bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Permissible Tasks
Authors: Jensen J Ole
Published: August 2024

This chapter considers the question of which permissible tasks tribunal secretaries may carry out. The tasks that a tribunal secretary may perform depends on what tasks an arbitrator may delegate or receive support in. A distinction must be made between two general categories of tasks: non-essential arbitrator duties that can be delegated entirely and essential arbitrator duties, which under certain circumstances may be supported. Before coming up with a specific list of tasks for the tribunal secretary, the chapter examines the personal nature of the arbitrator's mandate. It then describes certain functions that the arbitrator may not give up and others in which he/she may legitimately be supported. It also proposes a framework that can be used to determine under which circumstances an arbitrator may delegate or seek support in specific duties, as well as the role tribunal secretaries may legitimately play in the discharge of the arbitrator's mandate.
Challenge of Secretaries and Arbitrators
Authors: Jensen J Ole
Published: August 2024

This chapter considers whether parties can challenge and remove arbitrators and tribunal secretaries who fail to show the requisite level of impartiality and independence in the course of the arbitration, along with all other required qualities. It first examines whether parties can challenge tribunal secretaries and reviews the statutory bases for such challenges before analysing under which conditions a challenge to a secretary will be successful. It then looks at the procedure to be followed by the challenging party and the different approaches used by the competent body (state court, arbitral tribunal, arbitral institution) to make a decision on the challenge. It also describes the different approaches regarding the legal effect of a challenge, the ways in which a tribunal secretary may be removed from the arbitration, and whether arbitrators can be challenged in connection with their use of tribunal secretaries.
Singapore Private International Law
Authors: Chong Adeline , Man Yip
Published: August 2024

There has been significant reform in Singapore private international law in recent years. Developments such as the establishment of the Singapore International Commercial Court, the incorporation of the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements into Singapore law, and the enactment of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018, have all thrown the country’s private international law rules into a burgeoning phase. This book provides a roadmap to assist readers in navigating this changing landscape. The book offers an overview of Singapore’s legal system, exploring how governmental and judicial efforts have capitalised on Singapore’s location at the heart of Asia, its status as a leading financial centre globally, and its modern infrastructure, to make it the hub of choice for cross-border disputes and insolvency and restructuring efforts. Practical guidance is given to matters such as changes to the rules on jurisdiction, protective measures, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, general choice of law issues, and issues specific to contract, tort, unjust enrichment, equitable obligations, trusts, property, corporations, and international insolvency and corporate restructuring. The book also looks at how the English common law principles have been implemented and developed in Singapore, with relevant cases, legislation, and foreign sources used to offer a comparative perspective.
Benchmarks Regulation
Authors: Thomas Michael , Patwardhan Anahita
Published: August 2024

This chapter addresses the European Benchmarks Regulation. The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis revealed a number of serious cases of manipulation affecting important benchmarks. Indeed, financial services regulators in the UK and worldwide became aware of the need for measures to improve the transparency, governance, and integrity of benchmarks. This led to a number of international and national initiatives to regulate benchmarks. The European Benchmarks Regulation is the latest step in this series of initiatives to prevent benchmark manipulation and to protect the markets. It does so by imposing restrictions on entities which use benchmarks, and those which produce or contribute to benchmarks. Brexit will not substantially change the way in which this regulation will apply. A hard Brexit will, however, have the effect of creating two separate regulatory regimes in the EU and the UK, respectively. This will create extra compliance hurdles for entities providing or using benchmarks on a cross-border basis.
Solvency II Prudential Requirements on a Group Basis
Authors: Morris Charles H R
Published: August 2024

This chapter explores the Solvency II group regime. UK and EU groups that comprise mostly insurance undertakings and reinsurance undertakings are generally subject to the Solvency II group regime, which applies Solvency II requirements to such groups. The chapter then considers the process for identifying the existence, type (or case), extent, and constituents of a Solvency II group, which is established by article 213 of Solvency II. It also details the approach to group supervision of Case 1 and Case 2 Solvency II groups, which are headed by UK/EU (re)insurance undertakings or by UK/EU insurance holding companies or mixed financial holding companies. They are, therefore, broadly analogous to CRD consolidation groups in territorial scope and concept. The framework for the supervision of Case 1 and Case 2 Solvency II groups derives from articles 218 to 258 of Solvency II. At the core of such group supervision requirements is the Group Solvency Capital Requirement (Group SCR).
Bankruptcy and Winding Up
Authors: O’Sullivan Dominic
Published: August 2024

This chapter explores the general rule wherein the right to rescind survives the bankruptcy or winding up of the party against whom the right is available. Generally, recission is not barred as it will prejudice unsecured creditors of the guilty party by shrinking the pool of assets available to satisfy their claims. Moreover, a voidable share allotment cannot be rescinded after winding up commences. The chapter also studies the special bar that prevents a shareholder in a limited liability company from rescinding a statutory contract with the company. However, some statutory rights to rescind could be active if an irregular share allotment is on the line.
The Interaction of the Legal Concept of Causation with the Economic Concept of Causation
Authors: Lianos Ioannis , Davis Peter , Nebbia Paolisa
Published: August 2024

This chapter delves into the thorny issue of the integration of economic evidence in determining legal causation, and the challenges raised by the different understandings of causation or causality in law and in economics, counterfactual.
Procedural Infringements: Fines and Periodic Penalty Payments
Authors: Sauer Ralf , Blanco Luis Ortiz , Jörgens Konstantin
Published: August 2024

Abstracts and keywords to be supplied.
The Right to a Fair Trial and Jurisdiction under National Rules
Authors: Fawcett James J , Shúilleabháin Máire Ní , Shah Sangeeta
Published: August 2024

This chapter explores the impact of Article 6(1) ECHR on national rules of jurisdiction. The greatest impact of right to a fair trial concerns can be seen in those civil law jurisdictions which have introduced a forum necessitatis rule into their national rules as a general ground of jurisdiction. In contrast, the effect on the English national rules of jurisdiction has been very limited. There is no forum necessitatis rule in England and generally there has been a lack of judicial support for Article 6(1) ECHR having such an effect. Thus, there has been a noticeable lack of impact of the right to a fair trial on the discretionary element under English law, although the argument has been raised on occasion that using discretionary powers to deny access to the English courts would result in a breach of Article 6(1) ECHR.
The Right to a Fair Trial and Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments under the Traditional English Rules
Authors: Fawcett James J , Shúilleabháin Máire Ní , Shah Sangeeta
Published: August 2024

This chapter examines the impact of the right to a fair trial on the enforcement and recognition of judgments under national rules, using the traditional English rules as an example. In principle, where Article 6(1) ECHR has indirect effect, the courts of the UK are obliged to refuse recognition and enforcement of the foreign judgment by virtue of their duty under section 6 HRA (Human Rights Act). However, there is uncertainty as to when the indirect effect of Article 6(1) ECHR is engaged: is it only in instances of a flagrant denial of justice or in all circumstances where any of the guarantees afforded by the right to a fair trial are breached? In the absence of a clear instance of a flagrant denial of justice abroad recourse should be had to private international law, as modified to take human rights law more seriously.
Civil Proceedings
Authors: Nazzini Renato
Published: August 2024

This chapter analyses the different types of civil proceedings in competition law matters. Civil proceedings are proceedings involving civil rights and obligations of the parties, as differentiated from administrative and criminal proceedings. This chapter first discusses civil proceedings in England and Wales, before examining director disqualification proceedings in England and Wales. The chapter then deals with references to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU, which may be a step in proceedings before a court or tribunal of a Member State. Competition law actions, often in the form of a class action, may also be brought in the US, where the plaintiff has the incentive of an award of treble damages. The key features of the US regime and, in particular, the jurisdiction of the US courts in antitrust matters, are discussed in the final section.
Escape to the war: Understanding Ethiopian migration to Yemen
Authors: Telci Ismail Numan
Published: August 2024

This article scrutinizes the enduring migration corridor from Ethiopia to Yemen, ultimately leading many to Saudi Arabia. This route, steeped in a rich historical context of interregional movement between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, particularly from Ethiopia to Yemen, is explored not for its novelty but for the distinct contemporary challenges it poses to migrants. The study delves into the motivations, strategies, and resilience of migrants traveling through these historically significant yet perilous paths under present-day geopolitical and socio-economic conditions. Although the route itself is not unusual within the long history of regional migration, the term “unusual” is applied here to discuss the heightened risks and the complex dynamics faced by migrants today. Utilizing reports and firsthand interviews from international aid organizations, the research offers a granular analysis of how these migrations influence the demographic fabric of the Gulf region and the integration of migrants upon arrival. By melding economic, social, and integrative aspects of migration, the article enhances the scholarly discourse on migration studies, emphasizing the transformational impact of established migration routes in contemporary settings.
Environmental migration and non-migration: Learning through an intergenerational lens
Authors: Mallick Bishawjit , Hunter Lori M
Published: August 2024

Although migration–environment scholarship has experienced tremendous advancement in the past two decades, it continues to lack a historical perspective. This article proposes an integration of historical context into a conceptual framework to examine contemporary migration and non-migration decision-making as related to aspects of environmental context and change. We mainly engage the potential for intergenerational aspirations and capabilities enhancement as lessons are passed on to subsequent generations to improve coping strategies in the face of environmental stress. We apply a historical lens to a case study in coastal Bangladesh to illustrate this perspective’s potential. Ultimately, we urge interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of contemporary migration–environment associations and environmental historians, as the resulting historically informed research would have important implications for research, theory, and policy.
Nationwide epidemiological survey of juvenile idiopathic arthritis during transition to young adulthood in Japan using the National Database of Designated Incurable Diseases of Japan
Authors: Inoue Yuzaburo , Sakai Ryoko , Inoue Eisuke , Mitsunaga Kanako , Shimizu Masaki , Sugihara Takahiko , Matsushita Masakazu , Yamaji Ken , Mori Masaaki , Shimojo Naoki , Miyamae Takako
Published: August 2024

Objectives

We aimed to assess the unmet medical needs of young adult patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) by evaluating real-world treatment data.

Methods

We analysed data on JIA in the age group of 20–29 years from the National Database of Designated Incurable Diseases of Japan, which records severe cases or those requiring high-cost medical care registered between April 2018 and March 2020.

Results

Overall, 322 patients with JIA transitioning to adulthood were included. A high frequency of methotrexate use was observed among all JIA subtypes. The frequency of methotrexate use at registration was significantly higher in patients with rheumatoid factor–positive polyarthritis and those with oligoarthritis or polyarthritis than in those with systemic arthritis. The historical use percentage of any biological disease–modifying antirheumatic drug was ≥85% for all JIA subtypes. The proportion of patients with ≥2 biological disease–modifying antirheumatic drug prescriptions was significantly higher in patients with rheumatoid factor–positive polyarthritis than in those with systemic arthritis.

Conclusions

High-cost drugs were necessary for many patients with JIA transitioning to young adulthood and registered in the database. Further studies on the medical interventions and support for these patients are needed.
ALKBH5 governs human endoderm fate by regulating the DKK1/4-mediated Wnt/β-catenin activation
Authors: Liang Zechuan , Huang Tao , Li Wei , Ma Zhaoyi , Wang Kaipeng , Zhai Ziwei , Fan Yixin , Fu Yu , Wang Xiaomin , Qin Yue , Wang Bo , Zhao Chengchen , Kuang Junqi , Pei Duanqing
Published: August 2024

N6-methyladenonsine (m6A) is ubiquitously distributed in mammalian mRNA. However, the precise involvement of m6A in early development has yet to be fully elucidated. Here, we report that deletion of the m6A demethylase ALKBH5 in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) severely impairs definitive endoderm (DE) differentiation. ALKBH5−/− hESCs fail to undergo the primitive streak (PS) intermediate transition that precedes endoderm specification. Mechanistically, we show that ALKBH5 deficiency induces m6A hypermethylation around the 3′ untranslated region (3′UTR) of GATA6 transcripts and destabilizes GATA6 mRNA in a YTHDF2-dependent manner. Moreover, GATA6 binds to the promoters of critical regulatory genes involved in Wnt/β-catenin signaling transduction, including the canonical Wnt antagonist DKK1 and DKK4, which are unexpectedly repressed upon the dysregulation of GATA6 mRNA metabolism. Remarkably, DKK1 and DKK4 both exhibit a pleiotropic effect in modulating the Wnt/β-catenin cascade and guard the endogenous signaling activation underlying DE formation as potential downstream targets of the ALKBH5-GATA6 regulation. Here, we unravel a role of ALKBH5 in human endoderm formation in vitro by modulating the canonical Wnt signaling logic through the previously unrecognized functions of DKK1/4, thus capturing a more comprehensive role of m6A in early human embryogenesis.
FaSTPACE: a fast and scalable tool for peptide alignment and consensus extraction
Authors: Kotb Hazem M , Davey Norman E
Published: August 2024

Several novel high-throughput experimental techniques have been developed in recent years that generate large datasets of putative biologically functional peptides. However, many of the computational tools required to process these datasets have not yet been created. In this study, we introduce FaSTPACE, a fast and scalable computational tool to rapidly align short peptides and extract enriched specificity determinants. The tool aligns peptides in a pairwise manner to produce a position-specific global similarity matrix for each peptide. Peptides are realigned in an iterative manner scoring the updated alignment based on the global similarity matrices of the peptides and updating the global similarity matrices based on the new alignment. The method then iterates until the global similarity matrices converge. Finally, an alignment and consensus motif are extracted from the resulting global similarity matrices. The tool is the first to support custom weighting for the input peptides to satisfy the pressing need to include experimental attributes encoding peptide confidence in specificity determinant extraction. FaSTPACE exhibited state-of-the-art performance and accuracy when benchmarked against similar tools on motif datasets generated using curated peptides and high-throughput data from proteomic peptide phage display. FaSTPACE is available as an open-source Python package and a web server.
Clinical and socioeconomic factors predicting return-to-work times after cholecystectomy
Authors: Li M-C , Wu S-Y , Chao Y-H , Shia B-C
Published: August 2024

Background

Cholecystectomy, a type of surgery commonly performed globally, has possible mutual effects on the socioeconomic conditions of different countries due to various postoperative recovery times.

Aims

This study evaluated the medical and socioeconomic factors affecting delayed return-to-work (RTW) time after elective cholecystectomy.

Methods

This retrospective study analysed patients who underwent elective cholecystectomy for benign gallbladder diseases from January 2022 to April 2023. The patients’ medical and socioeconomic data were collected to investigate the clinical and socioeconomic factors correlated with RTW time of >30 days after surgery.

Results

This study included 180 consecutive patients. Significant correlations were found between delayed RTW time (>30 days) and age (odds ratio [OR]: 1.059, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.008–1.113, P = 0.024), lack of medical insurance (OR: 2.935, 95% CI 1.189–7.249, P = 0.02) and high-intensity labour jobs (OR: 3.649, 95% CI 1.495–8.909, P = 0.004). Patients without medical insurance (26.6 versus 18.9 days) and those with high-intensity labour jobs (23.9 versus 18.8 days) had a higher mean RTW time than those with insurance and a less-intense labour job (P < 0.001).

Conclusions

After cholecystectomy, older age, lack of medical insurance and high-intensity labour job were correlated with a delayed RTW time. Informing patients about their expected RTW time after surgery can help reduce costs.
Population-Based Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Against Laboratory-Confirmed Influenza Infection in Southern China, 2023–2024 Season
Authors: Gào Xīn , Sun Yexiang , Shen Peng , Guo Jinxin , Chen Yunpeng , Yin Yueqi , Liu Zhike , Zhan Siyan
Published: August 2024

Background

In China, the 2022–2023 influenza season began earlier and was characterized by higher levels of influenza activity and co-circulation of various respiratory pathogens compared with seasons before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Timely and precise estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness (IVE) against infections can be used to guide public health measures.

Methods

A test-negative study was conducted to estimate IVE against laboratory-confirmed influenza using data from the CHinese Electronic health Records Research in Yinzhou (CHERRY) study that prospectively integrated laboratory, vaccination, and health administrative data in Yinzhou, southern China. We included patients who presented influenza-like illness and received nucleic acid tests and/or antigen tests between October 2023 and March 2024. Estimates of IVE were adjusted for age, gender, month of specimen submitted, chronic comorbidities, and hospitalization status.

Results

A total of 205 028 participants, including 96 298 influenza cases (7.6% vaccinated) and 108 730 influenza-negative controls (13.4% vaccinated), were eligible for this analysis. The estimates of IVE were 49.4% (95% CI, 47.8%–50.9%), 41.9% (95% CI, 39.8%–44.0%), and 59.9% (95% CI, 57.9%–61.9%) against overall influenza, influenza A, and influenza B, respectively. A lower IVE was observed for individuals aged 7–17 years (38.6%), vs 45.8% for 6 months–6 years, 46.7% for 18–64 years, and 46.1% for ≥65 years. Vaccination reduced the risk of infection by 44.4% among patients with chronic comorbidities. IVEs varied by epidemic weeks with the changes in influenza activity levels and the switch of dominant influenza strains.

Conclusions

Influenza vaccination in the 2023–2024 season was protective against infection for the entire population.
Real-world use of pemigatinib for the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma in the US
Authors: Saverno Kim , Zimmerman Savill Kristin M , Brown-Bickerstaff Cherrishe , Kotomale Angele , Rodriguez Michael , Feinberg Bruce , Ren Haobo , Blecker Mike , Kim Richard
Published: August 2024

Background

Pemigatinib demonstrated efficacy in fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR)-altered cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) in the FIGHT-202 trial. However, limited real-world evidence exists on treatment patterns and outcomes in this setting.

Patients and Methods

Patient characteristics, treatment patterns, and outcomes of US adults who received pemigatinib for unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic CCA were collected via retrospective physician-abstracted chart review. Results were summarized using descriptive statistics.

Results

Data from 120 patients (49.2% male; 55.0% White; 19.2% Hispanic; median age at initial pemigatinib prescription, 64.5 years) were collected from 18 physicians/practices. At the time of prescribing, 90.0% of patients had metastatic disease. FGFR2 testing was completed for 92.5% of patients; of those, all but one (result unknown) tested positive, and 95.5% were tested using next-generation sequencing. Pemigatinib was prescribed as second- and third-line therapy among 94.2% and 5.8% of patients, respectively. The most common starting dosage was 13.5 mg daily for 14 days of 21-day cycles (87.5% of patients). Among 60 patients (50.0% of the full cohort) who discontinued pemigatinib during the 6.5-month median study follow-up period, 68.3% discontinued due to disease progression. The median real-world progression-free survival (rwPFS) from the date of pemigatinib initiation was 7.4 months (95% CI: 6.4-8.6), and the real-world overall response rate (rwORR) was 59.2% (95% CI: 50.0%-68.4%).

Conclusion

This study complements the FIGHT-202 clinical trial by assessing the use of pemigatinib among a diverse population of patients with CCA under real-world conditions. Findings support the clinical benefit of pemigatinib demonstrated in FIGHT-202.
John Berger
Authors: Heath Iona
Published: August 2024

In this book, Iona Heath writes about reading John Berger’s writing over more than fifty years and her friendship and correspondence with him over the best part of twenty years. She found that both of these interacted profoundly with her work as a general practitioner in a deprived urban area in London. For Iona Heath general practice is a quite extraordinary undertaking: every working day, sitting with a succession of unique individuals, each worried about some aspect of their health or life circumstances, many burdened by unspoken fears, and each seeking some form of answer. Starting with A Fortunate Man, when she was an ignorant but hopeful undergraduate medical student, she found reading John Berger on any subject had something new to tell her about the aspirations and detail of her work: clues about how to look and how to listen and much else. Later when they start to correspond, Iona Heath found herself in the privileged position of being able to check her understanding directly with the writer and on each occasion found deeper levels of awareness and insight. She is convinced that reading John Berger made her a better doctor.
Hope
Authors: Heath Iona
Published: August 2024

An exploration of the irrepressible nature of hope and yet how close it comes to despair.
Fear
Authors: Heath Iona
Published: August 2024

An account of the ubiquity of fear: fear of disease, premature death, life-changing illness, and an exploration of the fears of doctors and those of patients.
Death
Authors: Heath Iona
Published: August 2024

An account of how John Berger tried to teach me how Spinoza can help us think about death.
Introduction
Authors: Barnard Stephen R.
Published: August 2024

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the changing dynamics of media power and persuasion and situates these phenomena within the context of the hybrid media system. It begins with a brief examination of the inaugural White House social media summit, put on by Donald Trump’s administration in 2019, in order to illustrate the complex climate of propaganda and (dis)information in the contemporary media era. Next, the chapter considers what tried-and-true media strategies like spectacle and outrage can teach us about this pseudo-event and about practices of manipulation more broadly. The chapter then situates these and related phenomena within the context of a mediatized society defined by increasing hybridity between platforms and publishers. The chapter concludes by introducing some of the book’s central claims and concepts and by offering an overview of the chapters that follow.
Europeans, “Franks,” and “Their” Musics
Authors: Irving D. R. M.
Published: August 2024

The use of the term “European” to describe people is relational and dependent on context, with multiple meanings that have shifted over time. It has a complex connection to music. From the time of the Crusades, the categories of “Christian” and “European” became conflated with the term “Frank,” reflecting terminology used in the Islamic world. Religion, continental identity, and skin color interacted in ways that were initially loose but increasingly reified, resulting in discriminatory taxonomies that impacted the ways musical abilities were interpreted and described by writers of the time. In the eighteenth century, the trope of “European ears” became a popular idea in travel literature, referring to essentialized ways of listening. The emergence of the term and concept of “European musician” can also be traced to the 1700s.
The Emergence of the “European Music” Concept
Authors: Irving D. R. M.
Published: August 2024

The connection of the adjective “European” to the noun “music” is identifiable only from the late seventeenth century in western European historiography. Uses until the 1770s relate to comparison with musics in other parts of the world. Three examples by Jesuits in Latin, French, and German were published in the 1680s and 1690s, referring to China and Paraguay. In early-eighteenth-century France, certain uses of “European music” elided French and Italian styles in comparisons with Turkish music. By the last three decades of the eighteenth century, “European music” was more common, still usually with reference to other parts of the world. Most uses until the 1820s emanate from travel writing. Music histories published from the 1770s use it rarely. What appears to be the earliest example of published sheet music to apply the adjective “European” was printed in the United States in 1807.
Tools for Knowing: Introducing Nyāya’s Pramāṇa Theory
Authors: Keating Malcolm
Published: August 2024

Setting the stage for the interrelationship between epistemology and public discussion via a review of the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, this chapter introduces the concept of a pramāṇa, or way of knowing. Each of the main ways of knowing that Nyāya philosophers accept is introduced: perception, testimony, and inference, with a focus on perception. It explains the definition of perception in Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.4. The chapter also explains the distinction between knowing and reflecting on knowing, along with the relationship between perception and language, concluding with an exploration of the Nyāya response to the possibility of skepticism. It considers how doubt arises due to controversy and how skepticism worries about the impossibility of knowledge.
Finland, the Co-operative Commonwealth?
Authors: Spicer Jason S.
Published: August 2024

Chapter 3 analyzes the case of Finland, the world’s most co-operative -dense, high-income democracy, which possesses none of the features suspected of inhibiting co-operative development. Finland’s co-operatives developed along with its late-breaking industrialization and its political independence revolution, taking advantage of institutional voids/field openings to produce a co-operative “big bang.” Co-operatives were politically championed by both Finland’s independence movement and Pellervo, a co-operative “meta-organization”; a robust, comprehensive co-operative policy and organizing framework was established in this juncture, one which subsequently evolved to meet changing conditions. Co-operatives served as a defensive economic strategy throughout the era of “Finlandization” to secure its continued independence against the threat of Soviet annexation, then evolved as “globalization insurance” since the nation’s integration into the European Union. In offering a middle way between American liberal capitalism and Soviet/Eastern bloc state-led economic collectivism, co-operatives have long enabled Finland to manage its geopolitical position between East and West.
Listening as a Form of Excavation
Authors: Sánchez Carlos Alberto
Published: August 2024

This is the first of this book’s recommendations, exhortations, or orientations. It is about listening in on your self, your being, and your existence. Emilio Uranga calls this auscultation. According to Uranga, a moral transformation cannot occur without autognosis, or self-knowledge. Autognosis, however, requires auscultation, or careful attention to the inner rumblings of your existence. I compare this to the act of listening to a car’s engine and attending to those noises that signal a possible breakdown. The exhortation suggested by Uranga’s reflection is this: you need to listen in on yourself in order to know yourself and, ultimately, save yourself.
Be Charitable
Authors: Sánchez Carlos Alberto
Published: August 2024

This chapter is devoted to my second recommendation, exhortation, or orientation. Here, we consider Antonio Caso’s notion of economy, disinterest, and charity, focusing on the first and the last of these. According to Caso, our default mode of existence is self-centeredness, or economy. It is the natural mode of existence, since we have to use our finite energy we have on ourselves, on reproduction and survival. However, if we have excess energy we can either use it upon ourselves in self-centered ways or give it away to others. Doing the latter is charity. Charity, it turns out, is the antidote to modern alienation, and the only way, he says, to live “perfectly.”
Love What You Do
Authors: Sánchez Carlos Alberto
Published: August 2024

Beginning with a distinction between the phrases “do what you love” and “love what you do,” the chapter suggests that the latter is the more realistic of the two, since the former assumes a status of privilege and opportunity that most of us don’t enjoy. The chapter is structured around José Vasconcelos’s theory of “aesthetic monism,” which provides an inclusive theory of knowledge, one involving the intellect, the senses, and the emotions. Readers will get a sense of what Vasconcelos meant by the theory and how it applies to everyday life. To illustrate it, I use the example of my father’s love for his work. This example also illustrates the idea that loving what you do is sometimes more conducive to happiness than doing what you love.
Blooming in the Ruins Mexican Philosophy as Your Guide to Life
Authors: Sánchez Carlos Alberto
Published: August 2024

In this concluding chapter, we propose that “doing philosophy Mexican style” is something everyone can do, regardless of one’s background and nationality. Taking our cue from Guillermo Hurtado, we propose that to do philosophy as Mexican philosophers do, our thoughts need to be originary, ampliative, and solid. When a thought is originary, it is rooted in one’s own lived circumstance; when a thought is ampliative, it adds something to the existing conversation; and when a thought is solid, it opens new avenues of investigation and expands the existing discourse. The chapter ends with encouragement to the reader, whether Mexican or not, to live an examined philosophical life.
Performance, Pleasure, and Profit at the Victorian Freak Show
Authors: Durbach Nadja
Published: August 2024

A successful freak act relies on much more than an unusual body. It must provoke pleasure of one kind or another. In this increasingly competitive industry, engaging the public day in and day out required ingenuity, effort, and expertise. For most who exhibited their corporeal anomalies the stakes were high: the ability to earn a steady living in this way, given their limited access to most other forms of employment, kept the workhouse and the asylum at bay. Thinking more about Victorian freak shows as creative and crafted performances, and thus as a form of skilled labor, allows us to move beyond the victim/agent binary. Instead, it shifts our focus to the ways in which talented and hard-working people with atypical bodies worked within the parameters the freak show afforded them, deploying other people’s pleasure strategically to preserve their own economic independence.
The Tragic Journey of a Mexican Savage to the Civilized World
Authors: Bartra Roger
Published: August 2024

In Europe, human specimens considered to be exotic were frequently exhibited during the nineteenth century. For example, the arrival in Paris, in 1845, of some Iowa tribal chiefs caused quite a sensation. King Louis Philippe I himself invited them to the Tuileries. The Iowas perhaps believed that they were treated as high dignitaries of the American Indian nation. They agreed to present to the royal family their traditional dances, which caused great pleasure to the king. The Indians with their songs and dances greatly amused the courtiers. But it is highly probable that they realized that they were actually displayed as one more of the exotic rarities that Europeans were so fond of for a long time. The exhibits of American Indians and African savages added to the shows that displayed all kinds of monsters and deformed and strange beings.
Spectacles of Prognosis
Authors: Antebi Susan
Published: August 2024

The story of this particular spectacle begins with the feeling it evokes, inevitably filtered across time and space. El Niño Fidencio, a faith healer in the small community of Espinazo, Mexico, appears in undated black-and-white footage, likely from the late 1920s. In one film sequence, he stands before a crowd, throwing fruit at the people to cure them of their ailments, according to the text of an intertitle. Then he appears seated with another person on a swing, swinging back and forth in a different curative practice, surrounded by a large crowd. In yet another, he passes over the crowd and they sustain him, reaching up to touch and support him as he crawls across a sea of upward-stretching arms. Witnessing this footage inspires a similar reaching gesture in the viewers, as if we were part of the crowd, or could touch the healer’s hands, but the framing of the scene also holds us back, outside this moment and its outpouring of faith.
Freakish Fecundity
Authors: Vrtis Catherine Peckinpaugh
Published: August 2024

This chapter analyzes the intense cultural focus on dynamics of childbirth and childrearing combined with the rapidly growing genre of reality television to trigger a cascade of new productions focused on reproductive practices that both reflect and intervene in the ongoing unofficial national eugenics discourse. Examples of unusual families appear on 17 Kids and Counting and 16 and Pregnant and spin-off Teen Mom, which are contrasted with the compulsorily normative of A Baby Story. Collectively, these productions—along with their many sequels, spin-offs, and competitors—constitute an ongoing neoeugenicist debate on the borders of ab/normal reproductive behavior as the nation confronts its upcoming moment of inescapable demographic change.
Disornamentation
Authors: Gerdsen Jenna
Published: August 2024

This chapter looks at the works of the contemporary Asian American playwright Lloyd Suh and disabled, multimedia Japanese artist Mari Katayama and examines their twenty-first-century interpretation of the nineteenth-century gaze upon Afong Moy, commonly exhibited as The Chinese Lady. Suh’s play The Chinese Lady dramatizes Afong Moy’s time in America as an indentured performer and Katayama’s self-portrait photographs of her amputated legs and cleft hand evoke the historical staging of Afong Moy. These representations of disabled Asian women exemplify Anne Anlin Cheng’s theory of Ornamentalism, which asserts that Asian femininity has been regarded as “synthetic extension, art, and commodity” in the Western imagination.
Advanced Middle Ground Seeds
Authors: Randles Clint
Published: August 2024

This chapter contains example lesson plan seeds for advanced Middle Ground lessons. It leverages concepts from across the chapters of the book. It centers on the creative practices and processes of professional songwriters, performing musicians, recording musicians, and scholars of songwriting. It provides the reader with resources for further growth and exploration. It leverages the musicianship that can be developed in small student-centered ensembles where the teacher functions like a music producer in the classroom. Lesson seeds include sections on lesson time, modifications for special learners, formal and informal assessment strategies and rubrics, and learning outcomes. The reader is urged to start thinking of ways of developing their own ideas for seeds.
Micro-Targeted Campaigning (2004–2020)
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This chapter focuses on the most recent era of presidential campaigning: the period of micro-targeted campaigning from 2004 through (at least) 2020. The new century brought significant changes to the context of presidential election contests. Electronic media—including the Internet and social media—created additional possibilities for precise targeting and outreach. Along with changes in the regulation of campaign finance, those technological developments helped alleviate the resource constraints that in the second era pushed campaigns toward concentrating exclusively on narrow segments of the electorate while ignoring others. This chapter provides detailed descriptive information about the Electoral College strategies of major party campaigns during the 2004–2020 period. It concludes by noting that plentiful resources and an emphasis on flexibility still resulted in handfuls of states being classified as battlegrounds.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Authors: Mandelbaum Michael
Published: August 2024

Mohandas Gandhi led the mass movement in India that secured independence from the British Empire. A London-trained lawyer who began his career in South Africa, he developed the techniques of nonviolent protest for achieving political goals. In the wake of World War II, as the result, among other things, of the movement he led, the British ended their rule in South Asia. In their place two independent countries came into existence: predominantly Hindu India and largely Muslim Pakistan. Gandhi had strenuously opposed dividing the Asian subcontinent in this way, and was dismayed at the violence between Hindus and Muslims that erupted as the British left. He was assassinated a few months after India became independent.
Scientific Arguments against Free Will
Authors: Tse Peter Ulric
Published: August 2024

This chapter considers the Libet and Wegner experiments purporting to show that free will is an illusion. The chapter dismantles the Libet experiment and argues that he went far beyond his data in rejecting free will, and that he had an incomplete understanding of causation in the brain. The chapter also considers and disregards as irrelevant the Wegner experiments concerning the issue of free will. Finally, the chapter asks whether feelings of having willed or caused an action are about future or past actions. Some feelings of willing are retrodictive, about what one just caused, so cannot be causal of those actions. Other aspects of willing are prospective, such as conscious imagining and deliberation, and can be causal of subsequent thoughts and actions.
Parties and Democracy
Authors: Poguntke Thomas , Webb Paul , Scarrow Susan E.
Published: August 2024

These concluding thoughts highlight the considerable variability of the challenges to parties and democracy around the globe. While generalizations are difficult given the very different developmental trajectories of political parties in different parts of the world, we find that the capacity of political parties to provide stable linkage is either eroding or has been relatively weak all along. At the same time, political parties are largely dependent on state subsidies almost everywhere, while party members tend to contribute relatively little. To a degree, they have become a service provided by the state to citizens, with frequently fairly weak anchorage in society. However, they are still the central gatekeepers for political office.
First Lines for an Ecological Labour Law: A Social Utopia for the Anthropocene
Authors: Carelli Rodrigo
Published: August 2024

The Anthropocene marks the recognition of the unsustainability of the model in which we live based on the endless exploitation of labour and land for the purposes of production and consumption with exponential and continuous growth. This chapter argues that the new utopia may well be based on a post-growth society and it will require the construction of a labour law with combined goals: the traditional social one, reducing inequalities and guaranteeing human dignity; and the ecological one, helping to avoid planetary cataclysm, on a purposive approach of labour law. The chapter points out that ecological labour law should be universal, presenting for this a broader definition of work and proposing the strengthening of the International Labour Organization. At the end, it presents the tripod on which the ecological labour law is based: the regulation of working time, the universal basic income, and the protection of the working environment.
The Hohfeldian Analysis of Legal and Moral Relationships
Authors: Kramer Matthew H.
Published: August 2024

This chapter provides a lengthy exposition of the analysis of legal and moral positions that was propounded by Wesley Hohfeld somewhat over a century ago. It rigorously explores every aspect of Hohfeld’s analytical matrix, while also amplifying Hohfeld’s insights by showing that his matrix needs to be supplemented with several types of logical quantification. The four main entitlements delineated by Hohfeld (claim-rights, liberties, powers, and immunities) are probed sustainedly, as are the four main correlative positions (duties, no-rights, liabilities, and disabilities). The chapter likewise wards off many objections that have been leveled against the Hohfeldian analysis by critics of sundry stripes. It also recounts the several basic respects in which analyses of legal relationships differ from analyses of moral relationships.
Potential Holders of Claim-Rights
Authors: Kramer Matthew H.
Published: August 2024

This final chapter seeks to specify which sorts of beings can hold claim-rights at all. Though much of the chapter is straightforwardly ethical in its orientation, it also mulls over some complicated matters of logical quantification and the philosophy of language. The basic moral principle on which it relies is also central to justificatory questions about the extent to which and the ways in which the interests of various beings should be legally protected. Still, in this chapter, that moral principle is brought to bear not on those justificatory concerns but instead on non-justificatory questions about the class of potential holders of claim-rights. The chapter contends that that class includes all living human beings and many dead human beings and all future generations of people and most non-human animals.
A Lithic Chorography of England
Authors: Werth Tiffany Jo
Published: August 2024

“A Lithic Chorography of England” argues that England’s identity formation might be thought of as a petrogenesis, with its origins grounded in the formation, description, and imagination of its rocks. The chapter curates a lithic chorography by describing four stony entities: (1) it begins with the perilous, rocky coastline that exemplifies England’s porous, fragile, but also imperially ambitious, boundary; (2) it continues with London Stone, a once-large boulder imagined for centuries as the city’s stony heart and ambiguous guardian; (3) it then follows the fortunes of the Stone of Scone, upon which English monarchy is crowned; and (4) it concludes with Stonehenge, whose inscrutable designs fuel imaginative speculation England’s past and future worlds. The transcorporeal relations—of trust, of treachery—between stone and human provide a durable foundation for English identity as it unfolds from its break with Rome (early sixteenth century) to its civil war and crisis of authority (mid-late seventeenth century).
A humanitarian role model
Authors: Drewski Daniel , Gerhards Jürgen
Published: August 2024

Germany has taken in the largest share of refugees from Syria and the Middle East among the member states in the EU. Chapter 5 argues that the open policy of the grand coalition government of Angela Merkel was primarily based on the presumption that Germany is not only morally committed to but also legally bound by international law and its own constitutional right to asylum. This bond is derived from the “sanctity” of the German Basic Law in Germany’s postwar political culture, which enshrined the principles of human dignity and the right to asylum as a consequence of the experience of National Socialism. In contrast to Poland, the cultural background of the refugees was de-emphasized, while their humanitarian need was highlighted. This framing was shared by all major parties in parliament, thus creating an opportunity for the rise of the populist right-wing party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) on an anti-refugee platform.
Objections and Alternatives
Authors: Kenworthy Lane
Published: August 2024

Some will sympathize with the ends I have laid out— improving economic security, expanding opportunity, and ensuring shared prosperity—but disagree with the means. One objection, common among those on the right side of the political spectrum, is that bigger government will lead to greater public debt, slower economic growth, less employment, restricted liberty, and diminished self-reliance, so we might do better to rely on private institutions such as families and communities. On the left, many favor stronger labor unions, promotion of manufacturing jobs, a higher wage floor, or perhaps a basic income grant. In this chapter I address these objections and alternatives along with a number of others.