bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Social Character of Contentment
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the social dimensions of contentment. In the past, many people in the United States experienced a certain sense of unease, of troubled conscience and associated discomfort when contemplating those who did not share the good fortune of the fortunate. During the time of Ronald Reagan, Americans were being rewarded as they so richly deserved. The chapter first considers the role of the government in subsidizing the well-being of Americans before exploring how the economically and socially fortunate who used to be a small minority have become a majority, not of all citizens but of those who actually vote. It suggests that self-regard is the dominant—indeed the controlling— mood of the Contented Majority. It also examines the most important characteristics of the contented majority, including its attitude toward time, a highly selective view of the role of government, and tolerance of pronounced differences in incomes.
The Bureaucratic Syndrome
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how the bureaucratic syndrome is influenced by the pursuit of contentment. One of the most ubiquitous features of life in the late twentieth century is the complicated and multilayered organization. As economic and public operations become more complex, it is necessary to unite varying skills, different experience, different education, resulting specialization and different degrees of intelligence. The chapter first provides an overview of the bureaucratic syndrome before discussing how modern organization cultivates acceptance of what comfortably exists in the age of contentment. It then explores how the role of thought is diminished in the bureaucratic syndrome and goes on to describe a large organization's sense of common purpose. It also looks at the immunity of corporations to the adverse impact of bureaucracy and concludes with an assessment of the private sector as a form of escape from the bureaucratic syndrome.
The Reckoning, II
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the two remaining threats to the age of contentment: unpopular military action and a revolt of the underclass. Any military venture almost receives strong popular approval in the short run, with the citizenry rallying to the flag and to the soldiers who engaged in combat. More widespread wars, such as World War I and World War II, have had adverse consequences. The chapter first considers how military power could be a threat to the culture of contentment in the future before discussing the threat posed by the underclass in the urban slums, along with the possibility of an underclass revolt. It then looks at the reaction of the community of contentment to the miseries and violence of the urban slums and the probable reaction if the violence becomes more extreme. Finally, it explains how recession and depression could exacerbate the culture of contentment.
Requiem
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers some policy changes that are needed for the culture of contentment, to save and protect, to prevent suffering and further unpleasant consequence, to enhance the general feeling of security in well-being. It first discusses the nature of the modern industrial economy and how it can enhance long-run security before explaining how the culture of contentment has shaped the accepted attitude toward the state. In particular, it examines areas where the government's performance is approved, such as the armed services; where the state's adequacy is assumed, for example, in the conduct of foreign policy; or where state action is held to be deeply inadequate and seriously counterproductive. The chapter also emphasizes the need for macroeconomic regulation through the public budget, not through monetary policy, and proposes other measures relating to military power and the underclass.
Money
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

Money is nothing more than what is commonly exchanged for goods or services, so why has understanding it become so complicated? This book cuts through the confusions surrounding the subject to present a compelling and accessible account of a topic that affects us all. It tells the fascinating story of money, the key factors that shaped its development, the forces contending for control of money, and the lessons that can be learned from its history. The book describes the creation and evolution of monetary systems and explains how finance, credit, and banks work in the global economy. It also shows that, when it comes to money, nothing is truly new—least of all inflation and fraud. The book discusses the history of coins made of precious metals, the the history of paper money, the history of banks, and more.
The bank
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the history of central banks, with emphasis on the case of the Bank of England. For a long time after John Law, Frenchmen remained deeply suspicious of banks and bank notes, of any money that was not made of metal. The chapter considers the reforms that occurred in the banking industry, led by the Bank of England, which gradually emerged as the guardian of the money supply as well as of the financial concerns of the government of England during the period 1720–1780. It also examines the 1811 debate on the nature of money and its management, focusing on David Ricardo's arguments about money in relation to the gold standard. Finally, it looks at the Bank of England's role in introducing the use the two historic instruments of central bank policy: open-market operations and the bank rate.
Of Paper
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the history of paper money. The history of paper money issued by a government belongs to the Americans. Bank paper and government paper share many things in common. Bank notes retain full parity of purchasing power with the gold or silver to which they promise title so long as they can be exchanged for the metal. Moreover, as British experience during the Napoleonic Wars showed, bank notes by no means lose all or even most of their value when convertibility into gold or silver is denied. The chapter examines the circumstances that account for the pioneering role of the American colonies in the use of paper money. It also considers the first issue of paper money by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 and the rise of banks and banking during the colonial period.
The New Economics at High Noon
Authors: Galbraith John Kenneth , Galbraith James K.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the New Economics that emerged in the years following World War II. In 1947, Seymour Harris of Harvard University, an avowed Keynesian evangelist, edited a series of essays on Keynesian ideas and entitled his volume The New Economics. Under the New Economics, employment increased more rapidly than the labor force. As a result, unemployment declined steadily and prices were held stable. The chapter considers four serious flaws of the New Economics. The first was the reliance on prediction and foresight—on taking action before need. The three other flaws all limited, even negated, the ability of the government to deal effectively with inflation. The first of these flaws was in the machinery for dealing with the now familiar problem of market power. The next flaw was the fatal inelasticity of the Keynesian system. The final flaw was the revival of faith in monetary policy.
Matching with Transfers: Basic Notions
Authors: Chiappori Pierre-André
Published: May 2018

This chapter describes the basic notions of matching with transfers. It first introduces the notations that will be used throughout the book, including two compact, separable metric spaces: the space of female characteristics and the space of male characteristics. In particular, it outlines a framework that is common to all (bipartite, one-to-one) matching models. It then considers how a matching problem is defined in the nontransferable utility, transferable utility, and imperfectly transferable utility cases. It also explains how the solution is defined in all three cases, noting that there are differences in the definition of an equilibrium. In all cases, the basic equilibrium concept is stability.
Matching by Categories
Authors: Chiappori Pierre-André
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers matching by categories, beginning with a discussion of a specific but empirically very relevant family of models in order to provide a richer representation of heterogeneity between individuals that would account not only for economic aspects such as income or education, as well as more subjective (and less easily observable) ones, such as idiosyncratic preferences for marriage in general and for specific types of spouses in particular. The chapter explores a simple model that describes matching on income or education, the separability assumption, how separability can be justified, and the dual structure under separability. It also provides an overview of the Choo-Siow model, focusing on its basic structure, the matching function, heteroskedasticity, comparative statics, testability and identifiability, and the Galichon and Salanié's cupid framework as an extension of the model.
Matching under Transferable Utility: Applications
Authors: Chiappori Pierre-André
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers two examples of applications of matching models under transferable utility (TU). The first example deals with the legalization of abortion by virtue of Roe v. Wade and the feminist claim that it empowered all women. The second example deals with the discrepancy between male and female demand for higher education over the last decades. After providing an overview of Roe v. Wade and how it resulted in female empowerment, the chapter describes the model that takes into account preferences and budget constraints, stable matching on the marriage market, and changes in birth control technology. It then examines gender differences in the demand for higher education using the CIW (Chiappori, Iyigun, and Weiss) model, with a focus on equilibrium, preferences for singlehood, comparative statics, empirical implementation, and the Low model showing that higher education results in a deterministic drop in fertility.
Conclusion
Authors: Chiappori Pierre-André
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter discusses the progress that has been made with matching models on both the theoretical and the empirical front. Regarding theory, the power and the limits of the transferable utility (TU) model are now better understood. The TU framework can (admittedly under specific assumptions on preferences) encompass most aspects of family economics, including fertility, domestic production, risk sharing, and the consumption of public commodities. On the empirical side, the econometrics of matching models have seen several major advances, with the Choo-Siow model as a prime example. The chapter also considers what matching models teach us about reality, such as the asymmetry between male and female demand for higher education, and the relationship between assortative matching and inequality. Furthermore, a host of social issues can only be analyzed from a general equilibrium perspective; this is evident in the case of Roe v. Wade.
Social Ethics in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Authors: Farneth Molly
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses two aspects of Hegel's project together—epistemology and ethics, knowing and living well. In doing so, it gives an account of the relationships and practices that a community ought to cultivate, and of what happens when those relationships and practices are absent or deformed. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel shows what domination looks like and suggests that there is an alternative to it, a way of coping with conflict and forging solidarity. And, while Hegel was no democrat, he describes how conflicts can be confronted and hope for reconciliation sustained through just means in diverse communities. Read in this way, the Phenomenology of Spirit has much to teach the denizens of contemporary societies about what democracy ought to be.
Tragedy and the Social Construction of Norms
Authors: Farneth Molly
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues that, for Hegel, the authority of a community's norms is rooted in its social practices. It considers the lessons of Hegel's discussion of Sophocles' Antigone, in which he shows that a community that treats its norms as natural, fixed, and immediately given will be afflicted by tragedy. The central conflict of the Antigone is simultaneously a conflict between Creon and Antigone, between the roles and obligations of men and of women, and, more broadly, between human law and divine law. It is, in Hegel's interpretation, a conflict between two sets of one-sided stances, each of which stubbornly asserts itself as fixed and given.
Democratic Authority through Conflict and Reconciliation
Authors: Farneth Molly
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides an account of democratic authority based on the relationships and practices of citizens. In a democratically organized community, citizens' relationships are relationships of reciprocal recognition. Insofar as people call themselves democrats, they ought to be committed to cultivating practices in which they recognize one another's authority and hold one another accountable. These practices include some, but not all, forms of contestation and conflict, as well as practices of reconciliation. The chapter offers examples of what such relationships and practices have looked like in democratic organizing and restorative justice. Hegel holds that authority, when properly constituted and rightly understood, cannot stand apart from people, their relationships, and their practices.
Dragons and Kasha
Authors: Khovanova Tanya
Published: May 2018

This chapter begins with the following teaser about hungry dragons stealing kasha from one another. “Suppose a four-armed dragon is sitting on every face of a cube. Each dragon has a bowl of kasha in front of him. Dragons are very greedy, so instead of eating their own kasha, they try to steal kasha from their neighbors. Each minute, every dragon extends four arms to the four neighboring faces on the cube and tries to get the kasha from the bowls there. As four arms are fighting for every bowl of kasha, each arm manages to steal one-fourth of what is in the bowl. Thus, each dragon steals one-fourth of the kasha of each of his neighbors, while at the same time all of his own kasha is stolen. Given the initial amounts of kasha in every bowl, what is the asymptotic behavior of the amounts of kasha?” It then arrives at a branch of mathematics called representation theory.
Crossing Numbers of Complete Graphs
Authors: Elkies Noam D.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines crossing numbers. When a particular graph is drawn on a given surface, what is the smallest possible number of crossings among the edges? The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces crossing numbers; reviews the surfaces D, R
2, S, M, P, and T and some connections between them; and gives some basic properties of the crossing numbers, culminating with the existence of P
Σ‎ for any surface Σ‎. Sections 2–4 treat crossing numbers on the sphere, projective plane, and torus in turn. Section 5 lists some open problems suggested by this analysis, on the same three surfaces and also on the Klein bottle and beyond. We relegate to an appendix the computation of the integrals that figure in the bounds on P
P and P
T.
A Sequence Game on a Roulette Wheel
Authors: Vallin Robert W.
Published: May 2018

This chapter takes a classic puzzle about coin-flipping and extends it to a roulette wheel. It examines Penney's Game, a two-player game played via the flipping of a fair coin. Player I picks a sequence of heads (H) or tails (T) of length three (it can be any agreed-on length, but in most literature it is length three) and makes his choice known. Player II then states her own sequence of length three. An umpire then tosses the coin until one of the two sequences appears as a consecutive subsequence of the coin flips. The player whose sequence appears first is the winner.
Introduction
Authors: Mintzker Yair
Published: May 2018

This introductory chapter discusses how the historical figure of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer—also known as Jew Süss—is incredibly elusive, and any understanding of him must begin with the political and legal regimes under which he lived and died. Oppenheimer spent almost his entire life in the southwest corner of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In the eighteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire was the general political organization that connected the hundreds of more or less sovereign polities in German-speaking central Europe. Especially important for understanding Oppenheimer's case is the fact that the Empire's members shared a common legal system scholars term “inquisitorial.”
The Inquisitor
Authors: Mintzker Yair
Published: May 2018

This chapter focuses on the case of Philipp Friedrich Jäger, the judge-inquisitor who wrote the factual part of Oppenheimer's verdict and thus the basis for his death sentence. Although no other story in this book can reveal the issue of Oppenheimer's alleged crimes, the significance of Jäger's story goes well beyond factual issues alone. By reconstructing Jäger's life story and reading, particularly the document he submitted to the court, the chapter is able to reveal important connections between anti-Semitism in general and Oppenheimer's particular case. Crucial in this respect will be Jäger's participation in another political trial in Württemberg less than two years before Oppenheimer's arrest.
In the Land of the Dead
Authors: Mintzker Yair
Published: May 2018

This chapter concentrates on David Fassmann, one of the earliest known biographers of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer. Fassmann was a litterateur and fabulist from Leipzig who somehow managed to anticipate some of the best modern literature on the historical figure of Jew Süss. Fassmann's life story and his several treatments of Oppenheimer's life story will help scholars understand at least some of the reasons why, even as it unfolded, the scandal surrounding Oppenheimer's trial reached well beyond the confines of the small duchy of Württemberg. It should also help them appreciate the tangled nature of Oppenheimer's case: how reality and repute, truth and fiction, were wound around each other in his story as if in a skein.
Ordinary Jews
Authors: Finkel Evgeny
Published: May 2018

Focusing on the choices and actions of Jews during the Holocaust, this book examines the different patterns of behavior of civilians targeted by mass violence. Relying on rich archival material and hundreds of survivors' testimonies, the author presents a new framework for understanding the survival strategies in which Jews engaged: cooperation and collaboration, coping and compliance, evasion, and resistance. The book compares Jews' behavior in three Jewish ghettos—Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok—and shows that Jews' responses to Nazi genocide varied based on their experiences with prewar policies that either promoted or discouraged their integration into non-Jewish society. The book demonstrates that while possible survival strategies were the same for everyone, individuals' choices varied across and within communities. In more cohesive and robust Jewish communities, coping—confronting the danger and trying to survive without leaving—was more organized and successful, while collaboration with the Nazis and attempts to escape the ghetto were minimal. In more heterogeneous Jewish communities, collaboration with the Nazis was more pervasive, while coping was disorganized. In localities with a history of peaceful interethnic relations, evasion was more widespread than in places where interethnic relations were hostile. State repression before World War II, to which local communities were subject, determined the viability of anti-Nazi Jewish resistance. Exploring the critical influences shaping the decisions made by Jews in Nazi-occupied eastern Europe, the book sheds new light on the dynamics of collective violence and genocide.
Ideology, Electoral Incentives, and Inclusion Outcomes across Countries
Authors: Dancygier Rafaela M.
Published: May 2018

This chapter investigates whether two countervailing forces—ideological commitments to equal treatment and the potential electoral leverage of the Muslim vote—can nevertheless lead to representational parity. It examines how parties' commitments to equal treatment and nondiscrimination on the one hand and the potential importance of the Muslim vote on the other correlate with inclusion outcomes across countries. Across the cities and parties in Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, the Left is indeed much more tightly wedded to principles of equal treatment than is the Right, but proactive rhetoric in this domain does not predict inclusiveness. Though, within countries, center-left parties are always more likely to recruit Muslim candidates than are center-right parties, this is not true across countries; parties only feature significant shares of Muslim candidates when local Muslim electorates can deliver substantial votes.
Implications and Conclusions
Authors: Dancygier Rafaela M.
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter reflects on what conditions make it more or less likely that minority political incorporation has significant impacts on intergroup relations, the identities of parties, and the electoral alignments underpinning party systems. The discussion highlights that parties' recruitment strategies can meaningfully affect majority perceptions of the minority, minority views about the political system, and minority social integration. The waning of traditional structures of mobilization—in particular the decline of trade unions—raises the relative attractiveness of minority bloc votes and associated ethnically based campaign styles. Larger, more slow-moving, political and economic forces that shape linkages between the majority electorate and political parties thus also help determine whether and in what ways minorities are brought into the party system. The chapter then posits under what circumstances this incorporation will trigger electoral realignments and, in the process, generate a reordering of European party systems.
The Briar Patch
Authors: Wagner Bryan
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores how, according to the most common interpretation, the briar patch stands as a metaphor for culture, sometimes a subculture sustained by either de facto or de jure segregation. Some critics, including Larry Neal, suggest that the rabbit's escape proves the problem of subjectivity posed in the encounter with the tar baby was never as difficult as other critics have believed. According to Neal, the recognition denied first by the property owner and then by the tar baby is consistently available to the rabbit in the briar patch. The “confusion and absurdity” dramatized when the rabbit believes the tar baby will talk back to him is not an example of the existential quandary of blackness.
Inheritance
Authors: Cutterham Tom
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the role of inheritance in the transmission of privilege and power. However much they reveled in the symbols and the language of republican equality, those who called themselves gentlemen did not give up their sense of superiority. They did not give up their power over slaves or women, nor the status that set them apart from other men. Struggles over how to understand that status and how to recast it in a revolutionary light began as soon as independence was declared, and they wore on long after it was won. As long as some men possessed what others did not, equality would remain a problematic ideal. Moreover, as long as those men desired to keep what they had, and pass it on to their children, there would always be the question of inheritance.
Justice
Authors: Cutterham Tom
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks at how American gentlemen developed arguments against the confiscation of loyalist property after the war was over. The popularity of confiscation policies posed an important challenge to the sanctity of property rights, one of commercial gentility's most fundamental principles. So when gentlemen came to the defense of their former enemies, against the will of ordinary citizens, it was an important moment in the formation of an American ruling class. Cosmopolitan ideas of natural law and universal rights came face to face with the democratic potential of the revolution. The result was a series of compromises and reverses that left gentlemen increasingly frustrated with the power of popular legislatures, especially when confiscation and related policies seemed to threaten the United States' diplomatic and commercial relationships.
The Demagogue and the Sotto Voce
Authors: Costello Bonnie
Published: May 2018

Pronouns are crucial tools for any poet. They create dramatic relation and perspective, but because they are insubstantial they allow for abstraction and inclusion. No poet was quite so preoccupied with pronouns as W. H. Auden, who reflects on them often in his poetry and essays. This chapter considers Auden's relatively neglected poem “Law Like Love,” which incorporates many of the pronominal registers explored throughout this book. In this poem Auden reveals his skepticism about public orators and their absolutes, and turns against the rhetoric of his own most famous public poems, “Spain” and “September 1, 1939.” In “Law Like Love,” Auden finds alternatives for realizing the civic function of poetry.
Private Stuff and Public Spirit
Authors: Costello Bonnie
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks at some of the ways the “we” of love poetry expands to perform a civil or didactic function, and it connects this function to the puzzle of love's number, tense, and grammar, which constitutes the subject matter of many love poems. Plato argued that eros could be a rung on the ladder to other forms of love. Love's number may involve not only addition but also an exponential process, in sublimation “mounting upwards from one to two, and from two to all fair forms.” But a great deal of thinking since has set romantic love at odds, not only with truth and reason, but with social and ethical thinking. Later philosophers saw romantic love as exclusive and private, indifferent or even hostile to the world beyond itself and inscrutable to that world.
Crowds, Publics, Congregations
Authors: Costello Bonnie
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses crowds and poetry. Poets have been both repulsed and fascinated by crowds, particularly in the industrialized city where crowds present a challenge to the ideal of the solitary, autonomous poetic subject. And this debate about the identity, cognition, and force of the crowd has been central to literary representation. For many, the crowd has seemed a unified being, a quantitative phenomenon taking on a qualitative feature as a single entity. Poets express not only revulsion but also attraction as the crowd offers an opportunity for expansion. When perceived as uncountable hordes, inassimilable within a public sphere of face-to-face encounter and I/You dialogue, produce an effect of the numerical sublime, appearing as a force of nature or of the supernatural.
Invitations to the Common
Authors: Costello Bonnie
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the way poetry sometimes makes its reach for universals a dramatic process that involves not only singular “you's” and “I's” but a scale of “we's” and group affiliations. It wants to resonate for unknown readers whose situations are unique but for whom something fundamental in the poem remains true, if differently true, for them. Poetry can keep its inclusive “we” open and flexible, a space of the common. It achieves this by checking narrower configurations and often pressing against the voice of the hegemon; it moves cautiously and in degrees from the particular to the general, testing the impersonal for unconscious personal bias, recognizing many “we's” and frames of communication along the way, and widening or qualifying its scope but also infusing it with broad human emotional concern.
The Future of Us
Authors: Costello Bonnie
Published: May 2018

This chapter argues that recent poetry is catching up with both Auden and Oppen after a long silencing of the civil tongue. American poets are reclaiming a civic voice for their twenty-first-century art and experimenting with old and new ways of saying “we” inclusively. Many contemporary poets want to acknowledge and arouse a feeling not only for the universal or “the common” but for “everybody” in a compressed world, and not just as subject matter but as a physical, economic, social, historical, and political presence. They want urgently to address human disparities, injustices, displacements, indifferences, etc. that have arisen in a hierarchical, corporate, remotely connected but socially divided, and global reality. They seek to reorient us to this urgent social condition at the very level of language, often wrenching us out of the habitual “I” position into more collective orientations.
Control and Catastrophe in Human Affairs
Authors: McNeill William H.
Published: May 2018

CATASTROPHE OBVIOUSLY plays a big role in human affairs, manifesting itself in social relations, profoundly affecting both economics and politics. The historical record, indeed, seems to amount to little else than one catastrophe after another, if we mean by catastrophe some sequence of events that disrupts established routines of life and inflicts suffering or death on many....
Frege’s Discovery of Formal Reasoning
Authors: von Plato Jan
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers Gottlob Frege as the founder of contemporary logic through his little book Begriffsschrift that came out in 1879. The name stands for something like “writing for concepts,” in the sense of a notation, and there is a long subtitle that specifies the notation as “a formula language of pure thinking, modeled upon that of arithmetic.” The actual notation in Frege's book made a rather bizarre impression on many, and no one else ever used it. Luckily he had Bertrand Russell among his few readers; some 25 years after the Begriffsschrift, Russell rewrote Frege's formula language in a style, adopted from Giuseppe Peano, that later evolved into the standard logical and mathematical notation we have today.
The Göttingers
Authors: von Plato Jan
Published: May 2018

This chapter studies how around 1918, when work based on Bertrand Russell began in Göttingen, Russell's axioms with disjunction and negation as primitives were used. By the mid-1920s, David Hilbert and others in Göttingen gave axiomatizations for all the standard connectives separately. The motivation for the connectives was the same as in axiomatic studies in geometry: to separate the role of the basic notions, especially negation. This move proved its worth when the axioms of intuitionistic logic were figured out, as in Arend Heyting (1930). Paul Bernays had in fact found the right axioms already in 1925, as he wrote in a letter to Heyting (found in Troelstra 1990).
Charles Darwin’s Affect Theory
Authors: Ablow Rachel
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers how Charles Darwin's meditations on pain complicate the optimism not just of his own historical moment but of some of the recent affect theory that claims to depend on his work. Specifically, Darwin's use of the idea of pain to ambiguate the relationship between the biological and the cultural, and to interrogate the basic unit of analysis, leads to a strange phenomenology in which it is often difficult to say who or what suffers: a person, a population, a species, or a limb. This chapter suggests the radical revision Darwin offers to any account of the social that naturalizes an autonomous subject as its starting point. It additionally indicates how Darwin's work on the expression of pain might prove useful for a renovated version of affect theory.
The Rise of Anti-Immigration Sentiment and Undocumented Immigration as Explanations for Immigration Policy
Authors: Peters Margaret E.
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines whether anti-immigration sentiment and illegal immigration lead to immigration restrictions. It first considers the evidence for theories based on the macropolitical and macroeconomic conditions of the state, with emphasis on how democratization, growth, war, and state identities affect immigration policy. It then discusses four additional explanations for mass public support for immigration and/or other interest group activity on immigration: the role of workers, the effect of immigrants on the welfare state, nativism, and the impact of immigrants themselves. It also explores whether borders are increasingly restricted while enforcement lags in order to create an undocumented workforce that can easily be exploited. The findings support an interest-group-based argument for immigration policy, with firms as the most important interest group.
Introduction
Authors: Weitzman Steven
Published: May 2018

This book examines what we know or think we know about Jewish origins. It attempts to determine the common origin of the Jews, one that connects all of them into a single people, religion, or community—the very beginning of their collective story. This is the first book to trace the history of the various approaches that have been applied to the question, including genealogy, archaeology, psychology, sociology, linguistics, and genetics. It also considers why ascertaining an origin for the Jews has proved problematic, noting the difficulty of defining what we mean by the Jews and the difficulty of pinpointing what we mean by an origin. Finally, it discusses the politics of the scholarly search for the origin of the Jews and asks whether such a search played a role in anti-Semitism and if it is helping to feed the Israeli–Palestinian conflict today.
Genealogical Bewilderment
Authors: Weitzman Steven
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines genealogy as a method that frames the search for Jewish origins in terms of a research for roots, for distant ancestors. The root is one of the oldest and most pervasive metaphors for origin used today; it implies the existence of something flowing from the root into the trunk and branches—identity, culture, DNA—that connects everything together into an organic whole. The chapter assumes that the Jews are an organic and interconnected whole, a tree with many proliferating branches and stems that grow in different directions but that all arise from a firmly situated root composed of the ancestors from which the Jewish people descend. It considers the inadequacy of genealogy for exploring the origin of the Jews and why genealogical research does not fit well in a postmodern context, arguing that postmodernism is antigenealogy.
Hellenism and Hybridity
Authors: Weitzman Steven
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the theory advanced by the American scholar Shaye Cohen stating that the Greeks played a role in the formation of Judaism, and that Hellenization is the process that created the Jews. In his 1999 book The Beginnings of Jewishness, Cohen argues that it was the Judeans' imitation of Greek culture during the Hellenistic Age that transformed their culture into Judaism. Essential to the idea of the Hellenistic Age as conceived by scholars is the notion of hybridity, symbiosis, or melting together. The chapter considers Cohen's theory as another option for understanding Jewish origins as well as the role of foreigners in the origin stories that scholars tell about the Jews. It also compares Cohen's theory with that of Daniel Boyarin, who claims that Judaism developed into an ethno-religion under the influence of Christianity.
Source Codes
Authors: Weitzman Steven
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines the field of population genetics as an approach to the origin of the Jews. Most historians study the past by focusing on the period of time that can be documented by textual sources, the past 4,000 years or so. In the past few years, a new form of primordialism has emerged that uses DNA and the brain's evolutionary history to reconstruct demographic history, ancient social interaction, and other insights to shed light on where people come from and how they have evolved. The chapter first provides an overview of genetic history and biological approaches to the origin of the Jews before discussing what genetics research has revealed about the ancestry of the Jews, some of the criticisms hurdled against this research, and whether a genetic approach offers a viable alternative to the constructivist approach employed by many contemporary scholars to address the question of Jewish origins.
The Principles of General Relativity
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers what the theory actually achieved and specifically reexamines the meaning of the relativity principle. The question of its meaning was raised by critical observers whose comments led to a partial reinterpretation of general relativity. The German physicist Erich J. Kretschmann argued that the principle of general covariance has no physical content and only constitutes a mathematical requirement. This contention generated an exchange of letters in which Einstein conceded Kretschmann's criticism, but Einstein does not mention Kretschmann's remarks explicitly in his book. The chapter discusses these developments and correlates them with his correspondence with colleagues and with other texts he published during the formative years.
The Genesis of Relativistic Cosmology
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter highlights the background for the emergence of relativistic cosmology. A specific interpretational issue, which is treated in this context, is the role of Ernst Mach's principle and the first exploration of the cosmological consequences of general relativity. Here Einstein's main interlocutor was the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter. But during the years 1916 to 1918, Einstein also exchanged letters with the mathematicians Hermann Weyl and Felix Klein. This correspondence has been referred to as the Einstein–de Sitter–Weyl–Klein debate. This debate not only focused on specific cosmological models but also helped to clarify the meaning of such fundamental issues as coordinates and energy-momentum conservation in the theory. This chapter also discusses the implications of Hubble's discovery.
Space and Time in Pre-relativity Physics
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter begins with an epistemological discussion of space and time and of geometry in relation to Einstein's formulation of relativity theory. It introduces the concept of invariants. These are the only quantities to have an objective significance with respect to a specific geometry. The chapter then introduces the basics of tensor calculus. Tensor formulation of the laws of physics guarantees that they are covariant with respect to transformations, which represent the symmetry of space. The symmetry of space, namely, its isotropy and homogeneity, determines the form of physical laws. Einstein refers to this as “the principle of relativity with respect to direction.” The chapter then demonstrates how this principle is reflected in some of the equations of physics.
The General Theory of Relativity (Continued)
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter shows that in the limit of weak fields and low velocities, the equation of the geodesic line reduces to Newton's equation of motion. It proceeds to derive the gravitational field equation. Next, the chapter uses the gravitational field equation to derive the three effects that served as the first tests of the theory: the bending of light by the gravitational field of the sun, the shift to the red of spectral lines emitted by atoms in a gravitational field (gravitational redshift), and the motion of the perihelion of planet Mercury. After a short remark about expressing Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field, the chapter turns to the “so-called cosmological problem.” Its main theme is the defense of Mach's principle, which states that all inertial phenomena, namely the fictitious forces arising in accelerated reference frames, are caused by all the masses in the universe.
Introductory Remarks
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter offers an introductory commentary into Einstein's first two lectures. Given in Princeton on May 9 and 10, 1921, under the title “Generalities on the Theory of Relativity (Without Using Mathematical Symbols),” the lectures were attended by a large, nonprofessional audience that almost filled the lecture hall. The lectures were delivered in German and a German stenographer took shorthand notes, and they are presented in the next chapter in English for the first time. The chapter briefly discusses the context behind these lectures as well as the contemporary news media reports on both Einstein and the subject of his lectures. It also presents some notes on the changes and translations made to the text in the succeeding chapter.
Generalization of Gravitation Theory
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter attempts to formulate a consistent extension of the theory of general relativity. The starting point of the general theory of relativity is the recognition of the unity of gravitation and inertia (principle of equivalence). From this principle, it follows that the properties of “empty space” were to be represented by a symmetrical tensor expressed in the theory. The principle of equivalence, however, does not give any clue as to what may be the more comprehensive mathematical structure on which to base the treatment of the total field comprising the entire physical reality. As such, this chapter considers the problem of how to find a field structure which is a natural generalization of the symmetrical tensor as well as a system of field equations for this structure which represent a natural generalization of certain equations of pure gravitation.
Relativistic Theory of the Non-symmetric Field
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter attempts to find a measure for the “strength” of a system of field equations, which is determined by the amount of free data consistent with the system. It introduces the infinitesimal displacement field as a necessary remedy in general relativistic theory, as one can no longer form new tensors from a given tensor by simple differentiation and that in such a theory there are much fewer invariant formations. The infinitesimal displacement field replaces the inertial system inasmuch as it makes it possible to compare vectors at infinitesimally close points. After introducing these concepts, the chapter presents a discussion on relativistic field theory.
For the Second Edition
Authors: Gutfreund Hanoch , Renn Jürgen
Published: May 2018

This chapter considers the so-called “cosmologic problem” in greater detail. According to Einstein, the problem can be roughly formulated as: on account of our observations on fixed stars we are sufficiently convinced that the system of fixed stars does not in the main resemble an island which floats in infinite empty space, and that there does not exist anything like a center of gravity of the total amount of existing matter. Rather, we feel urged toward the conviction that there exists an average density of matter in space which differs from zero. Hence, the chapter considers whether or not this hypothesis, which is suggested by experience, can be reconciled with the general theory of relativity.
Poland, Palestine, and the Politics of Belonging
Authors: Heller Daniel Kupfert
Published: May 2018

This chapter traces Betar's complex relationship to Polish nationalism from the diverse and often conflicting vantage points of Betar's members, leaders, and Polish government officials. Betar's efforts to link Zionism with Polish nationalism became a regular feature of their activities in the early 1930s. At the very moment that Betar's leaders claimed to perform a distinct national identity, they modeled their ceremonies on Polish patriotic rituals, called for their members to “act Polish,” and attempted to include Polish government officials as both observers and participants in their celebrations. The chapter then explores the dynamics and paradoxes of acculturation for young Jews coming of age in interwar Poland, as well as the complex factors at play when government officials attempted to determine the extent to which young Jews and other minorities could be integrated into the new Polish state.
Taming the Shtetl
Authors: Heller Daniel Kupfert
Published: May 2018

This chapter looks at the efforts of Betar's leaders in Warsaw to capture the hearts and minds of Jewish youth in provincial towns across central and eastern Poland. Armed with long-standing stereotypes about shtetl life, Betar leaders were certain that bringing “modernity” and “progress” to these towns would mobilize provincial youth for the Zionist cause. The chapter studies the YIVO (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut) autobiography collection, as well as correspondence between Betar's headquarters in Warsaw and its small-town outposts, to reveal the tensions that arose between these urban activists and the young Jews they sought to transform. Providing a vivid account of Jewish life in small towns across interwar Poland, it exposes the vast gap between the ideological vision of Betar's leaders and the political beliefs and experiences of its members.
Epilogue
Authors: Heller Daniel Kupfert
Published: May 2018

This epilogue focuses on the Betar youth movement during the Holocaust. The flight of Betar's leaders from Warsaw was far from exceptional. With rumors circulating that German troops were executing prominent Polish and Jewish political activists, many leaders of Jewish youth movements were on the run. Some Betar leaders who arrived in Mandate Palestine as wartime refugees continued to invoke legends of Polish national liberation to inspire their followers. As they had done in the past, they claimed that Polish and Jewish nationalists shared parallel fates: just as Catholic Poles struggled to overthrow the foreign rule of Nazis in Poland, so too were Zionists in Palestine fighting to cast off the yoke of the British Empire. Meanwhile, many Betar members made good on their movement's pledges to defend the Polish state. Those who survived the Holocaust sought to ensure that their resistance activity against Nazi rule was on public record.
Medical Entrepreneurs
Authors: Song Priscilla
Published: May 2018

This chapter examines how changes in the political economy of health care have encouraged enterprising Chinese clinicians to experiment with lucrative biomedical interventions for foreign patients. It follows the career trajectory of New Century Hospital's lead neurosurgeon, Chinese neurosurgeon Dr. Huang Hongyun, and contrasts his experiences with those of other clinicians in order to illustrate the ethnographic contours of medical entrepreneurialism in urban China. Recounting their struggles to balance individual interests, professional ethics, and global ambitions, it demonstrates how the pursuit of high-tech therapies by medical entrepreneurs is not just about making money but also about professional ambitions and nationalistic pride—a cultural phenomenon framed as technonationalism.