bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Big Bang
Authors: Copley Jack
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the 1986 Big Bang liberalization of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), which was crucial in transforming the City of London into a truly global financial centre. This policy was the result of a winding institutional process that began in 1979 when the RPC initiated a case against the LSE for non-competitive practices. While Thatcher initially refused to exempt the LSE from this case, things changed following the government’s implementation of its monetarist experiment: MTFS. MTFS was a strategy to discipline the British economy in a depoliticized manner, by locking the government into years of financial stringency. In order for this strategy to be successful, the government had to meet certain monetary targets, which would justify the painful measures. Yet this plan went awry, plunging the economy into a deep recession while the government failed to hit its monetary targets. To prevent the complete presentational collapse of MTFS, the state began to make massive sales of government debt on the LSE as a way to meet the monetary targets. This in turn made it crucially important that the normal functioning of the LSE was not disrupted by a drawn-out court case. The Thatcher government finally decided to exempt the LSE from this investigation in 1983, which began the countdown to the 1986 Big Bang liberalization. The decision that led to the Big Bang was thus, to a significant extent, a desperate attempt to protect MTFS, which had sought to restructure the British economy in line with global competitive pressures.
Politicizing Religion
Authors: Balbier Uta A.
Published: November 2021

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”
Experiencing Religion
Authors: Balbier Uta A.
Published: November 2021

At each of Graham’s revival meetings a modern, lived, and transnational community of faith formed, connecting believers to past and future crusades. By following the audience to the meetings themselves, this chapter shows how they experienced the “modern” faith that had featured prominently in the contemporary religious debates discussed in Chapter 1. In the complex interplay between the sacred and the profane in the meetings’ orchestration, this faith became tangible. At the revival meetings, relationships formed within the audiences, and through practices such as singing and praying participants contributed to the charging of the spiritual atmosphere that finally climaxed in the altar call. Several aspects of the revival meetings—the presence of international guests, the awareness of prayers being said around the world for those in attendance, and the translation and accessibility of conversation narratives—enhanced the feeling in audiences that they were part of the transnational community of Billy Graham’s followers.
Plate Tectonics
Authors: Ervin-Blankenheim Elisabeth
Published: November 2021

Plate tectonics, the grand unifying theory of geology, and its relation to the Earth is explained in this chapter. The planet transforms through time by means of the movement of rigid plates carrying the continents riding on the plastic material in the Earth’s upper mantle. Three major plate boundaries are divergent margins, where new ocean floor is being created along mid-ocean ridges and plates separate from one another; convergent margins, where the material is subducted and consumed as different types of plates collide, creating trenches, island arcs or mountain ranges, and transform boundaries; and where plates slide past one another. Besides the three predominant boundaries, hot spots caused by mantle plumes and diffuse boundaries make up additional dynamic forces in tectonics. Beyond these categories, geologists still are learning about tectonics; some boundaries are unknown or speculative. Plate tectonics explains why many of the Earth’s hazards are found where there are. Earthquakes trace many plate margins, as do volcanoes. The area around the Pacific Ocean is called the “Ring of Fire” because of the many volcanoes related to subducting plates. Tectonics accounts for why certain rocks are located where they are; for example, all rock types are found at convergent margins. The theory also predicts where valuable mineral and economic deposits are located.
Biography of the Earth
Authors: Ervin-Blankenheim Elisabeth
Published: November 2021

The last era in the Phanerozoic Eon, the Cenozoic Era, is detailed in this chapter. The rise and radiation of the mammals occurred during Cenozoic after the devastation wrought by the Chicxulub Asteroid impact at the end of the Mesozoic Era. Ecological resources and niches vacated by the dinosaurs because of the mass extinction were filled by the mammals with concurrent developments in plants. Changes in climate and the mid-Miocene warming happened mid-era, then drying out and opening of grasslands followed by a plunge into ice ages and the Pleistocene extinction event. The late Cenozoic witnessed the development of humankind as the great ice sheets from the Pleistocene started to melt and the climate warm. The planet started to look similar to how it appears to humans today, and the current age of the Earth is the Cenozoic Era, Quaternary Period, Holocene Epoch, Meghalayan Age.
The Earth’s Impact on Life and Life’s Impact on the Earth
Authors: Ervin-Blankenheim Elisabeth
Published: November 2021

This chapter weaves together the three threads that make up the fundamental geologic principles: geologic time, plate tectonics, and evolution. The chapter examines their impact on life on the Earth and, in turn, biological life’s imprint on the planet. Each system, or sphere, of the Earth, water, air, solid Earth, and life, are interdependent. At the intersection of these spheres are critical systems, such as soil and the carbon cycle, both of which support life. The current situation on the planet, with diminishing resources and population numbers and changes in climate, are current concerns. The interrelated web of life in response to climate change and implications for the future benefits from a deep-time perspective with geology as a framework. Past hothouse times, tipping points, and understanding how the Earth works as well as the biography of the Earth through the lens of geology, can go far as a guide to future conditions on the planet—to listen to the song of the Earth.
Church Planters
Authors: Pitt Richard N.
Published: November 2021

Starting a new organization is a risky business. Most startups fail; half of them do not reach the five-year mark. Protestant churches are not immune to these trends. Most new churches are not established with denominational support—many are actually nondenominational—and, therefore, have many of the vulnerabilities other infant organizations must overcome. Research has revealed that millions of Americans are leaving churches, half of all churches do not add any new members, and thousands of churches shutter their doors each year. These numbers suggest that American religion is not a growth industry. Yet, more than 1,000 new churches are started in any given year. What are the forces that move people who might otherwise be satisfied working for churches to the riskier role of starting one as a religion entrepreneur? In Church Planters, sociologist Richard Pitt uses more than 125 in-depth interviews with church planters to understand their motivations. First he uncovers themes in their sometimes miraculous, sometimes mundane answers to the question “Why take on these risks?” Then he examines how they approach three common entrepreneurial challenges—recognizing opportunities, marshaling resources, and framing success—in ways that reduce uncertainty and lead them to believe they will be successful. The book combines their evocative stories with insights from research on commercial and social entrepreneurship to explain how these religion entrepreneurs come to believe that their organizational goals must be accomplished, that those goals are capable of being accomplished, and that they would accomplish those goals over time.
“Butts, Budgets, and Behaviors”
Authors: Pitt Richard N.
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines how pastors match their own evaluation of themselves as “successful entrepreneurs” against external evaluations of them as “failures” based on conventional measures of success: large congregations, large bank accounts, and large sanctuaries. This chapter shows that an essential component of founding pastors’ beliefs that their churches are successful, even if they only have 30 members or are mortgaging their home to pay the church’s bills, is the ambiguous and difficult-to-quantify measure of “changed lives.” They argued the evidence of their success was the way parishioners’ souls have been revived, their lives have been rebuilt, and the communities around them have been revitalized. Sociologist Carl Bankston sees “religious environments as economies in which religious groups are firms competing for customers who make rational choices among available products.” With this in mind, this chapter also examines how pastors think about competition and their position in a competitive religious economy.
De-Sacralizing Religion Entrepreneurship
Authors: Pitt Richard N.
Published: November 2021

This chapter bookends the Introduction by returning to the three questions that motivated the book’s research: (1) Are church founders “entrepreneurs”? (2) What motivates religion entrepreneurship in a crowded and competitive field trying to appeal to an increasingly anti-institutional-religion customer base? (3) What factors reduce these entrepreneurs’ uncertainty and fear of failure? The chapter summarizes the findings of the book: (1) yes, church founders are entrepreneurs; (2) a mixture of self-efficacy heuristics, unexpected circumstances, and a belief in God’s direction motivates them; and (3) their ability to recognize an enduring set of needs/opportunities, their ability to marshal the necessary human and financial resources, and their ability to determine—in purely subjective ways—what success is reduce fear of failure.
Expertise and Aesthetic Liking
Authors: Skov Martin , Kirk Ulrich
Published: November 2021

It has long been observed that experience influences aesthetic evaluations. Psychological research has found multiple examples of experts and nonexperts forming different liking responses to similar stimuli. It remains unclear, though, precisely why experts evaluate objects they are experts on differently from people who are not experts. In the article under discussion, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the authors demonstrated that, compared to non-architects, architects exhibited higher levels of neural activity in the reward systems when tasked with evaluating their liking of buildings but not when tasked with evaluating the attractiveness of faces.
The Role of Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortices in Aesthetic Valuation
Authors: Munar Enric , Cela-Conde Camilo J.
Published: November 2021

As discussed in both the original study and the current chapter, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is a required neural player in the aesthetic appraisal and a basic stage of the aesthetic experience. As the distinct activation that the authors found in the neuroimaging study occurred when participants rated as beautiful natural, artistic, and decorative stimuli, we concluded that left DLPFC responded to aesthetic qualities in general and not to specific artistic qualities. More recent studies indicate that the function of the LPFC in relation to aesthetics may be to exercise cognitive control to direct attention with a proper aesthetic orientation. Other studies suggest that LPFC is part of a frontal “evaluative” network which supports an analysis of emotional response and personal relevance. Specifically, left DLPFC seems to affect the evaluation of different images, disengaging from a habitual mode of identifying objects in order to adopt an aesthetic perspective.
Noninvasive Brain Stimulation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex During Aesthetic Appreciation
Authors: Nadal Marcos , Cattaneo Zaira , Cela-Conde Camilo J.
Published: November 2021

Several neuroimaging studies had shown that activity in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) was associated with aesthetic appreciation. But, was this a causal association? In the article under discussion, the authors used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to determine whether lDLPFC activity actually caused increased aesthetic appreciation. Their results showed that tDCS over lDLPFC caused liking for artworks and photographs to increase. They therefore concluded that the lDLPFC plays a causal role in visual aesthetic appreciation. The authors suggested that lDLPFC activity contributes to disengaging from a pragmatic orientation to stimuli, consisting mainly in identifying objects, adopting an aesthetic orientation, and focusing on those objects’ aesthetic qualities.
Is Artistic Composition in Abstract Art Detected Automatically?
Authors: Menzel Claudia , Kovács Gyula , Hayn-Leichsenring Gregor U. , Redies Christoph
Published: November 2021

Most artists who create abstract paintings place the pictorial elements not at random, but arrange them intentionally in a specific artistic composition. This arrangement results in a pattern of image properties that differs from image versions in which the same pictorial elements are randomly shuffled. In the article under discussion, the original abstract paintings of the author’s image set were rated as more ordered and harmonious but less interesting than their shuffled counterparts. The authors tested whether the human brain distinguishes between these original and shuffled images by recording electrical brain activity in a particular paradigm that evokes a so-called visual mismatch negativity. The results revealed that the brain detects the differences between the two types of images fast and automatically. These findings are in line with models that postulate a significant role of early (low-level) perceptual processing of formal image properties in aesthetic evaluations.
Imaging the Subjective
Authors: Vessel Edward A. , Starr G. Gabrielle
Published: November 2021

Aesthetic experiences can be deeply personal. Given this subjectivity, how can cognitive neuroscience characterize the neural mechanisms supporting intense aesthetic experiences? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Vessel, Starr, and Rubin measured brain responses as observers viewed a diverse set of artworks and rated how aesthetically “moving” they found each artwork. Although individual observers expressed highly divergent aesthetic tastes, imaging results identified several regions consistently more engaged by moving artworks, including nodes of the default-mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions implicated in internally directed mentation. This work increased interest in the DMN and the role of internally directed thought in aesthetic experiences and helped to shift the focus of inquiry from single regions to network interactions. A result of close interaction between humanists and neuroscientists, the paper under discussion captured more of the richness of aesthetic experiences than was common in neuroimaging experiments. The authors hope that this legacy continues to inform future work.
Cultural Neuroaesthetics of Delicate Sadness Induced by Noh Masks
Authors: Osaka Naoyuki
Published: November 2021

As an investigator of how culture interacts with neuroaesthetics in Japanese art, the author’s goal in the article under discussion is to explore the neural mechanisms involved in the social, affective, and cognitive processes of sadness induced by the Noh mask. Why do seemingly negative emotions, such as sadness, play a critical role in aesthetic experiences in the Noh theater? What brain activity is involved in feeling delicate sadness? Sadness induced by faces involves cortical interactions among various brain areas such as the amygdala, striatum, fusiform face area, and insula. The expectation for reward, hidden in the appreciation of the sad mask, might be a social reward. If so, it may be that appreciating sadness masks engages a common system that drives the expectation of negative rewards. The author ran a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which participants’ brains were scanned while watching sad Noh masks. Results confirmed predictions, revealing activation of the right amygdala while viewing sad masks.
Artists, Artworks, Aesthetics, Cognition
Authors: Seeley William P.
Published: November 2021

Skepticism about neuroaesthetics emerges from a contrast between aesthetic and cognitivist theories of art. Neuroaesthetics represents an aesthetic approach to understanding art. Aesthetic approaches identify the defining features of artworks by their aesthetic features and the affective profile of the experiences they engender. Cognitivist theories, in contrast, define artworks as communicative devices intentionally designed to convey some point, purpose, or meaning. In the article under discussion, the author argues that the conflict between these two views is overblown. He introduces a diagnostic recognition framework for understanding art grounded in a biased competition theory of selective attention. The framework defines artworks as attentional engines intentionally designed to orient perceivers to diagnostic features, including aesthetic features, that carry information about their point, purpose, or meaning. The artistic salience of aesthetic features of a work on this account, consistent with a cognitivist approach, lies in the semantic role they play in the expression of the work’s point, purpose, or meaning.
The Power of Poetry
Authors: Wassiliwizky Eugen , Menninghaus Winfried
Published: November 2021

From prehistory onward, poetic language has been widely used in the context of great personal, social, and emotional significance, reaching from large scale events, such as religious ceremonies, political occasions (including inaugurations of American presidents), and artistic contexts to more private gatherings, such as birthday parties, declarations of love, and parent–child interactions. Poetic language is capable of reaching deeply into the phylogenetically ancient structures of the human brain and providing profound aesthetic pleasures to its recipients. Yet a thorough scientific investigation of the workings of poetic language in the brain is only at its very beginnings. In the article under discussion, the authors review a study that focused on the emotional power of poetic language. In this project, they strived to integrate and interrelate perspectives from experimental psychology, neuroscience, rhetoric/poetics, psychophysiology, and philosophy. They argue that such a multidisciplinary approach is key to unraveling the mysteries of human aesthetic processing.
Vulnerability, Space, Communication: Three Conditions of Adequacy for Cosmopolitan Right
Authors: Niesen Peter
Published: November 2021

The chapter argues that according to the Kantian completeness assumption, not only do we face a major unresolved systematic issue—all exercise of cosmopolitan right takes place in a state of nature between states and foreigners: a highly structured state of nature, to be sure, but a state of nature nonetheless—but we have too few options for fulfilling the conditions of explanatory adequacy. Niesen points out that in Kant and the Law of War no space is reserved for leaving normative issues undecided, to be resolved through politics and through additional, positive global institutions.
A Kantian Defense of Remedial Wars
Authors: Harel Alon
Published: November 2021

The chapter discusses how Ripstein differentiates among three types of wars: self-defense, remedial, and punitive. Harel then argues that Ripstein’s reasons for rejecting a right to remedial wars fail. The underlying Kantian principles guiding Ripstein’s own account dictate that remedial wars are permissible. There are very powerful consequentialist, intuitionist, and conventionalist arguments against recognizing a right to remedial wars. But the logic provided by Ripstein’s account of Kant cannot justify the prohibition on such wars. Precisely as the right to conduct defensive wars follows inevitably from our understanding of states as independent of each other, the right to conduct remedial wars follows from this very same principle. Harel argues that punitive and remedial wars are fundamentally different and that while Ripstein’s counterargument addresses successfully the case of punitive wars, it fails to address the case of remedial wars.
Kant and the Criminal Law of War
Authors: Thorburn Malcolm
Published: November 2021

The chapter focuses on Ripstein’s account of a doctrine that has caused a great deal of trouble to moral philosophers of law over the years: the equal criminal immunity of combatants. Thorburn sets out the contours of the Kantian approach to the morality of law, which begins with the relationship of public authority and only later proceeds to the evaluation of how that authority has been exercised. He then considers Ripstein’s application of that approach to the legal equality of combatants in war. Although Ripstein’s account suggests a comprehensive justification of the doctrine of equal criminal immunity, Thorburn shows that Ripstein’s chapter does not spell this out fully, though he outlines a way in which Ripstein can do so.
Brotherhood in Rhythm
Authors: Hill Constance Valis
Published: November 2021

This portrait of the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, two of the most explosive dancers of the twentieth century, who refined a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic brilliance of jazz tap at its zenith, interweaves an intimate portrait of these great performers with a detailed history of jazz music and jazz dance, bringing their act to life and explaining their significance through analysis of their eloquent footwork and full-bodied expressiveness. The book narrates the Nicholas Brothers’ soaring careers, from Cotton Club appearances with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Jimmy Lunceford to film-stealing big-screen performances with Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. Drawing on numerous hours of interviews with the Nicholas brothers themselves, the book documents their struggles against the nets of racism and segregation that constantly constrained their careers and denied them the recognition they deserved.
What Risk Resilience Measures Can I Use?
Authors: Falco Gregory , Rosenbach Eric
Published: November 2021

The question “What resilience measures can I use?” addresses how to reduce the impact and consequences of successful cyberattacks. The chapter begins with a case study analyzing how Capital One recovered after being hacked and highlighting how your organization can use planning to facilitate cyber resilience. It illuminates the technical means for enabling resilience from an attack, including virtualization and maintaining backups. It defines a ten-step process for responding to cyberattacks: prevention, planning, preparation, detection, analysis, containment, communication, eradication, recovery, and post-event analysis. The chapter explains how an organization can build a computer security incident response team (CSIRT) to facilitate this process, and what role a cyber crisis communication plan should play. The chapter concludes with Rosenbach’s Embedded Endurance strategy experience supporting the White House in crafting a national cyberattack resilience and response plan.
Evangelical Worship
Authors: Ross Melanie C.
Published: November 2021

Almost invariably, media stories with the word evangelical in their headlines are accompanied by a familiar stock photo: a mass of middle-class worshippers with eyes closed, faces tilted upward, and hands raised to the sky. Yet, despite the fact that worship has become symbolic of evangelicalism’s identity in the twenty-first century, it remains an understudied locus of academic inquiry. Historians of American evangelicalism tend to define the movement by its political entanglements (the “rise of the religious Right”), and academic trajectories (the formation of the “evangelical mind”), not its ecclesial practices. Theological scholars frequently dismiss evangelical worship as a reiteration of nineteenth-century revivalism or a derivative imitation of secular entertainment (three Christian rock songs and a spiritual TED talk). But by failing to engage this worship seriously, we miss vital insights into a form of Protestantism that exerts widespread influence in the United States and around the world. Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic models a new way forward. Drawing together insights from American religious history and liturgical studies, and putting both in conversation with ethnographic fieldwork in seven congregations, this book argues that corporate worship is not a peripheral “extra” tacked onto a fully formed spiritual/political/cultural movement, but rather the crucible through which congregations forge and negotiate the contours of evangelicalism’s contested theological identity.
Violent Ideas Treated as Disease and Compassionate Reasoning as Treatment
Authors: Gopin Marc
Published: November 2021

The tendency to obey bullies generates the most violent ideas, but they can be overcome by training in Compassionate Reasoning and elicitive peacebuilding. This entails drawing wisdom from each person, thus building peace between groups. Enter the sciences of medicine and public health. The helping professional—the nurse, the doctor, the epidemiologist, or the health official—makes moment-to-moment decisions in order to save lives. This includes honoring and listening to each patient and their unique needs. The practitioner looks at scientific studies of the human condition across cultures, and also contexts of mental health, family, community, and environment. Public health focuses on health more than illness. Compassion cultivation, imagination, self-control, meaningfulness, and a future orientation are essential. A focus on contagion and epidemiology can be applied by Compassionate Reasoning toward threats against compassion practice and moral reasoning, as well identifying opportunities for the positive “contagion” of compassion and collective reasoning.
Introduction to Music Psychology
Authors: Woody Robert H.
Published: November 2021

Psychology and music can be complementary fields of study. Psychology is the study of the amazing human mind, and music comprises some of people’s most fascinating behaviors. Psychology promotes understanding of people: how they perceive and process the world around them, how they feel emotion, how they learn, and how they can skillfully perform certain behaviors, just to name several areas of interest. Music is made by human beings for human beings. Because people are the most important elements of music, aspiring musicians really cannot optimally advance their craft without considering the insights offered by psychology. This chapter introduces the psychology of music as a field of study. It covers a number of topics, including the cultural nature of music, the contributors to emotionally powerful music experiences, and the acquired skill explanation of musical ability.
Composing and Improvising
Authors: Woody Robert H.
Published: November 2021

Creativity is often associated with great composers or performers of the past who have been ascribed some kind of "creative mystique." In order to attain better explanatory power, the psychological perspective usually begins by defining musical creativity not by divine inspiration but rather as a generative process, that is, the act of generating new musical material or new renderings of pre-existing music. Musical generativity is best understood as a component of basic musicianship, rather than part of a specialized skill set. Despite creativity being of great interest to scholars for a very long time, only recently has scientific study of creativity borne some useful insights for musicians. This chapter shows how broader principles of human creativity, revealed by research across many domains, are also specifically applicable to music. It also explains the specific processes of composing and improvising music, showing that both require musicians to investment time and energy to build these creative skills to an expert level. Finally, this chapter encourages nurturing the naturally creative behaviors of childhood and facilitating in young musicians a exploratory mindset as a basic part of their musicianship.
The Teacher
Authors: Woody Robert H.
Published: November 2021

Most accomplished musicians can readily identify music teachers whose encouragement and instruction were instrumental in their skill development. Just as musicians must acquire a diverse set of skills to be succeed as performers, music teachers must develop their own range of specialized skills to be successful. Psychological research offers no support to the old saying that “Those can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Rather, those who can teach well typically do possess a skill set that is that differs from that of other musicians. This chapter explores the variety of factors that influence how effective musicians’ instructional efforts are. It explains the importance of building respectful relationships with students, planning instruction around specific learning objectives, and deliberately teaching generalizable music concepts. The chapter encourages teachers to support learner autonomy as to empower their students to have musically rich lives beyond the confines of their educational experience.
The Listener
Authors: Woody Robert H.
Published: November 2021

Practically speaking, listening is the primary reason music exists at all. Providing a meaningful sonic experience for others is largely the reason that composers work so hard on their creations and performers enter the stage or recording studio. Human beings’ love of music can be seen in common music listening is in everyday life today. In this respect, it may seem strange to consider “the listener” as a musical role, let alone to regard music listening as a skill that people develop, even to specialized expert levels. Be that as it may, listening is an extremely important topic in the psychology of music. Many people would never consider themselves “musicians” still enthusiastically fill the role of serious listeners. This chapter offers in depth consideration of music listening, beginning with an examination of the processes of human hearing. It addresses the multiple types of listening in which people engage, from hearing music in the background while doing other things to focused listening for the purpose analyzing or evaluating the music heard. Special emphasis is given to music’s capacity to evoke strong emotions in music, sometimes to the point of physiological responses such as tears, shivers, and a racing heart.
19th and 20th Century Philosophical Foundations of Curriculum
Authors: Regelski Thomas A.
Published: November 2021

This chapter explores more recent and more relevant philosophies: Existentialism-phenomenology, and Pragmatism. Existentialism is examined, first of all, in terms of its early roots in the theological philosophy of Kierkegaard and its emphasis on self-reflection in action, then as extended by humanistic existentialism and humanistic psychology. Pragmatism examines the nature of educational experiences, the action implications of “musicing” and “amateuring,” and its critique of traditional aesthetics rooted in Kantian idealism. Both topics are extensively applied to major considerations of curriculum planning. Frequent references to pragmatism continue in the following chapters.
Curriculum Models from Educational Theory
Authors: Regelski Thomas A.
Published: November 2021

This chapter presents a range of models from educational theory. Some are thoughtless habits that protect the status quo of practices for transmission of past knowledge, while others are more productive of transformation of schools, students, and society. First discussed is basic studies/essentialism, the dysfunctional default setting of many schools and educators. Especially problematic for music educators is perennialism, a commitment to the supposed “Great Works” and “great ideas” of Western civilization. More helpfully, progressivism is then addressed as based in Dewey’s pragmatic theory of “learning by doing.” Finally, reconstructionism and critical theory share an emphasis on overcoming social status quo class divisions that the traditional approaches to schooling were transmitting.
The Breakdown in American Public Life
Authors: Ledewitz Bruce
Published: November 2021

There is a breakdown in American public life. Our divisions today go well beyond usual partisan differences. Despite the many aspects of American life that are going quite well, including finally reckoning with our national heritage of racial oppression, we are filled with frustration and distrust. Americans suffer from destructive partisanship amounting to political deadlock. Our system cannot work when the political parties refuse to work together. Both sides believe their political opponents want to destroy them. We cannot even agree on the simplest and most obvious facts or turn to common sources of information. We call this the death of truth. These overlapping conditions contribute to widespread anger and despair.
The Spiritual Dimension of the Breakdown
Authors: Ledewitz Bruce
Published: November 2021

The usual explanations of the breakdown in American public life fail to account for our current condition. They do, however, point to an underlying national spiritual crisis. The economy has not actually performed that badly. Big money is not that influential. The pathologies of social media are symptoms of our problems, not sources. Even racism is only a part of our national distress. Both sides claim the unreasonableness of the other side is the problem. These opponents have weakened the institutions of government. Some observers have given up trying to explain our condition, pointing to human nature, when human nature should be constant, or to historical cycles that simply occur. Our crisis is part of the failure of the Enlightenment and capitalism to sustain meaningful human life in secular society. The problem is the Death of God.
Interpretation, Comparison, and the History of Religions
Authors: Miller Richard B.
Published: November 2021

This chapter critically examines the work of Jonathan Z. Smith and the Interpretive-Comparative Method for studying religion. It unpacks Smith’s ideas about theory and method and shows how they instantiate the guild’s ascetic ideal in the study of religion. It describes three signature ideas in his approach, noting in particular Smith’s silence about matters of purpose when theorizing about method. It then describes how he mobilizes his ideas in his treatment of the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana with the aim of overcoming incomprehension surrounding that event by invoking a method of interpretive and comparative reasoning. Drawing on the ideas of Peter Strawson, the chapter shows what a critical humanistic assessment of Jonestown would look like in contrast to Smith’s reading of them, focusing on the experience of indignation at injustice and the tragic loss of life at Jonestown.
Scientific Rationality and Causal Explanation
Authors: Miller Richard B.
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the work of Donald Wiebe and the Scientific-Explanatory Method. Otherwise known as the naturalistic paradigm, the Scientific-Explanatory Method insists that the study of religion should operate within a value-free, disinterested, and empirical set of parameters. The chapter examines Wiebe’s ideas and then enlists and expands on insights offered in the previous chapter to show how Wiebe’s naturalism rules out valid sources of knowledge about human experience. Drawing on the philosophical anthropology and hermeneutical ideas of Charles Taylor, it shows how naturalism drapes human conduct under the banner of behaviorism and excludes from consideration the idea that human beings are agents who act according to intersubjective reasons. The chapter concludes by arguing that the naturalistic paradigm relies on a fact-value distinction that reflects and reinforces the commitments to value-neutrality that the book identifies as afflicting the field.
Genealogy, Ideology, and Critical Theory
Authors: Miller Richard B.
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the Genealogical-Ideological Method for interrogating the category of religion and unmasking its complicity with capitalist market interests, racial and gender inequities, colonializing practices, and power. With these ideas in hand, the chapter examines representative works by Russell McCutcheon, Timothy Fitzgerald, and Saba Mahmood. In their works, it is argued, the problem of failing to provide justificatory arguments looms large. McCutcheon and Fitzgerald fail to see how the problems they espy in the study of religion apply to their way of thinking. Mahmood conceives of human agency as an outcome of repetitive bodily practices rather than as relying on reasons for action, thus denying her ways to understand human motivation in Islamic pietism and concealing the justificatory dimensions of the practices she describes in Politics of Piety. The chapter shows how problems in these approaches are symptomatic of difficulties surrounding the justificatory status of the study of religion.
The Emergence of the PRI in Mexico
Authors: Ackerman Edwin F.
Published: November 2021

This chapter explores the role of erosion of traditional agrarian structures on party organization in Mexico. Land privatization was extensive but not uniform in the country by the time the Partido Revolucioonario Institucional (PRI) began forming. Through agrarian census materials and archival evidence of electoral mobilization and peasant union construction, this chapter shows how the regions in the country with relatively higher levels of land privatization and where kinship-based communal councils were weak were the areas where the PRI emerged as a mass party. In areas where land privatization was weak and communal councils were strong, the party was able to establish only tenuous temporary alliances with peasants. It shows how these regional differences correspond to differences in peasants’ organizational availability, types of interests and demands, and emergence of professional politicians autonomous from their communities of origin. These differences facilitated the emergence of the PRI.
Dispossession and Party Formation in Broader Comparative Perspective
Authors: Ackerman Edwin F.
Published: November 2021

This chapter shows that rather than emerging from a ready-formed cohesive industrial labor movement, these parties’ original constituency was the demoted artisan and peasantry in transition to be, but not yet, proletarianized. Second, in a related way, the chapter shows that the period of party emergence followed a process of economic and political dispossession: these parties articulated new political subjectivities in the context of eroding traditional economic and political structures. The differences in the timing of party emergence between the countries lie precisely in how these processes of dispossession developed: in Germany, the process of economic dispossession coincided with a political dispossession setting the terrain for the mass-party form, while in the British case, economic dispossession was not initially accompanied by political dispossession of the working classes, who maintained a degree of self-presentational authority, particularly in the form of “friendly societies.”
Medieval Darkness, a Dim Renaissance
Authors: Wellman Kathleen
Published: November 2021

In these textbooks, the Middle Ages is a dark period when Christianity was perverted into Catholicism. They read the Reformation backward, showing that the Catholic Church rejected Lutheran theological tenets long before his time. They appreciate the Anglo-Saxons and medieval figures who challenged the Catholic Church as proto-Protestants. They vilify the French as their antithesis. The early English prepare the way for the Reformation and, ultimately, a Christian nation in the New World. The textbooks also use the Middle Ages to initiate some of their economic arguments, connecting early commercial development to incipient Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and then to post-Reformation Protestantism. The Renaissance, however, was an unfortunate flourishing of humanism. These interpretations of the Middle Ages have historical roots in white nationalism and anti-Catholicism, which have characterized American evangelicalism in the past and have become more prominent in recent public discourse.
Conclusion
Authors: Wellman Kathleen
Published: November 2021

In its conclusion, Hijacking History holds up a mirror to the narrative of these Christian world histories by considering the terms by which they define themselves: How has their narrative defined and used Christianity? How do they use history to analyze the past? And how do they construe the world? The conclusion reiterates central themes of the book but also urges thoughtful responses, critical engagement, and resistance to efforts to impose this polemic on American schoolchildren, particularly in schools supported by public funds. The dissemination of this narrative has surely played a role in hardening a national divide, with serious implications for civic life and democracy.
Respondents’ Religious and Social Landscape
Authors: Morello Gustavo S.J.
Published: November 2021

Because people’s lived religion happens in everyday life, it is relevant to know what daily life looks like, both in the privacy of the home and in the workplace or recreation spaces. This chapter presents a contemporary overview of Latin America’s religious landscape, and also respondents’ experience of “lived modernity.” In the three Latin American cities studied, it is a challenging one. The economy is perhaps one of the biggest pending bills of modernity. The most secularized social sphere has not brought about the prosperity and security promised. The point of this chapter is that if Latin Americans experience modernity in a different way than Europeans or US citizens, it makes sense that they also experience religion differently (even if their traditions come from the United States, Europe, Middle East, or Africa).
Introduction
Authors: Wright Dale S.
Published: November 2021

The Introduction outlines the book’s purposes and approach by explaining the title’s three components. It asks what it means to live skillfully and how the Vimalakīrti Sūtra focuses on the cultivation of life skills through the development of Buddhist practices. It then inquires into the meaning of a Buddhist philosophy of life and how it might play a crucial role in our efforts to diminish human suffering and to advance human awareness and awakening. Finally, it describes the unique character of the Vimalakīrti Sūtra and how this book will approach the sutra as a means to cultivate a contemporary philosophy of life along Buddhist lines that might accentuate the possibility of living skillfully.
Skill-in-Means
Authors: Wright Dale S.
Published: November 2021

This chapter addresses the Mahayana Buddhist theme of upaya, the “skillful means” required to live an authentic bodhisattva life of wisdom and compassion. The sutra pictures Vimalakirti’s skill as the ability to work with others toward the common good in a wide variety of circumstances. Vimalakirti is described as fully inclusive, rejecting no one while working to liberate everyone from the poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion. His skillful means is centered on the cultivation of intention, a vow to enact the highest thought of enlightenment possible under current conditions. The chapter concludes with an examination of five dimensions of character valorized in the sutra.
The Goddess of Freedom
Authors: Wright Dale S.
Published: November 2021

This chapter examines the sutra’s understanding of freedom by following the story of a goddess who for one full chapter becomes the principal teacher. She gives instruction on the formation of intention and the necessity to avoid clinging to all states of mind. She repudiates the pride of self-seeking by denying her own achievements, and teaches how bodhisattvas should understand gender roles and distinctions—by seeing how dependent and impermanent they really are. The goddess’s role in the sutra is to open Buddhism to greater flexibility and to new insights. This chapter seeks to define what those insights are.
Life in the Middle
Authors: Chaturvedi Neilan S.
Published: November 2021

For almost thirty years, political scientists have believed that the US Senate would be less affected by partisan polarization due to the existence of a handful of moderate senators who would act as power brokers between the two sides, yet year after year we see partisan gridlock. Life in the Middle argues that the belief in the powerful, pivotal moderate neglects their electoral circumstances and overestimates their legislative power. Indeed, not all senators are elected under equal circumstances where the modern centrist has to balance between two conflicting constituencies like Susan Collins in Maine, or represents a state where the opposition outnumbers their base like Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Using data compiled from the Congressional Record, the book examines the legislative behavior of moderates and finds that they seldom amend legislation to their preferences, rarely speak on the record, and often lose on final votes. Using unique interview data with nineteen legislative directors and six retired centrist senators, it also finds that the behind-the-scenes conversations mirror the on-stage behavior where centrists are not influential or viewed as pivotal by party leaders. Furthermore, moderates reported less satisfaction with legislative outcomes than their peers. Life in the Middle suggests that lawmaking needs to be re-evaluated as being much more variable and less reliant on the work of moderates and more on party leaders. Indeed, the mainstream concerns about polarization and its negative effects of increased gridlock and ideological legislation may be true.
On Children’s Outcomes
Authors: Rosenfeld Michael J.
Published: November 2021

Chapter 12 reviews research on the educational progress of children raised in different kinds of families. Using data from the 2000 U.S. census, the chapter shows that children raised by same-sex couples had good outcomes, which was consistent with a broad consensus of social science studies. In contrast to the negligible difference in educational progress between children raised by same-sex couples and children raised by heterosexual couples, there are many dimensions of social life that are strongly associated with children’s educational progress in the U.S. These more predictive dimensions include race, gender of the child, parental social class, parental education, region, disability, children raised in families as compared to children under the care of the state or foster children, and rural compared to urban and suburban residence. This research was featured in the DeBoer v Snyder trial.