: August 2024

This chapter presents general principles of the potential challenges associated with small sample sizes, and how these challenges can be mitigated, especially in study design. Effect size and power are fundamental themes in our suggested approaches, and risk of inflation of the former is discussed. Methods for computing the power as well as how the power can be boosted without increasing the sample size are presented. A related topic explored is the interpretation of results in the light of low power. We highlight that summary statistics can be less helpful for very small samples; for such samples, it might be useful to display the sample in full, instead of (or alongside) summary statistics.
Meta-analysis
Authors: Neuhäuser Markus , Ruxton Graeme D.
Published: August 2024

A meta-analysis makes it possible to make a combined inference drawing on the results from a range of different studies. This approach is particularly relevant in the context of small sample sizes, where a single study does not provide for a definitive conclusion. It may be that a field of research faces strong limitations on the sample sizes that can be utilized in a single study, limiting the ability to draw strong inferences from any one study. Here a meta-analysis that seeks to draw a general conclusion on the basis of aggregation of existing studies might then prove particularly useful. The fixed, as well as the random effects, models are introduced. Example data and R code are given.
The Neuroscience of Free Will
Authors: Tse Peter Ulric
Published: August 2024

This chapter begins by asking why free will might have evolved. It concludes that animals that are driven to fulfill goals by intrinsic cybernetic error signals, and that can do so in an unpredictable way, have a survival advantage over animals lacking such goal-directing signals. We then consider the basics of how neurons function and emphasize that the neural code is about coincidence detection at the level of receptors, dendrites, neurons, and populations of neurons, which has as a consequence the emergence of synchrony and bursty patterns of firing among neurons. We then examine different sources of indeterminism in the brain and look at the neural circuits that underlie executive, volitional, and nonvolitional control. The chapter addresses the centrality of cingulate cortex both to willpower and cybernetic error minimization and argues that many of the goal-directed cybernetic processes governing animal volition and behavior concern optimization of paths toward the fulfillment of goals, from physical desires to emotional longings, shaped by aspects of cognition such as imagination and hope. It emphasizes that consciousness and volitional operations, such as volitional attentional tracking and volitional operations in working memory, are inseparable; consciousness is the domain of active and potential operands for volitional operators. The chapter closes with a discussion of the types of learning and automatization that afford freedom within constraint in the form of mastery.
Vocabulary
Authors: Beal Jennifer S. , Dostal Hannah M. , Easterbrooks Susan R.
Published: August 2024

Chapter 3 focuses on all aspects of vocabulary learning, instruction, and application when reading printed text. It provides an overview of how children develop vocabulary, in conversation and in print; the effects of vocabulary on reading comprehension; and addresses evidence-based instructional practices for deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners. Breadth and depth of receptive and expressive vocabulary, semantic and phonological fluency, sight words, multiple meaning words, figurative language, and fingerspelling are promoted through time on task, the use of languages, explicit instruction, visual support, in-depth discussions, print-rich environments, etc. A multitude of ways to use a word wall and an example of explicit, contextualized vocabulary instruction with examples and non-examples are included. This chapter concludes with a summary of evidence-based vocabulary strategies for use with DHH learners.
Text Comprehension and Grammar
Authors: Beal Jennifer S. , Dostal Hannah M. , Easterbrooks Susan R.
Published: August 2024

Chapter 5 provides an overview of grammar knowledge and its relation to reading comprehension. A structure for reading instruction is provided, including use of all languages across guided, shared, and independent reading and writing. Evidence-based strategies for all areas of instruction are embedded across the chapter, such as explicit instruction, the language experience approach, directed reading and thinking, writer’s workshop, narrative story grammar, story maps, visualization, and reflections. Case vignettes include application of prediction, visualization, and summarizing during reading with diverse deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners. Tables include examples of complex grammatical structures, story grammar elements, sentence-parsing strategies, strategies used within multilingual deaf education classrooms, how to teach strategies, and a review of story signing and story reading.
Dante's Education
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

The book analyzes manuscript and archival evidence to reconstruct the contents, practice, and readings of Latin instruction in the urban schools of fourteenth-century Florence and gauges Dante Alighieri’s debts toward and involvement with these elementary forms of language instruction in his vernacular works. It shows Dante’s continuous engagement with this culture of teaching in his poetics, thus revealing his contribution to the expansion of vernacular literacy and education. The book argues that to achieve his unprecedented position of authority as a vernacular intellectual, Dante conceived his poetic works as an alternative educational program for laypeople, who could read and write in the vernacular but had little or no proficiency in Latin.
Prologue
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

In fourteenth-century Italy, literacy became accessible to a significantly larger portion of the lay population (allegedly between 60 and 80 percent in Florence) and provided a crucial means for the vernacularization and secularization of learning. Dante Alighieri’s education and oeuvre sit squarely at the heart of this historical and cultural transition and provide an ideal case study for investigating the impact of Latin education on the consolidation of autonomous vernacular literature in the Middle Ages—a fascinating and still largely unexamined phenomenon. Although we have surviving manuscript evidence of some of the school readings most popular at the time, a systematic study of their influence on Dante and Dante’s involvment with this culture of learning has never been attempted. This Prologue offers an overview of how the book aims to fill this lacuna.
An Introduction to Literacy and Education in Dante’s Florence
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

How did Dante hope to promote his classicizing poetics to an audience of vernacular, lay readers, whose classical culture was often wanting? To answer this question, we need to reconstruct the culture of literacy shared by Dante and his contemporary readers. Thus, this introductory chapter surveys the extant evidence of literacy levels and grammar instruction in thirteenth-century Florence. Whereas the Florentine milieu in which Dante was educated featured high level of literacy among the laity and a well-developed network of private schools, the increasing pursue of literacy instruction for vocational and social aims coincided with a shrinking of the curriculum of Latin readings. A handful of minor Latin poems was consistently read for acquiring literacy in both the vernacular and Latin, as well as to prepare a few pupils for more advanced training in Latin grammar. Hence, the chapter argues for that minor Latin school texts provided the basic literary culture shared by the poet and most of his contemporary readers. The last section of the chapter discusses Dante’s earliest schooling in light of the extant contextual and textual evidence. Finally, the proposed analysis suggests that Dante’s silence concerning the minor Latin poems should be interpreted as reticence rather than ignorance. Such contrived silence reflects his intention to establish a direct link between his poetics and the major Latin tradition. Dante’s indirect engagement with the Ilias Latina is briefly discussed as evidence of the poet’s covert intertextual dialogue with the Latin school models in his oeuvre.
(Un)like Aesop
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

Chapter 3 traces Dante’s creative reworking of school texts, as this evolved from the Vita nova to the Commedia. A close assessment of the reception of Aesopic fables in medieval education reveals the theoretical significance of Dante’s reference to Aesop at Inferno 23.4. Glosses, commentaries, and encyclopedic texts—such as Isidore’s Etymologiae—show that medieval literary theory considered this genre of fables as being paradigmatic of moralizing fiction. The presence of the name of Aesop in Inferno, it is argued, plays a pivotal role in Dante’s discourse about the uniqueness of the Commedia vis-à-vis traditional definitions of “fable” and “comedy.”
Spain
Authors: Ramiro Luis , Salvador María
Published: August 2024

Spanish party politics is changing. The Spanish party system and parties experienced a period of relative stability from the beginning of the 1980s, once the democratic system was consolidated after the 1977 and 1979 founding elections. Moderate voters and a favourable institutional framework were conducive to the formation of a two-party system. However, in 2015 the party system entered a phase of change: increased electoral volatility and party system fragmentation characterize the new period. Together with the party system, the parties themselves have changed. New parties, new forms of organization, and relevant radical-left and radical-right parties characterize contemporary Spanish politics. Nonetheless, some key features of Spanish party politics remain unchanged and pose potential challenges to the proper functioning of representative democracy: the parties have weak social roots and are very dependent on state funding.
The Development of Party Organizations in New Democracies
Authors: Kim Yeaji
Published: August 2024

This chapter focuses on the organizational features of the two largest political parties in South Korea, the Democratic Party (DP) and the People Power Party (PPP), based on their party membership, state funding, and candidate selection rules. While South Korea has successfully transitioned to democracy, its party system has been classified as weakly institutionalized due to factors such as personalism, regionalism, frequent mergers and splits, and weak party organizations. The analyses in this study reveal that the two parties are in the process of overcoming clientelistic party organizations but still rely heavily on state funding for income, leading to a cartelized party system. The parties have also established a more democratic candidate selection process, but questions remain about the value of active party members and the influence of non-party members in decision-making processes. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these organizational features on the development of democracy in South Korea, including the role of active party members, the impact of state subsidies on new or minor parties, and the benefits and drawbacks of a decentralized candidate selection process.
The State of Political Party Development in Ghana
Authors: Owusu-Mensah Isaac , Debrah Emmanuel , Mathapoly-Codjoe Enock
Published: August 2024

Political parties have been instrumental to Ghana’s democratic growth, which has constituted the West African nation as a bastion of democracy in the region and on the continent as a whole. However, inequality between elite and ordinary voters continues to grow as an outcome of parties’ activities. The disparity between electioneering and the delivery of political manifestos has also continued to widen, undermining citizens’ trust in party politics. Since the resurgence of party politics in 1992, only two parties have won elections, effectively institutionalizing a two-party model. Both parties have pursued programmes that reflect both capitalism and social interventions. The growing synergy between active participation and democratic institutionalization provides an optimistic outlook for democratic progress. However, the West African nation confronts extant challenges to democratic consolidation such as inter and intra-party conflicts, excessive partisanship and monetization of the electoral process, and inter-ethnic tensions. This notwithstanding, it is not far-fetched that democratic consolidation is imminent. This chapter reflects on the characteristics, role, and impact of political parties in boosting Ghana’s democracy towards a near consolidation.
Economic Paradigm Shifts for Labour Law
Authors: ter Haar Beryl
Published: August 2024

Since the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, the sustainability of the neoliberal free market economy has been questioned. Although this is not new per se, it has resulted in a number of alternative ideas that not only address the sustainability of the neoliberal free market economy, but also anticipate challenges from the technological and green transitions, demographical change, rising inequality, and work and income vulnerabilities. These alternative ideas have many commonalities that suggest a shift to a wellbeing paradigm. Based on these commonalities, new work narratives are being formulated which are radically different from the social market and neoliberal free market paradigms. An analysis of the new work narratives leads to the formulation of new foundational principles, functions, and structure of the labour law system.
Labour Law for Degrowth and Meaningful Work
Authors: Zekić Nuna
Published: August 2024

This chapter analyses the notions of degrowth and post-growth and draws new implications for labour law. A transition to an economy that is in balance with planetary boundaries will most likely involve some form of degrowth policy. The chapter first explains labour law’s role in the current growth economy. The author then argues that labour law needs to widen its goals to support the shift towards addressing climate change effectively while at the same time reducing inequality and improving wellbeing through meaningful work. Many labour law principles will remain relevant because there will most probably always be ‘necessary labour’.
The Value of Work in Labour Law
Authors: Bueno Nicolas
Published: August 2024

Since the establishment of labour markets, work has been mainly valued and therefore paid according to its market value. Activities, such as cleaning, taking care of others, or restoring the environment have usually a lower market value than activities serving economic interests of people or firms, such as financial or legal services. This chapter explains how economic ideology has led to this situation and discusses two shortcomings of this value system. On one hand, it can deter individuals from using their skills for non-market activities. On the other hand, it can encourage market activities that may be detrimental for people and the environment. This chapter builds on a post-growth approach and clarifies the notions of essential work and detrimental work. It explains if, how, and when labour law should intervene in the value of work.
Labour Law for Care and Wellbeing
Authors: de Muñagorri Rafael Encinas
Published: August 2024

Utopias of care work are rare, which is not only due to fatalism or lack of imagination. Even if post-growth theories are giving way to care-oriented societies, we need to get rid of the traditional view that care and domestic work are unproductive and the natural role of women. New welfare economics and feminist studies have stimulated our imaginations to explore new perspectives that promote care work and wellbeing. This chapter outlines these perspectives and examines their possible implications for welfare law and labour law. This is a daunting task as reflecting on the role of care work and wellbeing in labour law requires rethinking labour law at large.
Channelling Technologies to Benefit Employees via Labour Law
Authors: Albin Einat
Published: August 2024

Labour law’s existing approach to new technologies is based on a pro-capitalist paradigm that views technologies as part of the employers’ prerogative or as ‘algorithmic bosses’. This approach eventually exacerbates employers’ authority in unprecedented ways and shapes the market to develop technologies that fulfil employers’ interests. There is one exception to this paradigm within the law: that of technologies as accommodations for persons with disabilities. Following a post-work perspective, this chapter argues in favour of adopting the ‘technologies as accommodations’ paradigm regarding all technologies at work, putting forth several justifications for it as an alternative to the pro-capitalist paradigm. Viewed as ‘accommodations’, technological development, design, and use would be based on functions needed to protect and promote the social and welfare values of the workforce, ultimately positively impacting labour relations and workers’ rights while also profiting employers.
Utopia, Power, and Free Labour
Authors: Gamonal C. Sergio
Published: August 2024

This chapter will study the relationship between utopia, power, and labour law, proposing a utopia for the twenty-first century based on Free Labour of radical republicanism during the nineteenth century in the US. The notion of power is complex and ranges from coercion to domination, manipulation, and symbolic power. The chapter focuses on how to operate with the power to achieve a utopia and maintain it once completed. It also discusses how power has interrelated with labour law and its regulatory techniques. Finally, the utopia of Free Labour is proposed with a new interpretation for today’s globalized world of subordinate, informal, migrant, and gig economy workers.
What do we really know about Gothic breaking?
Authors: Howell Robert B.
Published: August 2024

A characteristic feature of Gothic is ‘breaking’, the lowering (or non-raising) of PGmc. */i/, */e/, */u/ before , <ƕ>, and . We have only clues regarding the phonetic qualities represented by these three graphemes, making it difficult to isolate what is going on in the breaking process. This study pursues two avenues of inquiry: (1) Gothic-internal evidence indicating that Gothic /r/ was an apical trill which, along with most rhotics, has a low F3, which can cause assimilatory lowering of a preceding vowel. Gothic , <ƕ> were very weak and are frequently lost or assimilated in sandhi, implying that they were glottal fricatives, before which vowel lowering is cross-linguistically frequent. (2) Other early Germanic dialects show similar vocalic lowering (and backing) before NWGmc. */r/ and */h/, in the latter case followed by widespread loss of the /h/. Parallels are drawn between these lowerings in NWGmc. dialects and Gothic breaking.
Gothic fidurdōgs ‘four days old’ and some traces of denominal s-stems in Germanic
Authors: Thöny Luzius
Published: August 2024

The element -dōgs in Gothic fidurdōgs ‘four-days-old’ is related to the simplex noun Gothic dags m. ‘day’ < *daǥa-, although it is unclear exactly how. This chapter presents an overview of etymologically related forms attested in other Old Germanic languages, mainly Old Norse and Old English, and reviews previous attempts to explain the data. It is argued that the attested forms are best explained from a PGmc. s-stem *dōǥi/az- n., an unusual formation in that it appears to be a denominative derivation, whereas the usual type of s-stem in Germanic is a deverbal abstract with an e-grade root like Gothic sigis n. ‘victory’. The stem *dōǥiz- has a parallel in *χōnís- n. ‘fowl’ to *χanan- m. ‘cock’, and *χrōþiz- n. ‘glory’, built to an a- or i-stem *χrōþa/i-, implied by Gothic hrōþeigs* ‘triumphant’. These nominal stems may be interpreted as substantivized adjectives, in some cases based on Vrddhi-derivations.
A prefix–particle verb cycle for Germanic?
Authors: Watts Sheila
Published: August 2024

This chapter discusses the evolution of preverbs in Germanic languages from a model of prefixation to the systematic use of verb–particle combinations. Both prefixes and particles are originally free adverbs which cliticize to verbs, modifying their meaning and generating new verbal lexemes. Their original directional sense is weakened and lost, and new directional adverbs are drawn into first free, then fixed combinations as phrasal, prepositional, and particle verbs. These processes share elements of both lexicalization and grammaticalization and together form a predictable cycle of changes illustrated with data from both Gothic and Old Saxon. The latter is on a trajectory which will produce separable prefixes in later Middle Low German, whereas the route which the former might have taken cannot be confirmed because Gothic lacks an ulterior history.
Pan-African solidarity and international reputation
Authors: Drewski Daniel , Gerhards Jürgen
Published: August 2024

Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world but hosts one of the largest numbers of refugees worldwide, mostly fleeing from the civil war in South Sudan. Chapter 7 demonstrates that Uganda’s open border policy, as it is pursued by the authoritarian government of Yoweri Museveni, is inspired by a Pan-African and anti-colonial identity construction and the pursuit of international prestige. Uganda’s borders are interpreted as artificial, dating back to the time of colonialism. In this way, the boundary of belonging is extended beyond the Ugandan nation-state, and refugees are included in the definition of the “we.” In addition, the government frames admitting refugees as a question of international recognition, which helps to offset international criticisms of Uganda’s authoritarian regime. Despite some specific criticisms, the government’s refugee policy is by and large supported by the opposition parties in the Ugandan parliament.
Between an anti-Socialist foreign policy and the historical memory of dictatorship
Authors: Drewski Daniel , Gerhards Jürgen
Published: August 2024

Chile hosts many Venezuelan refugees who escaped political instability and socioeconomic crisis under the Socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro. Chile’s right-wing President Sebastián Piñera pursued a rather ambivalent policy as an advocate of displaced Venezuelans without granting them protection under international refugee law. This ambivalent policy was based on emphasizing different aspects of Chile’s identity. Chile was framed as an economically successful model and systemic rival of Maduro’s far-left Socialist regime in Venezuela, welcoming displaced Venezuelans as political allies against a common enemy. However, the government also emphasized national sovereignty and a limited willingness to comply with international refugee law. Accordingly, Venezuelans were not framed as “refugees” under international law but as “migrants” and evaluated in terms of their economic contribution to the Chilean economy. The left-wing opposition in Chile was highly critical of the government’s rhetorical commitment to displaced Venezuelans, considering it a political maneuver to delegitimize the left.