bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Movie-Struck Hollywood
Authors: Cohan Steven
Published: October 2018

This chapter looks at female star narratives of the 1920s and 1930s, from The Extra Girl (1923) and Souls for Sale (1923) to Alice in Movieland (1940) and Star Dust (1940), discussing their historical if increasingly anachronistic basis in the problematic figure of “the movie-struck girl.” This was the figuration of the female fan of the silent era who went to Hollywood in search of economic, emotional, and sexual independence. The contradictions raised by the “movie-struck girl” were inherent in the institutionalization of female stardom. Thus, these tensions structure early star narratives, which equate Hollywood with stardom. But far from simply catering to fan girls as a means of reinforcing their investment in Hollywood stardom, these backstudio pictures feature strong, active, and desiring young women set in counterpoint to the manipulative or paternal-minded men running the industry and for whom female stars are commodities.
Historical Hollywood
Authors: Cohan Steven
Published: October 2018

This chapter singles out accounts of three eras that have preoccupied backstudios. First it looks at films that depict fictionalized versions of real Hollywood scandals from the early 1920s that are set in 1929, the year Hollywood undertook its conversion to all-talking pictures. Then it looks at films about the blacklist, most of which are set in 1951, the year the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee renewed its investigation of the motion picture industry. Finally, it turns to 1962, the year of Marilyn Monroe’s death, signaling to many the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age, as illustrated by the numerous biopics about that star. It closes with a discussion of gossip’s role in Hollywood’s history, as evident in the FX cable series covering the long-standing feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford and the making of the backstudio What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, which is also set in 1962.
Christianity’s Forgotten First Creed
Authors: Patterson Stephen J.
Published: October 2018

Chapter 1 offers a close reading of Galatians 3:26–28 to reveal an ancient creed resting within its folds. It also offers en route an introduction to Paul, the author of Galatians; how he came to join the Jesus movement; the basic ideas he brought to the movement; why he wrote this letter to the Galatians; and how he came to include this creed in it. Galatians 3:26–28 contains many additions to the original creed, which come from Paul’s own hand. But when Paul’s adaptations and alterations are peeled away, we can see the original creed, more or less as it would have been used in an ancient Christian baptismal ceremony. Since the creed itself predates its inclusion in Paul’s letter, we can suppose it to have been one of the earliest—if not the earliest—statement of Christian commitment and belief.
The Oldest Cliché
Authors: Patterson Stephen J.
Published: October 2018

This chapter shows that the creed in Galatians 3:26–28 was designed to counter an ancient cliché: I thank God that I was not born a foreigner, a slave, or a woman. This is a fairly complete accounting of the ways by which human beings divide themselves into us and them. There are Greek- and Roman-era versions of this cliché, as well as Jewish versions. It also shows how ancients thought about foreigners, how they treated slaves, and their various theories about the inferiority of women—that is, how they thought about race, class, and gender. Slaves, women, and foreigners were all essentially the same to ancient men—contemptible. They were all other.
There Is No Jew or Greek
Authors: Patterson Stephen J.
Published: October 2018

This chapter reveals the central importance of Jewish–Greek relations to the Apostle Paul. Building on the theory that Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith was not an answer to the universal problem of human sin, but an answer to how Gentiles could be included in the new Christ communities without following the Jewish Law (the “New Paul”), this chapter explores the history of interethnic violence that plagued Jews and Greeks in Paul’s day, especially in the cities of the Roman East, where Paul was active. Paul saw in the Jesus movement a way to bridge the divide between Jews and Greeks when others in the movement generally did not. Later, Paul’s words and ideas would be repurposed as the foundation for Gentile Christian anti-Judaism. Paul’s dictum “no longer Jew or Greek” became simply “no longer Jew.”
The Important Roles of Dissent
Authors: de Melo-Martín Inmaculada , Intemann Kristen
Published: October 2018

This chapter offers an overview of the ways in which dissent from a scientific consensus is epistemically valuable. It contends that dissent furthers scientific progress in various ways, including correcting false empirical assumptions, providing alternative ways of conceiving phenomena, and challenging value judgments. Dissent can also strengthen the justification for consensus views as such views are more likely to be reliable when they survive critical scrutiny, than if they go unchallenged. Similarly, dissent can foster warranted public trust in science because it can assure the public that scientific inquiry is an open and critical process. The chapter also points out that because dissent has these benefits, it imposes epistemic obligations on scientific communities.
Bad-Faith Dissent
Authors: de Melo-Martín Inmaculada , Intemann Kristen
Published: October 2018

This chapter explores whether the presence of bad-faith motive is a reliable criterion to identify normatively inappropriate dissent (NID). Rather than appropriate epistemic motives to help advance scientific knowledge, bad-faith motives involve some other objectionable goal: to confuse the public, stall policies that the dissenters dislike, promote particular ideological views, or safeguard profits. This chapter evaluates various ways to explain why bad-faith motives could result in dissent that fails to promote or that impedes scientific progress and it assesses their plausibility. It concludes that in spite of the intuitive appeal of attending to motivations, they cannot serve as a criterion to reliably identify NID.
The Relevance of Trust
Authors: de Melo-Martín Inmaculada , Intemann Kristen
Published: October 2018

This chapter offers a brief overview of the importance of epistemic trust and the relevance that scientific institutions and practices have in promoting or undermining warranted public trust. Epistemic trust is crucial for the production of scientific knowledge, the ability of the public to make sense of scientific phenomena, and the development of public policy. Normatively inappropriate dissent is more likely to take hold and erroneously affect people’s beliefs and actions in a context where the trustworthiness of scientists is called into question and where there is an excessive reliance on scientific information when it comes to assessing policy decisions. Thus, finding ways to facilitate and sustain warranted epistemic trust, as well as increasing understanding of the proper role of science in public policy decisions can help mitigate the negative impact of dissenting views.
Scientific Practices and the Erosion of Trust
Authors: de Melo-Martín Inmaculada , Intemann Kristen
Published: October 2018

This chapter discusses some social and institutional factors related to the practice of science that cast doubt on the trustworthiness of scientists and thus contribute to undermining the trust that people place in the scientific community and its claims. Specifically, it explores the roles played by the increasing commercialization of science, with its effect on the common good and on conflicts of interests, and by scientific misconduct in eroding public trust. It explains why this occurs and provides evidence to support the claim that trust has, in fact, been undermined as the result of these factors. It also suggests strategies for changing these trust-undermining practices so as to better facilitate and maintain warranted public trust in scientific communities.
Lessons Learned and New Directions
Authors: de Melo-Martín Inmaculada , Intemann Kristen
Published: October 2018

This concluding chapter revisits the main topics of the book and emphasizes the need to reframe the problem of normatively inappropriate dissent (NID). It contends that limiting attention to the role that problematic dissent plays in undermining support for particular policies and actions is both misguided and dangerous. It calls for a reframing of the problem in ways that are likely to be more fruitful in trying to address the problems that can stem from NID, such as developing scientific and institutional practices that promote warranted public trust in science and encouraging better ways to engage in discussions with all relevant parties about the values at stake in various policy decisions.
When the Camera Is on Us
Authors: Hollingworth Miles
Published: October 2018

Until you actually turn to the camera, you can have no idea whether you are acting or not, pretending or not. Certainty, the prototype, eternity, etc. is something you have to turn to look in the eye. Otherwise you will only see with it, you will only see down its same line of sight, you will only see what it sees. You will only see what everyone else can see down that same line of sight. Because what the camera can see is what everyone else could see, too, if they could all be there. ‘Camera’, in the way that it is used here and across the rest of the book, is a metaphorical way of saying: ‘Everyone has to see it, too!’ In this chapter, we learn that we are not going to be replaced by machines, but that we will begin to think and look and act like them.
Make Arts for a Better Life
Authors: Van Buren Kathleen , Shrag Brian
Published: October 2018

Make Arts for a Better Life: A Guide for Working with Communities provides a groundbreaking model for arts advocacy. Drawing upon methods and theories from disciplines such as ethnomusicology, anthropology, folklore, community development, and communication studies, the Guide presents an in-depth approach to researching artistic practices within communities and to developing arts-based projects that address locally defined needs. Through clear methodology, case studies from around the world, and sample activities, the Guide helps move readers from arts research to project development to project evaluation. It addresses diverse arts: music, drama, dance, oral verbal arts, and visual arts. Also featured are critical reflections on the concept of a “better life” and ethical issues in arts advocacy. The Guide is aimed at a broad audience including both scholars and public sector workers. Appendices and an accompanying website offer methodology “cheat sheets,” sample research documents, and specific suggestions for educators, researchers, and project leaders.
Foundations
Authors: Schrag Brian , Buren Kathleen J. Van
Published: October 2018

This section provides the foundation for the remainder of the Guide. It addresses key concepts and questions: “a better life”; what is “good”; artistic vitality and endangerment; what are the arts; how do arts and culture interact; what is creativity; negative impact and conflict; and how to use this Guide. It also introduces the seven steps that make up the Make Arts for a Better Life process: meet a community and its arts; specify goals for a better life; connect goals to genres; analyze genres and events; spark creativity; improve results; and celebrate and integrate for continuity. Several case studies are included to demonstrate aspects of the Make Arts process.
Connect Goals to Genres
Authors: Schrag Brian , Buren Kathleen J. Van
Published: October 2018

Step 3 follows Step 2, in which community members choose a goal for artistic programs. Step 3 provides guidance for choosing the desired effects of arts programs; choosing the content of arts programs; choosing a genre or genres that can communicate the content and produce the desired effects; and imagining events that could include the performance of new artistic works. Specific suggestions and tables (such as the Genre Comparison Chart) assist readers in moving through these processes. This step also considers how communication occurs through an artistic event. Step 3 concludes with a note on tourism and other repurposing of arts.
Spark Creativity
Authors: Schrag Brian , Buren Kathleen J. Van
Published: October 2018

Step 5 helps readers to design a new creative activity or modify an existing activity in a community. It addresses a number of critical issues relevant to developing artistic programs, including community values that affect artistic production; social, material, financial, and spiritual resources required for events; people who need to be involved in the creation process; and possible opportunities and barriers. It also offers guidance on how to develop the following types of sparking activities: commissioning, workshops, showcase events, mentoring, apprenticeship, publications, and creators’ clubs. Finally, Step 5 provides examples of sparking activities that relate to three main issues: identity and sustainability, health and well-being, and human rights. For each of these issues, readers are presented with examples of practical activities for designing artistic programs, real-life case studies from around the world, and relevant resources for further study.
Introduction
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

Language diversification is as old as the human capacity for speech and along with it the need for translation. In the Old World multilingual diasporas and centuries-long contact facilitated communication across language boundaries. The formerly isolated and linguistically fragmented Americas presented a new and severe challenge to the Europeans, especially the Christian missionaries. Relying on language to convert the indigenous populations, they regarded the extreme degree of language diversity as exemplifying the curse of Babel and saw their role as an extension of the early age of the apostles. Their efforts to translate the Christian message into indigenous languages highlights the interplay between language gaps and cultural gaps.
Confusion of Tongues
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

Missionaries rejected the royal policy of imposing Spanish as the medium of evangelization, judging that it would be easier for them to learn the Indians’ languages. The linguistic diversity of Oaxaca, the most extreme anywhere on the planet, combined with the tonal complexity of the Otomangue languages spoken by the great majority of the local population, served as a serious barrier to achieving this goal. The existence of over twenty distinct languages, and a plethora of individual dialects within them, stimulated the further spread of Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, as a lingua franca between Spaniards and Indians throughout the colony. Its failure to reach across all social strata and ethnicities led the missionaries to conclude that they would have to proselytize directly in all the indigenous languages despite their multiplicity and complexity.
Language Barriers under Siege
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

The program and techniques of language acquisition undertaken by the colonial church relied mainly on the missionary linguists and the young Indian tutors they recruited. Together they devised orthographies in the Latin alphabet for hundreds of indigenous languages, an alphabet that gradually replaced the native systems of glyphs for recording information. Within decades, well in advance of European grammarians and lexicographers, they had also produced dictionaries and grammars for all the major and many of the minor vernacular languages, along with catechisms and other devotional literature. Generations of clergy would depend on these written aids, which continue to serve as landmarks in the history of linguistics.
Speaking the Word of God
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

The success of the language program was ultimately to be judged by the ability to communicate the gospel message to the Indian neophytes. The same criterion regulated the fierce competition within the colonial clergy for Indian parishes, or doctrinas. Secular priests vied with regular clergy and locally born creoles with peninsular Spaniards for control of these lucrative benefices, for which the principal qualification was competence in the parish’s main indigenous language or languages. Despite diocesan language examinations to ensure sufficient mastery to preach and administer the sacrament of confession, definitions and standards of proficiency varied widely. Over time the secular clergy, dominated by often bilingual creoles, began to edge out the more formally trained regulars. But the minority languages, especially in distant, impoverished doctrinas, remained ill served.
Adoptions and Adaptations
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

The double bind between orthodoxy and intelligibility is examined further through the translating tool of semantic extension. Efforts to make the Christian message more accessible by expanding or extending the meaning of an “inherited” word confronted vast cultural differences in the realms of cosmology and morality that lay behind the linguistic gaps. Christian concepts such as heaven and hell were so far removed from the way that the Zapotec and other Mesoamericans conceived of the afterlife that no degree of semantic expansion could bridge the gap. Conversely, attempts to convey a Christian concept of God in such doctrines as the Trinity and the Eucharist by incorporating indigenous terms for the divinity and sacrifice risked contamination from pagan symbols and rituals.
The Art of Persuasion
Authors: Farriss Nancy
Published: October 2018

Missionaries and their native co-authors incorporated traditional indigenous oratory into Christian sermons in order to persuade, as well as instruct, the Indian neophytes. An analysis of sermons and devotional literature in indigenous languages reveals many examples of the refined style of Mesoamerican ceremonial discourse, especially the most characteristic literary device of paired couplets, or difrasismos. A comparison is made between Renaissance European and Mesoamerican poetics as represented in Mixtec and Zapotec texts, with an emphasis on the miracle stories of Marian devotion and deathbed exhortations. The rhetorical strategy, which relied on privileging familiar indigenous form over alien Christian content, may have gained a more attentive but not necessarily more convinced audience.
Introduction
Authors: Anderson Greg
Published: October 2018

The book’s point of departure is Dipesh Chakrabarty’s (2000) claim that the analytical tools of our mainstream historicism are irredeemably Eurocentrist, thereby causing us to lose the experiences of non-western peoples in translation. It aims to build on this postcolonial critique of historicism in three ways. First, our conventional historicist devices are not just Eurocentrist but essentially modernist. They cause us to lose in translation the experiences of all non-modern peoples, non-western and western alike. Second, this modernism is problematic specifically because it authorizes us to align non-modern realities with our own peculiarly modern ontological commitments, fundamentally altering the contents of those realities in the process. Third, to produce histories that are more ethically defensible, philosophically robust, and historically meaningful, we need to take an ontological turn in our practice. We need to analyse each non-modern lifeworld on its own ontological terms, in its own metaphysical conjuncture, according to its own particular standards of truth and realness. To support these three claims, the book uses the proverbially western lifeworld of classical Athens (ca. 480-320 BC) as its primary case study.
Our Athenian Yesterdays
Authors: Anderson Greg
Published: October 2018

Part One (“Losing Athens in Translation”) begins by introducing the case study, surveying “democratic Athens,” the consensus modern account of the “way of life” (politeia) which the Athenians called demokratia. This account is a conventional historicist construct, one that forces non-modern experiences to comply with a standard modern template of social being. It thus objectifies the polis as a disenchanted, functionally differentiated terrain inhabited by natural, pre-social individuals. Here, experience is neatly compartmentalized into discrete “orders,” “realms” or “fields,” such as the material and the ideational, the natural and the cultural, sacred and secular, public and private, the political, the social, the economic, and the religious. Athenian demokratia is duly historicized as “democracy,” as a specialist political system which bore a family resemblance to the liberal, egalitarian governments of our own time. And order in Athens is then assumed to radiate out from this male-dominated political system over all other societal fields and realms. As the following chapters will show, there are significant problems with this “democratic Athens” account.
Missing Objects
Authors: Anderson Greg
Published: October 2018

The standard “democratic Athens” account becomes still more problematic when the terms of its construction are themselves questioned. As described in chapter one, this account takes for granted a modern, universalist template or model of social being. This theoretical template would have us presume the presence in antiquity of various complex societal phenomena, like discrete realms of nature and culture, sacred and secular, public and private, etc. It would have us presume the prevalence in the polis of specific social objects, like state, society, economy, religion, and the natural, pre-social individual. And it would have us presume the imaginability in Athens of modern-style, proto-liberal forms of equality, rights, and citizenship. Yet there is no explicit evidence that supports any of these presumptions. There is no evidence at all for any close correspondence between our modern theoretical model and ancient lived experience. Indeed, the evidence that we do have indicates quite unequivocally that our model’s various master categories would have made no sense at all to the classical Athenians as self-evidently real phenomena.
Conclusion
Authors: Anderson Greg
Published: October 2018

After summarizing the book’ s overall case for an ontological turn in history, the conclusion briefly discusses four wider intellectual implications of this paradigm shift. First, this shift fundamentally changes the way we think about the past, from an ongoing story of a single humanity, inhabiting a single, continuous metaphysical conjuncture, to stories of multiple different humanities, each one inhabiting its own distinct world of experience. Second, the shift duly changes our sense of the relationship between present and past, whereby our modern world is no longer the ultimate telos of our species journey but an exotic metaphysical anomaly, a world that is no more “true to life/nature” than any other. Third, the shift lends significant support to broader calls for a more post-disciplinary intellectual environment, since it implicitly questions the modern metaphysical commitments which undergird our entire apparatus of mainstream knowledge production and its conventional division of intellectual labor. Finally, the paradigm shift can make a significant contribution to contemporary critical theory. By forcing us to take seriously the metaphysical and ontological commitments of extinct past peoples, it raises the possibility of a non-modern critique of the modern. Moreover, by drawing our attention to the past’ s many different ways of being human, it should significantly broaden our capacity to imagine more sustainable, more equitable worlds of the future.
Choosing Donors
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

Chapter 1 describes how parents choose a sperm donor with which to conceive a child. It shows that all parents take into account a similar range of factors as they select from among the available donor profiles. Parents choose donors with traits they believe will secure advantage for their children; they also choose donors with traits they believe fit well with the families they are creating. They choose among the types of donors available, including known donors, anonymous donors, and identity-release donors. The choices made before conception enable intending parents to express their taste and values and through that expression to make the child their own. All of the parents interviewed disclosed donor conception to their children. Both the variety of types of donors and the variety of information about individual donors have increased over time in response to consumer preferences.
Inventing the Donor / Inventing the Self
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

This chapter describes how children begin to understand the meaning of donor conception to make sense of the hollow concept of a donor. It explores how children of different ages imagine the sperm donor. Sex education in schools and conversations with other children become factors in their understanding. As children invent the donor from the bits and pieces of information available, they also try to figure out which parts of themselves came from the donor; they thus invent the self. Siblings who live in the same home can help children figure out who the donor is and what he has contributed. During adolescence children use the donor to help in the processes of separation and self-assessment. The chapter considers the following questions: How do children go beyond a birth narrative to understand themselves? How do their parents help them understand that some aspects of the self might come from a stranger?
The Tourists
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

The members of the Tourists are not really sure what they are looking for when they connect with other people to whom they are connected by reliance on the same sperm donor. The mere existence of donor siblings is a novelty to the members of this network, but like tourists who are only curious about the sites in a different land, a brief visit with the others suffices. Interestingly, the donor makes himself known to this network, but he too is a tourist who sets clear limits on what he has to offer the children born from his sperm donation. The Facebook group and holiday cards sent within the network are reminders of membership, but there is little other interaction. Born between 1994 and 2001, the kids interviewed are between sixteen and nineteen years old.
The Social Capitalists
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

The parents in the Social Capitalist network introduce a set of new ideas about the meaning of relationships with donor siblings. Rather than trying to squeeze themselves into any preexisting model of family, they actively negotiate their own rules for interaction and for language (including use of the word “dibling”). They also introduce a set of new ideas about the benefits the group can provide. They state quite clearly that they value the social and cultural capital available through group membership. The parents scurry to become members early (while their children are under the age of five) because they want both to influence the group’s formation and to secure the benefits they hope their children will receive in years to come. Because the children are so young, we hear only from the parents.
Donor Sibling Networks
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

This chapter looks across the five featured networks that span thirty years. It opens with a discussion of the historical moments in network creation and the different developmental ages of the children in these networks. The chapter highlights aspects that vary over time, such as parents’ reasons for connecting, naming conventions, and uses of technology. It then turns to an examination of the kinds of interactions within the networks (e.g., transactional and generative) and also the importance of trust and validation that participants can find in the networks. It also discusses the complex consequences network participation holds for its members within all networks. Interpersonal dynamics emerge separately among the children and their parents. Mothers and girl children are more likely to maintain each network. Further, since network membership is never fully known, attempts by the kids to establish a social order and to develop close ties are always shifting and evolving. The chapter ends with a discussion of the place of the donor in the network.
Choice in Donor Sibling Networks
Authors: Hertz Rosanna , Nelson Margaret K.
Published: October 2018

The conclusion of the book explains how relationships within networks of donor siblings begin with the idea of genes. Initially, both parents and children talk about a connection that highlights shared genes. In turn, these shared genes provide both the excitement and the elasticity in donor sibling networks. Ultimately, however, the conclusion argues that what becomes important within these networks is the idea of choice. The parents value connections with others they have come to like; the same is true among the children within a given donor sibling network. The conclusion offers no simple answer to the question of whether connections among genetic relatives can create meaningful bonds that could result in a new kind of voluntary family.
Introduction
Authors: Carey Patrick W.
Published: October 2018

The introduction argues that the Bible’s penitential language (i.e., sin, repentance, confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving), which was so much a part of religious and even political life in American history, has been replaced in the most recent decades in the United States by a language of conflict and confrontation. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and other religious tradition hold in common some or all of this biblical penitential language and have various ways of putting it into practice. This book, however, details the history of the American Catholic understanding of penance as a virtue and as a sacrament and demonstrates how that understanding and practice was influenced and transformed by successive religious and cultural and intellectual movements in Europe and the United States. The book calls for a return to a renewed penitential tradition that can contribute to personal as well as social peace and integrity.
Trent and Penance in the Colonial Period
Authors: Carey Patrick W.
Published: October 2018

The Catholic penitential tradition in colonial America was influenced by the Council of Trent (1545–63), which was itself affected in part by the polemics of the Protestant Reformation. The entire penitential tradition that colonial Catholics inherited from Trent included special days of prayer and fasting, abstinence from meat on Fridays, and the yearly sacramental practice of confessing one’s personal sins to a priest. Trent declared, in opposition to Protestant reformers, that penance was one of the sacraments ordained by Christ. The sacrament included the penitents’ acts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction (penance) and the priest’s act of absolution. Sacramental confession became a special bone of contention between Protestants and Catholics, especially in the nineteenth century. The polemics, though, preserved something of the biblical language and made the confession of sins to a priest a major part of the Catholic experience in the United States until the mid-1960s.
The Confessional Seal
Authors: Carey Patrick W.
Published: October 2018

The chapter demonstrates how Catholic sacramental confession influenced the American legal system and expanded the notion of religious liberty in the United States. It describes a precedent-setting legal decision in New York City in 1813 on the confessional seal—that is, the priest’s canonical obligation to preserve the secrecy of a penitent’s confession of sins. A New York court in People v. Phillips declared that a priest who had learned of a crime through a penitent’s confession of sins was not obliged to reveal that information in a court trial. That legal decision was periodically cited in subsequent court cases in the United States and laid the grounds for subsequent statutory laws in various states that protected in particular the confessional seal and more generally clerical confidentiality. The legal case also became the occasion for the first major American Catholic apologetical attempt to defend the Catholic understanding of sacramental confession.
Confession, Continuity, and Reforms, 1920–60
Authors: Carey Patrick W.
Published: October 2018

This chapter delineates the ways in which the nineteenth-century emphasis on auricular confession continued into the twentieth century. Evidence from published sermons indicates that sermons were a major means for promoting confession as a regular spiritual exercise. Periodicals dedicated almost exclusively to priests and seminary moral manuals, too, focused on promoting the benefits of frequent devotional confessions. During these decades, moreover, a reform movement arose that called for a reexamination of the theology, practice, and history of confession. That reform movement was a return (a ressourcement) to the liturgical, biblical, catechetical, and historical sources of penance, and it called for a restoration of dimensions of the sacrament of penance that had in the course of history been lost or forgotten—namely, a revival of penance as a sacrament of reconciliation and worship that underlined the social and ecclesial dimensions of sin and forgiveness.
Confession, the New Psychology, and Birth Control, 1920–60
Authors: Carey Patrick W.
Published: October 2018

The chapter addresses challenges from empirical psychology and psychiatry that called into question some of the inherited conceptions of sin and guilt. Those relatively new sciences caused some in the Catholic tradition to oppose the psychological approaches as a threat to the confessional tradition and others to reconsider confession in the face of the emerging sciences and to emphasize the benefits of the new psychology for understanding neuroses and mental illnesses that confessors periodically encountered in the confessional. Some, too, underlined the therapeutic and psychological benefits of auricular confession that were consistent with the new sciences. The moral issue of birth control also arose for Catholics in the early 1930s when Pope Pius XI condemned the use of all artificial means of birth regulation. Anecdotal and statistical evidence seems to indicated that significant numbers of childbearing Catholics practiced birth control and a few ceased going to confession because of it.
Platform Mechanisms
Authors: van José
Published: October 2018

The second chapter discusses how platforms introduce new mechanisms to social interaction through the mutual articulation of platform technologies, economic models, and user practices. The mechanism of “datafication” refers to the ability of networked platforms to render into data many aspects of the world that have never been quantified before. Datafication revolves around the capturing and circulation of data. “Commodification” concerns the transformation of online and offline objects, activities, emotions, and ideas into tradable commodities. It involves the development of multisided markets and new business models. Finally, the mechanism of “selection” is about the curation of most relevant topics, terms, actors, objects, offers, services, etc. It takes shape through personalization, trends and reputations, and moderation practices. Understanding the platform society requires a thorough analysis of the ecosystem’s mechanisms and the constantly evolving techno-commercial and sociocultural practices through which they take shape.
News
Authors: van José
Published: October 2018

This chapter examines how the advent of data-driven publishers, such as BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, as well as the rise of the Big Five platforms, have shaken the news sector’s economic, technical, and social foundations. The proliferation of online audience metrics and algorithmic filtering, promoting the personalization of news and advertisements, has fundamentally transformed how news is produced, circulated, and monetized. The triangular content–audiences–advertising configuration that constituted the legacy news industry is unbundled and rebundled through online platforms. As a consequence, the professional practices and institutional standards once set by legacy news organizations are seriously challenged. Key public values, such as journalistic independence and the trustworthiness of news, have come under scrutiny as new online players in this sector reconfigure the conditions of production and distribution.
Healthcare and Health Research
Authors: van José
Published: October 2018

This chapter focuses on the platformization of the health sector. A burgeoning field of online health platforms has emerged, ranging from personal fitness apps to medical platforms that are used by patients, doctors, and researchers. A global industry of health-related platforms is being stacked onto, and interwoven with, the infrastructural core of the ecosystem; developing sectoral health platforms is a potentially lucrative and data-rich area that major operators are keen to invest in. Examining health platforms, the chapter unravels a peculiar double-edged logic in how their benefit is argued: they offer personalized data-driven services to their customers, while simultaneously serving an overarching public interest in medical research, the outcomes of which ostensibly benefit everyone. Using the platform mechanisms as an analytical prism, the chapter scrutinizes three single platforms, which are illustrative of the health sector: 23andMe, PatientsLikeMe, and Parkinson mPower.
Education
Authors: van José
Published: October 2018

This chapter investigates how platformization is affecting the idea of education as a common good on both sides of the Atlantic. The growth of online educational platforms has been explosive, in both primary and higher education. Most of these educational platforms are corporately owned, propelled by algorithmic architectures and business models. They have quickly gained millions of users and are altering learning processes and teaching practices; they boost the distribution of online course material, hence impacting curriculums; they influence the administration of schools and universities; and, as some argue, they change the governance of (public) education as a whole. The chapter explores how, powered by the Big Five, these educational platforms are pushing a new concept of learning that questions values that are fundamental to publicly funded education: Bildung, a knowledge-based curriculum, autonomy for teachers, collective affordability, and education as a vehicle for socioeconomic equality.
Editor’s Introduction: The View from Erewhon
Authors: Hoekstra Kinch
Published: October 2018

Kinch Hoekstra’s introduction to Philip Pettit’s The Birth of Ethics adumbrates the themes of the work with reference to earlier attempts to provide naturalistic accounts of or challenges to morality. For Pettit, moral properties are really in the world, and yet are the product of patterns of human interaction and conventions to promote interests; his theory is thus both a kind of moral realism and a kind of moral conventionalism. Self-interest and language play central roles in Pettit’s hypothetical account of the genealogy of ethics, and a sketch is accordingly provided of the disagreement between Pettit and Michael Tomasello, which focuses on those roles.
Ground Zero
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: October 2018

Ground zero is the condition in the society addressed—“Erewhon,” in a familiar acronym of “nowhere”—before the advent of moral or ethical concepts and practices. In this society, we, the inhabitants, use natural language to make reports to one another on ourselves and our environment and, being want a reputation for telling the truth, we generate a norm of careful and truthful reporting. But reports may be excused in two epistemic ways: by invoking a misleading or a changed environment. And it is striking that, while we may report on our attitudes—our individual, internal environments—we do not avow or pledge them. An avowal would foreclose the misleading-mind excuse, as we human beings might be expected to be able to do in view of our alleged capacity for self-knowledge. And a pledge would foreclose the changed-mind excuse as well, as might seem to be possible in view of our alleged capacity for self-control.
Discovering Responsibility
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: October 2018

In the ordinary world, we identify agents whom we blame or hold responsible for a misdeed such as telling a lie, not just by the fact that it was possible for them to have spoken truly—this, in the absence of exemption or excuse—but also by three other presumptive facts. First, that they had a robust capacity to have told the truth; second, that they acted as they did in a context in which we think it was appropriate for anyone, including themselves, to exhort them to tell the truth; and third, that they are suitably reprimanded for not having acted as they were able and exhortable to act. Assume that in Erewhon certain standards get identified as multilaterally desirable by all lights, and as being within the reach of our capacity and exposed to the effect of exhortation. We will each be virtually pledged to those standards, not rejecting them in the manifest presence of an expectation that we will conform. And that means that, consistently with regarding you as someone whose pledges I can generally rely on, I must think that when you lie in the absence of exemption or excuse, you had the robust capacity to tell the truth, you were suitably exhortable to tell the truth, and you are appropriately reprimanded for failing to exercise that capacity. Unlike standard naturalistic alternatives, the emerging view of what makes you fit to be held responsible targets, not your indifference to others, but your failure to have exercised the capacity to tell the truth; but it does this without suggesting that you had a contra-causal form of freewill.
Morality Reconstructed
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: October 2018

If morality could plausibly have emerged in the manner described, then various lessons follow for ethics. In moral metaphysics, that ethics presupposes only a naturalistic basis and that the desire to be moral can be associated with the desire to live up to the persona we each project in speaking for ourselves in avowals and pledges. In moral semantics, that ethical judgments may be true or false, and that ethical terms may ascribe bona fide properties, despite having a wholly naturalistic base. In moral epistemology, that our ability to make judgments of desirability and responsibility, as well as other moral judgments, depends on our being immersed in practices like those of avowal and pledging. In moral psychology, that moral judgments are closely tied up with desire and that they are effective in motivating us, not in their own right, but in virtue of the robustly attractive desiderata that they rely on for support. And in moral theory or normative ethics, that it is perfectly understandable why in the ordinary world, moral thinkers should divide on issues like that between consequentialist and non-consequentialist approaches.
Conclusion: The Claims in Summary
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: October 2018

The conclusion provides an analytical summary of the preceding chapters.
Reply to Michael Tomasello’s Commentary
Authors: Pettit Philip
Published: October 2018

Michael Tomasello’s commentary suggests that the genealogy traced in The Birth of Ethics does not pay sufficient attention to the cooperative infrastructure on which language realises and does not give it sufficient importance in explaining the emergence of ethics. The challenge he raises is more plausibly read in a moderate way, as a claim that the narrative should have given a greater place to the role of our naturally cooperative, jointly engaged dispositions. The facts adduced by Tomasello in documenting our cooperative nature may be admitted, and are implicitly recognized in the book, but in explaining how ethics might have emerged in their absence, the account throws light on the essential nature of ethics. The challenge might be read in a more radical way as a claim that language is not needed at all in explaining the emergence of ethics. But in that form it is not very plausible, as the narrative at which Tomasello gestures would not explain the appearance of distinctively ethical concepts.
The Buddha’s Omniscience and the Immeasurability of Scripture
Authors: Heim Maria
Published: October 2018

Chapter 1 examines the Pali commentarial doctrine of the Buddha’s omniscience and how the commentarial texts define the corpus of material called “buddhavacana,” that is, the Buddha’s words. It explores how the commentaries expanded and interpreted the idea that the Buddha “knew all,” an idea only incipiently present in the canonical sources. The chapter suggests that related to the idea of omniscience is the idea that the Buddha’s words are to be taken as “immeasurable,” and it explores the claims and metaphorical expressions in which this immeasurability is elaborated. The idea that scripture is immeasurable has important implications for interpretative practice. The chapter describes Buddhaghosa’s treatment of the “piṭakas” as genres, methods, and oceanic texts.
The Contexts and Conditions of Buddhavacana in the Suttanta
Authors: Heim Maria
Published: October 2018

This chapter centers on Buddhaghosa’s readings of the suttas. It argues that the nidāna, the narrative framing of the sutta, was considered crucial for interpreting it. It also argues that in Buddhaghosa’s readings, attending to the narrative frame is a way to understand the Buddha’s omniscient mind, since it shows how he taught doctrine to particular interlocutors whom he, uniquely, understood. We are concerned here with pariyāya knowledge, that which speaks to a particular context. This chapter shows how Buddhaghosa considered context to be essential for interpreting this form of teaching by considering several suttas as examples, including the Brahmajāla Sutta and the Mūlapariyāya Sutta.
The “Completely Pleasing” Exegesis on the Vinaya
Authors: Heim Maria
Published: October 2018

This chapter argues that Buddhaghosa understood the Vinaya as demonstrating the unfolding nature of the Buddha’s omniscient ken because it shows how he was able to anticipate the future. It does so through a close reading of the opening of the Vinaya Piṭaka, the account of an occasion that took place at Verañjā, as it is interpreted in the Samantapāsādikā. The Vinaya rules, in Buddhaghosa’s reading, show how the Buddha created a monastic law code that could address immediate circumstances and foresee the future. It also argues for the importance of the narrative frames of the monastic rules, and considers closely Buddhaghosa’s own narrative frame in his Vinaya commentary; the key term here is “occasion” (samaya). The chapter also shows how essential the Buddha’s qualities were for Buddhaghosa’s reading of scripture.