bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Most Powerful Court in the World
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

In the United States, we answer some of our most bitterly contested questions by presenting them to nine lawyers, the justices of the Supreme Court. The Court was the most powerful court in the world when it was established in the late 1700s, and until recently it has had no competitors for the title. This book is about how the Court acquired so much power, how it has retained its power in the face of repeated challenges, and what it has done with its power over the years. The book shows that from the beginning, the Court has always been tasked with deciding high-profile cases involving issues that a great many people cared deeply about, along with a much larger number of obscure cases raising technical questions of little interest to most people. Critics of the Court’s best-known decisions have always accused the justices of deciding cases on political rather than legal grounds. In this respect, today’s criticism of the Court continues a tradition that has lasted for more than two centuries.
Establishing the Court
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

When the Supreme Court opened for business in 1790, it was vested with an extraordinary degree of authority, including the power to declare state and federal statutes unconstitutional. The Court was given this power for two reasons. First, it was clear that disputes would arise regarding the boundary between state and federal authority, and the Court was the forum where these disputes would be resolved. Second, the Constitution was intended to be a counterweight to democracy. It placed limits on what the state and federal governments could do, and the Court was the enforcer of these limits. But while the Court was powerful from the beginning, in its early years it had to navigate some difficult challenges to its authority, challenges that arose from the sharp political partisanship of the era.
The Jim Crow Court
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

The Supreme Court struck down Congress’s post–Civil War attempts to secure civil rights for black people, in cases including United States v. Cruikshank (1876) and the Civil Rights Cases (1883). When white supremacists regained power in the southern states, the Court upheld state statutes mandating segregation, including most famously in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The Court was thus partly responsible for the Jim Crow era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like most white men of the era, the justices shared the conventional view that whites were superior to nonwhites. They had little interest in racial equality.
The Lochner Era
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

The Supreme Court of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is remembered primarily as a pro-business Court. In several cases between the 1890s and the 1930s, the Court struck down state and federal regulation as an infringement of the constitutional rights of business enterprises. Some historians have echoed the critique prevalent during the era—that the justices were hostile to regulation and that they adopted constitutional theories that allowed them to implement their laissez-faire philosophy. Others have argued that this method of interpreting the Constitution had deep roots in American legal thought, and that the justices were merely applying traditional principles to new factual circumstances. Each explanation is true in its own way. Several of the justices genuinely were hostile to some forms of regulation. But they drew upon legal traditions under which some, but not most, of the era’s regulation was beyond the authority of legislatures to enact.
The Justices at War
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

The Court played an important role in World War II and the Cold War. Several of the justices took on wartime tasks, including Robert Jackson’s role as prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials. The Court was deferential to the military during wartime. In Ex parte Quirin (1942), the Court upheld the military’s authority to try captured German saboteurs. In cases challenging the internment of Japanese Americans, including Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court again sided with the government. In the early years of the Cold War, the Court likewise deferred to the government’s assessment of its security needs. In cases such as Dennis v. United States (1951), the justices consistently allowed the government to punish people for their political views.
Desegregation
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

The Court took no interest in desegregation until the mid-twentieth century, when elite white opinion outside the South began to move in that direction. In Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Court invalidated white-only primary elections. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Court held racially restrictive real estate covenants unconstitutional. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) and Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the Court required the integration of graduate schools. And in the most momentous of these cases, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court barred segregation in elementary and high schools. In the 1960s, when Congress began enacting statutes requiring racial equality, the Court affirmed the statutes’ constitutionality in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964) and South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966). By 1967, when Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice, enormous changes had taken place in the past twenty years.
Back to the Right
Authors: Banner Stuart
Published: November 2024

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the Court reverted to form. It became a conservative institution once again—not on every issue, but on most. The Court’s return to the right was a matter of personnel. After Republican presidents appointed ten consecutive new justices between 1969 and 1991, the Court’s Republican majority was so overwhelming that it would endure, throughout alternating Democratic and Republican administrations, right up to the present. In the mid-twentieth century, liberals extolled the Court for protecting important constitutional rights, while conservatives complained of activist justices who improperly intruded into political issues. Now the tables were turned. Now it was conservatives who praised the justices for being true to the law, while liberals accused them of squandering the Court’s legitimacy by letting their political beliefs dictate the outcomes of cases.
The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick
Authors: Blake David Haven
Published: November 2024

The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick examines how disability shapes one of the world’s most iconic novels. For generations, readers have viewed Captain Ahab’s whalebone leg as a symbol of what he lacks, the limb he lost fighting the white whale off the coast of Japan. This book considers the artificial leg in a historical, medical, and geopolitical context. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book situates Ahab’s prosthesis at the center of the novel’s reflections on wounding, embodiment, and the role that Islamic cultures play in American narratives of revenge. Sawed from a sperm whale’s jaw, Ahab’s artificial leg helps him stand, walk, and fight. But the prosthesis that marks him as different also creates the basis for his “irresistible dictatorship.” Blake connects the novel’s prosthetic arts with the use of Islamic imagery in nineteenth-century America to characterize overwhelming power. He identifies the character Fedallah as the captain’s most important prosthesis on ship, as the hair-turbaned soothsayer pilots the captain to his final battle with Moby Dick. Spanning each stage of Melville’s career, The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick meditates on democracy, aggrievement, and the challenges of living in a global age.
Introduction
Authors: Blake David Haven
Published: November 2024

Melville’s Moby-Dick is a meditation on how grief turns into grievance and grievance into the desire for revenge. Ahab transforms his dismemberment into a sense of aggrievement, turning his injury into the basis of his power. That power, the introduction argues, is most represented in Ahab’s whalebone limb. Ahab’s ivory leg is material object, but it is also a useful way to understand the novel’s use of Islamic imagery to estrange the captain from the power it simultaneously incorporates in him. Placing the book’s analysis in the context of disability studies and the representation of Islam as an extension of Western identity, the introduction lays out the emotional, philosophic, aesthetic, and geopolitical meanings associated with Ahab’s prosthesis. It positions the novel’s prosthetic arts alongside the work of scholars such as Altschuler, Garland-Thomson, Mitchell and Snyder, Siebers, Stiegler, Sobchak, and Wills.
Ishmael, Salaaming
Authors: Blake David Haven
Published: November 2024

The chapter argues that Fedallah’s disappearance during the second day’s hunt allows for Ishmael’s survival. Fedallah, it proposes, is the “phantom hand” behind the novel’s narrative design. In a reading of “The Counterpane,” the chapter contrasts Ishmael’s warm acceptance of Queequeg with his aversion the Parsee, who awakens in him a conflation of narrative and racial anxieties. Like many of Melville’s contemporaries (including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lydia Marie Child), Ishmael embraces Islamic religious experiences. In trying to understand Ishmael’s racism toward Fedallah and his Filipino oarsmen, the chapter examines Western attitudes toward Malaysia and the Philippines in the middle of the nineteenth century. Ishmael, it concludes, invokes his whiteness when he encounters populations that resist American expansion into the Pacific Ocean. Discussions of Siebers, Sanborn, Spivak, and Vafa supplement this chapter.
The Unnatural Stump
Authors: Blake David Haven
Published: November 2024

Moby-Dick reveals significant tensions between Ishmael’s sympathetic portrait of whales and his dehumanization of Muslim peoples in Maritime Southeast Asia. Using a critique of democratic capitalism that Melville offers in Clarel, the chapter examines the portrait of environmental violence in Moby-Dick. In an obvious parallel to Ahab, “The Pequod Meets the Virgin” describes the cruelty inflicted on old bull whale that is missing one of its fins. The scene reveals Flask to be a maliciously exploitative capitalist. When the Pequod accidentally kill a series of whales in “The Grand Armada,” Ishmael seems to develop an environmental consciousness, and yet he remains an apologist for commercial expansion into the Pacific. The chapter argues that environmental destruction intersects in the novel with disability, capitalism, and the representation of Islamic peoples in the area surrounding the Sunda Strait.
So, we went with them
Authors: Behrends Andrea
Published: November 2024

In a narrative manner and by introducing personal experiences, this chapter shows how war arrived and how people individually or collectively coped with it. It proceeds to emphasize the production of belonging through deliberate foregrounding and backgrounding (or “un/making”) of differences over longer periods of time. It provides insight into the borderland population’s historical experiences of war and their current anticipation of futures as individuals and (village) collectives, which result in the decision of either becoming (poor) town-dwellers or refugee camp-dwellers as strategies of survival. This section addresses competition and belonging between newcomers and locals, farmers, herders, NGO workers, community groups and others in the acceleration decrease of turbulence due to war and displacement.
Those are the only real refugees
Authors: Behrends Andrea
Published: November 2024

The book’s second part proceeds by introducing a group of former villagers who decided to move to the refugee camps when the war began. Here, the focus lies on how they deal with the strict rules and regulations inside camps: by having to resist, confront, accept, merge or tinker with the categories inflicted upon them by international aid agencies. What exactly do ascriptions and categories do to the people they explicitly frame? In answering this question, the author turns away from clear-cut categories altogether. Instead, the author shows how people actively attempt to change ascriptions inflicted upon them as they narrate their changing, partly contingent, and temporally created forms of belonging—to a village community, an age group, a town’s quarter, a profession, an aid category, etc.—through interaction.
The camps are very different
Authors: Behrends Andrea
Published: November 2024

Three characters are the focus of this chapter: a school teacher from Darfur who became the first president of the refugees in Camp Farchana, a head of a Chadian-led development agency who remembers the first registering of refugees in the camp, and a former rebel turned refugee who later became the camp’s president of refugees. The chapter looks at their different ways of individually negotiating status and networking during the period of highest uncertainty in the war. This also includes how they thought of ways how to live on, after this crisis, in a possible future with communal and individual ambitions and pathways.
They are our relatives now
Authors: Behrends Andrea
Published: November 2024

This part concludes with a focus on what happened “after” the war, a phase representing a transition from what aid organizations considered to be a state of emergency to post-emergency. To start closing down the camps and to integrate refugees into the Chadian state, aid agencies rely upon the peoples’ existing modes of belonging. The re-categorization of refugees is shown via two examples: one concerns how aid agencies integrate camp dwellers into the surrounding villages by following the camp dwellers’ long-term and so far “illegal” practices of temporarily leaving the camp in order to farm or trade outside; and the other focuses on the procedures of biometric registration of refugees to officially change their status to “refugee citizens”.
This is neither my first nor second time seeing war
Authors: Behrends Andrea
Published: November 2024

The book’s third part starts with a view from the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, which lies at a 500 miles distance from the Chad-Sudan border region. What is the national government’s position in view of the situation on this remote, and troublesome, border? Again, the section begins with a story from the time during the war, about the rebel attack on N’Djamena. The story of the upcoming tensions days before the actual attack, the population’s reactions during the hours of attack, and the attack’s immediate aftermath is told and put to paper by Brahim Mahamat Ali. The chapter goes on to analyze the effects of the attack, which failed for the rebels, but became a full-scale game-changer for the Chadian government. Not only did it end the war on the Chadian side, but it led the government into an aggressive new phase, characterized by urban expulsions, arbitrary arrests and killings while, at the same time, displaying a spirit of national renewal made possible by oil revenues.
The Crisis of Imaginaries
Authors: Roy Olivier
Published: November 2024

This chapter assesses how the crisis of religion mirrors the crisis of culture in general. Neither high culture nor anthropological culture provide the stuff of dreams today. “Ways of believing” now come within the realm of subcultures; they are associated with sects, fandoms, conspiracy theories and the like. The end of grand ideologies has also been a defeat for the imagination, just as secularization has been, as it leaves no other foundation for the political order than a theory of the social contract at odds with everyday experience. Imaginaries are thus relegated to the margins of societies, leaving the grand narratives in the hands of radicals. Without a common imaginary, it is hard to project oneself into the future: for the first time, a cause mobilizing youth (the fight against climate change) is driven not by hope but by fear. Ultimately, the erasure of a shared “cultured” imaginary does not erase the need for imaginaries but shifts it onto deculturated products that still fire the imagination. The chapter then considers the kitsch culture, culinary culture, religious culture, and indigenous culture.
Strategy, Piety, and Chivalry Violence and Restraint Under Henry V in 1415
Authors: Rogers Clifford J.
Published: November 2024

When Henry V invaded France in 1415, he issued formal disciplinary ordinances that offered substantial protections to noncombatant women, children, and clergymen. Even the burning of buildings was forbidden, unless by specific royal command, and a subsequent proclamation ordered his troops not to take peasants prisoner to hold them for ransom. As this chapter demonstrates, this represented a significant shift from earlier English practices and rules of engagement, and even more so from French or Scottish ones. On the other hand, Henry was willing to bombard the civilian population of Harfleur during the siege of that town, and famously ordered the killing of many of the French prisoners captured during the battle of Agincourt. The ordinances, the bombardment, and the battlefield killing were all within the boundaries of the contemporary laws of war, and are all explicable largely in terms of strategic or tactical advantage, but the unusually strong protection of the noncombatant rural population also reflects King Henry’s personal piety and shifting norms of chivalry.
English Atrocities in the Reign of Elizabeth i and Their Context
Authors: Trim D. J. B.
Published: November 2024

This chapter on ruthless military violence during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) considers some violence directed by the English state, but has as its focus the violence of English soldiers who were not serving the Tudor state. This reflects the fact that up to 1585, English soldiers were serving French and Dutch Protestants, effectively as mercenaries (albeit with English state approval and connivance). The chapter shows that extreme violence and massacres became more common from the 1560s onwards, the ultimate fruit of the confessional divisions caused by the Reformation. English soldiers in Protestant service were themselves subject to many massacres, and some of the violence that English commanders sanctioned or ordered was retaliatory. However, at other times, English atrocities went beyond what would have been accepted even in this very violent age, and beyond retaliation. Ruthless violence was part of the tool kit of English soldiers and would be deployed when needed.
State of Emergency the English Subjection of Early Modern Ireland
Authors: Edwards David
Published: November 2024

With good reason the September 1649 storming of Drogheda by Oliver Cromwell’s parliamentary army is remembered as probably the worst atrocity ever committed by English forces in Ireland. It was certainly among the bloodiest. Thousands were killed, mostly royalist soldiers, but a high proportion of the victims were also civilians, including women and children. However, when discussing the legacy of English state violence in Early Modern Ireland it is important to realise that the Cromwellian conquest of 1649-50, brutal though it was, was actually the second English conquest of the country in just over a hundred years, following an earlier and more prolonged conquest by the Tudor monarchy, 1534-1603. This chapter draws the two conquests together, examining the reasons that motivated English military intervention, and the types of measures that were deployed, often extreme, up to and including elements of genocide.
Operation Gomorrah Ruthlessness and the British Air War, 1943
Authors: Overy Richard
Published: November 2024

The chapter looks at the background and planning of the bombing of Hamburg in July/August 1943 which resulted in widespread incendiary destruction and the death of 34,000 people. While seldom discussed in the same way as the bombing of Dresden, Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg was a milestone in the campaign by RAF Bomber Command. It convinced Harris, commander-in-chief of Bomber Command, that urban firebombing was the most effective strategy against Germany. The operation stemmed from the changes in tactics and objectives in 1941 in favor of wide civilian damage and was made possible by adopting tactics for incendiary rather than high-explosive bombing. The chapter asks why scientists and commanders were able to endorse deliberate civilian bombing despite earlier government restrictions on what could be bombed.
Introduction
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: November 2024

The political identity of Gujarat, its Asmita, has been influenced by the perception of Islam (and then Pakistan) that Hindu reformists (including literary figures like Narmad and Dalpatram), revivalists (including Arya Samaj leaders), and nationalists have cultivated from the nineteenth century onwards. This sub nationalism based on Hinduism had affinities with the ethos of dominant castes (including the merchant castes, the Vanyas)—in a province where the more flexible caste system differs significantly from what it is in the neighboring regions—and some sectarian movements (including the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS)). The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh developed its network in this context, in parallel to the Hindu Mahasabha and with the support of Hindu traditionalists of the Congress.
A New Brand of Crony Capitalism
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: November 2024

In the name of development, Modi launched business-friendly policies focusing on mega infrastructure projects (roads, ports, energy). These measures found expression in growth without development and in a new form of crony capitalism: land was sold at a very low price to few industrialists. This was seen especially in Special Economic Zones like Mundra where Gautam Adani, the rising star of Gujarati oligarchs created a deep seaport at the expense of all regulations (environmental of otherwise).
Relating to the People the National-Populist Way
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: November 2024

Narendra Modi related directly to the people via the social media, by touring Gujarat and by orchestrating a state of quasi-permanent mobilization. People could even wear a mask with his face and the “Modi kurta”. This technique is typical of populism, a political approach that relies more than others on an unmediated communication between the leader and the masses, at the expense of intermediate bodies including political parties. Modi resorted to all kinds of channels to reach out to the people and create a state of quasi-permanent popular mobilization. However, his populism relied wholly on the ideology of Hindu nationalism, such that the people he was defending consisted only of the majority community.
Resisters, Dissenters and Victims
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: November 2024

The underclass and minorities were the first casualties of the Modi government, but not the only ones. Liberals, NGOs, intellectuals and all dissenting voices were attacked because they defended a vision of society that was not that of the BJP. The political opposition was also at the receiving end. Congress tried to cope with the new hegemon but failed completely, partly because of Modi’s politics, and partly because of its own limitations. Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims suffered the greatest casualties of the BJP’s policies in Gujarat, from a socio-economic point of view. This is one of the reasons why they did not support the BJP electorally as much as other groups did.
Fractured Union
Authors: Kenny Michael
Published: November 2024

The question of the United Kingdom’s survival, for a long time taken for granted, looms large in British politics. This book uncovers the roots of today’s crisis, exploring British MPs’ and civil servants’ assumptions about, and understandings of, the Union, and highlights a growing sense of pessimism about its long-term viability. It explores the following key questions. Why has the UK’s political class struggled to engage productively with devolution? Has the growing disenchantment of many English citizens with government based in London challenged how politicians and bureaucrats have approached the UK Union, and the governance of England in particular. How and why have recent crises—most notably the 2014 vote on Scottish independence, Brexit, and the covid-19 pandemic—damaged trust and created conflicts between central and devolved governments. And will the UK Union break apart in the next few decades? Fractured Union offers an account of the gradual loss of British unity, illuminating the forces and pressures now shaping the future of both nations and peoples. As nationalism rises across Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England, this book issues a sharp challenge to those who believe in a united kingdom: deliver better, more responsive government—or risk the UK falling apart.
Future-proofing the Union?
Authors: Kenny Michael
Published: November 2024

This chapter explores different potential futures for the UK's Union, considering three main scenarios: dissolution, reconfiguration, and continuity. The chapter emphasizes the need for more strategic foresight and capability within British government in relation to the Union. The first scenario includes the possibility of referendums in Scotland or Northern Ireland. The second considers the possibility of a major reconfiguration of the union along federal lines. The third, and most likely, scenario envisions the UK continuing on its current path, with incremental reforms designed to manage emerging conflicts and adapt to new political and administrative realities.
Comparisons and Futures
Authors: Kenny Michael
Published: November 2024

This concluding chapter considers the UK in comparison with several other multi-national states (Spain, Canada and the former Czechoslovakia), examining the strategies pursued by unionists in each of these cases. And it explores whether the UK's current devolution framework can be stabilized, in the context of high levels of support for independence in Scotland, and recent political turbulence in Northern Ireland. The chapter considers the need to reassess polices and institutions relating to devolution and territorial management more generally, and draws attention to examples of more productive inter-governmental collaboration and partnership. It also makes the case for a more systematic policy focus upon underlying geographical inequalities if the discontents and disillusion leading citizens towards nationalist politics are to be assuaged.
Nehru's Bandung
Authors: Benvenuti Andrea
Published: November 2024

This book sheds light on a neglected aspect of India’s Cold War diplomacy, starting with the role of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress government in organizing the first Asian-African Conference in Bandung in April 1955. Andrea Benvenuti shows how, in the early Cold War, Nehru seized the opportunity accorded by the conference to transcend growing international tensions and pursue an alternative vision: a neutralized Asian “area of peace”, underpinned by a code of conduct based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence. Relying on Indian, Western, and Chinese archival sources, Nehru’s Bandung focuses on the policy concerns and calculations, as well as the international factors, that drove a sceptical Nehru to support Indonesia’s diplomatic push for such a gathering. It reveals how, in Nehru’s estimation, Bandung also served a further important purpose—securing China’s commitment to peaceful coexistence, without which stability in Asia would be illusory. Nehru’s support for an Asian-African conference did not derive from an emotional commitment to Afro-Asian internationalism. Instead, it stemmed from a desire to promote a “third way” in an increasingly polarised world, and to forge a stable regional order—one that would enhance India’s external security and domestic prosperity.
Introduction
Authors: Benvenuti Andrea
Published: November 2024

This introductory chapter provides the historiographical context for examining Nehru’s role in organizing the Bandung Conference and discusses the nature, logic and development of his policy. The chapter highlights the book’s three main contributions to the existing historical scholarship on the Cold War, Indian foreign policy and Asian-African internationalism. Firstly, the book shifts the focus away from superpower competition as the structuring principle of Cold War international relations and recognises the role of influential Third World actors like India in shaping post-1945 world politics. Secondly, it places Bandung at the intersection of the various strands of Nehru’s foreign policy—notably, non-alignment, Afro-Asianism, accommodation with China, and opposition to military alliances such as SEATO. Finally, the study underscores the importance of state agency in shaping Asian-African internationalism by showing how the Bandung Conference’s origins lay in the interplay between regional nation-states, their interests and agendas.
The Nehru-Zhou Enlai Talks
Authors: Benvenuti Andrea
Published: November 2024

With an Asian-African conference still a long way off, Chapter 4 turns its attention to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai’s visit to India in late June 1954. It details Nehru’s extensive discussions with his Chinese opposite number and the implications of their discussions for Nehru’s regional diplomacy. As Chapter 4 shows, the two leaders reached significant convergence on several Cold War issues, including their support for the concept of “areas of peace” and their opposition to what they saw as Washington’s aggressive containment in Asia. Zhou was also able to allay Indian fears of Chinese expansionism and reaffirmed Beijing’s commitment to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence the two countries had established as a code of conduct to govern their bilateral relations following the signing of the April 1954 Sino-Indian agreement on Tibet. Although the two leaders did not discuss the potentially contentious border question, the Nehru-Zhou talks paved the way for closer political collaboration between the two Asian powers.
Towards an Afro-Asian Conference
Authors: Benvenuti Andrea
Published: November 2024

Chapter 6 analyzes Nehru’s evolving views on the desirability of an Asian-African conference amid growing regional tensions. As the chapter reveals, Ali Sastroamidjojo’s visit to New Delhi in late September 1954 prompted Nehru to reassess his approach to the whole question. Faced with the Indonesian leader’s determination to get the idea of an Asian-African summit off the ground, Nehru agreed that such a conference should be take place in the near future. As Chapter 6 indicates, Nehru’s decision was influenced by a variety of factors. These included his recognition of Indonesia’s increasing importance for India’s regional calculations and his realisation that such a conference could serve as a platform to promote an alternative approach to regional relations centred around areas of peace and peaceful coexistence. Although Nehru refrained from publicly discussing the prospect of inviting China, he privately recognised the importance of Chinese participation in the future conference, given the role that China could play in furthering his vision of a neutralized Asia.
The Bogor Conference
Authors: Benvenuti Andrea
Published: November 2024

In December 1954, as the Colombo powers neared a formal decision on holding an Asian-African conference, Nehru outlined the rationale behind India’s support for this initiative. Chapter 8 demonstrates that while Nehru saw the conference as an opportunity to foster Afro-Asian cooperation and discuss shared Afro-Asian concerns, his overriding motivation lay in Cold War considerations. In other words, he primarily intended to use the Afro-Asian gathering to win approval for the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and to promote his vision of a neutralized Asia. In this context, he saw China’s participation in the conference as critical to attaining India’s regional goals. Chapter 8 also examines Nehru’s and the Indian delegation’s role in shaping the outcome of the Bogor Conference in late December, where the leaders of the five Colombo powers set the date, agenda and composition of the upcoming Asian-African conference. Finally, this chapter explores Beijing’s rationale for accepting the invitation to the conference. In the Chinese view, attending the conference was part of a calculated strategy to boost China’s influence in the Afro-Asian world with the view to turning it into a support base for Beijing’s revolutionary aims.
Beyond Ukraine
Authors: Coker Christopher
Published: November 2024

War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms and guises. This book offers the first comprehensive update and revision of ideas about the future of war since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It argues that the war has fundamentally shifted our perspective on the nature and character of future war, but also cautions against marginalizing many other parallel trends, types of war, and ways of waging them. World-renowned international experts from the War Studies field consider the impact of the war in Ukraine on the broader social phenomenon of war: they analyze visions of future war; examine the impact of technological innovation on its conduct; assess our ability to anticipate its future; and consider lessons learned for leaders, soldiers, strategists, scholars and concerned citizens. Beyond Ukraine features contributions from Azar Gat, Beatrice Heuser, Antulio Echevarria, Audrey Cronin, T.X. Hammes, Kenneth Payne, Frank Hoffman, David Betz, Jan Willem Honig, and many other pre-eminent thinkers on the past, present and future of war—including an afterword by the late Christopher Coker.
People’s War vs Professional War
Authors: Honig Jan Willem
Published: November 2024

The chapter asks whether war once again has become the business of the people or whether it is best left to supposedly more effective professionals. With the replacement of conscript forces by professionals across Europe, the question seemed settled. However, an analysis of the role of the people in European warfare since the French Revolution reveals that this situation ignores a long-standing, deeply political debate, marked by social prejudice, discordant ideas on how war is best fought, and incompatible moral and political demands about who can join in war. The people however once more hold the key to victory. Neither Russian professionals in Ukraine, nor their Western professional counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan could prevail when the peoples on the opposing side decided to join the war and deny them victory. In modern wars, professional militaries alone can no longer guarantee victory in war.
Assembling the Future of Warfare
Authors: Gould Lauren , Arentze Linde , Hoijtink Marijn
Published: November 2024

War, like a societal centrifuge, has the power to draw in resources—intellectual, scientific, social, economic, cultural, and political—and unmake and re-work them in ways that cannot be foreseen. Arguably, today, we are again in the midst of such a reworking, with the war in Ukraine acting as a testing ground for an increasingly data-driven, automated, and technologically enhanced battlefield. Applying an assemblage approach, this chapter studies how commercial enterprises are drawn into the military-industrial complex to innovate for the current “turn” to big data, AI, and machine learning. Specifically, it traces how the Dutch military is assembling new alliances with defense companies, startups, and university students to innovate swarm technology. It illustrates that in the process of continuous adaptation, innovation and experimentation, Western militaries increasingly move away from hierarchical, democratically accountable systems rendering it increasingly hard to trace the lines of responsibility for the violence produced.
Afterword
Authors: Coker Christopher
Published: November 2024

Humanity's evolving relationship with war requires a reconsideration of our assumptions about conflict. Due to the changing nature of warfare, including the emergence of new technologies such as cyber and information warfare, a shift in human attention is required. There are different cultural perspectives on war; however, in recent decades, Western perspectives on conflict have been predominantly highlighted. In this afterword, concerns are raised about the post-human condition and the nature of future conditions due to new digital technologies. It also addresses the metaphysical dimensions of war, reflecting on how it shapes human experiences and values, including concepts of sacrifice and participation in battle.
Radical Redemption in History
Authors: de Graaf Beatrice
Published: November 2024

To establish similarities and differences between redemption narratives and to make clearer statements about the last twenty years of terrorism and radicalization, chapter 3 examines attacks carried out in earlier waves of terrorism, particularly by fin de siècle anarchists such as Auguste Vaillant and Zinaida Konopliannikova, the Red Army Faction, the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Clearly, in these cases, too, redemption was seen as a form of deliverance from or atonement for the perpetrators’ own past failings or sense of moral deficit. Thus, redemption as an act of martyrdom for the perpetrator’s own community is by no means a modern phenomenon. Finally, this chapter argues that a fourth R—that of radical redemption—should be added to Louise Richardson’s three Rs of revenge, renown, and reaction as narratives propelling the waves of terrorism.
Existential constructions in Bantu languages
Authors: Bernander Rasmus , Devos Maud , Gibson Hannah
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines existential predication in a sample of one hundred Bantu languages found across the Bantu-speaking region. Following Creissels (2019a), existential constructions are defined in relation to plain locational clauses. In comparison to the latter, they involve an alternative way of encoding the prototypical figure-ground relationship: the ground, rather than the figure, is the perspectival centre. The chapter shows that a broad distinction can be made between those Bantu languages which have dedicated mechanisms for convening existential interpretations and those which have non-dedicated strategies, i.e. they use plain locational constructions except for sometimes being associated with a change in word order. Three out of the seven types of dedicated cross-linguistic existential constructions identified by Creissels (2019a) are attested in the sample: locative existentials, locative-possessive existentials, and comitative existentials. Locative morphology is also shown to be a prevalent characteristic of all dedicated types of existentials found in the Bantu languages.
Micro-variation in the nominal class marking systems of Malawian languages
Authors: Mtenje-Mkochi Atikonda
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines micro-variation in the nominal class marking systems of six selected Malawian languages, namely Cicewa, Citumbuka, Cisena, Cindali, Cinyiha, and Ciyao. The analysis is based on Guérois et al.’s (2017) parameters of variation. The chapter observes that the languages under examination share most features expressed in the parameters with regard to nominal class marking. However, variation is exhibited through different realizations of the class 5 prefix and the occurrence of the augment. The chapter notes that some instances of micro-variation are not captured by Guérois et al.’s (2017) parameters and suggests that sub-parameters for analysing variation in closely related languages be developed. The chapter also argues that the shared linguistic features of the selected languages are indications of a linguistic area but that, within this larger linguistic area, the languages also form two ‘sub-areas’s – a northern Malawi one and a central and southern Malawi one.
Morphosyntactic and semantic variation of the persistive aspect in Lake Tanganyika Bantu
Authors: Abe Yuko
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the semantic variation in reflexes of *kɪ́- as attested in nine Bantu languages found near Lake Tanganyika, namely: Fuliiru (JD63), Rundi (JD62), Bembe (D54), Ha (JD66), Holoholo (D28), Bende (F12), Taabwa (M41), Fipa (M13), and Lungu (M14). The verbal marker *kɪ́- in early Bantu, most probably encoded ‘persistive’, usually appears in the pre-stem TA slot and refers to ‘a situation that has held continuously since an implicit or explicit point in the past up to the time of speaking’ (Nurse 2008a: 145). However, in individual languages, reflexes of the persistive *kɪ́- have developed various meanings that deviate from the morpheme’s original function. Through a comparative overview of the meanings of *kɪ́-, and its uses across these nine languages, the chapter offers a semantic explanation for the present-day micro-variation found in Lake Tanganyika Bantu.
‘Being Persecuted’ and Protection
Authors: Storey Hugo
Published: November 2024

This chapter looks at the interrelationship between ‘being persecuted’ and protection. It begins with the notion of surrogacy. Despite recent criticisms by leading scholars, this notion is seen to play a substantive role in establishing the meaning of protection within the refugee definition and of the nexus clause relating to Convention reasons. After consideration of the arguments for and against, it is concluded that protection is an integral part of the meaning of ‘being persecuted’. It is advanced that even though protection arises as a test within the ‘being persecuted’ element, it must be accorded the same meaning as the term holds in the availment clause. Two important ingredients of the term’s meaning are highlighted: that it is to be understood as encompassing internal and external protection; and that two of the qualities that the state must possess are ability and willingness to protect. Applying a human rights approach is seen to require understanding protection as both a negative concept and a positive concept. It is argued that de facto as well as de jure state entities can be assessed as to whether they provide protection in Article 1A(2). Human rights law is seen to offer strong support for the notion that it is a state’s duty to protect its own population against sufficiently severe harms. Also probed is the key notion of the effectiveness of protection. The chapter ends by identifying a limited number of ‘basic propositions’ distilled from the earlier analysis, followed by the author’s own ‘suggested propositions’.
The Interpersonal-Affective Focus
Authors: Lemma Alessandra , Hepworth Mary , Fonagy Peter , Abrahams Deborah , Luyten Patrick
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the architecture of a psychodynamic formulation. This formulation bridges theory and practice and ensures that therapy matches the needs of the individual patient. The specific approach to formulation in dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT) is described, that is, the interpersonal-affective focus (IPAF). A step-by-step guide to constructing a DIT formulation, using the patient’s language and metaphors, is provided. Use of transference and countertransference is key to inform the formulation. Finally, an explanation of how to select a focus is offered, and sharing the IPAF with the patient is discussed.
The Ending Phase
Authors: Lemma Alessandra , Hepworth Mary , Fonagy Peter , Abrahams Deborah , Luyten Patrick
Published: November 2024

The final phase of dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT) (sessions 13–16) is described in this chapter. It provides a guide for how to prepare the patient for ending, with a focus on interpreting the unconscious meaning of endings. It examines the challenges of both premature and prolonged endings and how to work with resistances to ending. It outlines the use of the ‘goodbye letter’, providing templates for this letter and how to make use of the attachment descriptors that are completed in the initial phase as a prompt for reviewing the work of therapy. DIT aims to foster the development of a therapeutic relationship that is more attuned to reality than in longer-term psychodynamic therapies. This reality-attuned relationship is supported by engaging in a review of the therapy in a collaborative manner.
Assessing and Guiding Student Science Learning with Pedagogically Informed Natural Language Processing
Authors: Linn Marcia C. , Gerard Libby
Published: November 2024

Natural language processing (NLP) tools can score students’ written explanations, opening new opportunities for science education. Optimally, these scores offer designers opportunities to align guidance with tested pedagogical frameworks and to investigate alternative ways to personalize instruction. We report on research, informed by the knowledge integration (KI) pedagogical framework, using online authorable and customizable environments (ACEs), to promote a deep understanding of complex scientific topics. We study how to personalize guidance to enable students to make productive revisions to written explanations during instruction, where they conduct investigations with models, simulations, hands-on activities, and other materials. We describe how we iteratively refined our assessments and guidance to support students in revising their scientific explanations. We report on recent investigations of hybrid models of personalized guidance that combine NLP scoring with opportunities for teachers to continue the conversation.
Automated Scoring in Chinese Language for Science Assessments
Authors: Chiu Mei-Hung , Zeng Mao-Ren
Published: November 2024

Research has shown that analysing Chinese response words is challenging due to the implicit expressions and sentence patterns of Chinese writing. Therefore, this study aims to explore the possibility of automated scoring of students’ explanations for scientific phenomena in Taiwan. The tests were conducted with 896 students in grades 10–12 in northern Taiwan, who had learned some chemistry in grades 8 and 9. The results from a machine learning (ML)-driven scoring portal show that both the accuracy and kappa values were as satisfactory as those in other studies. In addition, between holistic and analytic analyses, analytic analysis outperformed holistic analysis in terms of accuracy and kappa value. The results show that automated scoring is suitable for science assessment in the Chinese language.
Exploring Attributes of Successful Machine Learning Assessments for Scoring of Undergraduate Constructed Response Assessment Items
Authors: Shiroda Megan , Doherty Jennifer , Haudek Kevin C.
Published: November 2024

Content-based computer scoring models (CSMs) have successfully automated scoring of constructed response assessments, thereby increasing their use in multiple educational settings. However, the creation of CSMs remains time-intensive as little is known about model, item, and training set features that expedite development. Herein, we examined a large set of holistic CSMs for text classification to determine the relationship between scoring accuracy and different assessment item, CSM, and training set features. We found the number of rubric and CSM bins, item question structure, and item context significantly influenced CSM accuracy. By applying novel text diversity metrics, we found most text diversity metrics did not correlate to CSM accuracy. However, fewer shared words across responses correlated to increased CSM accuracy overall and within individual bins. Finally, we applied ordination technique to visualize constructed response corpora based on shared language among responses. We found these techniques aided decision-making during CSM development.