bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Urdu Ghazal
Authors: Narang Gopi Chand
Published: May 2020

The Urdu ghazal is a marvel of the magnetic dynamism of husn o i’shq filled with innovative imagery. It is a celebration of life and love in an ambiance of pure ecstasy. It has a profound capacity for joy as well as pain. It is the soul of Urdu verse and the play of creativity at its peak. No other poetic genre is as innately musical as the ghazal. The book presents unique flowering of the Urdu ghazal as a by-product of India’s composite culture that evolved from intermixing of Indian and foreign value systems. This never-before narrated story of the evolution of the Urdu ghazal is documented in eight chapters divided into three parts. It explores a variety of influences, including Sufism, Bhakti movement, and infusion of Rekhta and Persian languages and culture. The book explains classical ghazal forms that blossomed from the seeds sown by Amir Khusrau in the fourteenth century to great heights of literary excellence achieved during the next 300, notably in the works of great poets like Mir and Ghalib. Different socio-political and cultural demands of changing times are expounded towards the end, primarily how the ghazal provided new creative models to deal with literary movements like progressivism, modernism, and postmodernism. This book includes samples of works of thematically related poets. It also covers works of twentieth-century pioneering innovators like Firaq Gorakhpuri and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and postmoderns like Gulzar and Javed Akhtar.
The Genesis and Evolution of India’s Composite Culture
Authors: Narang Gopi Chand
Published: May 2020

This opening chapter provides an overview of how the Urdu ghazal evolved into a dynamic and musical form of poetic genre, and expounds on how a variety of factors, including the inflow of Islamic influences into the traditional Indian culture steeped in Hindu way of life, the spread of Bhakti Movement, the birth of indigenous strains of Sufism, and the contribution of great singers, made the ghazal gain great popularity with the masses.
The Concept of Beauty
Authors: Narang Gopi Chand
Published: May 2020

Like love, the concept of beauty is another overarching theme in the Urdu ghazal. The chapter makes the point that the concept of beauty was not borrowed from the Persian poetry. Rather, it emerged as a result of melding of Hindu and Muslim sub-cultures. Early examples of Dakani poetry illustrates this point with the help of specific examples. The chapter recognizes Sufism as another major influence.
The Modernists and the Postmodernists
Authors: Narang Gopi Chand
Published: May 2020

This chapter opens with a conceptual history of literary movements like modernism and postmodernism in Europe, and goes on to discuss the origins of these trends in Urdu literature, particularly Urdu poetry, about which much has not been written before. This chapter also contains samples of representative ghazal verses from a wide variety of modern and postmodern poets, including Javed Akhtar and Gulzar.
Entering North Block
Authors: Basu Kaushik
Published: May 2020

The opening chapter marks the transition in the author’s life from the world of contemplation, research, writing, and teaching to the rough and tumble world of politics, policymaking, and acrimonious public debate in India’s Ministry of Finance, located on the slopes of Raisina Hill in New Delhi, from where the author would later move to Washington, DC, again working on policy. It is a story of adjustment to a new culture, new discourse, and a new pace of life.
On the Road
Authors: Basu Kaushik
Published: May 2020

This is a chapter of travel and travelogue and describes the author’s encounters in various places and with various peoples, from India’s remote northeast and rural Bengal, through Israel, Italy, and Germany, to the people of Samoa in the Pacific and the Zapotecs of Teotitlan de Valle in Mexico. It is a commentary on the diversity of cultures across the world, but also an account of the underlying similarities of emotions and instincts across societies separated by continents and seas, with little overt interaction.
Lineages, Loudspeakers, and Labourers
Authors: Mahmudabad Ali Khan
Published: May 2020

Chapter 3 will also use a set of mushā‘irahs held in small and large towns across north India in order to illustrate the continuing material, structural, and cultural changes. The impact of radio broadcasting, ease of travel, dispersed forms of patronage, changing relevance of ustād–shāgird (teacher–student) relationships, and response to changing political contexts will all form the basis of this chapter. It is structured as a series of case studies in order to present the nuanced and rich details of the mushā‘irah, particularly since there is no extant work in this field and this book hopes to provide a foundation on which scholars may build further.
Dealing with Diversity
Authors: Melidoro Domenico
Published: May 2020

The diversity of cultures, religions, and moral values and the ways in which liberalism deals with this plurality is the topic at the centre of this book. The author illustrates, in a critical and original way, the recent international debate on liberalism and diversity. In doing that, he discusses some controversial issues such as multiculturalism and minority rights, immigration, religious pluralism, children education, and the place of religion in society as well. After an analysis of some recent liberal theories, the book works out a solution to the problem of ensuring a peaceful and stable coexistence of different groups within the same institutional setting. It is a solution that is liberal in its general orientation, since it has a liberal allegiance to equality and individual rights. However, the proposed solution tries to recognize the due space to community loyalties, religious belongings, and cultural traditions. In addition to this, the author proposes a new theory of political obligation, namely of how a plural society can persist, notwithstanding deep cultural and religious pluralism. In this book, the analytical rigour typical of the philosophical tradition, is not separated from attention to social reality and its problems. In fact, particularly interesting is the way in which the book tests its theoretical achievements with the issue of religious pluralism in India. The outcome is that peaceful coexistence and respect for religious freedoms is possible even in a fragmented society such as India.
Introduction
Authors: Sengupta Ramprasad
Published: May 2020

The role of entropy law and the finiteness of our planetary ecosystem in the economic processes of development are of fundamental importance in view of their wide-ranging impact on our society and economy. However, this had been neglected for long by most of the mainstream economists until Georgescu-Roesen’s seminal work ...
Entropy Law, Social Sustainability, and Development Policy
Authors: Sengupta Ramprasad
Published: May 2020

Chapter 1 introduces the concept and intuitive explanation of entropy law and shows how it plays a unifying role in the sustainability of the processes of development—economic, social, and environmental. It points out that the speed of extraction of resources and their uses in the finite planetary ecosystem have become unsustainable today. This is due to the speed of extraction exceeding the capacity of resource regeneration as well as the absorption of waste generated from the extraction and usage of resources, resulting in a state of increasing disorder. The chapter further points out that the combining of social and environmental sustainability with the process of economic growth would require the development of a social investment perspective for the economy along the lines of welfare statism. Thus it outlines a short history of welfare statism since the days of the Swedish welfare state in the last century in order to understand the changing compulsions of sustainability over time.
Crime, Inequality, and Poverty
Authors: Sengupta Ramprasad
Published: May 2020

Chapter 3 enquires into the issues of the social sustainability aspect of development by analyzing the inter-relationships between crime and deprivation, and the resulting social tension in the Indian context. It estimates the relationship of violent crimes such as homicide and property-related crime—dacoity, burglary and robbery, riots and left-wing extremism—with economic inequality or poverty, or social tension induced by either of these, along with other developmental variables such as state of education, infrastructural development, urbanization, and so on. It has used panel data for both simple correlation analysis as well as multivariate regression analysis (generalised moments method) in its different dimensions of use and treatment. The analysis of riots also considered the role of share of minority population, share of SC/ST population, as well as religious polarization as important social explanatory variables.
Human Development, Environmental Sustainability, and Index of Overall Development
Authors: Sengupta Ramprasad
Published: May 2020

Chapter 4 introduces the concept and measurement of multidimensional poverty and that of human development indicators as its obverse in terms of attainment of human capability. On the other hand, on the environmental sustainability front, the chapter discusses the measures of ecological footprint and its obverse the environmental performance index as possible alternative indicators. It has reviewed the concept of ecological footprint along with carbon footprint which are measures of stress caused by human demands on the services of ecosystems in terms of appropriation of productive land area. The environmental performance indicator on the other hand indicates the extent of performance of environmental conservation and protection as driven by human policy initiatives. Finally, the chapter provides an overall development indicator based on the indicators of three components of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental—as their geometric mean, along with the comparative estimates of per capita income.
Paradise—Lost?
Authors: Hawley John Stratton
Published: May 2020

The book begins with an introduction to the idea and reality of Vrindavan against the background of the forty-five years in which I have been a regular visitor. There have been drastic changes in the last two decades, but the idea of “the new Vrindavan” is old: New Vrindavans are spread around India and the world. I conclude this introduction by explaining the logic of the book as a whole.
From Inscriptions to Texts
Authors: Balachandran Jyoti Gulati
Published: May 2020

This chapter notes the value of the inscriptional record in revealing a comprehensive picture of Muslim settlements in pre-fifteenth century Gujarat, and in suggesting the importance of Sufis and other learned men among those settlements. However, the dominant inscriptional mode of historical recording in pre-fifteenth century Gujarat reflects the variegated ecologies within which Muslim communities developed with distinct historical and societal experiences. The narrative process of capturing the history of the region, and of the Muslim community within it, began in the fifteenth century at the conjuncture of two processes: the formation of a new state under the Gujarat Sultans and the sanctification of the sultanate territory by Sufi preceptors, particularly Aḥmad Khattū (d. 1445). These two developments, underpinned not so much by any ruptures at the turn of the fifteenth century than the confluence of long-term historical processes, together shaped the textual articulations of the history of the Muslim community in Gujarat.
Delhi under the Mughals
Authors: Nizami K. A.
Published: May 2020

Taimur’s invasion in 1398 dealt the final blow to a tottering Tughlaq dynasty and Delhi was eclipsed for the next century and a half. Even later, although the second Mughal king, Humayun, built the city of Dinpanah on the banks of the Jamuna in Delhi in 1533, the capital of the Mughal empire shifted to Agra under Akbar and Jehangir. It is only with Shahjehan building the architecturally and aesthetically stunning Lal Qila and Shahjehanabad in 1648 that Delhi once again gained prominence as the capital city. This chapter tracks the life of Delhi under the Mughal emperors—the durbar, lanes, bazaars, arts and crafts, umra, Sufi khaneqahs, learning and literature, politics, pomp and ceremony, festivals, sports, mushairas—in vivid and fascinating detail.
Inca Apocalypse
Authors: Covey R. Alan
Published: May 2020

This book describes a period of several decades during the sixteenth century when conquistadores, Catholic friars, and imperial officials attempted to conquer the Inca Empire and impose Spanish colonial rule. When Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca warlord Atahuallpa at Cajamarca in 1532, European Catholics and Andean peoples interpreted the event using long-held beliefs about how their worlds would end, and what the next era might look like. The Inca world did not end at Cajamarca, despite some popular misunderstandings of the Spanish conquest of Peru. In the years that followed, some Inca lords resisted Spanish rule, but many Andean nobles converted to Christianity and renegotiated their sovereign claims into privileges as Spanish subjects. Catholic empire took a lifetime to establish in the Inca world, and it required the repeated conquest of rebellious conquistadores, the reorganization of native populations, and the economic overhaul of diverse Andean landscapes. These disruptive processes of modern world-building carried forward old ideas about sovereignty, social change, and human progress. Although they are overshadowed by the Western philosophies and technologies that drive our world today, those apocalyptic relics remain with us to the present.
Beyond Cajamarca
Authors: Covey R. Alan
Published: May 2020

This chapter traces the fallout from the capture of Atahuallpa in Cajamarca. The Spaniards held Atahuallpa prisoner while he assembled a ransom of gold and silver. They allowed him to reconstitute his royal court, command his armies, and to send and receive messages, which helped him to survive and reconstitute his power over the following months. After the Spaniards divided up the ransom, however, they killed Atahuallpa and replaced him with a half-brother who was loyal to them. Pizarro and his Inca allies then marched southward to Cuzco to drive Atahuallpa’s troops out of the city. After their Inca ally died suddenly, the Spaniards allied themselves with Manco Inca, who was crowned in Cuzco after the Inca-Spanish force retook the city. The chapter closes with a description of the destruction of Atahuallpa’s realm in Quito, and of the first Spanish publication of eyewitness accounts of the Pizarro expedition.
Overturning Andean Landscapes
Authors: Covey R. Alan
Published: May 2020

This chapter looks at the viceroy Francisco de Toledo’s efforts to ensure the flow of silver and tax revenue to the Spanish Crown. Although mining served as the backbone of the colonial economy—and its demand for labor shaped the discussion of race and human rights in the Andes—the introduction of Old World crops and herd animals also helped to transform Andean economies that produced commodities and provided tax revenues and labor for Spanish ventures. Toledo ordered the resettlement of dispersed native populations as a way to undermine Inca-era beliefs, economic practices, and social hierarchies. He matched his attempts to reduce the Inca world to Spanish-style communities with an assault on the “savage” people living beyond the southern frontier. Despite Toledo’s overhaul of Andean life, Philip II continued to be interested in the Incas and their way of ruling the Andes, and he ordered the large-scale collection of new geographic reports describing the Inca world and its development under Spanish rule. A decade later, Philip claimed absolute ownership over lands across the Inca world.
Post-War and Post-Apollinaire
Authors: Roust Colin
Published: May 2020

After World War I, Auric’s many friendships placed him in a unique position in the Parisian avant-garde. On the one hand, he was alongside Louis Aragon, André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Tristan Tzara for the rise and fall of Paris dada. On the other, he was a member of Les Six, the group of composers led by Jean Cocteau who came to represent Parisian art music in the 1920s. Throughout the feuds between the dadaists and Cocteau, Auric preserved his friendships and functioned as an ambassador of sorts between rival avant-garde groups. In the meantime, his scores for Cocteau’s Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel (with the rest of Les Six) and Molière’s Les fâcheux would lead to bigger and better opportunities in the mid-1920s.
Eyes in the Sky
Authors: Boyle Michael J.
Published: May 2020

Chapter 4 argues that drones accelerate the trend toward information-rich warfare and place enormous pressure on the military to learn ever more about the battlefields that it faces. Today, for the United States, war is increasingly a contest for information about any future battlespace. This has had an organizational effect as the ability for the United States to know more through drone imagery has turned into a necessity to know more. The US military is becoming so enamored of its ability to know more through drone surveillance that it is overlooking the operational and organizational costs of “collecting the whole haystack.” Using drones for a vast surveillance apparatus, as the United States and now other countries have been doing, has underappreciated implications for the workload, organizational structures, and culture of the military itself.
Terrorist Drones
Authors: Boyle Michael J.
Published: May 2020

Chapter 5 argues that drones will allow non-state actors like rebel and terrorist groups to begin to level the playing field with powerful governments and to expand their goals as a result of being able to take to the skies. The low marginal cost of drones will be a boon to non-state actors who will use them to blunt the advantages that governments currently enjoy. In conflict zones, drones enable groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State to watch the battlefield in a way that they never could before and to strike at their enemies in surprising ways. At home, drones will enable terrorist organizations to strike civilian targets and perhaps even assassinate world leaders.
The New Race
Authors: Boyle Michael J.
Published: May 2020

Chapter 8 suggests that drones will amplify the competition for power and influence between states in conflict zones and produce new risks of deterrence breakdown and crisis escalation. It shows how states are already using drone technology to test the nerves and strategic commitments of their rivals, as well as to conduct surveillance that would otherwise been seen as too risky in crisis zones. This is because drones have changed risk calculations; what was once too dangerous with a manned aircraft is now possible with a drone. These strategic gambits are possible because of their low financial and human costs, as well as the illusion that drones can be used without the risk of escalation. As drones are now being used in more conflict zones around the world, they will begin to quietly reorder the risk calculations behind deterrence and coercion and produce greater chances of miscalculation, error, and accident.
Finding Truth in Fiction
Authors: Dill-Shackleford Karen E. , Vinney Cynthia
Published: May 2020

Being a fan of a popular film, television, or book franchise is something most of us enjoy. But, we may not be familiar with the scientific study of fictional narrative or of fandom. In this book, two media psychologists reveal the sometimes-paradoxical idea that fiction helps us find truth in our real lives. Whether you consider yourself a fan or whether you find yourself thinking of a particular fictional scene for inspiration, you are not alone. Perfectly sane people regularly admit that their favorite stories are important to them. Although journalists sometimes assume that the interest in the fictional world is a sign of trouble, the authors enthusiastically disagree. Because story worlds are social simulations, people use them to work out their values, decide how to handle similar situations, and even decide what kind of person they want to be. Although films and shows are widely spoken of as diversions or as escapism, there are many ways that they aren’t trivial at all. In this book, the authors explore how to understand the identity of a favorite character and the actor who plays the character. Are they the same person? They also delve into the nitty gritty of mental models for story worlds and timeless story arcs such as the hero’s journey. The moments that strike people as important can change as they age and move through different life stages. The authors’ conclusion: fans are not crazy. What fans are is human.
It Matters
Authors: Shackleford Karen E. , Vinney Cynthia
Published: May 2020

Lovers of fiction share enthusiasm for their favorite stories and characters. Many remember iconic moments, such as Darth Vader revealing that he is Luke Skywalker’s father or Rose and Jack sailing carefree on the bow of the Titanic. These shared experiences create common ground and social connection. This chapter explores the psychology of why the stories that become shared cultural touchstones are so meaningful and how people’s favorite stories can help fulfill their psychosocial needs. It discusses what motivates people to immerse themselves in stories and what the outcomes of engaging with different stories can be. Finally, the chapter investigates the lessons people can learn from their favorite story worlds.
Story and Life Stage
Authors: Shackleford Karen E. , Vinney Cynthia
Published: May 2020

This chapter provides an overview of how favorite stories impact people and help them learn and grow throughout their lives. The chapter covers how people’s relationships with stories evolve as they grow older. It discusses how story comprehension develops in childhood and the important role parents can play in introducing children to media of all kinds. It also considers how people’s ability to distinguish fantasy from reality in childhood is a product of knowledge acquisition and whether children of different ages can learn from screen stories. Next, it explores how stories can impact tweens and teens and how this group looks to fictional characters as role models. Finally, the chapter explores how stories can help people cope with the trials and tribulations of adulthood, how people’s story preferences evolve as they age, and the way stories can serve as emotional anchors throughout people’s lives.
On Prejudice and Values
Authors: Shackleford Karen E. , Vinney Cynthia
Published: May 2020

When it comes to race, gender, sexual orientation, and other social categories, current research continues to document a lack of inclusion and a tendency to stereotype in film and television. However, there are also signs for hope. The recent success of films like Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, and Love, Simon is sending a message to Hollywood that audiences are more than ready for underrepresented categories. For example, Grace and Frankie is a successful show that busts stereotypes about women in their 70s and tells stories about a family that includes an older gay couple, a Black son, a recovered drug addict, and other diverse characters. This chapter examines how stories like this help bring change and reduce prejudice. In addition, it discusses the recent accusations against famous people, including Bill Cosby, and how fans cope when a beloved celebrity falls from grace.
Is Tactual Knowledge of Space Grounded in Tactual Sensation?
Authors: Campbell John
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that while vision has only an objective aspect (e.g., we see the objects out there), touch has both subjective and an objective aspects. For example, one can feel a prickling sensation, that is, the subjective aspect of touch, and a pointed object out there, that is, an object aspect of touch. In light of this distinction, how can the claim that experience gives knowledge of our surroundings be understood in the case of touch experience? Unlike vision, one can hardly deny that there are tactile sensations, such as the bodily sensation one gets when a needle is injected in one’s arm. The question then is whether tactile sensations play an essential role in grounding our knowledge of the world. This chapter argues that even if we were to accept that the subjective aspect of touch is intrinsically spatial, we can still ask whether the knowledge we have from the objective aspect of touch is grounded in the knowledge that we have from its subjective aspect. Knowledge of our tactual sensations is grounded in our knowledge of our external environment, and consequently, the characteristics of our tactual sensations are grounded in our knowledge of our external environment. Whether consciousness is essential to our tactual knowledge of our surroundings is a separate matter. We can keep them separate by acknowledging that perceptual consciousness should not be analyzed in terms of sensation.
Experiences of Duration and Cognitive Penetrability
Authors: Figdor Carrie
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the cognitive penetrability of our experiences of the durations of everyday events. It defends an account of subjective duration based in contemporary psychological and neurobiological research. It shows its philosophical adequacy by demonstrating its utility in explaining the phenomenology of duration experiences. The chapter then considers whether cognitive penetrability is a problem for these experiences. It argues that, to the contrary, the problem presupposes a relationship between perception and belief that duration perceptions and beliefs do not exhibit. Instead, the assignment of epistemic features to particular processing stages appears to answer to pragmatic needs, not psychological facts.
Friend or Foe? Men and Feminism Through the 1990s
Authors: Jolly Margaretta
Published: May 2020

The chapter considers gender and gender relationships, the WLM’s foundational touchstones. It highlights the politics of difference by drawing on memories of pro-feminist men, where hesitancy testifies to challenges of trust and reconciliation. It considers men’s violence and sexual abuse, sticking points for the deconstruction of gender but areas where traumatic memory is increasingly implicated. Looking at prominent and related WLM demands that became an arena for confrontative gender politics—the right to freedom from violence, and the right to define one’s own sexuality—the chapter looks at evolving ideas about gender from queer, transsexual (the 2015 Brighton Trans*Formed oral history presents new questions of negotiation) and black activists. It concludes with an edited interweaving of the oral histories of Catherine and Stuart Hall, luminaries of the WLM, New Left and black rights movements, which presents a captivating portrait of a relationship underpinned by political and personal struggles and growth. 150 words
Introduction
Authors: Gee Emma
Published: May 2020

This book does not interpret the afterlife as a religious phenomenon but rather as a psychological one. At the fundamental level the afterlife is about the nature of the human entity and its relationship with the world. Constructing a space in which the afterlife is supposed to happen is also a way of thinking about the world. It is a space based on “reality,” but it is also an imaginative space that can be filled as we wish. The elements in it, while connected to “reality,” can be related to one another in ways that are not possible in the “real” world. In the Introduction the basic tenets of the book are established:
1. There is no “heaven” and “hell” dichotomy in the Classical afterlife.
2. However, afterlife texts do contain, as a rule, not one but two kinds of space: linear space in the form of a journey through afterlife terrain; and circular or bounded space in the form of a vision of the universe placed inside such a journey.
3. There is a constant striving in our texts to connect the afterlife with the universe of “science.”
4. The attempt to create a congruity between soul and universe is what this book calls “psychic harmonization.”
A chapter summary follows.
The Lyre and the Cloak
Authors: Gee Emma
Published: May 2020

This chapter studies Plato’s Phaedo. In the Phaedo, the afterlife journey and the synoptic vision of the universe are collapsed into one another. In the myth of the dialogue, we are all, all the time, said to be on an underworld journey, since we live in the “creases” of the earth, not on its surface. At the same time, the True Earth of the Phaedo mirrors in its shape the spherical universe of the vision, as we also see it in the Spindle of Necessity in Plato’s Republic, and in the flight of souls around the universe in Plato’s Phaedrus. The Phaedo is a true geography of soul, in that the fate of the soul is integrated with the shape and motive forces of the earth seen as a whole. What we have in the Phaedo is a complete synthesis of the mythical underworld with the “geographic” earth. Tartarus (Phaedo 111e7–112e3) is the lowest point of the world, but it is also the center of the sphere. The result of Plato’s assimilation of the underworld, the landscape of the soul, with the “scientific” earth, is that earth and soul become analogous. They can be studied in the same way. In the ideal world, the universe itself is our eschatology.
Tornado God
Authors: Thuesen Peter J.
Published: May 2020

One of the earliest sources of humanity’s religious impulse was severe weather, which ancient peoples attributed to the wrath of storm gods. Enlightenment thinkers derided such beliefs as superstition and predicted they would pass away as humans became more scientifically and theologically sophisticated. But in America, scientific and theological hubris came face to face with the tornado, nature’s most violent windstorm. Striking the United States more than any other nation, tornadoes have consistently defied scientists’ efforts to unlock their secrets. Meteorologists now acknowledge that even the most powerful computers will likely never be able to predict a tornado’s precise path. Similarly, tornadoes have repeatedly brought Americans to the outer limits of theology, drawing them into the vortex of such mysteries as how to reconcile suffering with a loving God and whether there is underlying purpose or randomness in the universe. In this groundbreaking history, Peter Thuesen captures the harrowing drama of tornadoes, as clergy, theologians, meteorologists, and ordinary citizens struggle to make sense of these death-dealing tempests. He argues that, in the tornado, Americans experience something that is at once culturally peculiar (the indigenous storm of the national imagination) and religiously primal (the sense of awe before an unpredictable and mysterious power). He also shows that, in an era of climate change, the weather raises the issue of society’s complicity in natural disasters. In the whirlwind, Americans confront the question of their own destiny—how much is self-determined and how much is beyond human understanding or control.
“Every Wind of Doctrine”
Authors: Thuesen Peter J.
Published: May 2020

Chapter 4 shows how twentieth-century weather disasters helped force some of the nation’s leading theologians to question old assumptions about providence and natural events. Especially at mid-century, which is usually remembered for Cold War anxieties, the weather influenced reconsiderations of providence by such thinkers as Reinhold Niebuhr, Georgia Harkness, and William Pollard, who, in different ways, broached the idea of randomness or amorality in nature. Newspaper coverage of two catastrophic events—the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 and the Palm Sunday Tornadoes of 1965—likewise revealed rising religious ambivalence on the popular level. Thus, even as some Americans were defending the time-worn belief that all things happen according to a plan, others were contemplating a world of radical uncertainty and unpredictability.
The Art of Becoming
Authors: MacDonald Raymond A. R. , Wilson Graeme B.
Published: May 2020

With a focus on music, this book outlines what improvisation is and why it is an important creative and social activity. Drawing on the emerging psychological literature in this area, as well as evidence from authors’ research with musicians, this text outlines innovative ideas on what defines improvisation and the psychological, creative, and social processes involved. It explores the role of specialist skills, the importance of musical identities and the nature of understanding in improvised interaction and between improvisers. It discusses how we develop as improvisers and the role of improvisation within therapeutic applications of music. Each chapter proceeds from discussion of an illustrative instance of musical improvisation. Providing fresh and provocative insights for anyone interested in playing, studying, teaching, or listening to improvised music, the authors offer suggestions for approaching this practice in new ways at any level, and identify potential developments in cross-disciplinary improvising. Asserting that everyone can and should improvise, the book provides a resource for courses teaching improvisation in contemporary practice, and has strong relevance for those applying musical improvisation in community and therapeutic contexts. The book deals with such questions as: What constitutes improvisation? Do all forms of improvisation represent the same thing? Faced with myriad possibilities, how do improvisers decide what to play? How does an improviser in a group know what the others will do? How might improvisation influence our well-being? In response to such questions, a definition of improvisation based on its unique behavioural features is set out as an exciting context for psychological investigation.
Stones, Clouds
Authors: MacDonald Raymond A. R. , Wilson Graeme B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers how improvisers decide what to play, the creative process of improvising together, and the relationships between performing, composing, and improvising. In particular, it discusses similarities, differences, and relationships between performing, composing, and improvising. It considers how agency is experienced and executed by an individual while they are improvising with other people. A model is presented for the process of choice that any individual undertakes when taking part in improvisation, with detailed examples provided to illustrate how the model functions. Drawing on empirical qualitative evidence from post-idiomatic free improvisers, this chapter identifies a comprehensive set of options across this spectrum that any individual improviser may take over the course of a piece to allow the group to generate music. This model also offers a less daunting challenge to the novice improviser, and a potential way round a “block” for creative practitioners.
Innumeracy, Incomprehension, and Inconsistency
Authors: Peters Ellen
Published: May 2020

This chapter, “Innumeracy, Incomprehension, and Inconsistency,” is the first of three chapters focused on how the less objectively numerate make worse decisions when numbers are involved. The chapter makes two main points. First, the less objectively numerate understand numeric data less well, even after controlling for nonnumeric intelligence, education, and other demographic indicators. Perhaps in part because of their lower comprehension, they tend to perceive more risk in the world than the highly numerate. Numeracy, however, does not relate consistently to perceptions of benefit. Second, the less numerate tend to respond less consistently when numbers are involved. When the same question is asked one way versus another, the highly numerate tend to answer them about the same whereas the less numerate answer them differently. As revealed more in later chapters, the less numerate tend to respond more to concrete, easy-to-evaluate information than to numbers, and these habits may explain their inconsistent responses.
Thinking Harder with Numbers
Authors: Peters Ellen
Published: May 2020

This chapter “Thinking Harder with Numbers,” is the first of four chapters focusing on how more objectively numerate people think harder and, as a result, judge and decide better when numeric information is involved. First, they attend to and search for numeric information more than the less numerate do. Second, they think more with numbers by (1) thinking longer in numeric decisions; (2) performing more numeric operations, for example by transforming numeric information from one format to another; and (3) understanding better what they know and do not know. These processes generally result in the highly numerate making better decisions. The highly numerate not only understand numbers better, but they also have better habits for dealing with numeric and non-numeric information in judgment and choice.
The Approximate Number System (ANS) and Discriminating Magnitudes
Authors: Peters Ellen
Published: May 2020

This chapter, “The Approximate Number System (ANS) and Discriminating Magnitudes,” discusses our intuitive, rather than deliberative, understanding of numbers. Humans are born with an innate sense of number and an ability to perform simple arithmetic operations with sets of objects without counting. We share this intuitive sense of numeric magnitude (how big one quantity is relative to another) with other species. Non-human animals cannot count as humans do. However, they have a keen sense of quantity that allows them to tell quickly and efficiently which quantity is bigger so that they can make better choices about food, mates, and safety. In humans, this intuitive sense of numbers develops from infancy to adulthood, and it appears to underlie the emergence of symbolic math ability (objective numeracy) in children.
Genetics and Formal Education
Authors: Peters Ellen
Published: May 2020

This chapter, “Genetics and Formal Education,” reviews evidence for the genetic underpinnings of numeric competencies, the role of formal education in developing better numeric skills, and barriers to learning in school. Studies indicate some genetic influence on approximate number system (ANS) acuity (also called intuitive number sense), objective numeracy, and math anxiety. The lowest heritability exists for ANS acuity, presumably because it is an evolutionarily preserved core trait. Evidence also exists for the importance of formal schooling to development of ANS acuity, and, of course, objective numeracy. Educators generally design mathematical curricula to build understanding smoothly from one topic to the next. However, children (and adults) have more difficulty learning some mathematical concepts than others (e.g., arithmetic with fractions, decimals, probabilities, and proportions). Finally, other barriers to learning math can disrupt learning, including missed chances to maximize early learning and math anxiety.
Introduction to The Social Psychology of Collective Victimhood
Authors: Vollhardt Johanna Ray
Published: May 2020

This chapter introduces the volume and gives a brief overview of its structure and the content of each chapter. The chapter describes the nature of social psychological research on collective victimhood to date, defines the concept, and provides an organizing framework for scholarship on collective victimhood. This framework emphasizes the interplay of structural and individual-level factors that need to be considered, as well as how the social psychology of collective victimhood is studied at the micro-, meso-, and macro level of analysis. In order to avoid a determinist and simplistic view of collective victimhood, it is crucial to consider the different ways in which people actively construe and make sense of collective victimization of their group(s). It is also important to consider the role of power, history, and other structural factors that together shape the diversity of experiences of collective victimization as well as the consequences of collective victimhood.
Experiencing Acknowledgment Versus Denial of the Ingroup’s Collective Victimization
Authors: Twali Michelle Sinayobye , Hameiri Boaz , Vollhardt Johanna Ray , Nadler Arie
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the psychological dimensions and consequences of acknowledgment versus denial of the in-group’s collective victimization. Denial can entail different forms and be literal, interpretative, or implicatory. Likewise, acknowledgment can entail factual acknowledgment, empathic acknowledgment, or even the perpetrator group’s possession of a negative identity. The authors discuss why and how these different forms of acknowledgment and denial matter, the societal means through which acknowledgment versus denial can occur, whose acknowledgment (e.g., perpetrator group vs. third parties) is most relevant in which context, and which events are most important to acknowledge. The chapter reviews findings demonstrating that acknowledgment can improve psychological well-being and intergroup attitudes, while lack of acknowledgment has the opposite effect. The underlying psychological processes that have been studied so far include identity, processes related to the groups’ relationship (e.g., trust), concerns over justice, and affective processes.
Striking at the Core
Authors: Kachanoff Frank Jake , Wohl Michael J. A. , Taylor Donald M.
Published: May 2020

This chapter presents an integrated model of psychological needs among victimized groups, building on self-determination theory. Extending the model of needs-based reconciliation and other work on needs among victim groups, the authors posit that collective victimization frustrates basic needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. They review empirical findings showing that the frustration of these needs on the collective level frustrates related needs on the personal level as well, and in turn have a negative effect on psychological well-being and willingness for reconciliation. The chapter focuses in particular on collective autonomy, which is central to many experiences of collective victimization as well as reconciliation attempts. In order to increase victim group members’ willingness to reconcile, it is important to take into consideration all three needs identified in this model and present apologies and other steps toward reconciliation in a way that satisfies these needs.
Never Trump
Authors: Saldin Robert P. , Teles Steven M.
Published: May 2020

In early 2016, as it became increasingly apparent that Donald Trump might actually become the Republican nominee, a movement within conservatism formed to stop him: Never Trump. Comprising primarily Republican policy elites and conservative intellectuals, the Never Trumpers saw Trump’s stated views as a repudiation of long-standing Republican foreign and domestic policy goals. Just as importantly, they saw him as erratic, mendacious, and unfit—the sort of person the founders warned about, and someone who would bring everlasting shame to the Republican Party.
Introduction
Authors: Saldin Robert P. , Teles Steven M.
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the emergence of the “#nevertrump” hashtag on Twitter. Like any meme, #nevertrump had a variety of meanings to those who deployed it. However, for the elite Republicans and conservatives who embraced it, #nevertrump signaled horror and incomprehension at the rise of Donald Trump and how it had turned their political world upside down. #Nevertrump was also a way of signaling that Trump represented something more sinister than normal quadrennial Republican and conservative movement primary politics. Once they recognized the threat, the strongest adherents to Never Trump relentlessly and desperately searched for ways to frustrate Trump's takeover of the Republican Party. Shocking even themselves, a number of these lifelong Republicans, who had spent their careers battling Democrats, ended up voting for someone other than their party's nominee, up to and including their former nemesis, Hillary Clinton. Even after his election, a remnant of these Never Trumpers have kept up rear guard efforts to expose the deceitfulness of the Trump administration and to call their former allies away from the siren song of Trumpian populism.
Guardians
Authors: Saldin Robert P. , Teles Steven M.
Published: May 2020

Chapter 2 discusses how the John Hay Initiative, the Republican foreign policy establishment, became the purest strain of Never Trumpism. The John Hay Initiative was designed to create a firewall around the heresies of Rand Paul and to help the other Republican candidates competently defend their vision of conservative internationalism. However, no one around the project imagined that their party would be tempted by a figure like Donald Trump. Trump's candidacy threw them into a world of uncertainty, in which all of their experience and strategies were suddenly rendered unhelpful or even counterproductive. In sharp contrast to most of the rest of the groups discussed in this book, they responded to Trump with open, furious, and mostly unified opposition. There were two primary reasons that people within the Republican national security network offer for having gone Never Trump. First, many were mortified at Trump's statements on foreign policy issues. Even so, most Never Trumpers in the foreign policy network say that their objections ran deeper than policy disputes; it was Trump's fundamental and unredeemable character flaws that constituted the core problem.
Experts Gone Rogue
Authors: Saldin Robert P. , Teles Steven M.
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines how Republican foreign policy professionals found themselves in an outright rebellion against their own party's nominee by the spring and summer of 2016. They were not prepared for their party nominating a candidate they suspected of illicit relationships to America's adversaries. Their level of alarm not only far eclipsed that of other Trump skeptics, but their tight network structure and orientation toward collective action allowed them to act quickly, and in concert. They managed to put together two letters—one during the primary and the second after Donald Trump was nominated at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland—that denounced him in the strongest possible terms. These letters, signed by a wide swath of the most senior members of the Republican foreign policy establishment, were aimed with martial intent. The signatories hoped that a warning this grave would alarm Republican primary voters, and then the electorate in the fall, causing them to turn away from the serious risk they were taking with the nation's security by putting its arms in the hands of Donald Trump. Having shot at Trump and missed, they were declared persona non grata as the president staffed his administration.
Pack Animals
Authors: Saldin Robert P. , Teles Steven M.
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on how the Republican Party’s band of political operatives navigated the rise of Donald Trump. Political operatives are the professional campaign consultants, pollsters, media experts, fundraisers, and staffers who make a living by providing key services to their party and its candidates. Unlike the GOP national security experts or the conservative movement’s intelligentsia, Republican operatives who were publicly Never Trump cut against the grain of their professional network. Despite near-universal, albeit largely silent, opposition to Trump initially, most operatives dutifully fell in line once he became the presumptive nominee. Yet the small minority within the political operative world that refused to make their peace with him emerged as one of the brightest constellations in the Never Trump universe.