bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Hermeneutics of Scripture
Authors: Saemi Amir
Published: February 2024

The problem of divinely prescribed evil arises only if we have a moral interpretation of Scriptural injunctions, and can be resolved once we reject that interpretation in favor of a legal interpretation of Scriptural injunctions. Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical tale Hayy ibn Haqzān can help us understand the social function of religious laws and why it is rational to legislate nonoptimal moral rules under nonideal conditions. An argument for Legal Interpretation is offered in light of Ibn Tufayl’s idea and the planning conception of law. This argument reveals that there is a grain of truth in the contextualization view. The chapter also discusses the moral functions of Scripture in our modern world.
Introduction
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: February 2024

The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels, yet microbes such as bacteria and fungi, the most abundant and ubiquitous organisms, also produce this most important greenhouse gas as part of the natural carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is consumed by algae and cyanobacteria, which are microbes that carry out photosynthesis like plants. Only microbes produce and consume the next two most important greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, and only microbes produce another gas, dimethyl sulfide, which helps to form clouds and minimize global warming. A key question to be examined throughout the book is about how climate change may alter what microbes are doing with greenhouse gases: will they consume more or produce more? The answer is critical in predicting what the planet will look like in the coming decades if climate change continues at its current pace.
The Natural Carbon Cycle and Fossil Fuels
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: February 2024

Plants (autotrophic respiration) and soil microbes on land and microbes in the ocean release more carbon dioxide than what comes from fossil fuels. However, unlike fossil fuels, respiration is matched by primary production in the natural carbon cycle. On land, nearly all primary production is carried out by vascular plants, whereas in the ocean, it is by microbes, the phytoplankton. The rate of primary production is about the same on land as in the ocean, even though many terrestrial plants are huge while phytoplankton are measured in microns. Global gross primary production is slightly greater than global respiration, and the carbon cycle appears to have been in balance since the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. The carbon cycle now is being disrupted by carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel burning and other human activity.
Getting Located
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

This chapter motivates an approach to external world skepticism that does not begin from epistemological theorizing or demand a payoff in terms of epistemological theory. Reasons are given for starting from a position resolutely within the epistemic practices, principles, and commitments of ordinary life and science and then asking whether we can find any reason in favor of any skeptical principle or argument. The distinctive nature of the inquiry is highlighted: the central question is what we ourselves are actually committed to in real life and where those commitments lead us. To this end, we must focus on what we would actually be prepared to offer as an expression of those commitments.
Stroud’s Question
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

The Moorean approach focuses on the early stages and initiating moves of skeptical reflection. Standing in the ordinary, pre-philosophical position, Moore responds at these early stages by appealing to things he knows about the world. This chapter defends Moore against Barry Stroud’s charge that this sort of response is unacceptable. Stroud maintains that there is a question of critical epistemic reassessment, familiar in ordinary life, that—when fully generalized—excludes Moore’s response, thus setting the stage for skeptical argumentation. This chapter argues that the principles and procedures of everyday epistemic life do not in fact enable skepticism to arise in the way Stroud envisions. Given this Moorean response, any residual concern about whether our beliefs are true is not epistemically well-motivated but rather an expression of existential discomfort with the fact of human fallibility. In response, Moore aims in part to show us how to be at home with ourselves.
Skepticism and Perception
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

Many skeptical arguments assume that our evidence is fundamentally restricted: it comprises or is provided by only our experiential and other non-factive mental states, all described in a way that carries no implications about the world. It is often urged that if on any given occasion sensory perception all by itself yields at most knowledge about how things seem or appear to us, then the skeptic’s limitation on our evidence is thereby inevitably imposed. This chapter shows that this is incorrect. No limitation on our evidence follows directly from this conception of the epistemology of sensory perception, because this conception is compatible with allowing that in any given case our evidence includes considerations about the world as well. Establishing this point requires careful exploration of issues of epistemic priority, epistemic dependence, basing relations, and epistemic regresses, all from our Moorean standpoint within our ordinary epistemic practices and commitments.
Joking remarks and joking intentions
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter, which focuses on joking remarks, distinguishes between two senses of ‘to joke’: to say something one believes to be false with the intent to amuse, or to say something either true or false with the intent to amuse. Humor is often thought to lack a warranty of truth, but this chapter argues that truths-in-jest sometimes have a warranty of truth. When someone says something is “just a joke” or that they are “just joking,” like Don Imus did when defending a belittling comment about a Rutgers basketball team, they mean that there is no warranty of truth; but it does not follow that they believe what they are saying is false.
Listener culpability
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that people who listen to belittling speech sometimes bear moral responsibility for the presence of belittling ideas in the common ground. This explains why people feel guilty when they are part of a conversation that involves slurs and belittling jokes. The chapter distinguishes listening from hearing; listening is intentionally hearing someone and trying to understand what they mean. It defines being part of a conversation as being eligible to take a turn. It argues that when listeners are part of a conversation, they bear joint responsibility for the contents of the common ground. While our culture encourages us to be good listeners, the chapter argues that good listening is not always ethical listening. Good listening, in fact, can contribute to public humiliation.
Finding derogatory jokes amusing
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that, regardless of whether one believes a claim, one’s willingness to accept it as common ground depends on how one feels about treating it as true and on how one feels about others treating it as true. This explains why both social identity and negative beliefs about a group are correlated with feeling amusement at jokes that derogate the group, and why the context of the joke-telling is also a factor. However, while some tellers of derogatory jokes presuppose derogatory ideas, and invite their audience to presuppose them too, contentious jokers—aggressive jokers whose goal is to rile the audience—do not. So, presupposition is not the primary mechanism by which derogatory jokers convey derogatory ideas. Finally, the chapter argues that we are not morally responsible for being amused at belittling jokes, although over time we can modify our propensity to be amused.
Extinctions and Apocalyptic Birds
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

As humans progressed from an age of exploration into the Industrial Revolution, birds went extinct. Explorers reaching Mauritius wiped out the dodo, probably by accident, and hunting doomed the great auk, the Carolina parakeet, and the passenger pigeon. Fashion demand for feathers nearly doomed the ostrich and many shorebirds like egrets and gulls. Because birds eat dead humans, birds featured in biblical apocalypses and those of Mayans and Aztecs. Wars and technology of the twentieth century gave the book Silent Spring and the film The Birds terrifying power. Conservation efforts rescued two of the largest birds, the bald eagle and the condor, from extinction.
Birds Leading Humans to Another New World
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

The twenty-first century expanded the religion of nature that began in the nineteenth. By 2020, the most common music at American funerals was “On Eagle’s Wings,” a hymn that identified God and humanity with birds. The two largest wars in history and genocide in the Holocaust made the search for harmony more urgent. The mantle left by Audubon was assumed by Rachel Carson, whose work ended the assumption that humans could safely use all tools they invented to control nature. Works of art ranging from children’s books to documentary films and public murals and statuary taught the importance of birds. As issues of race and gender raged, Audubon came under attack, but his life and the birds he loved offered solutions.
The Ripple Effect
Authors: Han Enze
Published: February 2024

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted nature of China’s presence in Southeast Asia, shedding light on not only the influences it exerts on the region, but also the unintended consequences that have arisen as a result. It argues that to truly understand China’s relationship with Southeast Asia and the implications of that relationship, it is necessary to delve beyond a narrow focus on the Chinese state and instead examine the everyday forms of China’s presence in the region. The book contends that traditional state-level analyses often overlook the impact of non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants, whose actions can significantly influence perceptions of China in Southeast Asia. By broadening the scope of analysis to include these actors, the book seeks to offer a more nuanced understanding of China’s presence in the region. In addition, the book highlights the importance of considering the unanticipated consequences that have resulted from China’s presence in Southeast Asia. By exploring the unexpected ways in which China’s actions have affected the region, the book emphasizes the need for a more holistic and nuanced approach to understanding China’s relationship with Southeast Asia. Overall, the book seeks to offer a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective on China’s complex presence in Southeast Asia, highlighting the need to look beyond the Chinese state and take into account the everyday actions of non-state actors, as well as the unanticipated consequences that have arisen as a result of China’s presence in the region.
Trade, Investment, and Economic Influence
Authors: Han Enze
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides a general overview of China’s economic influence in Southeast Asia. It looks at a few prominent infrastructure projects that China has pushed in the region, such as the high-speed rail lines in Laos, Thailand, and Malaysia. It also examines how Chinese investments in Southeast Asia take advantage of special economic zones that some regional governments have set up, with a detailed discussion of the Rayong Industrial Park in Thailand. As a result of its upgrade of the industrial value chain and to bypass the ongoing trade war between Beijing and Washington, there are also certain key industries where Chinese capital has expanded to Southeast Asia, such as electronic vehicles. What we are witnessing, despite the slump during COVID-19, is an increasingly influential China in its economic relations with Southeast Asia.
Garbage Community
Authors: Berg Anne
Published: February 2024

Chapter 3 turns to ordinary citizens and argues that scrapping, salvaging, and other waste-focused initiatives bound Germans together as a garbage community and provided a readily accessible, seemingly apolitical, way to participate in a regime premised on imperial conquest and genocidal extraction. By the late 1930s, German volunteerism replaced the secondary materials trade. From early initiatives such as the propaganda campaign “War against Rot” to the metal collection of 1940 in celebration of Hitler’s birthday, to collections of clothes for soldiers, and bottles for liquor for mobile killing squads, this chapter shows how scrapping and salvaging became a routine, unquestioned part of everyday life for the vast majority of Germans. Even as enthusiasm waned, compliance with the collection frenzy persisted and the materials gathered quickly overwhelmed the transport capacities of the Reich.
First Steps
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter covers Wilfred Smith’s emigration to Canada and his initial exposure to occult teachings of Aleister Crowley through the mediacy of Smith’s esoteric teacher Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886–1950), best known under his magical name of Frater Achad. Jones begins Smith on the challenging path to the acquisition of the basics of the theory and practice of the Western and Eastern esoteric disciplines in Crowley’s Order of A∴A∴, which composed the “inner” work of Crowley’s form of Western Esotericism. The chapter offers an overview of Crowley’s synthesis of meditation (yoga) and magic, which he denominated “Magick.”
Isis, Therion, and Hilarion
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter details the efforts of Charles Stansfeld Jones and Wilfred Talbot Smith to develop an Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) lodge in British Columbia from the materials created by Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s “Law of Thelema” is integrated into the OTO, transforming it from a masonic order which covertly admitted women to a religious society premised on the apocalyptic revelations of Thelema and Crowley’s central role as its prophet. The movement in closest parallel to Thelema was Theosophy, with its significantly larger body of adherents, its own emerging World Teacher, its own esoteric church, and its own form of esoteric masonry open to men and women, Co-Masonry. Jones uncovers the OTO secrets of sexual magic, followed by the recognition of his achievement of the grade of “Master of the Temple,” a level of attainment immediately below that of Crowley.
The Detroit Working
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter treats Aleister Crowley’s contact with socially prominent Scottish Rite Freemasons in Detroit, which leads to a predictable crash against the waves of conventionality. The publication of the “Blue” Equinox was designed to outrage as many as possible, and it succeeds beyond the author’s intentions. This book included the text of Crowley’s “Gnostic Catholic Mass.” Its suggestion of ritual nudity and sex leads to a moral panic drummed up by the yellow press at the mostly imagined activities of the OTO in Detroit. Crowley gives up attempting to represent the OTO as a higher development of Freemasonry, which he now views as a reactionary movement opposed to his Law of Thelema, acceptance of which was the first requirement in OTO under Crowley.
Jane, Kath, and Leota
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter covers the assertion by Aleister Crowley of his final and absolute authority over the exegesis of Thelema, in response to criticism by his disciples Charles Stansfeld Jones and Norman Mudd. Crowley continues his campaign against the leadership of the Theosophical Society and their promotion of Krishnamurti as the World Teacher. Wilfred Talbot Smith begins regular correspondence with Crowley; he marries and divorces Katherine Talbot. Crowley’s personal disciple Jane Wolfe enters Smith’s life as a significant partner in the establishment of Thelema and the practice of sexual magic.
Salve Regina
Authors: Starr Martin P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter treats the entrance of Regina Kahl into the life of Wilfred Talbot Smith. She becomes his mistress and magical partner who provides the motive force for Smith’s work to establish Thelema, starting with the Gnostic Catholic Mass in which they took the roles of Priest and Priestess. Their work was followed by their premier conferral of Crowley’s post-masonic degrees of the Ordo Templi Orientis in their home in Hollywood which was operated as “profess house” of the OTO. Smith incorporates as the Church of Thelema to acquire real property. Attacks on Smith by Max Schneider are endorsed by Crowley’s correspondence.
Introduction
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

The Introduction argues that paradigmatic Greek homecoming stories like the Odyssey, together with scholarship on trauma in antiquity, have focused on the hero’s experiences of trauma and recovery to the exclusion of others’ stories and experiences of trauma after war. Despite replicating some of these exclusions, tragedies about homecoming also draw attention to female characters’ expressions of trauma and their difficulty finding receptive witnesses to their pain. After defining “trauma” and the “trauma hero” narrative, this chapter addresses the difficulties of identifying trauma in ancient texts and cultures. It also presents three important strands of the book’s argument: (1) historical and cultural traumas can be traced in the literary form and stagecraft of these plays, (2) tragedy stages the responses of internal witnesses to trauma so that the external audience can reflect upon the stakes of failing to bear witness to the trauma of others, and (3) the staging of both trauma and witnessing in homecoming plays had particular relevance to the lives of fifth-century Athenians, who engaged in more extensive battles abroad in the latter half of the fifth century than they ever had before.
Moral Injury in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 1 uses the concept of “moral injury,” the pain of committing or witnessing actions that betray what one considers right, to analyze Clytemnestra’s character in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, especially in Agamemnon. Scholars have applied the concept of moral injury to the stories of Greek heroes like Achilles and Ajax; this chapter argues that Clytemnestra’s actions, emotions, and speeches also follow this pattern. Clytemnestra’s language and use of stage space make the experience of moral injury felt through a sense of looming excess that spreads and engulfs other characters, including the Chorus. At the same time, the trilogy also demonstrates the limits of the moral injury theme and of moral recovery for female characters. The Chorus’ gender biases in Agamemnon, for instance, impede their understanding of Clytemnestra’s testimony about war’s excesses. This chapter also analyzes Cassandra’s trauma as a victim of war as distinct from Clytemnestra’s. She is the only character in Agamemnon who speaks openly about her own trauma as well as past wounds in the house of Atreus, but her trauma is recognized by none of the other characters onstage. The Oresteia, therefore, demonstrates how aspects of a character’s identity, including gender and status, shape how their emotional wounds and moral injuries are received and remembered by their community.
Ambiguous Loss and Euripides’ Heracles
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 3, οn Euripides’ Heracles, identifies the grief that Amphitryon and Megara feel at not knowing whether Heracles is alive or dead as a form of “ambiguous loss”—a type of chronic trauma in which the precise nature of the loss is unclear and so lacks closure. This experience is the starting point of all homecoming stories in Greek literature and is usually explored from the perspective of the absent hero’s wife and children. This chapter argues that the family’s experience of ambiguous loss can be traced through formal devices of stasis (strife), aporia (immobility), misdirection, and lack of closure, which mimic the emotional experience of ambiguous loss. This chapter also argues that Heracles treats the problem of witnessing women’s pain differently from the earlier two plays discussed. In the middle of the play, Heracles is unexpectedly attacked by Madness personified and kills his wife and children in his own home. After her death, Megara’s experiences of ambiguous loss and domestic violence are in danger of being wiped from collective memory, or “disremembered,” as the other characters in the play focus on the murders of the children and on Heracles’ survival. Yet the feeling of ambiguous loss continues to surface through the diction, stagecraft, and plot of the play, even after Megara’s death, so that the external audience continues to feel her pain, although internal witnesses fail to recognize it.
Conclusion
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

The Conclusion summarizes what readers can learn from reading female characters’ emotional wounds in homecoming plays through the lens of trauma studies. It argues that homecoming plays articulate diverse experiences of trauma after war for women, including trauma that arises from chronic conditions of violence and oppression. At the same time, however, these plays also foreclose the possibility of repair within their fabricated social structures, which reflect in a distorted way the social structures and values of fifth-century Athens. The Conclusion also suggests future directions for scholarship in Classics that engages with trauma studies.
How Our Expectations Shape Our Perceptions of Reality
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the need to manage expectations when engaging with challenges to the public’s health. For the public to effectively judge the performance of health authorities, it is necessary to first establish a baseline of expectations against which performance can evaluated.
Can Contact Tracing Work Here?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

The chapter discusses the shortcomings of contact tracing in the United States during the pandemic. The chapter identifies how lack of testing capacity, workforce limitations, and lack of trust in public health services all contributed to these shortcomings. It suggests the importance of addressing these issues to shore up testing infrastructure in the event of future pandemics.
The Right to Bear News
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the tenor of the media coverage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines how the often-alarmist tone of the media shaped the national conversation during the pandemic. This tone at times obscured a complete picture of the crisis as well as of other health challenges that were exacerbated by pandemic mitigation efforts.
Health Inequities Beyond COVID-19
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines how the socioeconomic forces that created health inequities during COVID-19 shape health gaps that have long been present in the United States and which currently remain. The chapter concludes with a call to action to address the root causes of these health gaps to build a healthier world for all.
Recognizing and Moving Beyond Our Collective Grief
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter reflects on the importance of acknowledging grief as a step toward rebuilding in the wake of loss. This recognition also serves as a reminder of the burden of mental health need in the United States after the pandemic and of the country’s responsibility to allocate sufficient resources to address this.
Epistemic Humility During a Global Pandemic
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses public health’s elevated profile during the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent occasional lapses into overconfidence and false certitude. These lapses reflect the need for humility, an openness to criticism, and an awareness that what is known is always limited.
The Selling of Vaccines
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses vaccine hesitancy in the United States. It suggests key reasons for the lack of trust in the health system charged with delivering the new vaccines, including the history of exclusion faced by many groups, notably communities of color, in their engagement with the health system.
Fixing Our Health System After COVID-19
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the vulnerabilities of the U.S. health system, a system which was tested during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter suggests that these vulnerabilities can be addressed by embracing new health care payment models to incentivize health rather than illness, by health care professionals taking steps to improve the influence of the social forces that shape health, and by health care providers working to change the public narrative about health.
The Invisible Work of Public Health
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter reflects on how the work of public health often unfolds behind-the-scenes, with local health departments, in particular, doing much unsung work. The chapter suggests this low profile may have contributed to some of the disinvestment in public health that hindered the response to COVID-19.
Will Better Public Health Funding Be Enough?
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines the underfunding of the American public health system in the years leading up to COVID-19, asking the following question: If public health had been better funded, would the country have fared so poorly during the pandemic? The chapter suggests that doing better in the event of future pandemics means giving public health the resources it needs to function at the highest possible level.
Chronic COVID
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the challenge of long COVID and the uncertain drivers of this condition. It suggests pathways to better understanding this phenomenon—an understanding that has so far proven to be elusive. The chapter suggests that it takes time to fully grasp the effects of a new pathogen and that long COVID reflects how the most recent pandemic is no exception.
COVID-19 Collectivism
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores how efforts to address COVID-19 in the years to come will require concern for the public good and a willingness to engage in collective activities toward better therapeutics and social supports for those affected. As an example, the chapter cites a slogan used by the Long COVID Alliance, “Nothing about us, without us.”
Russia in the Pacific during the Age of Imperialism
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

Exploration and the pursuit of wealth motivated Russia’s initial drive toward the Pacific, from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century Russian imperial expansion was encroaching on the interests of China, Japan, and major European powers, opening new economic opportunities but also generating new security threats. Territorial buffer zones were critical to protect sparsely populated and vulnerable frontiers in Siberia and the Russian Far East. The Russian state, under Nicholas II, expanded eastward to acquire territory; preempt expansion by other European powers active in the region; and, for reasons of economic development, each goal advocated by competing elite circles in St. Petersburg. Constant bureaucratic infighting and overly-centralized decision-making often led to ineffective foreign policies in the Pacific region. Russia’s imperial ambitions culminated in the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, and the first Revolution of 1905. Foreign policy setbacks and domestic upheaval forced limited political reforms on the tsar but failed to constrain the autocrat’s foreign policy prerogatives.
Redistribution: Inequality and Envy
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers the question of inequality in relation to overall well-being. Given that money has diminishing marginal utility, there is obvious reason to expect that we would increase overall well-being by diminishing inequality. Capitalists have two replies: first, if we diminish inequality by redistributing wealth, we will destroy incentives and have less wealth overall; second, concerns about inequality really just stem from the petty emotion of envy. This chapter points to empirical data indicating that both replies are wrong. Work by economists indicates that we could make our taxation system far more progressive while not diminishing productivity or tax revenues. Data put together by social scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that wealth inequality is toxic to human well-being.
Market Failures I: Public Goods
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

Capitalists argue that free markets give people better incentives to make better economic decisions for themselves, and that this ultimately benefits us all. This chapter responds that the capitalist argument in favor of markets breaks down for goods and services where the benefit is diffuse—public goods where the benefit goes well beyond the person who might be able to be made to pay for it at point of service. F. A. Hayek acknowledges this point when it comes to services like sanitation and roads, but the point would arguably extend to other areas like public transportation, education, and healthcare.
Market Failures III: Neighborhood Effects and Climate Change
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter contends that the Hayek and Friedman arguments for the superiority of markets fail whenever there are significant negative externalities, or neighborhood effects, involved with economic transactions. The obvious case of a negative neighborhood effect is pollution, but many other economic decisions can have neighborhood effects that negate the capitalist premise that markets work better for everyone. The biggest and most dangerous example of a neighborhood effect is the looming disaster of climate change. It is quite dubious that capitalism is well situated to deal with this issue. Socialism, via more democratic control of the economy, at least gives us some hope.
Commencing and Concluding the Carita of Krishna
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 3 closely compares the first and final books of Villiputturar’s Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat. This chapter begins with a discussion of how both Villiputturar and Sabalsingh Chauhan ensure that their audiences are constantly thinking of Krishna from the very beginnings of their respective poems. It then analyzes another key similarity between the Pāratam and the Mahābhārat: the opening books of both texts introduce Krishna as the Pandavas’ protector and, in turn, the Pandavas are introduced as Krishna’s devotees. While the chapter shows that the endings of these retellings are radically different, it also reveals how the conclusions of both texts are integral parts of Villiputturar and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s shared project of recasting the Mahabharata as kṛṣṇacaritas, or works that relate “the deeds of Krishna.”
Prayers and Protection
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 4 analyzes how Villiputturar and Sabalsingh Chauhan rework two of the most troubling sequences in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata into devotional stories focused on Krishna. The two epic sequences that are examined in this chapter are the attempted disrobing of the Pandavas’ shared wife Draupadi and the entire fifth book, the Book of Effort, about the preparations for the great battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. The comparisons in this chapter reveal significant differences and similarities between these two sequences in Villiputturar’s Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat. They also show how the poets incorporate elements of local Vaishnava bhakti traditions into their individual regional retellings.
Remembering Rama
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 6 contends that the prevalence of certain kinds of allusions to the Ramayana narrative tradition throughout the Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat identifies Sabalsingh Chauhan as both a devotee of the Hindu god Rama (an incarnation of Vishnu and the hero of the Ramayana tradition) and a connoisseur of the sixteenth-century Rama-centric Bhasha poetry of the beloved bhakti poet Tulsidas. The chapter demonstrates this with examinations of three types of Ramayana allusions in Sabalsingh Chauhan’s Mahābhārat. The first is invocations to Rama and other Ramayana figures in the opening prologues of the different books of the Bhasha poem. The second is episodes in the narrative in which Rama’s most cherished devotee, the monkey deity Hanuman, comes to the aid of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The third is passages in which Krishna is equated with his earlier incarnation of Rama.
Radical Democracy and Sacred Value
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

This chapter elaborates the political conditions that are implicit within my social practical account of the political role of sacred value and social practical reasoning. To do that, I turn to how counterpublics like broad-based community organizing (BBCO) affiliates habituate individuals in radically democratic social practices and what political conditions are required for individuals and groups to engage in an ethical way of life free of domination, exploitation, expropriation. To make this case I turn to John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin and Cornel West to illustrate the way the everyday patient work of BBCO recasts Dewey’s, Wolin’s, and Wests’s theories of radical democracy. The chapter offers a unique theory of radical democracy that is capacious enough for political struggles involving sacred values and honest enough about racial capitalism and power in democratic life.
On Organizing as Practice
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

BBCO is a practice more than it is a craft or art. Most accounts tend to frame BBCO as an activity by single individuals. The lone professional organizer has become the emblem of BBCO, a single stand-in for a collective practice. This chapter argues that BBCO is a practice. The activity of organizing can be best understood by following the action itself rather than focusing on individual actors or actor organizations. One consequence of this account is a richer description of the role of sacred values in the life of BBCO counterpublics and a truer account of the feel of the practice of BBCO. By figuring BBCO as a practice, we can gain greater insight into how sacred values fit into the life of the BBCO constituency and how the organizing involves individual and collective agents taking positions in fields of power where sacred values play important roles.
On Black Organizing
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

Any account of radical democracy that cannot adequately grapple with the tentacles of capitalist exploitation and racial expropriation in the US is fundamentally flawed. Some religious scholars and theologians are less convinced that BBCO is the right example for radical democracy. The first section of this chapter gets this critique up and running. In the next section, I draw on political and social theorists to argue that capitalism moves by exploitation and expropriation that depends on “hidden abodes” not entirely encompassed within the economy. The third section explores how BBCO organizes against racial capitalism. The final section argues that by centering the political role of sacred value, in this specific case the sacred value of Black life, BBCO can more adequately build relational power that grasps the role of race expropriation and class exploitation in contemporary racial capitalism.
On Churches
Authors: Stauffer Aaron
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides a counterpublic political ecclesiology for local churches to join BBCOs. To make this case, I draw from a radical social gospelers, Rev. George Washington Woodbey. After a brief caveat in the first section, this chapter’s second section, then, dives into Woodbey’s life, seeking to draw out from his life and work key themes and principles of a counterpublic political ecclesiology. These are three: cooperation, dialogue, and agitation. We need to do some updating of Woodbey’s nascent political ecclesiology and as I explore Woodbey’s life and writing I work dialogically to develop my counterpublic political ecclesiology. In my third section, I briefly review theologians and theological ethicists who have written about social practices of recognition, political ecclesiology, or churches in organizing. The fourth section sums up my argument and addresses the reality that a counterpublic political ecclesiology of churches in BBCO takes place in religiously plural constituencies.
Land Use and Its Consequences
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

The first section of the chapter outlines food security implications of agricultural land use, surveys unsustainable features of widespread food production practices, and unpacks the debate over intensification and extensification of agriculture. The second section explores consequences of agricultural land use extending beyond the land itself, affecting groundwater and surface water, oceans, ambient air quality, and the functioning of critical planetary systems. The third section examines causes of destruction and fragmentation of forests and the impacts of the global expansion of forest land used for production of “high-risk commodities.” It explains the linkage between deforestation and declining terrestrial biodiversity and the global market dynamics driving both crises. It assesses the socioeconomic and ecological shortcomings of some proposed nature-based solutions and shows how they perpetuate an unsustainable business-as-usual approach. The fourth section summarizes how these land use issues are conceptualized as human rights concerns and translated into concrete policy proposals.
Water and Social Organization
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

The first section of the chapter surveys estimates of diminished freshwater availability and explains its causes and consequences. It demonstrates that responsibilities for fulfilling human rights to water within highly interdependent, densely concentrated human settlements are wide-ranging and difficult to carry out in the absence of centralized institutional coordination. The second section examines the global political economy of water resource acquisition and use. It first looks at the global effects of policies designed to conserve a nation’s resources by decoupling its economic growth from its domestic water consumption. It then examines unsustainable policies that promote production or export of resource-depleting crops and commodities. The third section assesses the privatization of water delivery and sanitation services, the political objectives and market dynamics behind it, and the problems that have ensued. It evaluates the ecological and human rights implications of placing highly consequential water resource decisions in the hands of private institutions.
Energy Transition Pathways
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

This chapter shows how pathways for transition to sustainable energy policies generate new ecological and economic risks, introduce market uncertainties, and disrupt established expectations. Hence the allure of sacrifice-free solutions and incrementally transformative pathways. The first section considers pathways unlikely to produce timely changes because they depend on unrealistic assumptions regarding human behavior or the operation of markets. The second section examines solutions that produce some positive results but create problems within another sphere of activity, shift problems onto other communities, or postpone or magnify long-term harm. Section three explores “path dependencies,” aspects of social organization that lock in existing economic relations, thereby constraining the feasible options for the future. Examples include market strategies that prolong the commercial life of unsustainable products and unsustainable governmental policies skewed by corporate interests, extensive state investments, and national security objectives. Section four illustrates connections between human rights and a sustainable energy transition.
Foundations
Authors: McLean Kate C.
Published: February 2024

This chapter defines culture as encompassing the valued practices and activities of community members, such as storytelling, as well as the processes of negotiating with master and alternative narratives. The historical foundation of the study of self and identity is articulated, including an analysis of how the hyperattention to self comes at the cost of attending to the larger sociocultural context. Such hyperattention results in viewing individuals as having more agency to control and chart their life courses than they may have in reality. The challenge of cultural change is illuminated with the examples about narratives regarding American racism. The challenge of studying personal change is examined in terms of the study of posttraumatic growth.
Our Scientific Responsibility for Change
Authors: McLean Kate C.
Published: February 2024

This chapter concludes the volume with a call toward changes in scientific approaches and practices. Suggestions include prioritizing descriptive work, the inclusion of more diverse and representative samples, including systemic and structural analyses in psychological research, and greater transparency about the biases of scholars. Examples of doing such work are provided, including in the study of psychological well-being, racial and gender identity, and socialization within the LGBTQ+ community.
Seeing Beauty
Authors: Grillo Jennie
Published: February 2024

Susanna’s is a story of being seen, and the reception of the biblical tale has clustered around its themes of subjection to sight. Much of the painting tradition of the story has been characterized as voyeuristic, and this criticism has often been extended to implicate the text of the Additions in the painters’ guilt. This chapter examines a series of moments in that story and its representation in painting, and concludes that the text itself, particularly in Theodotion’s recension, rejects the voyeurism of the elders. This resistance is also successfully captured in Tintoretto’s attention to Susanna’s own subjectivity, in Rembrandt’s echo of the text’s own critique of the voyeur, and in Rubens’ frankness about the violent horror of Susanna’s situation. Interpreters like Pseudo-Chrysostom illuminate the way Susanna defies shame, and medieval illuminators put her beauty to typological uses.
Food and Culture in the Works of Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf
Authors: O’Brien Nanette
Published: February 2024

Food and Culture in Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf: Culinary Civilization examines the literary representation of food in the first half of the twentieth century. Embodying a transition from late nineteenth-century concerns to the upheavals of twentieth-century modernity, their works exhibit fascinations with sensual and aesthetic taste and the implications of food preparation and consumption in Britain, America, and France. Representations of everyday culinary practices provide these authors with a way to articulate concerns about the state of civilization, particularly in peacetime. This book proposes that food is significant to literary modernism in two major ways. The first is that food culture provides a means for thinking about the dialectic between the concepts of civilization and barbarism. The second is that writing about food is necessarily grounded in material history, and this book establishes the contexts and conditions of food culture in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly with regards to women’s experiences of dining. Drawing on sociological thinking from Norbert Elias’s conception of the civilizing process and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, and using close reading and biographical and historical analysis, Food and Culture in Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf reveals Ford’s, Stein’s, and Woolf’s investment in the connections between culinary practices and social and political change that contribute to a positive vision of civilization.
Cultures of Food and Eating
Authors: O’Brien Nanette
Published: February 2024

Chapter 1: ‘Cultures of Food and Eating’ establishes that the concepts of nationhood, food culture, and history in early twentieth-century England, France, and America are an intrinsic part of the discussion about culinary civilization in Ford’s, Stein’s, and Woolf’s work. Food helps these authors to form their notions of civilization with regard to industrialism, agriculture, domesticity, education, and gender. Changes in these contexts can be linked to how each of the three authors understand the historicity of food and its social effects in relation to civilization and barbarism. This chapter traces the nineteenth-century legacies that are carried into and adapted in the twentieth century by modernist writers, from Victorian social norms, to diet reform, to shifts in growing, processing, and preparing food. Transformations are seen in the industrialization of food and agricultural production in all three countries, in a rapidly growing processed-food market, and in the shrinking populace of domestic servants as middle-class households cook more for themselves and eat out in restaurants more.
Rights and Recognition Puzzles
Authors: Hickey Sam , Sen Kunal
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores what drives ruling elites to offer protection to vulnerable and excluded groups. It focuses on two different types of response: the adoption of non-contributory forms of social assistance targeted at vulnerable groups and the passing of legislation designed to protect women from domestic violence. Both policy responses were actively promoted by international actors in the first two decades of the twenty-first century and have been subject to different levels of resistance and forms of ‘policy translation’ in different contexts. This chapter argues that elite commitment to adopting and delivering both cash transfers and anti-domestic-violence legislation was directly shaped by the configuration of power and by the nature of paradigmatic ideas within different types of political settlement. In some cases, reforms were led by dominant leaders with an ideological commitment to development and women’s rights. More often, change was catalysed by advocates establishing ‘reform coalitions’ that were able to navigate and overcome various forms of ideological, political, and bureaucratic resistance within increasingly competitive settlements. For cash transfers these reform coalitions were led by international development agencies who formed alliances with government officials and then a broader range of actors, whereas the key actors on women’s rights were women’s movements, female parliamentarians, and senior ‘femocrats’ (feminist bureaucrats). Successful coalitional strategies included the alignment of advocacy messaging with dominant ideas (e.g. dignity or vulnerability, and family values rather than ‘rights’) and co-option of potential veto actors (e.g. finance ministry officials, religious leaders).