bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Macroanalysis of Secessionist Tactics
Authors: Griffiths Ryan D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins the transition from the case studies to the final sections of the book in which it zooms out to view the dynamics of secession from a wide angle and to test the theory in a large-N format. It first describes the data on secessionist movements by excluding all of the cases prior to 1945 because the strategic playing field for secessionists was different in earlier periods, and removing cases where the strategic playing field is substantially different. The chapter then explains how they were sorted into the six secessionist kinds. The chapter also elaborates the data used for the dependent variable: compellence and normative appeal. To study compellence tactics, it presented new data on secessionist methods and modelled three tactics in which the movements pursue independence via institutional means, civil resistance and nonviolent extra-institutional means, and violent extra institutional means. To study normative appeal, it created new data on the rhetoric used by secessionist groups around the time they became active. Ultimately, the chapter presents a quantitative analysis in two dependent variables of tactics of compellence and normative appeal.
Not the Wars You’re Looking For
Authors: Hazelton Jacqueline L.
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines support for the compellence theory in three cases: the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, and the Philippines' campaign against the Huk insurgency. In the British campaign in Malaya, 1948–1957, the colonial government defeated a small, isolated Communist insurgency that failed to gain political traction even within the population of impoverished ethnic Chinese rubber plantation workers that it targeted as its often-unwilling base of support. In Greece in 1947–1949, the United States backed the repressive, fragile post-World War II Greek government and built its military capacity sufficiently to defeat the Communist and nationalist insurgents. In the Philippines in 1946–1954, the United States backed the Philippine government as a bulwark against Communist expansion in Asia, pressing for major governance reforms while building Philippine security forces. In all three cases, elite accommodation played a significant role in the counterinsurgent's ability to defeat the insurgency militarily, with the type of elite involved varying by case; uses of force included forcefully controlling civilians; and uses of force broke the insurgency before reforms were implemented, if they were implemented at all, as the compellence theory predicts.
“Time to Attend to the Wedding”
Authors: Martin Russell E.
Published: September 2021

This chapter takes Grand Prince Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia's wedding as a starting point. It explores the origins, structural elements, and symbolism of the wedding ritual over the course of the sixteenth century. It compares Muscovite weddings with ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine weddings and explores the question of the origins of these rituals in the East Slavic space. The chapter also plots Muscovite weddings according to Arnold van Gennep's model of les rites de passage — separation, liminality, and incorporation — which turns out to be a very useful lens for interpreting Muscovite weddings. When Muscovite secretaries and scribes developed a discrete set of documents to describe royal weddings at the turn of the sixteenth century, they created, perhaps unintentionally, a ritual template that lasted without much modification for more than a hundred years. The chapter describes and dissects that template.
Time and Migration
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

Based on longitudinal ethnographic work on migration between the United States and Taiwan, this book interrogates how long-term immigrants negotiate their needs as they grow older and how transnational migration shapes later-life transitions. The author of the book develops the concept of a “temporalities of migration” to examine the interaction between space, place, and time. The book demonstrates how long-term settlement in the United States, coupled with changing homeland contexts, has inspired aging immigrants and returnees to rethink their sense of social belonging, remake intimate relations, and negotiate opportunities and constraints across borders. The interplay between migration and time shapes the ways aging migrant populations reassess and reconstruct relationships with their children, spouses, grandchildren, community members, and home, as well as host societies. Aging, the book argues, is a global issue and must be reconsidered in a cross-border environment.
Emigrating, Staying, and Returning
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores the ways temporalities of migration are manifested in the intimate lives of older immigrants. It addresses the temporal, structural, cultural, and contextual factors that shape their changing relations to home and host societies at different points of their lives. It also illustrates the historical backgrounds against which aging immigrants aspired to migrate to the United States and their perceptions of “America” and “American” in relation to Taiwan. The chapter chronicles the senior immigrants' views of the American dream through their stories. It examines the aging immigrants' assessments of transnational opportunities and restrictions and their changing notions of membership in home and host societies in later life.
Articulating Logics of Social Rights
Authors: Sun Ken Chih-Yan
Published: September 2021

This chapter uses temporalities of migration as a conceptual tool to explain its manifestation among Taiwanese immigrants as they consider intimate relations with their home and host societies. It analyzes the way aging immigrants reconsider their worthiness for “social care” provided by both the US and the Taiwanese governments. It also points out how older immigrants constructed moral boundaries to govern their use of public resources and how they attempted to justify their right to government-sponsored entitlements for senior citizens and claim moral superiority over newcomers by denigrating other migrant groups. The chapter explores how temporal variation offered aging immigrants new options and resources for organizing their lives across national borders. It mentions public benefits programs that offer older returnees a new means for overcoming the difficulties they had encountered in the United States.
Conclusion
Authors: Henry Eric S.
Published: September 2021

This concluding chapter begins by describing the decline of English teaching in China. Although English is still the most popular foreign language for students taking the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE), the state has lately begun to expand the number of options available, including Japanese, German, and Spanish, particularly as those relate to expanding trade and global soft power. These indicators may presage a transformation of the English language industry in Shenyang to come, but it is important to appreciate the difference between the marketplace for language instruction and the more cultural dimensions of linguistic desire that this book discusses. A change in the economics of language schooling is an inevitable consequence of a maturing market. Similarly, the relatively minor reduction of English's weighting on university entrance exams underscores changes to the underlying ideology of education, but does not necessarily herald the doom of foreign languages in China or the elimination of English's linguistic capital. Nevertheless, the chapter surveys the ground traveled in this ethnography and highlights some of the issues brought to the fore. There is much still that could be said about language, education, and modernization in China, and the chapter points the way forward to further research on these topics.
Rich Thanks to Racism
Authors: Freeman Jim
Published: September 2021

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. This book explains why this is so, as it reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. The book details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality. The book carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. It uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. The book exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and extreme anti-immigrant policies. It also demonstrates how these “racism profiteers” prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color. The book is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.
Introduction
Authors: Madland David
Published: September 2021

This introductory chapter gives a background on the problems that the average American worker faces. It posits that most Americans are not able to get a fair share of the gains they help create nor are able to ensure that their elected representatives respond to their economic concerns. It proposes that stronger unions operating under a new type of labor system could help address the country's underlying economic and political challenges. It argues that US law does not provide enough support for unions to overcome the growing power employers have over their workers, nor does it adequately address the basic collective action problem inherent in union membership. The chapter talks about how the changing economy has made it harder for workers to collectively bargain at their worksites. It describes what the new labor system should be: a system that would provide strong incentives for membership and promote broad-based bargaining; a system that would include reforms necessary to provide real rights and protections for all workers; a system that would take the best of what works elsewhere in the world and adapt them to the US context based on existing policies in US cities and states; a system that would raise wages for those who have a college degree and those who do not, for low- and middle-income earners, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or classification as independent contractors. Ultimately, a system that would help ensure that work has dignity.
Kidney to Share
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D., MD
Published: September 2021

This book tells the story of the author's decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. The book takes readers through the complex process by which such donors are vetted to ensure that they are physically and psychologically fit to take the risk of a major operation. The story is also placed in the larger context of the history of kidney transplantation and the ethical controversies that surround living donors. The book helps readers understand the discoveries that made transplantation relatively safe and effective as well as the legal, ethical, and economic policies that make it feasible. The book explores the steps involved in recovering and allocating organs. It analyzes the differences that arise depending on whether the organ comes from a living donor or one who has died. It observes the expertise — and the shortcomings — of doctors, nurses, and other professionals and describes the burdens that we place on people who are willing to donate. It asks us to consider just how far society should go in using one person's healthy body parts in order to save another person. The book provides an account of organ donation that is both personal and analytical. A combination of perspectives leads to a profound and compelling exploration of a largely opaque practice. The book pulls back the curtain to offer readers a more transparent view of the fascinating world of organ donation.
The Arcane Process of Screening Living Donors
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the careful medical and psychosocial screening that is required for living donors. It analyzes the motivations of family donors, voluntariness, and the possibility of intrafamilial coercion. In the early days of transplantation, nobody was considering living donors who were unrelated to the recipient. That was partly for legal reasons, partly for emotional reasons, but mostly for medical reasons. The chapter then shifts to discuss the first kidney transplant that took place in 1950, and traces the discoveries and developments in early medical science. The key breakthrough in improving outcomes for liver, kidney, and heart transplants was the fortuitous discovery of a remarkable new immunosuppressive medication, cyclosporine, and better tissue typing. The chapter then investigates how these developments in immunosuppression and tissue matching improved the outcomes of transplantation from both related and unrelated donors.
Meeting “My” Recipient
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter talks about the process of medical tests, information sessions, and psychological evaluations after Deb Porter Gill and the author matched with on all six HLA tissue type markers. The chapter displays the author's excitement to meet Deb, however, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules preclude the hospital from disclosing a potential donor's name to an unrelated recipient. By fortunate coincidence, Deb was en route to spend a week in Kansas City when she read the author's Facebook message. They both agreed they should take advantage of this chance to meet in person. The chapter then narrates the conversation they had about writing and publishing, politics, child welfare, and everyone they knew in common.
Evaluation at Mayo
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins with narrating the author's preparation for the required tests and evaluations at the Mayo Clinic. It reviews the two purposes of the tests and consultations: they were designed to ensure that donating an organ would not adversely impact the author's medical or emotional health in either the short or long term, and they wanted to be sure that her kidney would not hurt Deb Porter Gil, the recipients. The chapter also mentions a paper that reviewed fifty-two other studies on the health outcomes for 118,000 adult, living kidney donors over twenty-four years. It shows that the living kidney donors in the study had no increased risk for chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease; no adverse psychological outcomes; and they lived just as long as everyone else. Ultimately, the chapter recounts the author's 400-mile drive from Kansas City to Rochester and her meeting with the Mayo doctors.
Complexities of Increasing Organ Supply
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter investigates why the various matching and swapping arrangements are hard to implement, arguing it is difficult to schedule even one transplant in ways that are convenient for the donor and meet the needs of the recipient. The chapter analyses the difficulties of this complicated exchange, especially if there are two or more transplants. With such awareness, the chapter reviews the innovative program that was recently initiated at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, which allows people to donate a kidney today in exchange for a voucher that a designated recipient can redeem for a kidney in the future if and when a kidney is needed. Even though the new and more complex elaboration of paired exchanges or vouchers increased the pool of people who can donate and increased the chances for people on transplant waiting lists to get an organ, the chapter explores how they begin to look more and more like markets. And, in most countries, markets in organs are illegal.
The Countdown Begins
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins with Deb Porter Gill and the author's discussion about directed donation after their chain in the paired exchange called off. The chapter then displays Deb's frustrations with the Mayo Clinic's lack of communication and attention to detail in the process of her impending surgery and other necessary tests. It then turns to highlight the author's biggest obstacle: the dry ice saga. The author received an email from Mayo, with template language saying they were required to recheck blood for HIV and hepatitis within twenty-eight days of all organ donation surgeries. The chapter describes how the author struggled to find a dry ice source and shipment to ship the HIV-hepatitis lab kit back to Mayo on time.
Second Attempt
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on Deb Porter Gill's second surgery attempt after the first postponed kidney transplant. It details the entire list of surgical risks again and the need for a new signature on the consent forms. The chapter also highlights her discussion with Lisa, her nurse transplant coordinator, about the dry ice story, and a final “sign-off” appointment she had with a nephrologist, as the nephrologist's approval would be required to proceed to surgery. The chapter then recounts how the author and Deb started as strangers, entered into the same project with optimism and determination, and together made a miracle happen. Ultimately, it outlines the follow-up appointments and protocols after the successful surgery.
Follow-Up
Authors: Gershun Martha , Lantos John D.
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on Deb Porter Gill's and the author's completion of the post-op evaluation, five months after the surgery at the Mayo Clinic. It describes the recovery stories of both women and their trip for Mayo's final testing. The chapter also looks at Deb's kidney biopsy and how she managed to overcome the early signs of rejection with the help of Mayo's aggressive early intervention. It recounts the mini version of the author's original three-day evaluation at Mayo, and discusses her final meeting with her nurse transplant coordinator, donor advocate, and nephrologist, who would provide her final sign-off. The chapter offers the author's narrative throughout her journey, one of the most profoundly meaningful experiences of her life. It critiques why people idealized her actions, hailing her as a hero or a living saint. Ultimately, the chapter seeks to understand the living organ donors' unique place in the medical system.
Republicanism, Communism, Islam
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This book provides an alternate vantage point for understanding the variegated forms and trajectories of revolution across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Việtnam, a perspective that is de-nationalized, internationalized, and transnationalized. The book positions this new vantage point against the conventional framing of revolutions in modern Southeast Asian history in terms of a nationalist template, on the one hand, and distinctive local cultures and forms of consciousness, on the other. The book's comparative analysis shows how — in very different, decisive, and often surprising ways — the Philippine, Indonesian, and Việtnamese revolutions were informed, enabled, and impelled by diverse cosmopolitan connections and international conjunctures. It addresses the role of Freemasonry in the making of the Philippine revolution, the importance of Communism and Islam in Indonesia's Revolusi, and the influence that shifting political currents in China and anticolonial movements in Africa had on Việtnamese revolutionaries. Through this assessment, the book tracks how these forces, rather than nationalism per se, shaped the forms of these revolutions, the ways in which they unfolded, and the legacies which they left in their wakes.
Beyond Nationalism and Revolution in Southeast Asia
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter offers a composite picture of the Philippine, Indonesian, and Việtnamese revolutions that goes beyond both established understandings of these revolutions as nationalist in nature and the various strands of the growing body of literature on the various cosmopolitan connections cited above. The chapter intends to provide a new descriptive overview of the three major revolutions in Southeast Asian history. In so doing, the chapter provides a critical counterpoint to those understandings and accounts of these revolutions that, consciously or unconsciously, follow official nationalist narratives in which the rise of national consciousness produces nationalists who make national revolutions. It works to undermine efforts to appropriate these revolutions — and the making of these three new nation-states — for the nationalist elites who came to occupy state power in the aftermaths of these revolutions and throughout the postindependence era. By providing alternative narratives, the chapter suggests ways these revolutions might be understood not only in terms of their victories and their victors but in light of their betrayals and their victims, as the diverse and diverging emancipatory energies that helped to fuel revolutionary mobilization were in various ways absorbed, appropriated, and eviscerated by postrevolutionary (nation-)states.
Masonería, Cofradía, Katipunan
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter argues that the Philippine Revolution of the late nineteenth century can be most fully understood in light of the international context in which it unfolded and the cosmopolitan mobilizing structures that enabled and impelled the trajectory it followed. The chapter suggests that the timing of the Philippine Revolution — late relative to South America, early in Southeast Asia — owed less to the nationalizing impact of Spanish colonial state formation than to the cosmopolitanizing consequences of the deepening integration of the Philippine archipelago within the world capitalist economy over the course of the nineteenth century. The chapter reviews the church's fundamental role in the formation of a modern public sphere in the Philippines and in linking the Philippines to the very same cultural, intellectual, and linguistic world of Christianity, which liberal and republican cosmopolitan challenges to the universalist claims of Rome had emerged. Ultimately, the chapter discusses how plebeian and egalitarian forms of brotherhood provided the basis for a revolution within the Revolution, with the associational form of the cofradía providing a popular vehicle for subaltern mobilization in many provinces across the archipelago.
From Cultuurstelsel to Komedie Stamboel
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter begins by detailing the rise of multiple new initiatives in the realm of political action during the early twentieth century in the Netherlands East Indies. It explores how the deepening incorporation of the Indonesian archipelago within the world economy over the course of the nineteenth century entailed advanced forms of exploitation in commercial agriculture, commodity processing, natural resource exploitation, and the elaboration of a modern transportation network. The chapter then discusses the internationalization of the Indonesian archipelago's economy in the increasing prominence and problematic position of diverse diasporic immigrant communities, most notably the so-called Chinese. It further analyses how the commercialization of agriculture and extension of market relations in the hinterlands of Java and other islands of the Indies during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries unfolded through the intermediation of local compradors — immigrant Hokkien-speaking merchants, moneylenders, and rice millers — who were discouraged from assimilation into native society and designated as “foreign orientals.” Ultimately, the chapter highlights the broadening of transregional and transoceanic networks of diasporic and religious circulation, the deepening incorporation of the Indonesian archipelago within the world economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its impact on the intensifying immersion of the Netherlands East Indies within diverse currents of cosmopolitanism.
From Cần Vương to Viêt-Nam Duy-Tân Hội to Thanh Niên
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter details the first waves of large-scale organized mobilization that unfolded across the territories that came to comprise Việtnam. It draws heavily on the discursive tradition and sociological infrastructure of Sinographic cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and on various forms of support and solidarity from neighboring China, on the other. The chapter then shifts to the Cần Vương insurrection, which did not provide the bases for sustained popular mobilization or systematic command and coordination across Annam and Tonkin, enabling a French counterinsurgency campaign to achieve “pacification” within a few short years. The chapter also introduces a new movement led by Phan Bội Châu called the Viêt-Nam Duy-Tân Hội (Việtnam Modernization Society), in which he started to assemble a clandestine network of supporters not only in Annam and Tonkin but also in Cochinchina. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the emergence of a new revolutionary network established by Nguyễn Ái Quốc known as the Việt Nam Thanh Niên Cách Mệnh Đồng Chí Hội (Revolutionary Youth League of Việt Nam), or Thanh Niên for short.
Commonalities, Comparisons, Conclusions
Authors: Sidel John T.
Published: September 2021

This chapter proposes that the origins of the Philippine, Indonesian, and Việtnamese revolutions were profoundly, but also diversely, cosmopolitan in nature. In this vein, the chapter indicates that the explanation for the differences observed between these revolutions lies not in innate, intrinsic, internal features of the three societies in which they unfolded, but rather in the varying ways they were integrated into the broader circuitries and currents of transcontinental and transoceanic commerce, into the world capitalist economy, and into diverse forms of cosmopolitan connectedness across the region and beyond. In suggesting explanations for the variegated forms and diverging trajectories of the Philippine, Indonesian, and Việtnamese revolutions, the chapter stresses the importance of both the distinctive legacies of cosmopolitan connections dating back to the Early Modern Era and the different constellations of social forces that crystallized during the Age of Empire with the deepening integration of the region into the world economy over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It recounts the anticlerical and elitist colorations of the Philippine Revolution, the centrality of Islam and communism to the Indonesian Revolusi, and the crucial contributions of both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party to the Việtnamese Revolution. Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates a non-nationalist basis for sympathy and support for the egalitarian aspirations and emancipatory energies animating Southeast Asians' revolutionary struggles during the late nineteenth and early–mid-twentieth centuries.
The Fall of the Byzantine Empire
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyzes the Byzantine Empire. After Rome had completely collapsed, Byzantium was a center of power, prosperity, and culture. There was a rough period in the 600s and 700s, when it was victimized by barbarian invasion, but it recovered well. The Byzantine Empire at its height, from the eighth to the tenth century, was remarkably egalitarian. The state went to great lengths to eliminate poverty, to protect workers, and to prevent the creation of oligarchs and plutocrats. Economic growth produced military power, allowing the Byzantines to raise huge armies. Military power also produced economic growth; part of the financing of the Byzantine Empire came through conquest. Using this system, Byzantium prospered mightily, notably between 800 and 1025. But then things began to fall apart.
How States Actually Die
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter details the societal death of Somalia. After the government of Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, Somalia became genuinely stateless. The Somali government fell in part because the economy was fragile and social cohesion was fragile. Conceivably, Somalia could have maintained a status quo as a low-expenditure, low-performance ministate. However, the general noncooperation of Somali clans with their clan neighbors translated into national noncooperation between Somalia and its neighboring nations. This led to both border raids and major warfare. Ultimately, massive government spending on wars, refugees, and corruption without an economic base led to hyperinflation. By the late 1980s, a monthly government salary provided only three days' worth of actual living expenses. Once government salaries became worthless, government employees stopped coming to work and the Somali government simply stopped functioning.
What Links These Stories?
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter looks at the common threads that unite the various disaster stories of ancient Byzantium, the Middle East, the French Revolution, and modern-day Somalia. First, cooperation helps; factionalism and infighting hurt. The French aristocracy doomed itself by splintering while arguing over which subset of nobles would have to pay the new taxes, and the interclan divisions prevented the Somalians from developing a unified response to defend themselves against British or Italian colonizers. Second, governments do not survive without adequate tax revenues. Byzantium doomed itself by granting tax subsidies to its nobility, while the Somalian government was always in tenuous straits due to the lack of taxable surplus in the country. Third, the economy matters, and fourth, ecological preservation can be essential to economic growth. Fifth, ethnic tensions inhibit rational state policy: the inability of African or Middle Eastern countries to prevent the loss of the semiarid came from governments paralyzed by ethnic divisions. Finally, state capacity matters: Somalia's government was crippled by widespread corruption and flagrant lack of expertise.
Why Bigger Is Better
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter explores the argument that big networks of cooperation work better than small networks of cooperation. This argument was made most forcefully by S. N. Eisenstadt, one of Talcott Parsons's best students, who studied the rise and fall of ancient empires. What are the advantages that large systems enjoy over small systems? Large systems have larger resource bases; can support greater specialization; and can draw from a larger talent pool to fill positions requiring unique skills. Preferring large social networks to small ones is what led to the prosperity of Switzerland, one of the richest nations in the world. Its manufacturing got a jump start by offering religious asylum to Protestant craftsmen who were being persecuted in Catholic France. The legacy of offering religious toleration was that Switzerland became the world's primary watchmaker. Swiss tolerance also allowed it to unify the country without any major disputes between French- and German-speaking areas.
Progress That Is Real
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter highlights the reduction of poverty. Over the course of history, the world has become rich. Indeed, it is quite clear that from 1820 on we have seen an extraordinary explosion of economic growth and standards of living that has benefited every region of the world. The bottom line shows that world standards of living were thirteen times higher in 2000 than they were in 1820. Food consumption has also gone up substantially from 1965/1966 to 2015. As such, economic development appears to have at least reduced starvation and malnutrition of the poor nations of the world. However, do these favorable trends translate into better health?
Progress That Is Real
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter illustrates how the generalized improvement in income has led to better health. Globally, the number of years that people live has steadily improved over time. In the 1880s, the average person lived to be only twenty-seven years old. Life expectancy improved by 1900 and again by 1950. In the 2000s, the average person lived to be sixty-nine years old; people's lifespans more than doubled. This is due to the improvements in food supply, sanitation, and modern medicine, particularly pediatric health. To be sure, not all diseases are curable. We have made progress against heart disease and against certain forms of cancer, but there are still diagnoses where the doctor gives you the bad news and tells you the short time you have remaining to live. We do not live forever, but we live for a longer time and we spend a larger proportion of our lives not in pain.
The Miracle of Airports
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter assesses how airports increase economic growth and do so dramatically. The two main quantitative studies that have been done on the effects of airports on economic development were done in Brazil and in the United States. Both studies showed that there was dramatically higher growth in the states receiving airport expansions; the super-growth only occurred after the airport expansion was completed. Commercial agriculture and tourism seem to be particularly responsive to enlargements of airport capacity. However, it is possible to overdo airport construction. Spain went on an airport-building binge in the 2000s. Above and beyond the airports the country already had, forty-eight new airports were constructed, many of which were less than an hour from each other. Only eleven of the new airports were profitable and some saw no air traffic at all.
The Parallel Power
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter illustrates why gangs are so powerful in Latin America. First, Latin America is poor, and when opportunities for legitimate employment are scarce or unremunerative, people turn to crime because crime pays. Second, gangs get politicians elected and keep them in power, which makes the government an implicit ally of the criminals. Third, gangs provide social services to poor people that the government cannot or will not. This allows some gang leaders to play Robin Hood and become popular. Finally, some of the criminals have full legal impunity. This is especially the case when the gang leaders/members are either politicians or cops.
Working at Creating a Culture of Hatred
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter analyzes the culture of hatred. The Canadian sociologist Matthew Lange has found that ethnic supremacist education is a fundamental source of division in some of the most ethnically divided countries in the world. Supremacist schools are a direct cause of the hostility between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka, between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus, between French Quebecois and English Canadians in Quebec, and between hostile ethnic groups in many other nations. The places Lange writes about are dissimilar, but the causes of xenophobic education generally are the same. These lead to enduring ethnic hostility that could last for generations. The chapter then focuses on ethnic supremacist education in Sri Lanka.
The Global Land Grab
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter evaluates why the amount of landlessness in the world is going up dramatically. The primary cause for this is a wave of land acquisition in the Global South. China has obtained vast tracts of land in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. American, European, and Indian investors are also in the mix. Local elites are in the game as well; they are at least as active as the foreigners in land acquisitions. Whether for good reasons or bad reasons, lots of land is being sold in the Global South and cultivators are losing their homes and their livelihoods. The fact that land transfers do not involve what is officially designated as “arable” land does not mean that dispossession is not occurring. When the United States occupied Native American lands, none of that territory officially counted in the census as “arable” land, since the frontier was not cultivated by white people. Those land seizures led to three hundred years of Indian wars.
Triggers of Destruction
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter assesses some of the plausible triggers that could start a process of societal devolution. The danger areas to worry about include downturns in the Mensch cycle, ecological disasters, landlessness-based violence, and increase in patriarchy. Downturns in Mensch cycles are inevitable. Ecological hazards are harder to predict, but it is unlikely that the world faces absolutely no environmental threats whatsoever. The world is already experiencing more frequent and intense low-level wars from increased landlessness. Will that lead to something more serious? Who can say? A global snapback to traditional patriarchy seems unlikely, but this process is occurring in more localized areas. In those settings, the effects of the limitation of women's activity have already led to significant damage.
Long-Term Booms and Busts in Capitalism
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter addresses the long-term booms and busts in capitalism. The most famous theory of cycles comes from the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratieff, who posited fifty-year cycles of twenty-five years of boom and twenty-five years of bust. Another theory comes from the work of Gerhard Mensch. The chapter then looks at the five big Kondratieff waves and considers the factors that caused them. The Industrial Revolution was really a case of new product development; machine spinning and weaving dropped the price of clothing dramatically. The clothes-buying binge began to fade in the 1820s, but the British and world economy were rescued by railways. When this boom too ran its course, but the world economy was rescued again — by structural steel. Unfortunately, much of the transformation of world structures from wood to steel had been accomplished by 1920. The 1920s saw depression throughout Europe, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then the world economy was rescued again by the automobile, which generated a huge number of by-product industries. The saturated market made the 1970s and 1980s years of economic stagnation and slow global growth. However, the world economy was saved again — this time by the personal computer and the internet.
Technological and International Causes of Stagnation
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter describes how the long-term booms and busts of capitalism are driven by two dynamics: those of technology and those of international competition. Gerhard Mensch argued that the great expansionary cycles of the world were linked to fundamental technological innovations that generated a broad range of related products. Busts occur when the engineering of a given product becomes so well understood that no new improvements can be made. Growth will stay mediocre until some new breakthrough innovation comes. If the breakthrough innovation does not happen, then capitalism can go into long-term stagnation. Once technology is stagnant and the skills to produce products have become widely dispersed, then competition is based on price rather than quality. Just as the rich nations are running out of sales due to technological stagnation, lots of low-cost competitors appear to fight for whatever sales are left.
Will There Be a Sixth Mensch Cycle?
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter reflects on the possibility of a sixth Mensch cycle. There have been five Mensch cycles: textiles, railroads, steel, automobiles, and computers. When the first four major products died, after long periods of stagnation, a new product emerged to revitalize the world economy. After the fifth Mensch cycle — personal computers and the internet — finally dies, it is difficult to know what the next big product will be, which might reestablish the global economy. It is also difficult to know what country will invent the next great innovation. If the United States wants there to be a sixth Mensch cycle, and if it wants the key invention to be developed in the United States, then protecting and maintaining America's scientific capacity is essential.
Creating Lasting Meaningful Social Reform
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter examines the emancipations which were not the result of British or American arm-twisting. Brazil did not emancipate its slaves even after a second British naval assault — a blockade of Rio de Janeiro. What induced Brazil to change? On the one hand, the slaves mobilized themselves. The late nineteenth century saw increasing uprisings by black populations and increasing numbers of organized mass escapes as groups of slaves made runs for the frontier. On the other hand, Brazil urbanized. The urban population had no vested interest in slavery, so abolitionist groups formed in the larger Brazilian cities just as they had formed in Britain. Change in public opinion led to the abolition of serfdom in Russia as well.
What You Can Do to Save the World
Authors: Cohn Samuel
Published: September 2021

This chapter outlines what we can do to prevent societal death from happening, or stop the process once it has begun. It is important to remember that massive cultural change is possible. How do you change the culture of a world on a downward slide? When networks of trust and cooperation are shrinking, people only talk to people in their own social circle. Thus, reaching out and talking to other people that one would not otherwise talk to is key. Sharing new ideas helps build trust and confidence. It is also important to eliminate intolerance and maintain a positive message about the importance of global cooperation and working together, about the importance of science and education, and about the state and taxation.
Whose Woods These Are
Authors: Edmondson Brad
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on the early life of George Davis, a person who turned the idea for his doctoral dissertation into a big map that transformed life in the North Country. The chapter mentions how Davis worked on plans to preserve the Adirondacks for seven years, then spent another fifteen years fighting to protect those plans. It narrates Davis' work for a commission, which analyzed Adirondack Park's privately owned land in 1970. He found that most of this land was owned by just 626 families, each of which had more than 500 acres. The chapter then shifts to introduce Paul Schaefer, a leader of a coalition of conservation organization who fought the plan after a state agency made a proposal to build several more dams inside the Blue Line to provide flood control and hydroelectric power in the 1940s. The coalition claimed that it violated the Forever Wild clause. It also illustrates how Schaefer, chemical engineer Almy Coggeshall, and generations of activists defended wilderness against the thousands of snowmobiles breaking the silence in woods all over the Adirondacks. Ultimately, the chapter reviews how one can preserve the natural integrity of nearly pristine ecosystems while also letting people who live nearby build homes, take vacations, cut down trees, and dig minerals out of the ground.
“A Three-Year Vacation”
Authors: Edmondson Brad
Published: September 2021

This chapter recounts the Big Blowdown of 1950 in Adirondack, New York. It introduces Clarence Petty, a New York State Forest Ranger who was asked to go up and look at the damage that had happened in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. The chapter outlines the appeal of foresters to the state legislature to start a salvage logging program in the forest preserve. It then turns to narrate the early life of Clarence, from being a park ranger to pilot, as well as the story of his brother's life Bill Petty, a regional director of the Conservation Department. Clarence became the undisputed authority on the forest preserve. He combined his years of aerial observation with three major surveying assignments that took him to every acre of state-owned land in the Adirondacks. He called his first assignment “a three-year vacation.” The chapter examines the statewide version of the disagreement between the Petty brothers, in which Clarence and other Forever Wild advocates were horrified by salvage logging in the forest preserve, while Bill and other scientific foresters replied that the friends of the Forever Wild clause were silly and sentimental. Ultimately, the chapter reviews the work of Neil Stout and Clarence Petty to make detailed maps and gather as much useful data as possible on the large roadless areas in the forest preserve.
Quickening
Authors: Edmondson Brad
Published: September 2021

This chapter highlights the works of Paul Schaefer and the archives of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks (AfPA) and other early conservation organizations. It analyses how Schaefer's foundation of a diverse coalition, aimed at protecting pristine Adirondack landscapes, culminated in the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency. The chapter reveals that the quickening of activism for wilderness protection in the United States took place in Schenectady, New York. It illustrates how a group of scientists and engineers who worked in the research labs of General Electric (GE) became more aware of threats to their wilderness and drew their passion toward political action. The chapter also describes the members of the Forest Preserve Association who multiplied their impact by encouraging established groups to join their cause. Their main prospects were the Adirondack Mountain Club, which represented hikers; the New York State Conservation Council, which represented hunters; and dozens of local outing groups like the Mohawk Valley Hiking Club. Ultimately, the chapter examines the impact of the Wilderness Act and how the New York's coalition of environmental became a powerful, well-coordinated political force.
Going Rogue
Authors: Edmondson Brad
Published: September 2021

This chapter focuses on Harold Jerry, a state official who was recruiting staff for a new state commission on the future of the Adirondack Park, and New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. The chapter details the governor's agenda to draft a long-term plan for the Adirondacks. The management of one state park might have seemed trivial to a man like Rockefeller, but the Adirondacks is not just any park. It is an internationally famous nature reserve that is as big as Vermont. The chapter also addresses the concerns of the full-time residents of the Adirondacks who did not think of their home as an occasional vacation spot. Most of the Park is private land, and it is an important source of timber, minerals, and water. Their problem was not overdevelopment, but a lack of economic opportunity. After Rockefeller saw another chance to build his presidential resume, or at least burnish his legacy, by “saving” the Adirondacks, the chapter discusses the recommendations made by Jerry and a group of commissioners that were so uncompromising that Rockefeller was reluctant to endorse. It highlights the commissioners' use of political brinksmanship at least twice, making threats that forced the powerful governor to capitulate. Ultimately, the chapter examines how the recommendations of Harold Jerry and his team led to the success of the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks (TSC), giving the “forever wilders” power over the North Country.