bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Democratic Law
Authors: Valentine Shiffrin Seana
Published: October 2021

This chapter argues for a communicative conception of democracy and democratic law by appealing to a duty of respect that we owe to our fellow citizens. To nurture and sustain the social bases of self-respect, citizens must convey to each other their convictions of mutual equality, their commitments to respect essential human needs and moral rights, and their mutual commitment to cooperate and provide every member with a stable place of belonging. Fulfilling these duties of communication requires a public commitment authored by all of us, undertaken through articulate action. Law has qualities of substantive expression that mere discursive messages lack. Law is public and takes the form of an ongoing, articulate commitment. But for law to convey the message that citizens must convey, each of us must be able to contribute to its formation. Hence, for law to play this special function, it must be democratically forged and sustained.
Democratic Law as Medium and Message
Authors: Kolodny Niko
Published: October 2021

This commentary raises numerous questions for the communicative conception of law. Given that compliance with law has multiple motivations, how can it be effective in sending a message of equal respect? Why do we have to be co-authors of the message, as opposed to merely affirming it? Why does the message or its affirmation have to come from the collective, rather than from individuals? Supposing we must author the message, why must our roles in doing so be equal? Why does the communicative function of democratic law give us a reason for participating in a democratic system? These questions give rise to two general challenges. First, how can we reconcile the demand on individual citizens to convey a message of equal respect with the idea that it is the collective which conveys the message? Second, why couldn’t law have the role of communicating public commitments without those commitments being democratic?
The Economic View of Strategic Management
Authors: Helfat Constance E.
Published: October 2021

Economics-based theories in strategic management fall into two categories: (1) homegrown theories developed within the field of strategic management that rely on economic logic, and (2) theories that originated in the field of economics, but that have been applied and often developed in new directions in the field of strategic management. This chapter surveys foundational theories of both types and provides selected examples of subsequent work. The discussion then turns to emerging areas of interest and opportunities for future theoretical research to address gaps in existing theories, to improve the understanding of new phenomena, and to investigate fundamental questions not yet addressed.
Strategy in Nascent Markets and Entrepreneurial Firms
Authors: Eisenhardt Kathleen M.
Published: October 2021

This chapter focuses on strategy in nascent markets that are unique entrepreneurial settings characterized by high velocity (i.e., ambiguous, uncertain, and fast-paced) landscapes. Despite their strategic challenges, these markets are where life-altering technologies and game-changing firms originate. Early research on strategy in nascent markets explores top management teams with their strong and long-lived influence on their firms, and organizational processes like alliance formation and strategic decision-making. Recent research extends to managerial cognition and organizational learning processes. Promising paths for future research include alternative strategies (shaping vs. adapting) in nascent markets as well as the strategic implications of the distinct economic “games” in different nascent markets (e.g., ecosystems vs. marketplaces). Unpacking how profitable growth happens for firms remains a significant puzzle as well. Overall, an exciting future lies ahead for one of the most critical and richest areas of strategy.
Competitive and Cooperative Strategy
Authors: Child John , Durand Rodolphe , Lavie Dovev
Published: October 2021

This lead chapter defines competitive, cooperative, and coopetitive strategies, and provides an overview that complements the two following chapters which focus on gaining competitive advantage and creating value through alliances. This lead chapter suggests that although cooperation counters competition, in practice, firms simultaneously compete and cooperate in markets and value chain functions. The chapter reviews theories on competitive and cooperative strategies, such as market power, transaction cost economics, and resource-based theories, and highlights game theoretical, relational, and social perspectives. The chapter then considers the changing context of strategy, including the rise of emerging economies, political intervention, technological disruption, and growing social demands on businesses. The text points to new forms of cooperation and competition, including global value chains, cross-sector alliances, technology platforms, and ecosystems, with new models of public-private collaboration. This new business reality has important implications for the future focus of research on cooperation, competition, and coopetition.
Global Strategy
Authors: Tallman Stephen , Cuervo-Cazurra Alvaro
Published: October 2021

This chapter provides an overview of research on global strategy and outlines suggestions for future studies. The field has generated three critical decisions: (1) expansion (whether to internationalize and how to select countries and entry modes to ensure effectiveness), (2) management (how to structure, coordinate, and control operations dispersed across countries to achieve efficiency), and (3) advantage (how to build an advantage in scale, learning, and arbitrage across locations to guarantee success). Future research can provide novel insights on these decisions by analyzing the impact of changes in three contexts: (1) countries, and the dynamics in cross-border interactions emerging from globalization, emerging markets, and government activism; (2) industries, and the reorganization of firm boundaries arising from digitalization, big data, and global value chains; and (3) organizations, and the reconsideration of the nature of work derived from global expertise, remote collaboration, and the gig economy.
MNCs and Cross-Border Strategic Management
Authors: Westney D. Eleanor
Published: October 2021

This chapter focuses on the strategic management of established multinational corporations (MNCs) that operate across multiple locations and how they have addressed the core strategic challenges of how to organize and manage geographically distributed locations. The chapter summarizes the conceptual foundations of MNC strategic management: the global integration / local responsiveness (GI/LR) framework, MNC capabilities for innovation and cross-border learning, the network model of the MNC, and the process approach. This chapter briefly surveys recent research trajectories, including subsidiary management, the role of headquarters, typologies of MNCs, and research on people and processes. Then the chapter identifies questions for future research in terms of four arenas: the changing balance of global integration and local responsiveness, managing regional strategies, cross-border learning in an era of growing resistance to globalization, and MNC responses to global external challenges of climate change and the threat of pandemics.
Strategic Leadership
Authors: Hambrick Donald C. , Wowak Adam J.
Published: October 2021

Research on strategic leadership, or the study of top executives and their effects on organizational outcomes, has flourished over the past few decades. Firm strategies are the product of human endeavors, and the individuals most responsible for formulating and implementing strategic initiatives—chief executive officers (CEOs) and their top management teams—are subject to the same biases, motives, and limitations as everyone else. As a result, even though executives vary in their levels of discretion, firms tend to become reflections of those who lead them. This chapter synthesizes recent themes and trends in the strategic leadership domain while also providing suggestions on what we see as the most promising avenues for future research. The field has come a long way since its inception in the mid-1980s, but opportunities still abound for scholars seeking to shed light on the human element in firm strategy and performance.
Ownership and Governance
Authors: Connelly Brian L.
Published: October 2021

Shareholders have, in recent years, imposed considerable influence on firms and the managers that run them. Their role has become so prevalent that hedge funds, activist investors, and short sellers dominate the headlines of the popular business press. Academics are desperately trying to keep up with the furious pace of change and incorporate emerging phenomena into theories of corporate governance. To facilitate this process, this chapter reviews the key forms of corporate ownership and describes ways in which they affect firm-level outcomes. The chapter identifies five issues about which ownership scholars disagree: the competitive influence of common shareholding, the costs and benefits of excess control, the consequences of share repurchases, the threat of short sellers, and the value-creating prospects of shareholder-nominated directors. The chapter describes the state of each debate with the hope that strategy scholars, in the years ahead, will add nuance to what we know about these pressing matters.
Strategy Processes and Practices
Authors: Burgelman Robert A. , Floyd Steven W. , Laamanen Tomi , Mantere Saku , Vaara Eero , Whittington Richard
Published: October 2021

Strategy process research has yielded a richer understanding of the emergence of strategies from throughout the organization and over extended periods of time; strategy-as-practice research has helped us understand the range of actors involved in strategy and the tools they draw on in their strategy work. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage research that combines insights from these two traditions. First, the chapter offers brief overviews of process and practice research. Then, the chapter reviews the most recent work from 2018 onward. Most of the text, however, goes to discussing future research that combines process and practice perspectives and that focuses on four themes: temporality and spatiality, actors and agency, cognition and emotionality, and language and meaning. These themes are woven together by two “red threads”—strategy digitalization and strategy inclusion—that we expect will have significant impact on strategy formation.
Summary and Discussion
Authors: Fuhse Jan
Published: October 2021

The chapter summarizes the key arguments of the book, outlines its contribution, and defends its premises against criticisms. Against the criticism of ignoring human agency, I hold that social theories only offer us tools for making sense of empirical observations, rather than represent the social world “as it really is.” The notion of human agency, and ontological discussions in general, helps little in this regard. Against the inclusion of nonhuman entities like objects or concepts (Fuchs) in networks, I see the focus on social networks and on communication in them as key for the connection between relational sociology and empirical studies on social networks. Three areas for future research are: (1) the relation between informal networks and formal organization; (2) network constellations in fields of society like politics, the economy, or science; and (3) the study of social networks in processes of communication in computational social science.
Choose Your Medicine
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

Choose Your Medicine is the first comprehensive history of the concept of freedom of therapeutic choice in the United States. It draws on legal history and the history of medicine (as well as political, intellectual, cultural, and social history) to examine the ways that persistent but evolving notions of a right to therapeutic choice have affected American law, regulation, and policy from the country’s origins to the present. It describes social movements and legal efforts dedicated to resisting government measures denying individuals an unfettered choice among therapeutic products and methods. The targets of this activism have included, among others, state medical licensing statutes, FDA restrictions on the distribution of unapproved drugs, state and federal prohibitions against medical marijuana, formulary limitations in government insurance programs, abortion restrictions, and prohibitions on physician-assisted suicide. The narrative’s protagonists range from unschooled supporters of botanical medicine in the early nineteenth century to sophisticated cancer patient advocacy groups in the twenty-first. The book considers how all of these examples, taken together, fit within the broader development of the idea of freedom of therapeutic choice in American history and law.
Introduction
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

In addition to setting out the themes of the book, the Introduction tells the story of cancer patient Abigail Burroughs and the case of Abigail Alliance v. von Eschenbach (2008), a suit against the FDA brought by a patient advocacy group founded by Abigail’s father after her death. In this case, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied terminally ill patients the right to obtain investigational drugs prior to FDA approval. Using a test established by the Supreme Court in its physician-assisted suicide decision, Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the DC Circuit held that a right to access unapproved drugs is not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” The Introduction asserts that the Abigail Alliance court’s version of history was incomplete and one-dimensional, as the rest of the book will demonstrate.
Storming the Bastille of Orthodoxy
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

After describing orthodox medicine and its alternatives in early America, this chapter discusses the rise of country’s earliest medical licensing laws, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These schemes strove to exclude unorthodox practitioners from the medical profession. American arguments for freedom of therapeutic choice were born in opposition to these original licensing systems. The chapter examines in detail the medical liberty advocacy of Benjamin Rush, an influential Founding Father who was also the most prominent American physician of the early national period. The chapter analyzes the genesis during this time of various strains of medical freedom rhetoric that would persist, to varying degrees, throughout American history.
Orthodoxy and “The Other Man’s Doxy”
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

After discussing William James’s medical freedom advocacy, this chapter describes orthodox medicine and the main alternative medical sects during the Gilded Age. The chapter then explores the resurgence of medical licensing during this period and shows how the continuing popular preference for freedom of therapeutic choice was reflected in the medical licensing statutes as written and implemented. It considers the meaning and impact of Dent v. West Virginia, the 1889 Supreme Court case upholding medical licensing. It then explores the content of the arguments directed against discriminatory medical licensing in the Gilded Age and considers the persistence of all four strains of medical freedom rhetoric from the antebellum years (bodily freedom, economic freedom, freedom of belief, and freedom of inquiry). It concludes by examining the overall political philosophy of medical freedom activists during this period, in particular the extent and nature of their libertarianism.
Reining In Progressive “State Medicine”
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

During the Progressive Era, the medical freedom movement appropriated the phrase “state medicine” to designate an expanding tyrannical conspiracy between public officials and the American Medical Association (AMA). This chapter shows how activists resisted not only compulsory measures such as vaccination and inspection, but also every other aspect of a system that they portrayed as a plot to deny citizens their treatments of choice. It examines the drafting and judicial interpretation of the postal statute and 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act to (temporarily) prevent the federal government from regulating the efficacy of drugs. It also explores the triumphant campaign by the National League for Medical Freedom, in the early 1910s, to defeat facially innocuous bills that would have merged existing federal agencies to create a National Department of Health. The chapter closes with a consideration of which side of this struggle represented “Progressivism.”
Conspiracy Theorists and Con Men
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

This chapter discusses the 1930s through the 1960s, an anomalous period of American history in which the people’s confidence in major national institutions was at its peak. Most people trusted government health regulators, the medical establishment, and pharmaceutical companies to do the right thing. Consequently, medical freedom of choice activism occurred mainly on society’s margins, voiced by peddlers of fraudulent products and right-wing cranks. The most persistent and cantankerous promoter of medical freedom during this period was the National Health Federation (NHF), the publisher of “Health Freedom News.” This organization, founded by manufacturers of dietary supplements and quack medical devices, resisted FDA regulation of alternative treatments, as well as the fluoridation of municipal water supplies. Although the NHF sometimes exemplified paranoid, Red-Scare politics, it also employed more conventional libertarian arguments of the sort that infused medical freedom rhetoric in other periods of American history.
The End
Authors: Grossman Lewis A.
Published: October 2021

This chapter examines Americans’ hesitant embrace of physician-assisted suicide (PAS). After considering the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment and the general rejection of physician-administered euthanasia, the chapter explores the history of PAS and the legal response to it in depth. It discusses the activism of Derek Humphry and Jack Kevorkian. It analyses the Supreme Court’s 1997 decision in Washington v. Glucksberg, which denied the existence of a substantive due process right to PAS. The chapter also describes the 1994 passage of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act and the sputtering success of such measures in other states. It analyzes the opposition to PAS by both conservative religious groups and left-leaning disability activists and shows how the same anti-establishment suspicion that bolsters support for freedom of therapeutic choice in other contexts can provoke opposition to assisted suicide.
Closing Death's Door
Authors: Saks Michael J. , Landsman Stephan
Published: October 2021

Closing Death’s Door explores innovative legal strategies to address the challenge of medical error. In the United States today, several hundred thousand patients die in hospitals each year because of errors in medical treatment—the nation’s third leading cause of death. The legal mechanism designed to deal with this epidemic of injury and death is the medical malpractice system. It has failed to stem the tide of iatrogenic harm. Among the reasons are the costliness of the malpractice system, its availability to only a minuscule percentage of those harmed, and decades of “tort reform” efforts that have effectively extinguished the system for all but the most egregious claims. In 1999, in To Err Is Human, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) sounded an alarm about the toll taken by medical error. Its proposed solution—a set of reporting systems to document problems and generate data on which solutions might be based—has been a failure. The time has come for a fresh look at what the law might do to contribute to patient safety. To begin a conversation about legal innovations designed to spur healthcare system improvements directed at reducing harmful medical errors, this book explores a number of possible steps, including well-designed economic incentives to stimulate greater investment in safety; promotion of systems approaches to safer delivery of care; government regulation and surveillance in especially risky treatment contexts; and encouragement of a range of technological improvements, especially involving information technology.
IOM and Public Disclosure of the Error Problem—To Err Is Human
Authors: Saks Michael J. , Landsman Stephan
Published: October 2021

“IOM and Public Disclosure of the Error Problem—To Err Is Human,” considers the steps that led the Institute of Medicine (renamed the National Academy of Medicine) in 1999 to publicly declare that upwards of 100,000 Americans were dying annually as a result of medical error. Their public declaration came after more than two decades of research had documented to the profession the toll of medical error, first in California (under the leadership of Don Harper Mills) and later in a number of other states (notably by the Harvard Medical Practice Study team). In the face of these findings, the healthcare industry had not acted on safety so the researchers chose to go public with their findings.
Information Technology
Authors: Saks Michael J. , Landsman Stephan
Published: October 2021

“Information Technology” assesses the prospect that technological innovation can substantially improve healthcare safety. Leading technology analysts, including Dr. Eric Topol and Vinod Khosla, have predicted that technology will reinvent healthcare. One way might be by providing critical healthcare information directly to patients/consumers. Professional resistance to such a shift is exemplified by efforts to curtail the reporting of genetic information to consumers by companies like 23andMe. The success of these companies suggests that more and more data may eventually flow to potential patients, empowering them and opening healthcare decisions to greater scrutiny. One key to this process will be expansion of the reach of electronic health records. Achieving such expansion requires legal changes with regard to patient access and system accuracy obligations. Another potentially valuable technological change has to do with the use of artificial intelligence. Its use in diagnosis may require expanded legal protection.
The Biology of Death
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2021

Death is not just the last event of life. Death is interwoven into our growth, development, protection against disease, and more. It foreclosed evolutionary pathways, thus shaping all life. And it involves fascinating questions. How do we define life and death? How do we know when a person is dead? Why do we age and can we do anything about it? Will medical advances continue to extend human life span and even defeat death? Death also involves a host of ethical questions. Most amazingly, living organisms evolved systems to use death to their advantage. The death of specific cells refines our immune system, gives us fingers, allows fruit to drop from trees, and tadpoles to become frogs. Even single-celled organisms use “quorum sensing” to eliminate some cells to ensure the overall survival of the colony in harsh environments. Death is far more than dying, and this book looks at how death is part of life at every level, including cells, tissues, organisms, and populations.
Dying
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2021

What actually happens when someone dies? Are there signs that death is approaching? Physicians sometimes notice what is called a terminal drop in basic physiological systems that seems to presage death, but those signs do not occur in every case. In the “twilight of death,” not every cell in the body dies at the same rate. However, once death occurs, the signs are more clear and involve a loss of respiration and heartbeat, rigor mortis, and the pooling of blood, among other things. Some people report near-death experiences, and one might wonder if those provide a glimpse of the afterlife. Yet most of the features of near-death experiences can be explained physiologically. Consciousness and its relationship to the physical brain remain to be understood.
Last Hominid Standing
Authors: Howard Gary C.
Published: October 2021

Since our hominid ancestors evolved a few million years ago, they have not had an easy time. Like untold numbers of species before them, many early hominid branches of our family tree disappeared. They went extinct or more likely were subsumed into modern humans by interbreeding. Eventually, modern humans and Neandertals migrated out of Africa, but they were challenged by genetic bottlenecks and pandemics. So we are the last of the hominids. We came close to joining the vast majority of species in extinction, but somehow we got lucky. The big question is whether we can last.
From Cosmogony to Cosmic Eschatology
Authors: Lindow John
Published: October 2021

This chapter provides a summary and brief analysis of the overall narrative sweep of ONM, from cosmogony to eschatology. Cosmogonic myths may be said to include the formation of the cosmos and the origins of the various mythological groups and relationships. The myths set in the period between cosmogony and eschatology recount the fraught encounters between two of these groups, gods and giants, which began when the gods killed a giant to form the cosmos. Eschatological myths involve a final fatal battle between these groups, the destruction of the cosmos, and its rebirth. Besides cosmogonic and eschatological myths, one can distinguish myths of acquisition and reacquisition, myths of giant-slaying, and myths of verbal duels.
Old Norse Mythology as Sacred Narrative
Authors: Lindow John
Published: October 2021

This chapter presents a case study of one myth that we have from pictorial sources in the Viking Age, from poems almost certainly composed in the Viking Age, and from thirteenth-century sources, namely the encounter between the god Þórr (Thor) and his cosmic enemy, the World serpent, a beast that encircles the earth, in the deep sea. In this myth, Þórr fishes up the serpent, and depending on the variant, Þórr may or may not kill the serpent. I present and analyze the texts in more or less chronological order, from the older skalds through the Eddic poem Hymiskviða, through Snorri Sturluson in Edda, and compare the texts to the rock carvings that portray the myth. I argue that the issue of the death or survival of the serpent is less important than the simple fact that Þórr had the serpent on his hook.
In Search of Meaning and Holy Redemption
Authors: Peleg Samuel (Muli)
Published: October 2021

This chapter analyzes the case of the Hilltop Youth, a radical, violent, and lawless group of young Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. The major argument is that an explanation to their extremist ideology and messianic activism can be found is their yearning for meaning in what they deem as an increasingly precarious and unstable reality. In their struggle to alleviate and solidify the world they live in, they opt for a very militant reading of their faith as a guiding and reassuring compass toward redemption. Such a path is fraught with violence and aggression toward Palestinians as well as toward Israeli authorities. On the road to what these unruly adolescents believe will lead them to their ultimate salvation, everyone else is a threat and every means is sacred. The chapter emphasizes the rapid degradation of recognized “truths” around them and their young age—malleable and vulnerable to unrestrained calls for action—as the Hilltop Youth main catalysts for embracing fierce lawlessness as their quest of choice for meaning.
Aging in the Shadow of Trauma
Authors: Shrira Amit , Palgi Yuval , Shmotkin Dov
Published: October 2021

Aging in Israel frequently entails coping with a unique intertwinement of age-related losses and exposure to traumatic events. This chapter focuses on the central role that meaning in life plays in the struggle of older adults against the double burden of aging and traumatic adversity. The chapter consists of three main sections. The first section dwells on the exceptional reality of older adults in Israel. The second section discusses theoretical notions regarding the function of meaning in life in the adaptation to aging and trauma. It reviews research findings highlighting the beneficial effect of meaning in life on older adults’ adaptation to traumatic events. The final section points to the valuable perceptions of a meaningful aging in adaptation to adversity. Overall, this chapter provides an overview of how Israeli older adults maintain meaning in life, thereby supplying fresh insights on the concept of meaning in late life.
The Quest for Meaning and Fulfillment Among Haredi Women in Israel
Authors: Keren-Kratz Menachem
Published: October 2021

The status of Orthodox women has undergone many changes in history and reached its peak during the interwar period. At that time, Orthodox women were allowed to acquire both traditional and general education and enjoy the fruits of Western culture. They also helped to provide for their families, either by working with their husbands or by running their own businesses. These achievements were not maintained during the post-Holocaust period in Israel as Haredi women were expected to participate in restoring the totally ruined Torah World to its pre-Holocaust glory. To that end Haredi women were encouraged to bear as many children as they could and become their family’s main breadwinner to allow their husbands to study in the yeshiva for many years. Haredi women took up this burden and for many decades sacrificed their well-being and health without complaint. In the 21st century, once Haredi women realized that the world of the Torah had regained and even surpassed its scope in Europe, they sought to reclaim their previous social status. Nowadays, many Haredi women seek to enrich their life in ways that until recently were considered undesirable and immodest. In their pursuit for a meaningful life they combine intrinsic adherence to a Haredi identity and tradition while also adopting other ways of behaving with personal agency to pursue meaning in their life.
Religious Sense-Making, Purpose-Making, and Significance-Making Among Jewish, Druze, and Muslim Young Adults in Israel
Authors: Novis-Deutsch Nurit , Nynäs Peter , Kheir Sawsan
Published: October 2021

Situated within the theoretical framework of meaning-making, this chapter discusses sense-making, purpose-making, and significance-making in the context of religion, spirituality, and secularity. To do so, the authors present a 24-item scale, Meaning-Making in Religion (MMR), based on items from the Faith-Q-Sort. Next, they report the results of a study involving 90 Israeli students, Jewish, Muslim, and Druze, who took part in a study of young adults and religion globally. Using participants’ Faith-Q-Sort and in-depth interviews, 12 faith prototypes were extracted. Their analysis uncovered several socially recognized paths for pursuing meaning through religion or spirituality, one socially agreed-upon narrative of secularity, and a few less socially sanctioned narratives of religious meaninglessness. The authors analyze our findings in terms of meaning-making, subjective well-being, and religious subcultures in Israel and discuss the implications of these findings for the study of meaning, religiosity, and culture.
The Other Face of Battle
Authors: Lee Wayne E. , Carlson Anthony E. , Preston David L. , Silbey David
Published: October 2021

The Other Face of Battle plunges into the jarring and violent experience of America’s “other” wars: the often irregular, unconventional, and intercultural wars that have dominated the American military experience. The national narrative is dominated by the so-called “big wars,” but the other wars are both more common and equally critical to understanding American military history. American wars with enemies from different cultures, fighting with different tactics, have generated shocking battlefield defeats, unanticipated insurgencies, and strategic stalemate. In 1755, George Washington and other Anglo-American soldiers on an expedition to the Ohio Country were catastrophically defeated by French and Indian irregulars at the Monongahela, with resounding consequences for how Americans thought about themselves in combat over the next several generations. In 1898, U.S. troops at the Battle of Manila confronted Filipinos who had just fought and won a revolution against the Spanish—a battle that was but the opening round of a protracted U.S.-Filipino conflict sparked by American occupation and annexation. The unexpected war that followed was both conventional and irregular, an omen for America’s 20th-century wars. In 2010, U.S. soldiers and Afghan allies launched an extraordinarily complex, interservice attack on the village of Makuan in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. The battle symbolized the Americans’ struggle to find and pin down the elusive Taliban enemy, despite careful planning, immense firepower, and nine years of experience fighting an insurgency.
The Battle of the Monongahela
Authors: Lee Wayne E. , Preston David L. , Silbey David , Carlson Anthony E.
Published: October 2021

Narrates the nature and consequences of intercultural combat at the outset of the French and Indian War when British Major-General Edward Braddock’s column of British soldiers and colonial Provincial troops were attacked and destroyed by a force of French and allied Indians from several Nations. The clashing tactical styles and expectations of combat were critical in undermining British resistance. The battle proved central in creating a distinctly American identity and especially to colonials’ self-conception as proficient Indian fighters. Many colonists were awakened to a sense of “being Americans”—as George Washington expressed it—as they campaigned with British regulars who often denigrated their military abilities and provincial status. Americans celebrated the conduct of Washington and the effectiveness of the Virginia provincials at the Monongahela.
Reflection
Authors: Hicks Andrew
Published: October 2021

According to Plato’s Timaeus the universe is bound together by proportion (analogia). In the 12th-century reception of Plato (and the late-ancient Platonists), the quest to understand the ordered system of natural powers became coterminous with determining both the harmony of nature’s original divine constitution and the creative power that it continues to exert. And just as the world’s body is made continuous and unified by proportional bonds among the elements, so too is the soul structured in accord with numerical ratios, and its powers are thus properly proportioned by similar harmonies. If the perceptual unity of music harmony is, in the words of the Timaeus, an “imitation of divine harmony manifested in mortal motions,” then understanding musical ratios and proportions may provide a key to understanding the powers of both the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the human body and soul) alike.
“Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy in Cudworth and More
Authors: Hutton Sarah
Published: October 2021

This chapter discusses two analogous 17th-century conceptions of natural causality: Cudworth’s hypothesis of the “Plastic Life of Nature” and More’s “Spirit of Nature.” Developed partly in reaction against Descartes’s mechanistic natural philosophy, and partly in accordance with their own Platonizing metaphysics of substance, these propose a teleological conception of natural causality, which features formative and vital powers, with the capacity to bring order and harmony to what would otherwise be a haphazard jumble of atoms. To formulate their respective hypotheses, Cudworth and More turned to classical antiquity, in particular Plotinus, as a source for their ideas of the power of sympathy which they proposed as a vitalistic power capable of unifying nature and enabling the interaction of soul and body, immaterial powers and material things. By this means Cudworth and More sought to account for life and the orderly harmony of nature.
Powers in Britain, 1689–1827
Authors: LoLordo Antonia
Published: October 2021

Scholastic physics and metaphysics emphasized both the notion of power in general and the notions of the many particular powers of creatures. But during the 17th and 18th centuries, powers came to be seen as suspect. This trend culminated in Hume’s denial that we have the idea of power his predecessors assumed we have. This chapter tells the story of the decline, fall, and eventual resurrection of the concept of power in Britain in the long 18th century. It focuses on differing accounts of the idea of power, the scope of power, and the metaphysical basis of power, as found in four figures: John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Mary Shepherd.
An Introduction to the Gospels and Acts
Authors: Myers Alicia D.
Published: October 2021

Introducing the Gospels and Acts is not just about reading the first five books of the New Testament. It requires entering the first-century Mediterranean world where the events recorded in these writings happened. This short book takes readers on a journey through the Gospels and Acts, introducing them to the world of Jesus of Nazareth and of the believers who composed and shared stories inspired by him. It provides overviews of context and major passages in each canonical work, and also introduces readers to the apocryphal gospels and acts to demonstrate the larger phenomenon of early Christian writing. After situating readers in the literary context of the canonical Gospels and Acts, Myers focuses on the writings themselves, giving basic historical background before digging more deeply into a chosen contextual theme for each work. These themes include the politics and history of Roman Palestine, expressions of Second Temple Judaism, understandings of identity and human worth in the Roman world, hospitality, Hellenistic philosophies, and the process of canonizing the New Testament. Rather than shying away from difficult and often confusing elements of the Gospels and Acts, the book invites readers to engage more deeply and situate themselves more fully in the strangeness and surprising familiarity of the Roman world. In this way, readers will see the continuing relevance of the Gospels and Acts for today and learn to be responsible readers of these works for years to come.
Mark’s Story
Authors: Myers Alicia D.
Published: October 2021

This chapter begins the study of the canonical Gospels with the earliest Gospel written rather than the first in the Christian canon: the Gospel of Mark. After offering basic background on authorship, provenance, and date of composition, this chapter outlines the historical and political contexts of Roman Palestine in the first century CE. This introduction leads into a discussion of Mark’s apocalyptic perspective and presentation of Jesus’s mission as a cosmic battle. Following this background information, the chapter offers a literary overview of the Gospel and explores major themes and passages, including Jesus’s characterization, the Parable of the Sower and minor characters, Jesus’s time in Jerusalem, and the various endings of the Gospel of Mark. The chapter ends with a conclusion describing Mark’s challenge for its readers to choose between fear and faith.
Long Live Hip-Hop
Authors: Keyes Cheryl L.
Published: October 2021

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, a musical adaptation of Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, advanced the marriage of hip-hop and the musical that Miranda had introduced in his earlier show In the Heights. Employing hip-hop aesthetics and performance in an unparalleled yet effective way, Hamilton’s libretto is rendered in a spoken-word style, adhering to a hip-hop sing-songy style of delivery and embodied by a multi-ethnic cast with swaggering bodies and hip-hop-style moves. This essay examines the hip-hop aesthetic qualities of Miranda’s Hamilton, situating the show as a part of the continuum of hip-hop music, culture, and performance practice, and the manner by which the musical draws from real life hip-hop personae as templates for character-building via the art of rap as a storytelling device. Such analysis proves that hip-hop has been recharged with a new life, meaning, and context on the American musical stage.
Hamilton—An American Musical
Authors: Rush Adam
Published: October 2021

Many of the musicals Miranda and the Hamilton creative team suggest influenced the development of their musical (including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and Les Misérables) stem from the United Kingdom and British (or European) creative teams. As a hybrid of European theatrical traditions that was first staged (or at least popularized) in Britain, the megamusical—along with Shakespeare’s plays—is one of Britain’s most recognizable theatrical exports. How American is Miranda’s musical, therefore, if it so frequently returns to megamusicals for structural and stylistic guidance? There is much about Hamilton that is American, yet its referencing of British musicals complicates the labeling of this show as an exclusively American musical. This chapter argues that Hamilton occupies a liminal space in that it is a hybrid of transatlantic traditions. Despite the referencing of British musicals seeming to complicate the show’s Americanness, Hamilton asserts its national identity through an amalgam of transatlantic influences and intertextual associations.
Unangan (Aleut) Migrations
Authors: Crawford Michael H. , Alden Sarah , David Randy E. , Beaty Kristine
Published: October 2021

There were diverse causes and demographic and evolutionary consequences of migration of the Unangan (a.k.a. Aleut) people in their expansion from Siberia through the Aleutian archipelago. The causes included subsistence patterns, volcanic eruptions that destroyed island econiches, climatic changes that calmed the seas and made interisland migrations possible, and cultural contacts as well as forcible relocations. The consequences of the migrations included an intimate relationship between genetics, as revealed by mitochondrial DNA, and geography; loss of genetic diversity due to population fission along kin groups; creation of genetic barriers due to periodic climatic limitations to migrations; population genetic differentiation due to kin migration and founder effect; and admixture with Russian administrators and military in the western and central islands and with fishermen of English and Scandinavian ancestry in the eastern islands.
Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes in Pre-Hispanic Human Remains from Puyil Cave, Tabasco, Mexico
Authors: Navarro-Romero María Teresa , Muñoz María de Lourdes , Alcalá-Castañeda Enrique
Published: October 2021

Previous data have established direct archaeological evidence that semisedentary forager-farmers in the Mesoamerican region existed during the millennia preceding the onset of sedentary agrarian life in the Maya area. The present study concerned the identification of the maternal genetic origin of skeletal remains discovered in the Puyil cave through sequence analysis of the mitochondrial DNA. The individuals pertained to the Archaic and Classic periods and the samples were found inside the Puyil cave located in Tabasco, Mexico, an area occupied by Zoque and Maya populations. The technologies used were next-generation sequencing and Sanger sequencing. The analysis was was made possible by the development of haplotype networks for comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient and contemporary civilizations from the American continent and Asia. The sequences displayed haplogroups A, A2, C1, C1c, and D4, while haplogroup B was absent. The haplotype networks showed a close genetic relationship with Maya populations from Mexico and Guatemala and with contemporary native populations from Bolivia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, China, and Asia. The analysis with ancient mitochondrial DNA study sequences showed evidence of Maya ancestors’ migration from North to South America and through the Caribbean islands. The results of this study confirm that a Maya ancestor of the ancient remains from the Puyil cave is shared with contemporary Maya and that expansion of the founding haplogroups A, C, and D came from Asia.
A Genetic Perspective on the Origin and Migration of the Samoyedic-Speaking Populations from Siberia
Authors: Karafet Tatiana M. , Osipova Ludmila P. , Hammer Michael F.
Published: October 2021

To study the affinities of Siberian populations and to address hypotheses on the origin of the Samoyed peoples, 567,096 autosomal genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 147 Y-chromosome data from 15 Siberian and 12 reference populations were examined. For several analyses, we used the intersection of our data with publicly available ancient Siberian samples. To examine genetic relatedness among populations, PCA, FST, TreeMix, and ADMIXTURE analyses were applied. The distribution of runs of homozygosity (ROH) and identical by descent (IBD) sharing within populations were studied to explore the potential effect of demography and evolutionary processes on the population structure. Analyses of autosomal and Y-chromosome data revealed high differentiation of the Siberian groups. A substantial level of variation among Samoyedic-speaking populations alone did not differ significantly from the whole of Siberia. Several populations (i.e., Nganasans, Evenks, Yukagirs, and Koryaks) did not appear to have experienced admixture with other Siberian populations (i.e., producing only positive f3), while for the other tested populations the composition of mixing sources always included Nganasans or Evenks. The Nganasans from the Taymyr Peninsula demonstrated the greatest level of shared shorter ROH and IBD with nearly all other Siberian populations. Autosomal SNP and Y-chromosome data demonstrate that Samoyedic populations differ significantly in their genetic composition. Genetic relationship is observed only between Forest and Tundra Nentsi. Selkups are affiliated with the Kets from the Yenisey River, while the Nganasans are separated from their linguistic neighbors, showing closer affinities with the Evenks and Yukagirs.
Rapid, Adaptive Human Evolution Facilitated by Admixture in the Americas
Authors: Norris Emily T. , Rishishwar Lavanya , Jordan I. King
Published: October 2021

Humans have migrated from their ancestral homelands in Africa to nearly every part of the world. Human migration is characterized by a recurrent process of physical isolation and genetic diversification followed by admixture, whereby previously isolated populations come together and exchange genes. Admixture results in the introgression of alleles from ancestral source populations into hybrid admixed populations, and introgression can facilitate rapid, adaptive evolution by introducing beneficial alleles at intermediate frequencies. We provide examples of adaptive introgression between archaic and modern human populations and for admixed populations in the Americas, which were formed relatively recently via admixture among African, European, and Indigenous American ancestral populations. Adaptive introgression has had an outsized effect on the human immune system. In light of the ubiquity of admixture in human evolution, we propose that adaptive introgression is a fundamentally important mechanism for driving rapid, adaptive evolution in human populations.