bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Literary and Cultural Representations of Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean
Authors: Rivas Zelideth María
Published: December 2019

Representations of Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean have been caught in the fissures of history, in part because their presence ambivalently affirms, depends upon, and simultaneously denies dominant narratives of race. While these populations are often stereotyped and mislabed as chino, Latin American countries have also made them into symbols of kinship and citizenship by providing a connection to Asia as a source of economic and political power. Yet, their presence highlights a rupture in nationalistic ideas of race that emphasize the European, African, and indigenous. Historically, Asian Latin American and Caribbean literary and cultural representations began during the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade (1565–1815) with depictions of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino slaves and galleon laborers. Soon after, Indian and Chinese laborers were in demand as coolie trafficking became prevalent throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Toward the end of the 19th century, Latin American and Caribbean countries began to establish political ties with Asia, ushering in Asian immigrants as a replacement labor force for African slaves. By the beginning of World War II, first- and second-generation immigrants recorded their experiences in poetry, short stories, and memoirs, often in their native languages. World War II disrupted Asian diplomacy with Latin America, and Caribbean and Latin American countries enacted laws that ostracized and deported Japanese immigrants. World War II also marked a change for Asian immigrants to Latin America and the Caribbean: they shifted from temporary to permanent immigrants. Here, authors depicted myriad aspects of their identities—language and citizenship, race, and sexuality—in their birth languages. In other words, late 20th century and early 21st century literature highlights the communities as Latin American and Caribbean. Finally, the presence of Asians in Latin America and the Caribbean has influenced Latin American and Caribbean literature and cultural production, highlighting them as characters and their cultures as themes. Most importantly, however, Latin American modernism emerged from a Latin American orientalism that differs from a European orientalism.
Interdisciplinarity
Authors: Klein Julie Thompson
Published: December 2019

The relationship of interdisciplinarity and literary theory is marked by the boundary work of competing practices deemed inside and outside of the discipline, conflicting claims of specialization and generality, and shifting representations of the concept of interdisciplinarity. The line between text and context has been a recurring point of debate, amplified by tensions between traditional practices and new approaches. The earliest warrants for interdisciplinarity included a synoptic view of knowledge and the social and moral purpose of literary education. Even after institutionalization of the modern system of disciplinarity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, advocates upheld related claims. Other interests, though, were also apparent, including the practice of borrowing from social sciences, the synchronic paradigm of periodization, interart criticism, and the work of polymaths who posited a broad view of culture. Guides to practice published by the Modern Language Association from the late 1960s through the early 1980s reinforced the power of intrinsic criticism. Yet, as new interests beyond formalist criticism took root, representation of interdisciplinarity changed. The 1992 guide was marked by a heterogeneity of movements that broadened the scope of literary study while shifting theorization of interdisciplinarity in literary studies from earlier warrants to critique and historical, political, and sociological turns in scholarship. Transdisciplinary and transnational redrawings of boundaries are extending the scope of both interdisciplinarity and literary theory. Counter to popular characterization of movements rising and falling, hybrid methodologies combine older and newer approaches, such as combining close readings of texts or deconstructionist analysis with questions of gender or power. Relations of literary studies with other disciplines and interdisciplinary fields also exhibit a growing momentum for intersectionality apparent in the 2007 guide to practice.
Native Advertising
Authors: Wojdynski Bartosz
Published: December 2019

Native advertising has become an increasingly important revenue component for many online journalism publications. Because Web consumers engage in advertising avoidance strategies when using the Web, advertisers have gradually come to rely increasingly on paid advertising that resembles in format, appearance, and content non-advertising content on websites. On news websites, native advertising forms include sponsored content, sponsored homepage links, and sponsored article-referral links. The spread of native advertising news content has led to concern that news consumers fail to recognize it as advertising, and questions about whether it is unethical or deceptive.

Contemporary native advertising is not the first content delivered alongside news that blurs the boundaries between editorial and paid promotional content. Print advertorials, which took root in newspapers and magazines in the mid-20th century, are a direct analogue, but host-read ads on radio and television programs, text-based search engine result advertising, and newspaper special advertising sections can all be seen as advertising content designed to feel like non-paid content. However, because contemporary native advertising takes so many different forms, and because practices of disclosure to the user are so varied, there has been a rise in public concern and academic inquiry into the prevalence and effects of native advertising.

Native advertising on online news sites has generated a number of ethical concerns from practitioners, media critics, and consumers. On the production side, scholars and practitioners worry that the creation of content on behalf of, or in partnership with, advertisers may erode norms of editorial independence that have governed media organizations’ practices for over half a century. Others are concerned that as consumers become accustomed to seeing articles produced with advertiser input, the credibility of news organizations and trust in their non-advertising content will decrease. Perhaps most prominent have been concerns that native advertising deliberately disables consumers’ ability to recognize advertising elements on a website, rendering advertiser and publisher liable for deceiving consumers.

Research on native advertising has focused primarily on understanding how consumers detect and perceive native advertising, with additional streams focused on descriptive analyses of native advertising content and practitioner perspectives. Empirical studies show that many consumers do not recognize native advertising, and that there are substantial differences in how the content is received and trusted between those who recognize it and those who do not. Scholars have also identified characteristics of content, disclosure practices, and individual characteristics that influence the likelihood of advertising recognition.
News, Children, and Young People
Authors: Elvestad Eiri
Published: December 2019

Studies of how children and young people relate to news have made important contributions to the field of journalism. As early as the early 1900s, children’s and young people’s news exposure was considered with interest. News exposure plays an important role for citizenship in democracies, and for news media organizations, recruiting new generations of audiences is important for survival in the future. From the early days, scholars have mainly focused on four areas in studies of news children and young people. First, the role of mass media as an agent of political socialization and how news exposure can inspire children and young people to civic engagement. Second, the introduction of television and television news increased the numbers of studies of children’s and adolescent’s emotional reactions to news coverage, and the emotional reactions to violence in the news coverage in particular. Third, an increasing focus on children’s rights and children as a minority group has further inspired studies of representation of children and young people in the news. Finally, inspired by methodological approaches focusing on people’s motivation for the use of different media and how they were used (“uses and gratification” studies), a main area for researchers has been to grasp how children and young people engage with news and how they do so in changed media environments. In the last decade, journalism studies have increasingly focused on how children and young people receive, evaluate, produce, and share news in social media.
Visa Policy in the European Union
Authors: Dzankic Jelena
Published: December 2019

Most European Union (EU) Member States participate in the common visa regime, even though there is no common visa policy applicable to all of them. The visa policy explored here covers the Schengen Area (including EU Member States and other countries, as well as EU countries that are still outside the Schengen). The Schengen Area does not include two EU Member States—the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland—that have opted out from the EU’s visa policies and operate a common travel area between them. Furthermore, the common visa policy in the EU is related to the issuance of short-term visas, while visas of longer duration and residence permits remain in the national domain. Against this background, the visa policy of the EU has four relevant aspects. First, the gradual evolution of the Schengen Area has been driven not only by political developments within the EU and its Member States, but also by broader global developments (e.g., the fall of communism). Second, the consolidation of the internal and external aspects of the visa policy in the EU took place through the growth of the Schengen acquis. Third, visa liberalization has become one of the most powerful tools for policy diffusion beyond the EU’s borders. Finally, securitization of migration has had a strong impact on the EU’s visa policy, particularly in the domains of information exchange and police cooperation.
Mexico and the European Union
Authors: Dominguez Roberto , Crandall Marlena
Published: December 2019

The EU–Mexico relationship is symbolic of how a determined commitment to cooperation can lead to enduring partnerships between disparate and geographically distant states. The EU and Mexico have gradually institutionalized several frameworks for cooperation through a series of internationally significant agreements. In spite of major asymmetries in their levels of political, social, and economic development, the EU and Mexico have continually formalized their commitment to cooperation: both parties signed the Economic Partnership, Political Coordination and Cooperation Agreement (GA) in 1997 (in force since 2000), the Strategic Partnership (SP) in 2008, and modernization of the GA in 2018. Although the EU and Mexico have had relations since the 1970s, the first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed an intense alignment of policy goals in a variety of economic, political, and social areas, leading to the acceleration of mutual commitments and cooperation between seemingly unlikely partners.

The implementation of the 2000 GA has been successful on several fronts: trade expanded, trust grew, and the European investment flow to Mexico increased with few interruptions. Therefore, it was not a lack of success that motivated the GA modernization process, but external global transformations and a relationship that had outgrown its defining framework. External global transformations—such as the rapid technological revolution, the subtly shifting international balance of power, and the degradation of the neoliberal economic model—required a more responsive agreement with updated legal frameworks. Further, the limitations of the original GA with respect to trade and economic imperatives required the inclusion of several new articles to address the expanded digital and service-based economies. With respect to political coordination and cooperation, the revised GA incorporated more disciplines into the formal High-Level Dialogues, and addressed a broadened international agenda increasingly focused on regulation, sustainability, and environmental concerns. While the EU–Mexico relationship is characterized by an entrenched belief in institutionalized, regular, and productive cooperation mechanisms, both parties agreed to modernize the GA in the late 2010s. The decades-long commitment to this ethos, despite their highly disparate starting point, is poised to promote several more decades of cooperation with the conclusion of the modernized Agreement in 2018.
Contact Theory and the Distinct Case of LGBT People and Rights
Authors: Harrison Brian F. , Michelson Melissa  R.
Published: December 2019

Gordon Allport’s Intergroup Contact Theory predicts that coming into contact with a member of an outgroup will, under the right conditions, lead to reduced intergroup prejudice. Scholars have found significant evidence that contact with gay men and lesbians does typically lead to reductions in explicit prejudice, even when Allport’s specific conditions are not met. People who report that they personally know someone who is gay or lesbian are more supportive of gay and lesbian rights and relationships and people who report contact with same-sex couples in committed relationships are more supportive of legal recognition of those relationships. There is also evidence that mediated contact, also known as paracontact, can reduce prejudice—in other words, that exposure to positively portrayed gay men and lesbians via the media, including television shows, can shift attitudes. Less is known about how contact affects attitudes toward bisexuals, but initial evidence suggests similar effects. Contact with transgender people is more mixed, with some evidence that interpersonal contact is not as effective due to the negative reactions that many individuals have to transgender people, and some evidence that mediated contact may be more effective, although this is also limited due to the small (but growing) number of positively portrayed transgender characters in the media. A final complication is self-selection bias, in that members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community are more likely to come out to individuals whom they believe will respond positively but both observational and experimental evidence suggests that this does not completely explain the power of contact to reduce prejudice against LGBT people.
Islam, Sexuality, and Gender Identity
Authors: Davies Sharyn Graham
Published: December 2019

The terms LGBT and Islam mentioned together in a sentence rarely evoke positive connotations. Rather, LGBT and Islam are often considered inherently incompatible. While there is little evidence on which an inherent incompatibility can be claimed, persecution of LGBT people across the globe is routinely carried out in the name of Islam. Yet at its heart, Islam can be a powerful force acknowledging sexual and gender diversity. Of all the world’s great religions, Islam is arguably the most sex positive of all.

Three main avenues provide understanding of sexuality and gender in Islam. First is the Qur’an, or the Islamic holy book. Second is hadith, which are the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. Third are fatwah, which are the rulings of religious leaders. Certainly, most of this literature positions sexuality as properly confined to heterosexual marriage between a gender normative woman and a gender normative man. However, it is often difficult to distill such an imperative from cultural aspects that inflect all readings of religious scripture. In other words, it is often not Islam per se that prohibits same-sex sexuality and gender diversity but rather cultural interpretations of religious aspects. Moreover, it is not uncommon for fatwah to contradict each other, and thus which fatwah are followed comes down to which imam or religious leader espouses it.

A further difficulty with discussing sexuality and gender vis-à-vis Islam, or indeed any religion, is that terms such as sexuality and gender are inherently modern and were developed long after understandings of religion were culturally and politically enshrined. As such, particular understandings of the categories of woman and man within scripture exist in a state where interrogation is not possible. If Muhammad were alive today, he would have linguistic tools available to him to talk about sexuality and gender in a much more nuanced way. To thus discuss LGBT subject positions within Islam, given that Islam was largely developed before words like gender and sexuality were invented, is difficult. Nevertheless, such discussion is warranted and fruitful and shows that while many interpretations of Islam seek to vilify LGBT, many aspects of Islam and its practice are inclusive of sexual and gender diversity.
The Political Economy of LGBT Rights
Authors: Siegel Scott N.
Published: December 2019

Equal treatment for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community has improved at a rapid pace around the world since the gay rights movement first rose up to become a salient global force for change. With important regional exceptions, laws criminalizing same-sex sexual relations have not only come down in multiple countries, but same-sex couples can now also construct families in many advanced industrialized countries. Public acceptance of homosexuality, even in some non-Western countries, has increased dramatically. Yet, within those general trends hides the remarkable unevenness in the spread and adoption of policies fostering legal, social, and economic equality for LGBTQ communities around the world. Policy change toward more equal treatment for sexual minorities is concentrated in the developed world and within the cisgender gay and lesbian communities in particular. The existing literature in policy change shows the importance of transnational activists, changing international norms, and increasing levels of secularization have made this possible. But the effectiveness of these factors rests on an underlying foundation of socioeconomic factors based on economic and social development that characterizes advanced industrialized states. There is an uneven distribution of resources and interests among pro and anti-LGBT activist groups alike, and the differing levels of economic development in which they operate that explains the decidedly uneven nature of how LGBTQ human rights have advanced in the past 50 years. In addition, new political parties and activist organizations have emerged to lead the backlash against LGBTQ rights, showing progress is neither inevitable nor linear. In addition, serious gaps in what we know about LGBT politics remain because of the overwhelming scholarly focus on advanced industrialized states and policies that benefit the cisgender, gay and lesbian middle class in primarily Western societies. The study of LGBT politics in non-Western and developing countries is woefully neglected, for reasons attributed to the nature of the research community and the subject area. In the developed world, greater attention is needed to inequality within the LGBTQ community and issues beyond same-sex marriage. Finally, issues of intersectionality and how different groups within the LGBT community have enjoyed most of the benefits of the gay rights movement since its takeoff more than 50 years ago.
National Parliaments and the European Union
Authors: Auel Katrin
Published: December 2019

The role and position of national parliaments in European Union (EU) affairs have undergone a long, slow, and sometimes rocky, but overall rather remarkable, development. Long regarded as the victims of the integration process, they have continuously strengthened their institutional prerogatives and have become more actively involved in EU affairs. Since the Lisbon Treaty, national parliaments even have a formal and direct role in the European legislative process, namely, as guardians of the EU’s subsidiarity principle via the so-called early warning system.

To what extent institutional provisions at the national or the European level provide national parliaments with effective means of influencing EU politics is still a largely open question. On the one hand, national parliaments still differ with regard to their institutional prerogatives and actual engagement in EU politics. On the other hand, the complex decision-making system of the EU, with its multitude of actors involved, makes it difficult to trace outcomes back to the influence of specific actors. Yet it is precisely this opacity of the EU policymaking process that has led to an emphasis on the parliamentary communication function and the way national parliaments can contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the EU by making EU political decisions and processes more accessible and transparent for the citizens.

This deliberative aspect is also often emphasized in approaches to the role of national parliaments in the EU that challenge the territorially defined, standard account of parliamentary representation. Taking the multilevel character of the EU as well as the high degree of political and economic interdependence between the member states into account, parliamentary representation is conceptualized as extending beyond the nation-state and as shared across the EU, with a strong emphasis on the links between parliaments through inter-parliamentary cooperation and communication as well as on the representation of other member states’ citizens interests and concerns in parliamentary debates. Empirical research is still scarce, but existing studies provide evidence for the development of an increasingly dense web of formal and informal interactions between parliaments and for changes in the way national parliamentarians represent citizens in EU affairs.
Institutional Amnesia and Crisis Management Analysis
Authors: Stark Alastair
Published: December 2019

Institutional amnesia can be defined in simple terms as an organization’s inability to recall and use historical knowledge for present-day purposes. However, the concept requires to be defined more expansively so that its causes and effects can be fully understood in relation to crises and crisis management. This means conceptualizing institutional amnesia in broader terms as something that influences individual crisis managers, the formal institutional aspects of crisis management agencies, the cultural dimensions of those agencies, and the wider systemic location within which both actors and agencies reside. The analysis of the effects of amnesia in each of these areas reveals the profound effects that it can have on various aspects of crisis management.

Institutional amnesia can affect the performance of crisis management policies and the politics of crises more generally. In particular, memory loss can be seen to influence crisis decision-making that relies upon historical analogy, crisis learning which demands that learned lessons are formally institutionalized across time, and meaning-making efforts, which draw upon recollections of the past to justify political projects in the present. The effects that institutional amnesia has on these three important areas illuminate its relevance to crisis analysis. Yet amnesia, and to some extent memory, continue to be concepts that are neglected, or referred to tangentially, by mainstream crisis scholars.
Rapid Adaptive Camouflage in Cephalopods
Authors: Chiao Chuan-Chin , Hanlon Roger T.
Published: December 2019

Visual camouflage change is a hallmark of octopus, squid, and cuttlefish and serves as their primary defense against predators. They can change their total body appearance in less than a second due to one principal feature: every aspect of this sensorimotor system is neurally refined for speed. Cephalopods live in visually complex environments such as coral reefs and kelp forests and use their visual perception of backgrounds to rapidly decide which camouflage pattern to deploy. Counterintuitively, cuttlefish have evolved a small number of pattern designs to achieve camouflage: Uniform, Mottle, and Disruptive, each with variation. The expression of these body patterns is based on several fundamental scene features. In cuttlefish, there appear to be several “visual assessment shortcuts” that enable camouflage patterning change in as little as 125 milliseconds. Neural control of the dynamic body patterning of cephalopods appears to be organized hierarchically via a set of lobes within the brain, including the optic lobes, the lateral basal lobes, and the anterior/posterior chromatophore lobes. The motor output of the central nervous system (CNS) in terms of the skin patterns that are produced is under sophisticated neural control of chromatophores, iridophores, and three-dimensional skin papillae. Moreover, arm postures and skin papillae are also regulated visually for additional aspects of concealment. This coloration system, often referred to as rapid neural polyphenism, is unique in the animal kingdom and can be explained and interpreted in the context of sensory and behavioral ecology.
Medieval Jewish Sources for Asian Trade
Authors: Margariti Roxani Eleni
Published: December 2019

Epigraphic materials, travel narratives, religious-legal literature, and documents of daily life produced by or for Jews between the 7th and the 13th centuries add significant dimensions to our understanding of the history of trade across Asia. Written in a variety of Jewish languages, these sources hail from places across the Afro-Eurasian geographical continuum and speak to the two well-known circuits of medieval trans-Asian trade: the Silk Road and its maritime Indian Ocean equivalent. While there has been a tendency to look at medieval Jewish sources scattered across Asia as vestiges of a unified trading diaspora, a consideration of these sources’ volume, chronology, and the circumstances of their production and use reveals several disjunctures and suggests a more fractured history of Jewish participation in Asia trade. Even so a survey of these sources illuminates a variety of topics that relate to Jewish mercantile activity along well-trodden avenues of exchange, transactions and relationships across confessional lines, and the structures and institutions of transregional commerce.
A Review of Gender Differences in Negotiation
Authors: Hernandez-Arenaz Iñigo , Iriberri Nagore
Published: December 2019

Gender differences, both in entering negotiations and when negotiating, have been proved to exist: Men are usually more likely to enter into negotiation than women and when negotiating they obtain better deals than women. These gender differences help to explain the gender gap in wages, as starting salaries and wage increases or promotions throughout an individual’s career are often the result of bilateral negotiations.

This article presents an overview of the literature on gender differences in negotiation. The article is organized in four main parts. The first section reviews the findings with respect to gender differences in the likelihood of engaging in a negotiation, that is, in deciding to start a negotiation. The second section discusses research on gender differences during negotiations, that is, while bargaining. The third section looks at the relevant psychological literature and discusses meta-analyses, looking for factors that trigger or moderate gender differences in negotiation, such as structural ambiguity and cultural traits. The fourth section presents a brief overview of research on gender differences in non- cognitive traits, such as risk and social preferences, confidence, and taste for competition, and their impact in explaining gender differences in bargaining. Finally, the fifth section discusses some policy implications.

An understanding of when gender differences are likely to arise on entering into negotiations and when negotiating will enable policies to be created that can mitigate current gender differences in negotiations. This is an active, promising research line.
Human Punishment Behavior
Authors: Xiao Erte
Published: December 2019

Punishment has been regarded as an important instrument to sustain human cooperation. A great deal of experimental research has been conducted to understand human punishment behavior, in particular, informal peer punishment. What drives individuals to incur cost to punish others? How does punishment influence human behavior?

Punishment behavior has been observed when the individual does not expect to meet the wrongdoers again in the future and thus has no monetary incentive to punish. Several reasons for such retributive punishment have been proposed and studied. Punishment can be used to express certain values, attitudes, or emotions. Egalitarianism triggers punishment when the transgression leads to inequality. The norm to punish the wrongdoers may also lead people to incur costs to punish even when it is not what they intrinsically want to do.

Individuals sometimes punish wrongdoers even when they are not the victim. The motivation underlying the third-party punishment can be different than the second-party punishment. In addition, restricting the punishment power to a third party can be important to mitigate antisocial punishment when unrestricted second-party peer punishment leads to antisocial punishments and escalating retaliation.

It is important to note that punishment does not always promote cooperation. Imposing fines can crowd out intrinsic motivation to cooperate when it changes people’s perception of social interactions from a generous, non-market activity to a market commodity and leads to more selfish profit-maximizing behavior. To avoid the crowding-out effect, it is important to implement the punishment in a way that it sends a clear signal that the punished behavior violates social norms.
Economic Growth in the United States, 1790 to 1860
Authors: Weiss Thomas
Published: December 2019

In the early 21st century, the U.S. economy stood at or very near the top of any ranking of the world’s economies, more obviously so in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), but also when measured by GDP per capita. The current standing of any country reflects three things: how well off it was when it began modern economic growth, how long it has been growing, and how rapidly productivity increased each year. Americans are inclined to think that it was the last of these items that accounted for their country’s success. And there is some truth to the notion that America’s lofty status was due to the continual increases in the efficiency of its factors of production—but that is not the whole story.

The rate at which the U.S. economy has grown over its long history—roughly 1.5% per year measured by output per capita—has been modest in comparison with most other advanced nations. The high value of GDP per capita in the United States is due in no small part to the fact that it was already among the world’s highest back in the early 19th century, when the new nation was poised to begin modern economic growth. The United States was also an early starter, so has experienced growth for a very long time—longer than almost every other nation in the world.

The sustained growth in real GDP per capita began sometime in the period 1790 to 1860, although the exact timing of the transition, and even its nature, are still uncertain. Continual efforts to improve the statistical record have narrowed down the time frame in which the transition took place and improved our understanding of the forces that facilitated the transition, but questions remain. In order to understand how the United States made the transition from a slow-growing British colony to a more rapidly advancing, free-standing economy, it is necessary to know more precisely when it made that transition.
Mining and Metallurgy in Africa
Authors: Bandama Foreman
Published: December 2019

Africa hosts some of the oldest mines (for extracting ochre used in personal adornment) in the world, but the mines that relate to the transformation of rocks to metal occur much later than those found in Eurasia. Throughout the world, the processes of identifying and winning ores from parent rock to transform them into metals and ultimately into usable objects is indeed considered a novelty. African ethno-archeological research suggests that the realization that certain rocks contained sufficient quantities for heat-mediated reduction into metals, as well as the appreciation of the different properties of targeted metals, have never been a difficult issue for the local Africans. However, archeometallurgists are still rationalizing how this novelty began without an apprenticeship phase, especially south of the Egyptian pyramids.

Indigenous sub-Saharan African metallurgy is laden with symbolism. This particular aspect led the whole craft to be derided by Western science as magical and therefore unworthy of proper scientific study. This prejudicial thinking has since been discredited by sound research, but the ripple effects still linger, and archeometallurgical research is still generally underfunded when compared to other elements of anthropological inquiry. Nonetheless, the limited research conducted to date firmly highlights the direction of pre-industrial mining and metallurgical research in this region.

In a pattern unknown in Eurasia, where copper and bronze preceded iron production in a very gradual process, sub-Saharan African metallurgy was ushered in by the simultaneous advent of iron and copper in parts of East, Central, and West Africa, before this metallurgy was introduced to the southern sub-continent. Gold, tin, and cuprous alloys (mostly bronze and brass) were then worked after centuries of ongoing iron and copper metallurgy. As the last block to take up metallurgy, southern Africa is often uncritically assumed not to have had innovative aptitude, but the historiography of mining and metallurgy of sub-Saharan Africa constantly evokes prejudicial thinking about African incapacity, or counter-discourse in the continent’s defense.

A more careful reading of sub-Saharan metallurgy places this craft on par with the equivalent from Eurasia. Considering that the African continent is the cradle of humankind, this is not surprising. Fortunately, as products of high-temperature processes, archeometallurgical objects (finished products, reactions infrastructure, and waste by-products) retain the transformations they went through in their physical and chemical properties, allowing archeometallurgists glimpses into the technologies produced by past societies. Guided by concepts such as materiality, and in agreement with Maussian thinking, Africanist archeometallurgists consider so-called magic to be just as important as technical control, because there is no chasm between the technological and anthropological factors of artifacts, and all technologies fall within the broader social paradigm of their construction.
US Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective
Authors: Phillips Sawyer Laura
Published: December 2019

The key pieces of antitrust legislation in the United States—the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Clayton Act of 1914—contain broad language that has afforded the courts wide latitude in interpreting and enforcing the law. This article chronicles the judiciary’s shifting interpretations of antitrust law and policy over the past 125 years. It argues that jurists, law enforcement agencies, and private litigants have revised their approaches to antitrust to accommodate economic shocks, technological developments, and predominant economic wisdom. Over time an economic logic that prioritizes lowest consumer prices as a signal of allocative efficiency—known as the consumer welfare standard—has replaced the older political objectives of antitrust, such as protecting independent proprietors or small businesses, or reducing wealth transfers from consumers to producers. However, a new group of progressive activists has again called for revamping antitrust so as to revive enforcement against dominant firms, especially in digital markets, and to refocus attention on the political effects of antitrust law and policy. This shift suggests that antitrust may remain a contested field for scholarly and popular debate.
US Grand Strategy
Authors: Cavanna Thomas P.
Published: December 2019

In its most general sense, grand strategy can be defined as the overarching vision that shapes a state’s foreign policy and approach to national security. Like any strategy, it requires the coherent articulation of the state’s ends and means, which necessitates prioritizing vital interests, identifying key threats and opportunities, and (within certain limits) adapting to circumstances. What makes it truly “grand” is that it encompasses both wartime and peacetime, harnesses immediate realities to long-term objectives, and requires the coordination of all instruments of power (military, economic, etc.). Although American leaders have practiced grand strategic thinking since the early days of the Republic, the concept of grand strategy itself only started to emerge during World War I due to the expansion and diversification of the state’s resources and prerogatives, the advent of industrial warfare, and the growing role of populations in domestic politics and international conflicts. Moreover, it was only during World War II that it detached itself from military strategy and gained real currency among decision-makers. The contours, desirability, and very feasibility of grand strategy have inspired lively debates. However, many scholars and leaders consider it a worthy (albeit complex) endeavor that can reduce the risk of resource-squandering, signal intentions to both allies and enemies, facilitate adjustments to international upheavals, and establish a baseline for accountability. America’s grand strategy evolved from relative isolationism to full-blown liberal internationalism after 1945. Yet its conceptualization and implementation are inherently contentious processes because of political/bureaucratic infighting and recurrent dilemmas such as the uncertain geographic delimitation of US interests, the clash of ideals and Realpolitik, and the tension between unilateralism and multilateralism. The end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks, China’s rise, and other challenges have further compounded those lines of fracture.
The Gay South
Authors: Watkins Jerry
Published: December 2019

Regional variation, race, gender presentation, and class differences mean that there are many “Gay Souths.” Same-sex desire has been a feature of the human experience since the beginning, but the meanings, expressions, and ability to organize one’s life around desire have shifted profoundly since the invention of sexuality in the mid-19th century. World War II represented a key transition in gay history, as it gave many people a language for their desires. During the Cold War, government officials elided sex, race, and gender transgression with subversion and punished accordingly by state committees. These forces profoundly shaped gay social life, and rather than a straight line from closet to liberation, gays in the South have meandered. Movement rather than stasis, circulation rather than congregation, and the local rather than the stranger as well as creative uses of space and place mean that the gay South is distinctive, though not wholly unique, from the rest of the country.
Byzantine and Slavic Orthodoxy
Authors: Rentel Alexander
Published: December 2019

The Byzantine-Slav liturgical tradition emerged as an aggregate rite from the diverse liturgical practices of the Eastern Mediterranean from the early 4th century. This tradition developed around the city of Constantinople but was also influenced by the liturgical traditions of Jerusalem and the monasteries surrounding Jerusalem. While Constantinople remained the center of this tradition, it also found its home and developed in unique ways throughout the Mediterranean and the Balkan Peninsula, into Ukraine and Russia, and eventually throughout the world.

The liturgical tradition itself weaves together the diverse practices of monastic and urban worship, creating very much a hybrid rite. The daily office, primarily drawn from monastic practices, utilizes a mix of invariable texts, prayers, psalmody, and composed hymns of ancient provenance as well as a wide array of variable hymns of different origins and genre. Throughout these services, the monastic elements stand side by side with remnants of the urban cathedral worship. The Divine Liturgy, the Eucharist service, has at its core prayers that go back to the classic patristic age of the church, the 4th and 5th centuries. The entire service, however, betrays multiple layers of influence on its development, ranging from practices of the imperial cult of late antiquity to popular piety.

All these elements have come together through organic development and, at times, directed reform to form a vast liturgical tradition with rich textures and complex nuances of meaning.
Tantric Buddhism in Japan: Kūkai and Saichō
Authors: Gardiner David L.
Published: December 2019

Many accounts place the origins of Tantric Buddhism in Japan in the hands of the two men, Saichō 最澄 (767–822) and Kūkai 空海 (774–835). (This article will use “Tantric” and “esoteric Buddhism” synonymously.) These were the founders, respectively, of the Tendai (天台) and Shingon (真言) schools, both of which contributed substantially to the early development of Japanese forms of Tantric theory and practice. Naturally, no tradition emerges from a vacuum; it always grows from existing roots and trunks to create new branches. Because the contributions of Saichō and Kūkai marked a major transition in the history of Japanese Buddhism, focusing on them is an appropriate way to frame important features of early Tantrism in Japan.

Several of the deities central to developed esoteric Buddhism in Japan were present during the Nara period (710–794), as were some of the key texts such as the Scripture of the Great Illuminator大日経 (Skt. Mahāvairocana-sūtra, Jpn. Dainichi-kyō), prior to Saichō and Kūkai’s bringing new materials back from China in 805 and 806, respectively. Significant among the new elements were mandalas, initiation or consecration ceremonies (kanjō灌頂) into ritual practice that employed them, and new texts, in particular of the Scripture of the Tip of the Thunderbolt (金剛頂経) (Skt. Vajraśekhara-sūtra, Jpn. Kongōchō-kyō) corpus, most of which had been translated into Chinese by Amoghavajra 不空 (705–774, Ch. Bukong; J. Fukū). While Saichō returned to Japan more than a year before Kūkai—and established the earliest foundation for the new Tantric tradition by performing Japan’s first kanjō and by making one of the two formal tracks for training Tendai monks a Tantric one (shana-gō遮那業)—Kūkai’s subsequent contributions had a much greater immediate impact on how the tradition unfolded.
Nazism and Religion
Authors: Kurlander Eric
Published: December 2019

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) always had a complicated relationship with religion, emblematic of the diverse völkisch movement out of which the NSDAP emerged. This relationship became even more complicated during the later years of the Weimar Republic as the party grew larger and attracted millions of new supporters from Protestant as well as Catholic regions. The NSDAP’s attitude toward the Christian churches was nonetheless ambivalent, swinging from co-optation to outright hostility. This ambivalence was founded in part on a pragmatic recognition of Church power and the influence of Christianity across the German population, but it simultaneously reflected an ideological rejection of Judeo-Christian values that a number of Nazi leaders saw as antithetical to National Socialism. Many Nazis therefore sought religious alternatives, from Nordic paganism and a “religion of nature” to a German Christianity led by a blond, blue-eyed Aryan Jesus. This complex mélange of Christian and alternative faiths included an abiding interest in “Indo-Aryan” (Eastern) religion, tied to broader ideological assumptions regarding the origins of the Aryan race in South Asia. Ultimately, there was no such thing as an official “Nazi religion.” To the contrary, the regime explored, embraced, and exploited diverse elements of (Germanic) Christianity, Ario-Germanic paganism, and Indo-Aryan religions endemic to the völkisch movement and broader supernatural imaginary of the Wilhelmine and Weimar period.
Islamic Economic Principles
Authors: Wilson Rodney
Published: December 2019

Justice in commercial transactions is central to Islamic economic teaching, in particular the notion that remuneration should be fair, with distribution viewed as a moral issue. Risks are inherent in any economic system, but in Islam rather than risks being borne by debtors alone, they should be shared by creditors. This has implications for the organization of banking and finance. The charging of interest is forbidden, partly due to concerns about exploitative usury, as well as unease about how interest rates are determined.

Islamic economic teaching stresses the merits of charitable giving and the importance of tackling poverty. At the same time there is an awareness of the dangers of creating a dependency culture and the desirability of sustainability in charitable giving. There is concern not only with how money is earned but with how it is spent, with Islamic economic teaching providing guidance on what spending is legitimate and desirable and what should be avoided.

Markets are viewed as the normal method of conducting business in Islamic economics, and private property rights are respected. Islamic teaching in the economic sphere is often regarded as more compatible with a capitalist economic system than a socialist economy, although there is no consensus among Islamic economists about where the dividing line between the state and the private sector lies. Arguably Islamic teaching has developed more at the microeconomic level of the firm while macroeconomic fiscal and monetary policy options remain contested.
Phonetic Detail and Phonetic Gradience in Morphological Processes
Authors: Strycharczuk Patrycja
Published: December 2019

It is uncontroversial that morphological processes can change phonological surface representations. However, some empirical evidence also suggests that morphological processes may trigger phonetically gradient processes, that is, processes that involve fine phonetic differences, but involve no change in phonological categories. Such findings challenge modular or discrete feedforward theories of grammatical architecture, which counterpredict direct interactions between morphology and phonetics. This article reviews some of the findings in this area, pointing to two types of difficulty in interpreting evidence of morphologically-conditioned phonetic gradience. The first one involves significance and replicability in experimental sciences, which become especially problematic when fine phonetic detail is examined and the magnitude of differences involved is very small. The second one concerns identifying what is causing the phonetic effects among a wealth of possibilities, including paradigmatic relationships, morphological structure, prosody, and informativity.