bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nationalism, Foreign Policy Assertiveness, and Chinese Policy towards the United Nations
Authors: Rudd Kevin
Published: September 2024

This chapter examines the observations of senior foreign diplomats working at the United Nations regarding the real world of multilateral diplomacy during the first decade of Xi Jinping’s leadership. It focuses on the notions of nationalism, foreign policy assertiveness, and Chinese policy towards a range of UN instruments and institutions. China’s international posture on universal human rights norms has become increasingly assertive during the Xi Jinping period. The chapter considers China’s expanding role in drafting UN Security Council resolutions, its aggressive pursuit of UN candidatures, and the increasing placement of Chinese personnel within the UN system. Xi’s global meta-narrative of the community of common destiny has also been the subject of intense Chinese diplomacy to incorporate it into the normative language of the UN system. The chapter concludes that China’s changed posture across the UN system is a direct articulation of China’s changed nationalist and foreign policy narrative at home. This is reinforced by an ideological conclusion, within the framework of Marxist dialectical analysis, that the ‘scientific’ and ‘objective’ forces of history which propel humanity towards socialism are now working in China’s favour and driving the CCP’s efforts to redesign the international system.
Historical linguistics of the languages of Sumatra, Java, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and Moken-Moklen
Authors: Adelaar Alexander
Published: September 2024

This chapter traces the linguistic history of the languages of Sumatra, Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands, including the languages of the Barrier islands off Sumatra’s west coast, and Moken and Moklen (spoken in the Mergui Archipelago on the border between Thailand and Burma). It gives an overview of the various subgrouping hypotheses that have been proposed for these Malayo-Polynesian languages and is concerned with the principles on which these are based. Among others, it critically evaluates the use of *tuzuq ‘seven’ as evidence for a Greater North Borneo subgroup, and the use of PMP *j as evidence for a Sumatran subgroup.
Non-areal contact
Authors: Hoogervorst Tom
Published: September 2024

This chapter investigates non-areal contact between Malayo-Polynesian languages from Southeast Asia and Madagascar (MPSEA) and languages from other families found in four regions: South Asia, West Asia, East Asia, and Europe. It considers lexical borrowing, typological convergence, and influence through language planning policies. Malay was the main vector through which South Asian and West Asian loanwords entered other MPSEA languages. In the opposite direction, Malay also lent the largest number of borrowings to non-Austronesian languages, comprising both inherited and borrowed words. In general, lexical influence from MPSEA languages on the languages of South Asia, West Asia, East Asia, and Europe chiefly pertained to regionally specific products, concepts, and inventions. Meanwhile, prestigious languages such as Sanskrit and Arabic were responsible for the introduction of several abstract concepts into Malay and Javanese, whereas the Philippine languages have mostly drawn from Spanish and English for this purpose, Tetun from Portuguese, and Malagasy from French and English. These source languages continue to inspire language users, particularly in the realm of post-independence language engineering.
Sama-Bajaw languages
Authors: Kaufman Daniel
Published: September 2024

The Sama-Bajaw language family is remarkable for its discontiguous distribution across a wide swath of maritime southeast Asia as well as the nomadic lifestyle of its constituent communities, many of whom spend the majority of their lives at sea or in villages constructed on stilts above water. Despite their scattered distribution, the Sama-Bajaw languages clearly display a phylogenetic unity suggesting descent from a single language and are now thought to have originated in Borneo. This chapter offers a typological overview for the described Sama-Bajaw languages covering all areas of their grammar, with a focus on their unique innovations as well as features adopted from neighbouring languages. Because the Sama-Bajaw peoples are so widely dispersed and have maintained commercial and social relations with various sedentary outsiders for centuries, their languages are a rich source for the study of linguistic contact in the Austronesian world. The chapter discusses aspects of contact with special regard to morphosyntax and urges further scholarship in this area.
Languages of Java
Authors: Klok Jozina Vander
Published: September 2024

This chapter discusses key linguistic features of the major indigenous languages and varieties spoken on the island of Java, Indonesia, including Javanese, Madurese, Sundanese, Baduy, Banyumas, Osing, Cirebon, Banten, and Tengger, which together comprise for close to 60% of the speaker population of Indonesia. The use of speech levels—stemming historically from Javanese—characterize the larger languages, although their present-day use indicates a change in progress which no longer emphasizes the past social hierarchy. The modern languages of Java are characterized typologically by SVO default word order, no case marking, a reduced number of voice marking distinctions, and applicativization. Their phonemic vowel and consonant inventories are considered larger within Austronesian, and typically have vowel harmony, homorganic nasal substitution, and no lexical stress. Noteworthy specific phonological features include gemination in Madurese, progressive nasalization in Sundanese, tense vs. lax stops in Javanese, and patalization and diphthongization in Osing. Important morphological features of the languages of Java include reduplication across all grammatical categories and multifunctional affixes, while variation is found across language varieties in terms of their synthetic-analytic characterization. These languages also have rich number of tense, aspect, modality/evidentiality adverbs or auxiliaries, which optionally modify the predicate, and include phasal polarity. Prominent morphosyntactic features include subject-only restriction for relativization or cleft constructions (lifted in some varieties), and various combinatorial strategies to form polar questions, including discourse particles, word order variation, and intonation.
Languages of central Maluku
Authors: Grimes Charles E.
Published: September 2024

Around 61 Austronesian languages in geographical central Maluku are severely under-documented with less than a handful of grammars and phonologies available, along with a few topic-specific papers. Many languages have become extinct or severely endangered in the past 150 years, some as a consequence of colonial-era actions. This chapter surveys some phonological inventories and processes, along with grammatical issues such as active/non-active orientation in the verbs, split-S systems, subjecthood, human/non-human marking in pronominal systems, predicative versus attributive marking on verbs, possession and the “reverse genitive”, pre-verbal versus clause-final negation, and directional systems. The impact on SVO typologies from contact-induced change with SOV languages is also addressed briefly, something which sets the central Maluku languages apart from Austronesian languages to the west.
The languages of Halmahera and West New Guinea
Authors: Gasser Emily , Arnold Laura , Kamholz David
Published: September 2024

This chapter provides the first typological overview of the Austronesian languages spoken in Halmahera, Raja Ampat, and west New Guinea; together, the majority of these languages comprise the South Halmahera-West New Guinea (SHWNG) subbranch. The chapter covers topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. Basic constituent order is SVO in all languages, and most adpositions are prepositional; this generally head-initial profile, however, combines with widespread clause-final negation and aspect marking. Phonological inventories are generally straightforward (typically 10-15 consonants and 5-7 vowels). Stress tends to be penultimate, and several SHWNG languages have tone. Phonotactics are variable across the region: some languages have very simple syllable structure, while in others lengthy and unusual clusters are permitted. Noun phrases are head-initial, except for possessor NPs which precede the head. Most languages have an alienability distinction in possessive constructions. The languages are isolating to lightly agglutinating; productive inflectional morphology marking verbal subjects and possessors is common. True passive constructions are rare; several languages have productive applicative and/or causative morphology. Demonstrative systems generally make a three-way spatial contrast, and may be highly elaborated with directional demonstratives. Verb serialization is common, marking functions such as manner, cause-effect, direction of transfer, and purposive motion. The languages have either decimal or quinary-decimal numeral systems, with the numbers six through nine formed by addition. A repeating theme throughout this chapter is the role that contact with neighbouring non-Austronesian languages has played in the development of several features characteristic of the region.
Segment inventories
Authors: Blevins Juliette
Published: September 2024

This chapter examines the segmental inventories of the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia and Madagascar (not including the South Halmahera-West New Guinea languages) with an eye towards explaining recurrent and rare patterns of contrast. A central focus is potential forces that have shaped the consonant and vowel inventories of these Western Austronesian languages, including: preferences for symmetry, economy and unmarked sounds; systems of contrast that evolve on the basis of local phonetic properties, modulated by contact; and the inherent strength and constancy of certain features in contrast to others that are more liable to change. More generally, this study suggessts how typological features of these Malayo- Polynesian segmental phonologies illuminate our understanding of general phonological typology, and suggest explanations for skewed typological distributions.
Reduplication
Authors: Mattes Veronika , Schwaiger Thomas
Published: September 2024

The chapter gives an overview of reduplication in the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia. The morphological process in question is discussed for this geographical group in terms of its forms (full versus partial, with or without fixed segments, with or without accompanying affixation, potential phonological processes involved) and its meanings and functions (plurality, intensity, diminution, other intra-category meaning changes, word-class derivation, pragmatic uses). Furthermore, cases of lexical reduplication (inherently reduplicative word forms lacking an unreduplicated counterpart) are discussed, as well as several proposals for the historical development of reduplication in the languages under scrutiny. Finally, some typological generalizations are presented.
Adnominal possession
Authors: Schapper Antoinette , McConvell William
Published: September 2024

This chapter studies the structural characteristics of adnominal possessive constructions in the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Southeast Asia (MPSEA). It looks into the features of basic and marked possessive patterns to highlight the variable features of MPSEA languages’ possessive constructions. Discussions have been raised regards the possessive constructions in Oceanic languages and geographical patterns among Austronesian possessive constructions. The chapter then explores the aspects of adnominal possessor constructions: order of possessor and possessum, locus and marking of possessor, patterns of differential possessive marking, and pragmatic variation in possessive constructions. It considers how geographical skewings could affect some types of differential possessive markings.
Single-Issue Legislatures
Authors: Guerrero Alexander
Published: September 2024

This chapter considers the use of single-issue legislative bodies, rather than generalist legislatures. To make the use of randomly selected citizens attractive—at least if they are the heart of the legislative system—they should serve on single-issue legislative bodies, rather than generalist ones. But that is a distinct innovation, a significant and largely unexplored departure from extant political systems. The chapter begins by discussing the purported advantages of using single-issue legislative bodies, including the reduction of the epistemic burden on representatives and the ability to focus on issues where there is potential agreement. It then considers questions that might naturally arise: if there are these advantages, why don’t we have single-issue legislative bodies with elected members? Why are elected legislatures all generalist legislatures? Could we secure the benefits of single-issue legislative bodies without embracing the random selection component? The chapter concludes by considering distinctive concerns about single-issue legislative bodies, including the worry that only generalist legislatures can avoid fragmentation and synchronic and diachronic incoherence in policymaking, and the related worry that single-issue legislatures will be mired in problems of issue overlap and jurisdictional questions. In considering these worries, the chapter examines the role of political party structure, vote trading and log-rolling, and other mechanisms of cross-issue organization and planning that are central to generalist legislative structures, considering how well these mechanisms function to achieve synchronic and diachronic coherence with elected generalist legislatures, and whether these or other mechanisms might help lottocratic single-issue legislative with respect to these concerns.
Introduction
Authors: Kowol Kit
Published: September 2024

The chapter introduces the five main traditions of wartime Conservatism: industrial paternalist, ruralist, individualist, constructive imperialist, and Tory progressive. Key individuals are also discussed, including: the industrialist Lord McGowan, the historian Arthur Bryant, the publisher Ernest Benn, and the Conservative politicians Leo Amery MP and R. A. Butler MP. Given the proliferation of their views in books, journals, the press, and parliament the chapter asks why their ideas and existence are not better known? The answer given is that it is due to the dominant interpretation of the conflict as a ‘People’s War’ that is focussed on the rise of the Left, the victory of the Labour Party in 1945, and the welfare state. By contrast, the introduction locates the book among works that are starting to challenge this ‘People’s War’ interpretation by exploring the imperial dimension of the war, the links between domestic and international politics, and the development of Britain’s warfare state.
The Unification of Algebra and Geometry: Glimpses of Quantum Spin
Authors: Satija Indubala I.
Published: September 2024

This is a historical tour of two centuries of the golden age of mathematics starting with the discovery of complex numbers in cubic equation and revolving around rotations where we see glimpses of spin in Rodrigues’s product formula and in Hamilton’s quaternions. It takes us to the fascinating topic of the geometric algebra with Grassmann, Clifford and then Hestenes. This chapter describes the beginning of the modern era of spinors as discovered by Cartan along with prehistoric spinors hidden in Pythagorean triplets.
“Found Beautiful”—the Dirac Equation
Authors: Satija Indubala I.
Published: September 2024

This chapter tells the magic of the most beautiful equation in physics—namely the Dirac equation that predicted spin and antiparticles and guided physicists to the ultimate theory of quantum physics—the quantum field theory, all emerging by wedding relativity and quantum mechanics. The theory predicted the electron g-factor of 2—agreeing with the experimentally known value at that time and establishing the importance of the fine-structure constant in quantum physics. Here is a discussion of spacetime algebra where Hestenes addresses the question of what exactly the quantum spin is and how it generates magnetic moment that is proportional to the spin. Answers may be lurking in de Broglie’s proposal of an electron possessing an internal clock and the concept of Zitterbewegung that provides a window to the particle’s substructure in quantum mechanics.
Weyl and Majorana Fermions, “Närrisch” Neutrino, and the Revelation of Parity Violation
Authors: Satija Indubala I.
Published: September 2024

Weyl and Majorana fermions, that have mesmerized the particle physicists and also now the condensed matter physicists, were predicted by the exploration of the Dirac equation as physicists capitalize on the art of mathematizing to predict what kinds of particles inhabit this world. The tale of these particles is linked with the neutrino, an elusive particle that have had physicists chasing it all sort of weird places and nailing down its identity remains one of the open puzzles in physics. This chapter tells the story of the discovery of parity violation that shocked physicists during the quantum revolution. It introduces the vibrant field of quasiparticles as, following the discovery of magnons and phonons, physicists are hunting for Weyl and Majorana fermions in condensed matter systems.
Spin-Statistics and the Stability of the Universe
Authors: Satija Indubala I.
Published: September 2024

This chapter describes spin-statistics theorem showcasing its importance in the stability of the Universe and in its explaining magnetism and dwells on the question of why there is no simple explanation that half-integer spin particles obey Pauli exclusion principle while the integer spin particles do not. There is a discussion of the bunching-antibunching of quantum particles known as the Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) effect. Along with its inspiring history, this chapter also describes modern application of HBT in the ultracold atomic physics of the Bose–Einstein condensate. The chapter introduces anyons—particles with arbitrary spin that breaks fermion-boson dichotomy in two dimensions. The years 1925 and 1926 were turning points in the history of physics. In 1924, we had no quantum theory—that is, there was nothing that could substitute Newton’s equations to describe quantum systems.
Spin, Spinor, and the Geometric Phase
Authors: Satija Indubala I.
Published: September 2024

Using spin-1/2 models, this chapter discusses geometric phases, also known as Berry phases, where a system fails to return to its starting state in a cyclic process—a phenomenon known as “anholonomy.” The mathematical framework underlying the geometric phases leads to magnetic monopoles residing in an abstract parameter space. The Berry phases provide a common mathematic theme to unite a diverse class of problems and lead to the notion of topological quantum numbers—the Chern numbers that describe exotic new states of matter known as topological insulators. Readers are introduced to neutron interferometry where geometric phases can be measured including the sign change in the wave function after a 360-degree rotation.
The Torts Scholar as Disaggregator
Authors: Bernstein Anita
Published: September 2024

This chapter celebrates Jane Stapleton’s contributions to tort theory as disaggregation. Disaggregation as a perspective or method locates and defends diversity, fragmentation, and multiplicity in its object of attention. Stapleton herself has identified a disaggregation theme in her work: her phrase Against Grand Theories, placed at the centre of her Three Essays on Torts (OUP 2021), can be read as saying For Disunity. This chapter names other examples of disaggregation in Stapleton’s writing. Insurance, ‘common sense’, restating, and comparative law as a source of unification, Stapleton has argued, all fail to unite the disparate primary materials that populate tort. This field of law, in our honouree’s eyes, is simultaneously heterogeneous and coherent.
Time to Cut Ties: Reforming the Secondary Victim ‘Control Mechanisms’ in Pure Psychiatric Injury
Authors: Goold Imogen , Kelly Catherine
Published: September 2024

Twenty years ago, Jane Stapleton cut right to the heart of what is wrong with the law’s approach to pure psychiatric injury claims by secondary victims when she said, ‘the area of nervous shock is … the area where the silliest rules now exist and where criticism is almost universal’. Two decades later, her words ring just as true. Over that period, the ‘control mechanisms’ on such claims ossified into rigid rules that draw hard, but incoherent, lines between which claims will succeed and fail. Incrementalism has led the law away from the early approach to such claims, wherein the courts drew on the fundamental logic of reasonable foreseeability in determining who might claim for the harm caused by seeing the dreadful impact of another’s negligence. This chapter argues in favour of fundamental reform of the control mechanisms for secondary victim claims for negligently induced psychiatric injury to address these criticisms.
Causation at a Tipping Point: Material Contribution and the ‘Worse Off’ Question
Authors: Turton Gemma
Published: September 2024

In its 2021 decision the UK Supreme Court in Financial Conduct Authority v Arch Insurance (UK) Ltd recognised in an insurance context that a factor that is neither necessary nor sufficient for an outcome may still be a factual cause of that outcome. This ought also to be recognised in the negligence context and would bring clarity to the law on ‘material contribution to harm’ when addressed in an appropriate case. Liability in negligence turns on a wider range of considerations than simply factual causation, and the question of whether the claimant has been made worse off as a result of some wrongdoing ought to be addressed at the ‘scope of liability’ stage. Although this ‘worse off’ question involves application of a but-for test of necessity, the relevant considerations can be more clearly articulated if the factual causation inquiry has recognised all causes including those that were neither necessary nor sufficient.
Compensation as ‘Conditional Licence’ for Harmful Activities: An Exploration
Authors: Morgan Jonathan
Published: September 2024

This chapter explores the immanent doctrine through which the law grants conditional permission to carry out harmful yet beneficial activities: they are permitted provided parties carrying them out compensate all those who suffer harm. Arguably this idea underlies leading cases including Rylands v Fletcher, Vincent v Lake Erie, and Burmah Oil v Lord Advocate. But it is controversial along many vectors. Can liability for parties acting entirely properly be justified? Why should the remedies be limited to compensation (i.e. not injunctions), when serious harm is inevitable or ongoing? Is the liability a sanction (fine) or a price (tax)? Is the doctrine’s justification moral, or instrumental/regulatory? Can it be generalised or is it exceptional (or anomalous)? And who decides: legislators or courts?
Damage as an Essential Element in the Economic Torts
Authors: Murphy John
Published: September 2024

It is generally assumed that the economic torts are a family of actions concerned to protect purely financial interests bound up with a claimant’s trade, business or livelihood. This chapter seeks to show that such an assumption is by no means true even though it fair to say that they are most commonly used in connection with economic setbacks inflicted on a claimant by a defendant. It reveals that the decided cases, contrary to the common misconception, actually supply hard evidence of these torts being successfully invoked in connection with a wide-range of non-financial interests (such as our interests in bodily integrity, reputation, psychic integrity and decision-making autonomy). The chapter also explains how, although damage must always be shown before a successful claim can be made in any of these torts, it is not appropriate to treat the damage requirement as an element of the tort of deceit in cases of two-party intimidation. It is argued that, in the case of those torts, the damage requirement is better seen as a condition of actionability because although the courts will recognise the commission of a wrong where the claimant suffers no tangible loss, they will stop short of allowing the claimant to sue unless actual damage can be shown.
A World of Private Higher Education
Authors: Levy Daniel C.
Published: September 2024

Higher education—long and overwhelmingly seen outside the US as an intrinsically public sector function with limited private presence—has become a firmly dual-sector reality globally. Indeed, a third of the world’s now more than 200 million higher education enrolments are in private institutions, a share higher than in the US. Against this new background, we respond to the historically abiding question of how social functions are sectorally distributed and engaged, exploring both private–public (intersectoral) and private–private (intrasectoral) distinctiveness. We discover rich ‘double distinctiveness’ wherein various parts of the private sector ‘differ differently’ from the public sector. Guided and organized by these sectoral concepts, accumulated empirical findings—often approaching what provocatively might be called private higher education ‘laws’—significantly enhance understanding of the extensive, varied, rapidly changing, and otherwise often vexing terrain under study. The study’s treatment of how and why private higher education both thrives and fails to thrive is truly global, even as it highlights salient regional characteristics. Likewise, the account provides the historical sweep vital to understanding contemporary realities. Complementing its qualitative thrust, the book mines an unprecedented quantitative profile of the world’s private and public higher education—drawing heavily on a new, massive, global enrolment dataset.
Size and Shape
Authors: Levy Daniel C.
Published: September 2024

The first part of Chapter 2 provides an empirical analysis of the world’s PHE, including its historical growth and present dimensions. The dataset introduced is the most comprehensive ever on private–public enrolment, allowing us to discover national, cross-national, sub-regional, and regional patterns. Analysis reveals the simultaneous road to near ubiquity in PHE presence by country and yet the heavy weight of global PHE concentrated in certain large countries. At the regional level, Asia and Latin are the global giants in total and proportional private share, quite surpassing longstanding US numerical leadership, and principally driving the generalized shift of PHE (even more than of higher education overall) from the developed to developing world. The second part of Chapter 2 provides a set of qualitative regional portraits, assessing forces producing contemporary regional and sometimes sub-regional patterns. These portraits should give a concrete view of PHE within its broader higher education and societal contexts. Along with the chapter’s quantitative portrait, the regional ones thus provide a factual geographical layering upon which the conceptual analyses of subsequent chapters can draw.
The Colossus of Rhodes
Authors: Badoud Nathan
Published: September 2024

The Colossus of Rhodes is both the most famous and the least well-known monument of ancient Greece. Numbered among the Seven Wonders of the World, this bronze statue of the god Helios, 34 m in height, was created by the sculptor Chares of Lindos between the years 295 and 283 bc, only to be destroyed by an earthquake in 227 bc. The legends that have spread after its collapse seem so strange and contradictory that, from an archaeological point of view, it has become a minor and almost negligible object, which the best specialists of Greek sculpture hardly mention. This book is the first to propose a comprehensive approach to the Colossus. It envisages the statue in its religious, political, and topographical contexts. It explores its function, its technique, its appearance, its meaning, and its location. It reconsiders the beginnings of the Hellenistic world, marked by the emergence of Rhodes as an imperial power, embodied by the Colossus.
Regulation of Public Life I Parliament
Authors: Nicholls Colin , Bacarese Alan , Maton James , Scott Rachel , Hatchard John
Published: September 2024

This chapter sets out the Seven Principles of Public Life, the work of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Committee on Standards and Privileges, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Legislation and regulations governing the conduct of members of parliament, including: the revised MPs’, Lords’, and Ministerial Codes of Conduct, and Guides to the Codes, including the registration and declaration of financial interests; expenses; lobbying, including The Transparency of Lobbying, and their enforcement, including the Reform of the House of Lords Act 2014 and the Recall of MPs Act 2015.
The Supreme Court of the US and the Liberal Script
Authors: Benson Robert E.
Published: September 2024

This chapter explores the US Supreme Court’s historical and contemporary engagement with the liberal script—principles underscoring individual freedom, the rule of law, and self-determination. The chapter argues that the Court, pivotal in interpreting the semicodified US constitution, has both upheld and contested the liberal script across its jurisprudential history. Through key rulings, it has navigated societal fissures, sometimes affirming liberal values, while at others, under external pressures or internal contestations, veering from these ideals, as epitomized in the Court’s more recent roll back of voting rights. As the Court faces mounting challenges amid a polarized political landscape, its ability to uphold the liberal script while adapting to evolving societal norms, remains central to preserving the integrity of American democracy.
Theatre as a Barometer of Contestation
Authors: Parolin Peter
Published: September 2024

This chapter considers the 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar in New York City to examine the arts as a site of contestations to the liberal script. The production featured a Donald Trump–like Julius Caesar, whose assassination in the third act of the play caused Trump supporters and right-wing activists to protest the production. The protest included conventional tactics like pressure for corporate disinvestment but also threats of violence to theatres across the country. The terms of the protest show a high level of intolerance for the arts as a venue for political and social critique as well as an unwillingness to express social and political disagreement within the parameters sanctioned by the liberal script.
The Public’s Commitment toward US Leadership of the Liberal International Order
Authors: Anderson Stephanie B , Garrison Jean A
Published: September 2024

This chapter addresses whether the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 signaled a sea change among the public toward US leadership in the world and the liberal international order. It compares Trump’s foreign policy orientation with others throughout American history to distinguish whether and how it breaks from tradition. Next, the chapter analyses how public opinion toward the liberal international order has changed over the past 50 years. Finding the public opinion surprisingly stable, the discussion turns to the relationship between public opinion and actual policy formation. The chapter concludes that public attitudes will remain supportive of the LIO in the near and midterm, although both demographic changes and growing internal contestations may affect long-term support.
The Cosmopolitan Interests
Authors: Lopes Dominic McIver
Published: September 2024

Aesthetic injustice involves such harms to people in their aesthetic capacities as subvert cosmopolitan interests in the value diversity and social autonomy of aesthetic cultures. This chapter characterizes the interests as justice-relevant. The interest in value diversity is an interest in there being diverse aesthetic cultures. The interest in social autonomy is an interest in the values constitutive of aesthetic cultures being determined by cultural insiders. Given aesthetic value pluralism, the potential of aesthetic cultures to foster respect, and the nature of conflict, aesthetic cultures are not inherently sites of conflict. Just social arrangements include policies to avoid intercultural conflict.
Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Bohland James R. , Rechkemmer Andreas , Rogers Peter
Published: September 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is omnipresent in situations where deep learning algorithms and big data can expedite actions required to resolve complex and potentially harmful events. Thus, it is not surprising that AI has become an important tool in disaster management. The applications and contexts in which AI is used across disaster management stages are reviewed and critiqued in this chapter. Particular attention is given to understanding the ethical, technical, and legal issues that constrain wider application of AI now and in the future. Disasters are contextual and spatially bound; consequently, they require an understanding and appreciation of cultural and local constraints to manage what can be a chaotic situation. Understanding how to align these constraints with the learning paradigms and analytical frameworks of AI is critical in the application of AI across all stages of the disaster management cycle. Misalignments create errors, erode trust, and limit the effectiveness of AI, but can be minimized by using development approaches that involve both AI developers and disaster management practitioners and establishing common standards of evaluation in AI deployment. Until a higher level of trust is achieved, the future of AI will be limited to narrow problem-solving, rather than modeling the complex interdependencies that occur across disaster stages to more effectively manage future events.
Beyond the “First Commandment”
Authors: Goren Seth
Published: September 2024

Judaism’s approach to procreation and parenting is firmly rooted in the “First Commandment” to “be fruitful and multiply” and extends into specific guidance on how to raise children, whether one’s own descendants or those of the community. Moreover, Jewish tradition has engaged these concepts with creativity and innovation, cultivating new approaches to ongoing questions and responding to modern challenges and uncertainties with diverse solutions. For these reasons, Jewish sources on these topics reflect the places, times, and social contexts of their authors to present varied and often contradictory perspectives on how Jews engage with parenting, procreation, continuity, adoption, and guardianship.
Parents and Children in the Qur’an and Premodern Islamic Jurisprudence
Authors: Delgado Janan , Ibrahim Celene
Published: September 2024

This chapter surveys parent-child relationships in the Qur’an and probes select issues related to child custody (ḥaḍāna) in premodern Muslim jurisprudence. The Qur’an stipulates several ethical imperatives concerning care of children as well as children’s behavior toward parents; moreover, relationships between parents and children play a prominent role in the Qur’an’s didactic narratives. We also survey how issues related to child custody in the Islamic legal tradition are evidence of a delicate attempt by Muslim legal scholars to balance the rights and duties of mothers and fathers and parents and their children. We explore gender dynamics in parent-child relationships in the Qur’an as well as in child custody and guardianship in premodern Islamic legal theory.
Pregnancy and Piety
Authors: Teman Elly , Ivry Tsipy
Published: September 2024

In this anthropological study we explore the attitudes, experiences and decisions of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish women regarding prenatal diagnosis and testing (PND). The analysis is based on 49 in-depth interviews with Haredi mothers in Israel and the United States from a variety of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. We look at the way our interviewees employed faith-based concepts in explaining their decisions regarding PND, including faith, certainty, obligatory effort, and tests of faith. We suggest that the women’s negotiations of PND can be conceptualized as a form of “situated ethics” that may be viewed as a gendered folk interpretation and vernacular religious application of Jewish ethics.
Abortion in the Jewish Tradition of Religious Humanism
Authors: Zohar Noam
Published: September 2024

This chapter seeks to examine and integrate the diverse positions on abortion in the Jewish tradition by focusing on its underlying value perspective of religious humanism: human beings are created in the Divine Image. Arguing that literary and homiletic materials of aggadah are too ambiguous for normative guidance, the discussion here focuses on halakhah—the Jewish tradition of normative discourse. The fundamental Biblical passage is the law in Exodus regarding the causing of miscarriage, which clearly does not regard feticide as murder. Departing from the text’s plain meaning, Hellenistic and some other Jews regarded a fully formed fetus as embodying the Divine Image. The rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, however, held that although there is a religious duty to promote the Divine Image through procreation, only a born infant is a person (nefesh) commanding full respect for its life. This has left room for disparate medieval and contemporary positions regarding the permissibility of abortion.
Talk Less
Authors: Blanchard Kathryn D.
Published: September 2024

Disagreements over abortion do not occur only between Christians and non-Christians, or between Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians. The question is divisive even among Protestants themselves. Protestants ostensibly agree on the centrality of Biblical Scripture for ethics, but Scripture’s meaning has never been self-evident. Other factors—namely tradition, reason, and experience—condition our readings. After decades of getting no closer to theological agreement, and in the wake of the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade, perhaps it is time for Protestants to take a break from talking about abortion as such. Instead, we should focus our limited time and energy on creating systemic conditions for reproductive justice and engaging in concrete practices of hospitality and neighbor love.
Public Opinion and Attitudes toward Abortion
Authors: Jelen Ted G.
Published: September 2024

This article summarizes empirical research concerning attitudes associated with beliefs about the acceptability of abortion among ordinary citizens across religious traditions. Although the bases of religious teaching on abortion vary across major religious traditions, the specific bases on which laypeople come to support or oppose legal abortion are remarkably similar. For virtually all religious traditions, the strongest predictors of abortion attitudes are respondent beliefs about non-marital sex. About half as important as attitudes toward sexual morality are attitudes about the sanctity of human life. By contrast, attitudes toward socially appropriate gender roles, and toward gender equality, are much weaker predictors of citizen beliefs about abortion.
Evangelical Perspectives on Prenatal Testing
Authors: Comstock Cunningham Paige
Published: September 2024

Evangelical Protestant attitudes about prenatal diagnosis, including pre-implantation genetic testing, are guided by beliefs about procreation, the status of the unborn child, the cultural mandate, the commandment to love one’s neighbor, the sovereignty and Providence of God, and the meaning of suffering in the context of infertility or disability. These are understood in the broader context of an evangelical theology of marriage, family, procreation, and children. An evangelical theological anthropology rejects the potential for instrumentalizing children, rather than welcoming them as a gift from God. Broader societal concerns include potential eugenic consequences and discrimination against persons with disabilities. While the practices of evangelical Protestants regarding prenatal testing are not well studied, their practical support for pregnant women, disabled persons, and their families, and their embrace of adoption suggest behaviors that align with stated beliefs.
Labour Market Dynamics in Zambia
Authors: Musondela Best , Siakalima Daniel , Wamundila Sitali , Chompolola Abson , Nkhowani Jessie , Phiri Daphne
Published: September 2024

The government of the Republic of Zambia over the years has impacted the labour market through the formulation and development of policies and strategies that have fostered job creation. The extent to which these policies and strategies have impacted the labour market is the focus of this chapter. The chapter reveals, among other things, that Zambia has a fast-growing population. However, the labour market trends do not reflect a proportionate growth in the key labour market indicators namely population, labour force, and employment. The country still faces inadequate jobs and the employment sector is dominated by informal employment. Unemployment and underemployment still remain the biggest challenges in the labour market. In view of this, the chapter recommends the need to institute strategic and policy measures that facilitate long-term planning for exploitation and utilization of natural resources in order to promote job creation.
Social Policy and Social Development in Zambia
Authors: Sambo Cleopas Gabriel , Michelo Stanfield , Masumbu Gibson
Published: September 2024

This chapter discusses the evolution of social policy in Zambia and demonstrates the various influences which have shaped both its form and content. It shows that the concept of social policy has in the recent ten years begun to capture practices and ideas previously conceptualized as social development practice in Zambian national policy discourses. Although this conceptual turn is pronounced, much of the ideas and practices remain the same—a dominance of social assistance programming characterized by safety-net-type interventions. The chapter argues a path dependency in which electoral politics, economic considerations, and global policy ideas remain the major determinants of policy reform. Particularly, it demonstrates that initial ideas and practices of social policy in Zambia represented imaginings of universalist provision emphasizing citizen entitlement; however, the turn to multiparty electoral politics in the 1990s, which coincided with downward economic trends, has led Zambian social policy to be dominated by social assistance programming even though attempts have been made to strengthen other dimensions such as insurance-based provision in the area of health over the past five years. This turn has also coincided with increased involvement of international actors in domestic policymaking. These contours, we argue, are best interpreted as pragmatic attempts to dismantle enduring levels of chronic poverty but within a global neoliberal architecture and to limited effect.
The Manufacturing Sector in Zambia
Authors: Mulenga James , Mulenga Mulenga C.
Published: September 2024

The manufacturing sector plays an important role in economic growth and employment creation in Zambia. This chapter broadly focuses on the sector’s performance under the import substitution industrialization strategy (ISI) and the export-oriented industrialization strategy. Using time series data from various sources, Labour Force Surveys, and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, the chapter shows that Zambia’s manufacturing sector is dominated by resource-based manufacturers and low technology manufacturing industries, although with low employment share. The chapter establishes that Zambia’s manufacturing sector has revealed comparative advantage in various products with explosives and pyrotechnic products, lime, cement, fabricated and construction materials, and sugar, molasses, and honey topping the list. The chapter concludes that the contribution of the manufacturing sector is suboptimal due to various challenges it faces. Addressing the various challenges and devising strategies to boost the growth of the manufacturing sector can help accelerate economic growth and enhance employment creation.
Evolution of Monetary Policy in Zambia since Independence
Authors: Chipili Jonathan M. , Zgambo Peter
Published: September 2024

This chapter discusses monetary policy in Zambia during the pre- and post-1991 periods. Prior to 1991, monetary policy pursued multiple objectives which included credit provision, promotion of growth, and inflation control. Monetary policy was conducted using direct instruments such as interest rate controls. In addition, monetary policy was used to finance fiscal deficits, leading to hyperinflation. This contributed to macroeconomic instability. In the post-1991 period, monetary policy was streamlined to focus on price stability with reliance on market-based instruments. In general, monetary policy has contributed to relative macroeconomic stability and improved economic performance for most of the post-1991 period. To increase its effectiveness, money and secondary markets must be deepened to enhance the transmission mechanisms and improve coordination between monetary and fiscal policies to minimize fiscal dominance and support macroeconomic stability. Developments in Fintech pose a challenge to the effectiveness of monetary policy which the authorities must pay attention to.
Regional Value Chains and Regional Markets
Authors: Hampwaye Godfrey , Kaliba Matildah , Kaleng’a Wisdom C. , Nyanga Progress H.
Published: September 2024

This chapter examines Zambia’s participation in regional value chains and regional markets. The regional markets of focus are Southern African Development Community, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and Africa in general. In order to understand regional value chain, three major exports are discussed: copper, maize, and soya beans. The chapter draws upon and analyses information from various documentary sources. The discussion shows that indeed the value chains for the three products have great potential for Zambia’s industrialization with great opportunities and can enhance industrialization in the region. The key obstacles to achieving fully regional value chains include those related to policy inconsistences, lack of capacity, lack of skills, and poor infrastructure. The region must start thinking about enhancing regional value chains through collaboration among countries.
Socioeconomic and Development Dynamics in Zambia
Authors: Manda Simon , Nchungo Josephat , Mungu Mwape
Published: September 2024

This chapter revisits crucial issues at the heart of contested development debates, particularly political and economic elements that produce and reproduce poverty and inequality in the global south. This chapter shows Zambia’s socioeconomic development trends as reflective of the outcomes of the interaction between domestic and international interests embedded as policy directions. By drawing from an understanding of how different state strategies and policies have shaped economic dynamics and how these in turn influence prospects for social development, outcomes reveal persistent reproduction of poverty within the neoliberal policy context. Using the analytical lenses of the mining and agricultural sectors—largest contributors to GDP, avenues for income disbursements, and touted realistic drivers of socioeconomic development—this chapter shows how reduction of poverty and wider development prospects have been elusive for the copper-dependent country Zambia.